The Best TV Shows and Movies New to Netflix, Amazon and More in March

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Every month, subscription streaming services add a new batch of movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are the titles we think are most interesting for March, broken down by service and release date. Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice.

Movies New to Netflix

It’s 1987, and James and Em (Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart) are workers at a rundown amusement park where the games are rigged. He makes her a “bummer” mixtape, saying of its contents: “They’re truly miserable, pit of despair-type songs. I think you’ll love it.” The music serves as shorthand: We know that the mechanic, Connell (Ryan Reynolds), is a poseur because he claims he once jammed with Lou Reed; that the preening Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva) is superficial because she dances to Falco; and that the fumbling James and the guarded Em could be a good match because they both love Hüsker Dü. It’s all wonderfully cynical, and yet sweetly earnest.
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This 1984 smash isn’t really about ghosts. It’s about the effortless chemistry among the three leads: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. Or, to be honest, it’s about Murray. The story, now firmly imprinted in our national comedy DNA, is a woozy swirl of proton packs, shape-shifting Sumerian gods and, of course, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Sigourney Weaver is on hand, too — also in top form. But Murray is the deadpan master who fuels the movie.
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“Moon” is an underrated debut and a must-see before viewing director Duncan Jones’s most recent film, “Mute,” which feels like something of a successor. Sam Rockwell is absorbing as Sam Bell, an off-world corporate caretaker who, after being alone on the moon for three years, is starting to unravel. Aided by Clint Mansell’s eerie score, the film examines the toll taken by living in total isolation, what it’s like to confront ourselves and the lengths to which corporations might go to protect its interests. It’s a haunting movie.
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“Married, two kids — it should be enough,” Kate Winslet’s character despairs. But what if it’s not? In this 2008 film from director Sam Mendes, an ill-suited couple (Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to escape what the husband calls the “hopeless emptiness” of settled-down conformity in the 1950s suburbs, but they can’t agree on how. Winslet is devastating in her rage and disillusionment as she cycles through limited options. Then, a sizzling Michael Shannon steps in, who, because his character is certifiably insane, has no fear of telling it like it is.
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As the traveling corporate hatchet man Ryan Bingham, the ever-charming George Clooney flies around the country firing workers he has never met before, often with a smile. He’s a man with no personal life to speak of, whose main interest is racking up frequent-flier miles. (To him, loyalty means rewards programs.) But as he trains a chipper subordinate (Anna Kendrick) and connects with a fellow road warrior (Vera Farmiga), he’s forced to confront the emptiness of his transient life. Some of the movie’s most affecting moments are provided by real people who describe on-camera the trauma of losing their jobs.
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With a new “Benji” coming to Netflix on the March 16, Netflix is making the … er … “classic” titles available, including this 1974 original, the first of five written around the scrappy little stray. In a twist on the typical family-dog scenario, the pup begins the franchise as a homeless freelancer who works his way into the hearts of the townspeople, especially a pair of siblings who feed and play with him behind their parents’ backs. When the children are kidnapped, it’s up to Benji to do the sleuthing necessary to find them.
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Netflix Original TV Series

