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

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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 May, broken down by service and release date. Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice.

Movies New to Netflix

Strictly translated, the French title of this film is “The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain,” and it’s a bright, puckish movie that’s sure to lift your spirits. Our heroine (Audrey Tautou) seems to live in a France of long ago — allegedly 1997, but it feels more like the 1950s, with Bruno Delbonnel’s evocative cinematography spinning around a glowing Montmartre. The magical realism touches are a true delight; when Amélie falls in love, she actually melts into a puddle, splashing across the floor.
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The second “Bourne” film by director Paul Greengrass brings the rogue amnesiac C.I.A. assassin Jason Bourne one step closer to finding out who he really is, and what terrible things he may have done. As Bourne, Matt Damon inflicts memorable damage as the story flings him about from Moscow to Paris, to London, to Tangier, to New York. Things look bad for Bourne at the end … or do they?
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What if one little thing — missing an elevator, or a train — could change your whole life? Gwyneth Paltrow lives out two parallel paths based on one such divergence, and the film follows both as each ultimately involves the same Monty Python-quoting stranger (John Hannah, never more appealing).
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The French New Wave icon Agnès Varda, now in her late 80s, wanders through the French countryside, chats up the locals and plasters buildings with giant photographic portraits of those locals, taken by her companion. It’s an utterly whimsical and charming enterprise.
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In surveying aspects of American masculinity, this movie is both raunchy and kind of sweet — a Judd Apatow specialty. And it’s packed with hot comic talent: Steve Carell, Jane Lynch, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Elizabeth Banks (in a hysterical bathtub scene) and Seth Rogen, who gives his breakthrough performance. Stormy Daniels makes a brief cameo as well.
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In this adaptation of the classic children’s novel by Katherine Paterson, two outsider kids (Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb) become fast friends and imagine a secret magical kingdom together, a refuge from school bullies. The special effects (courtesy of Weta Digital) help realize Terabithia with its tree-trolls and hairy vultures, but the emotional landscape is created in the children’s sensitive, nuanced performances. Tissues suggested.
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This Pixar Oscar-winner offers a beautiful and celebratory passage into Mexican culture, as framed by the story of Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), a 12-year-old boy who finds himself transported to the Land of the Dead — which, despite its name, is actually a wonderful place to be. The colors are luscious, the songs ravishing, and the animation incredibly detailed: When Miguel plays the guitar, his fingers form actual, complex chords. Wonderful stuff.
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Also of interest: “Beautiful Girls” (May 1), “Shrek” (May 1), “Grand Designs” Seasons 13 and 14 (May 15) and “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” (May 31).

TV Shows New to Netflix

Season 2 is coming to a close in mid-May on the CW and then migrating to Netflix, so this is your chance to catch up or review. Who fell victim to Black Hood’s killing spree? What can Archie’s vigilante crew, the Red Circle, do about it? What kind of trouble will Jughead get into with the biker gang the Southside Serpents? No jingle jangle necessary for this binge.
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Also of interest: “Shooter” Season 2 (May 22), “Arrow” Season 6 (in May, date T.B.D.) and “The Flash” Season 4 (in May, date T.B.D.).

New Netflix Original Movies

The writer-director Andrew Niccol (“Gattaca” “In Time”) returns to the science-fiction-thriller genre in which he’s done so well. Niccol’s “Anon” stars Clive Owen as a cop who’s working in a totalitarian futuristic city where crime has been nearly eliminated by also eliminating privacy. Amanda Seyfried plays an anonymous hacker who uncovers a conspiracy, possibly related to a series of unexplained murders. Together, the government lackey and the anarchist rebel look for the truth about their world.
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Separately and in collaboration, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have been responsible for the award-winning documentaries “The Times of Harvey Milk,” “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” and “The Celluloid Closet.” Their latest nonfiction project is a provocative and intimate look at how doctors, nurses and patients at two San Francisco Bay Area hospitals cope with death. Frank without ever becoming too gloomy, “End Game” urges viewers to think about our last days on Earth not as a heartbreaking tragedy but as an opportunity for true closure.
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Joey King stars in this adaptation of the beloved young adult novel by Beth Reekles, which follows a virginal high schooler who finally gets a chance to date the hunky classmate she’s always liked. The trouble? She worries that if she goes through with it, it will mess up her close friendship with the boy’s sister. King has been making movies and TV shows for over 10 years, so it’s easy forget she’s still only 18. That’s probably because she hasn’t actually worked on many projects like this one, the lead of a rom-com aimed at her own generation.
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Also of interest: “Sometimes” (May 1), “Forgive Us Our Debts” (May 4), “Ibiza” (May 25) and “Sara’s Notebook” (May 26).