Flint, Mich., is infamous for the recent crisis involving lead-contaminated water, as well as for the General Motors downsizing covered in Michael Moore’s documentary exposé “Roger & Me.” The docu-series “Flint Town” describes a different problem, noting how the city’s poverty has led to an underfunded police department, an escalating crime rate and citizens who live in fear. The show tracks the efforts to rectify the problem, which involves a lot of missteps, but also some genuine will to squeeze hope out of a hopeless situation.
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Netflix’s Marvel shows vary wildly in quality, but “Jessica Jones” is one that even a lot of the franchise’s skeptics like. Give a lot of credit to the star, Krysten Ritter, who’s both cool and heartbreaking as a crusty, superstrong detective, clobbering creeps while indulging in multiple vices to numb her pain. Three years after the show’s first season became a critics’ darling, it finally returns, with the heroine determined to crack a case that could lead her back to how she got her powers in the first place.
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The veteran playwright and screenwriter David Hare, a two-time Oscar nominee for “The Hours” and “The Reader,” scripted this original four-episode BBC Two series about the investigation of a London murder with sensitive sociopolitical ramifications. Carey Mulligan stars as one of the officers investigating the case of a Syrian refugee who was shot and killed as he was working a food delivery job. As the case unfolds, the motives behind his assassination tip toward a disturbing commentary on England itself and its growing anti-immigrant sentiment.
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Fans of the darkly comic, painfully real MTV series “Awkward” should be thrilled to hear that the show’s creator, Lauren Iungerich, is back to making television, once again taking on high school but from a different perspective. Shifting her focus from the ritzy Palos Verdes region of Los Angeles to the more hardscrabble South Central, Iungerich should bring her usual snappy dialogue — and her sensitivity to adolescent emotions — to a part of the city where life is often more complicated than just finding a date for prom or mastering Snapchat.
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Readers who lived through the 1980s may recall the name of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a guru whose small Oregon cult briefly made national news because of his followers’ alleged involvement with bioterror and an attempted political assassination. The docu-series “Wild Wild Country” uses rare archival footage and recent interviews to help explain where Rajneesh’s movement came from, how it took hold in America and how it all came to a violent end.
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The former “Hannah Montana” writer Heather Wordham and the former “Wonder Years” and “Malcolm in the Middle” writer Matthew Carlson bring their knack for family-friendly tales of teen angst to this, another of Netflix’s growing stable of old-fashioned multicamera sitcoms. Paris Berelc and Isabel May star as high-school freshmen who struggle with this latest phase of their lives while discovering that making a good impression isn’t entirely within their control.
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From the mind of a “Narcos” executive producer, José Padilha, comes another true crime story, based on the still-unfolding “Operation Car Wash” money-laundering scandal in Brazil. “The Mechanism” (or “O Mecanismo” in the original Portuguese) follows a team of investigators who start looking into kickbacks and bribes in a state-run petrochemical company. Things get hairy as they realize they could be exposing corruption on a scale that could destabilize the social order, not only in Brazil but also around the world.
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Netflix Original Movies

A hit at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, this arty French-Canadian zombie thriller — with a title that translates as “The Ravenous” — crosses “The Walking Dead” with muted neorealism and a touch of “The Twilight Zone.” When a rural Quebecois community begins to succumb to a ghoulish plague, the survivors regroup in the surrounding forests and fight to reclaim their home. But will they become as horrible as the monsters they’re trying to expel? The writer-director Robin Aubert asks that question subtly, in a horror movie that is as thoughtful as it is creepy.
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Producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg join forces with the team behind the Comedy Central series “Workaholics” to put a stoner-comedy twist on “Die Hard.” Anders Holm, Adam Devine and Blake Anderson play Los Angeles waiters who work in a building that gets seized by terrorists. Determined to be rough-and-tumble, blockbuster-style heroes — with guns and cool catchphrases — the three waiters bumble their way into even more trouble, and end up fighting with one another as much as with the bad guys.
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How might radicalization actually work? The Dutch director Mijke de Jong offers a persuasive case study with this fictional account of a young Muslim woman in Amsterdam (Nora El Koussour) whose anger over Islamophobic policies leads her to get married, drop out of school and follow her husband to an austere religious community in Amman, Jordan. “Layla M” is about a headstrong woman whose convictions are met with different forms of oppression in Amsterdam and Jordan, tying her to a grim destiny like ropes to a railroad track.
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Also of interest (TV and movies): “300” (March 1), “Casino” (March 1), “Cruel Intentions” (March 1), “The Descent” (March 1), “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (March 1), “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” Season 18 (March 1), “Wet Hot American Summer” (March 1), “Love” Season 3 (March 9), “Terrace House: Opening New Doors” Season 1 (March 13), “Benji” [new Netflix Original version] (March 16), “50 First Dates” (March 28) and “Little Women” (March 28).

New to Amazon Prime

Released in 1988, “The Accused” was one of the first Hollywood films to address the moral culpability of unprotesting witnesses to rape. Jodie Foster won her first Oscar for playing the abrasive, working class Sarah Tobias, who is treated as an “asking for it” poster girl after she is gang raped in a bar. It’s not only the rape itself that’s on trial here, however: It’s also the frat boy privilege, the whooping enablers and the pernicious victim blaming. A harrowing but necessary watch.
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The sibling directors Jay and Mark Duplass might seem to be typecasting Jason Segel as a pot-smoking man-child, but this is one of the actor’s best films. In it, he plays a 30-year-old slacker who continually interprets random events as “signs” about what he should do with his life — and perhaps he’s right. The movie is sweet and discursive, with something serious on its mind.
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My sixth-grade teacher kept a cage of white rats in the classroom, and I would pretend that these were the rats from N.I.M.H. — lab rat escapees from the National Institute of Mental Health, who had gained superior intelligence from chemical brain enhancement experiments there. In this acclaimed animated film (based on a trilogy of books), the rats are the heroes, capable of reading, orchestrating their own escape, devising their own independent society and other brilliant plans. It’s a kid pleaser.
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The “Juno” team — director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody — do something really risky in this movie: They give us a female antihero who’s incredibly unlikable but still funny and fascinating. Charlize Theron’s Mavis Gary is someone who grew older without growing up, hence her desperate scheme to win back a happily married ex (Patrick Wilson). The story deconstructs Hollywood’s usual rom-com view of women: Mavis is not on any road to redemption, and we aren’t rooting for her anyway. Patton Oswalt gives the film its bittersweet heart as an old schoolmate who once worshiped Mavis from afar.
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Maybe we all resent it a bit when our friends become successful, but Brad (Ben Stiller in fine form) is obsessed with it. Even though he has a prestigious job, a loving marriage and a son on his way to college, he can’t stop comparing his life — unfavorably — with those of his old college friends (Michael Sheen, Jemaine Clement, Luke Wilson and the film’s writer and director, Mike White), all navigating a sea of first-world problems. Produced by Amazon, the film is sharply observed, and all too real.
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India often produces nearly 2,000 films a year, absolutely dwarfing Hollywood in volume and earnings. And yet most Americans are rarely exposed to the films and music of Bollywood, the Indian film industry’s Hindi-language component, known around the world for its heroic tales, its brilliant costumes and its elaborate song-and-dance numbers. This new series from Amazon Prime offers an original twist on both Bollywood and the reality-competition series, pitting singers, dancers and DJs against one another to create remixed performances of popular Bollywood tunes.
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Frustrated nuns go wild at a 14th Century Italian convent in this assertively foul-mouthed tale (loosely based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron”). The death-stare master Aubrey Plaza is one such sister who can’t stay repressed for much longer, not when Dave Franco is the new groundskeeper and an irrepressible Jemima Kirke heads up the local witches’ coven. Who knew confession could be so hilarious?
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Also of Interest: “1984” (March 1), “Chaplin” (March 1), “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (March 1), “The Doors” (March 1), “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” (March 1), several “James Bond” titles (March 1), “Sneaky Pete” Season 2 (March 9), and “The Dangerous Book for Boys” Season 1 (March 30).