New Netflix Original TV Series

The first season of this semisatirical look at contemporary college life from Justin Simien was described by Netflix as a continuation of his 2014 indie film of the same name. But the TV version really just took a more granular approach to the movie’s premise, shifting between the perspectives of a handful of black students at an Ivy League university rife with racial insensitivity. The second season promises to push beyond the rough outline of the original, intensifying the relationships between the characters, while considering how their campus activism is being received by cable news pundits and social-media trolls.

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The veteran TV comedian Carol Burnett returns to the small screen for her own spin on Art Linkletter’s old “kids say the darnedest things” shtick. Working without a script, Burnett will invite celebrity guests to tell a panel of grade-schoolers about some small problem they’re having and then see if the children have any suggestions for how to fix it. The little ones may prove they have some useful advice to offer, but the show’s emphasis will be more on cuteness than on self-improvement.
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Netflix continues to expand its foreign-language programming with its first original Danish series, set in a post-apocalyptic Scandinavia where a handful of youthful human survivors have banded together and are searching for any remaining signs of civilization. Created by Jannik Tai Mosholt (who was a writer on the international hit “Borgen”), “The Rain” will mostly be about the emotional weight of being among the last people on Earth and the difficulty in restarting society from scratch with strangers.
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One of the 21st century’s most bizarre murders is now the subject of a true-crime docu-series. In 2003, a man wearing an explosive collar died in what was initially assumed to be a suicide bombing, until it was later revealed that he’d been roped into an elaborate bank robbery scheme. “Evil Genius” looks back at this complex, stranger-than-fiction case, and offers new details about the fascinating characters involved.
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‘Fauda’ (Season 2)
Starts streaming: May 24
Add it to your Watchlist

“The New York Times” TV critic Mike Hale named this Israeli thriller one of the “Best International Shows” of 2017, crediting its tense and twisty plot involving a retired special agent who returns to his old job in order to track a Hamas operative he thought he’d already killed. Season 1 told a fairly complete story, but new crises pop up all the time in the Middle East, offering plenty of opportunities for the second season to continue its “Homeland”-like exploration of conflicted characters, navigating the intricacies of one of the world’s most complex regions.
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At the end of Season 3 of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” the ever-sunny Kimmy (played by the wonderful Ellie Kemper) got a job working at a promising new start-up. That’s where she’ll be at the beginning of the show’s fourth season: still learning how to act like an adult, after having spent much of her youth imprisoned by a cult leader. The rest of her friends — including the aspiring entertainer Titus (Tituss Burgess), the crackpot old-school New Yorker Lillian (Carol Kane), and the former trophy wife Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) — will continue navigating the sudden turns of fortune that this zippy, addicting sitcom puts its cast through each season.—

Netflix Original Comedy Specials

Much of what makes John Mulaney one of the most popular comics of this era is that he puts himself in situations where he can react naturally and hilariously to the absurdities of everyday life. That’s especially true in his stand-up sets — including his latest for Netflix, in which he riffs about growing up, growing older and what it was like to be a writer on “Saturday Night Live.”
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Ali Wong went from being a niche-favorite comedian to becoming a sensation after her first Netflix special, “Baby Cobra,” shot in 2015 while she was seven months pregnant. So what did Wong do for an encore? She got pregnant again and performed a fresh stand-up set in Toronto, dealing with the horrors of parenting. Non-prudish parents will appreciate the comic’s profane candor; folks without kids may be scared away from ever having sex again.
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Early in her career, Tig Notaro was known for her wry, deadpan, somewhat perverse observational humor, but ever since delivering a spirited and riveting set in 2012 about her breast cancer diagnosis, Notaro has shifted toward more barbed jokes about her own life. Her latest special runs the gamut in subject matter, from common situations like marriage and parenthood to things more specific to the world of openly gay comedians.
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The longtime friends Steve Martin and Martin Short both have a reputation for being among the most personally engaging people in show business, renowned for their generosity of spirit and their eclectic interests. All of that is on display in their comedy special, taped recently on their current national tour. The two sing songs, tell stories, trade self-deprecating quips, perform sketches and generally do their best to make the audience feel as if they’re hanging out in person with two of America’s favorite entertainers.
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Also of interest: “Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives” (May 8).