New to Hulu

The art world gets a good going-over in this Oscar-nominated satire about a Stockholm museum from the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund. The targets are admittedly easy: ridiculous exhibitions put together by pretentious and hypocritical progressives. But two happenings in particular — a performance-art stunt in which a man pretends to be a monkey, and an explosive social-media campaign for an installation meant to represent “sanctuary” — provoke compelling questions about confrontational art. What happens when you confront it right back?
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In this loopy new original action series from Hulu, two detectives (Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn) live in a world that is about to face an extinction-level event in five years’ time. All sorts of what Detective Charlie Hicks (Sturgess) calls “freaks, nutters, religious weirdos and psychos” are using that as an excuse to get away with murder before the apocalypse, which might mean the world is coming to an end ahead of schedule.
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As an avalanche comes crashing down an alpine ski resort, vacationers naturally panic. A mother lunges for her children, but her husband flees — taking his iPhone. Everyone is safe, but is the marriage? Ruben Ostlund offers here a wickedly funny exploration of marital dissatisfaction, along with one of the best (worst?) man-cries ever committed to film.
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Lovers of the New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey, this one’s for you. Finally, after years of playing soft supporting roles, Lynskey took center stage, in this bittersweet 2012 comedy about a 35-year-old divorced woman who finds her way out of a life slump by way of an affair with a 19-year-old guy (Christopher Abbott). Lynskey is luminous, even when she literally hits rock bottom. (It’s a sight gag. Don’t miss it.)
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What could be cuter than penguins? Baby penguins! The French documentarian Luc Jacquet returns to Antarctica for this sequel in order to track a waddling father and son on the younger bird’s first journey across and under the ice. Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones and an underwater camera accompany their plunge. Under the sea, the birds seem to fly.
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Also of interest: “Chaplin” (March 1), “Chicago” (March 1), “Dirty Dancing” (March 1), “Stuart Little” (March 1), “Veni Vidi Vici” Season 1 (March 1), “The Bridge” Season 4 (March 15), “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain” (March 15), “The Son” Season 1 (March 15), “John Q” (March 16) and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (March 24).

New to HBO

Alan Rickman made his big-screen debut in this film as the icy Hans Gruber, a disaffected German terrorist intent on stealing a huge cache of bearer bonds for unstated nefarious purposes. Gruber almost seems bored by the whole affair — that is, until the arrival of Bruce Willis’s pesky “cowboy,” John McClane. The ensuing showdown makes for the greatest Christmas action movie ever made. Yippee-ki-yay!
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Popeye Doyle is a racist creep; but he’s also a relentlessly effective cop, and Gene Hackman brilliantly captures both sides of this prickly character. (He won an Oscar for his performance.) Popeye is on the trail of a silky international drug lord (Fernando Rey), and in the process of hunting him down takes part in one of the greatest slam-bang car chases of the 1970s. Which is saying something.
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“Quid pro quo”: It’s only one of the terrifying demands made on the F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) by the caged Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). She seeks his help in creating a profile of a serial killer, but he wants something in return, elevating this brooding horror-thriller into something brilliant. It won five Oscars, and it still haunts.
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Hoping to keep up with the references in Steven Spielberg’s coming movie “Ready Player One”? Then it’s time to get reacquainted with this 1983 hacker thriller, which occupies a significant place in that movie’s plot. Matthew Broderick — looking ridiculously youthful — is a high-school kid named David Lightman, who is determined to play what he thinks is an unreleased computer game, Global Thermonuclear War. (Yikes!) Key word being “thinks.” Get to know David really, really well, and it will help you crack some of the “Ready” codes.
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Anyone who’s contemplated the possibility of a female James Bond should take a look at “Atomic Blonde.” The movie is set in Cold War Berlin, with Charlize Theron as a top spy for Britain’s MI6, who’s capable of dispatching multiple K.G.B. thugs at once with punches, flying kicks and found-item weapons (garden hoses, corkscrews). Theron was once a serious ballet student, and she did most of her own fight-scene stunts here (and looks suitably banged up after they’re over). Bond would certainly approve.
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Does absinthe makes the heart grow fonder? It definitely does the trick for the four college pals in this film (Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish), who get together for a wild reunion in New Orleans. Gleefully outrageous, Haddish steals the show (you’ll want to see her grapefruit-banana trick), and it’s a pleasure to watch her break through.
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Also of interest: “The Beguiled” (March 1), “Ice Age” (March 1),“Where the Wild Things Are” (March 1), “Alien: Covenant” (March 3), “My Cousin Rachel” (March 10) and “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling” Parts 1 and 2 (March 26 and 27).
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Noel Murray and Scott Tobias contributed reporting

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