New to Amazon Prime Video

Haley Joel Osment gives an uncanny performance as the sweet, sentient robot boy David, who is abandoned by his human “mother” as if he were a broken toy. Also memorable is Jude Law, who is eerily exhilarating as the cyber love man Gigolo Joe. The unsung hero of the story, however, is the long-suffering super-toy Teddy. Together, these robots raise some deep philosophical issues that can also break your heart.
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John Hurt gives one of his most deeply moving performances, playing a gentle man with profound facial disfigurement who is trapped in the hellish life of a Victorian sideshow freak. The man is rescued by a kindly physician (Anthony Hopkins) who puts him on display for two new kinds of audiences, first his fellow doctors, then the curious snobs of London high society. This dark fairy tale from David Lynch was nominated for eight Oscars, and its contemplation of voyeurism — including our own — is still unsettling.
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The director Kathryn Bigelow and the screenwriter and onetime combat journalist Mark Boal introduce us to an elite army bomb squad (of the sort with which Boal was embedded in Iraq) in this tense and psychological work from 2009. Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty are in top form here, helping the movie win six Oscars, including awards for best picture and best director. Remember to breathe when Renner suddenly realizes there’s a buried web of explosives surrounding him.
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A murder, a sleuth and a stopped, stranded train full of stylish suspects: Sidney Lumet’s version of the Agatha Christie classic is superior to Kenneth Branagh’s recent remake. It focuses more on clues, conspiracies and methodical logic than the emotional turmoil of its popular French detective, Hercule Poirot (here played masterfully by Albert Finney). His interrogations of passengers played by Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Perkins are slyly amusing, particularly because that the murder victim was a truly terrible person that no one seemed to like.
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Has any boxer ever been as dogged in pursuit of a championship as Rocky Balboa? We sweat along with him as he trains and finally cheer as he runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, punching the air in triumph. Sylvester Stallone wrote the first six “Rocky” movies (and directed four of them), and this first effort from 1976 won the Oscar for best picture. Not bad at all for a kid from Hell’s Kitchen. Watch this one if you need to go the distance, too.
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Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is a college professor in Pittsburgh who’s been failing to write a second novel for years. He’s 2,000 pages in, and he still doesn’t know what the story is. One of his students (Katie Holmes) points out that he has failed to make necessary narrative choices — either in the book or in his messy life. The movie is a charming adaptation (by director Curtis Hanson) of the novel by Michael Chabon, which gives Tripp one last lost weekend before he must finally decide whether he can become the author of his own existence.
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Peter Weir’s 1975 movie adaptation of the novel by Joan Lindsay was an unambiguous classic about ambiguity, but this six-part Amazon Original television series is in some ways an even stranger nightmare vision. The year is 1900. Three Australian boarding school girls and one of their teachers, out on an innocent picnic at the ominously named Hanging Rock, mysteriously disappear. Scandal ensues, unsettling the locals as well as the school’s secretive headmistress (Natalie Dormer, who gives an especially arch performance here). Did she fail the girls in some way?
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The highly cultivated Schlegel sisters (Hayley Atwell and Philippa Coulthard) strive to connect with men above and below their socioeconomic station, with mixed results. This four-part update of the Edwardian novel by E.M. Forster elaborates on the 1992 film: There’s more class commentary, some racial consciousness, and more narrative room for the previously neglected Schlegel brother Tibby (a hilariously droll Alex Lawther). He drives everyone crazy, and his sisters keep telling him, “Go away, Tibby!” But you’ll be happy he doesn’t.
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Also of Interest: “Back to School” (May 1), “Bull Durham” (May 1), “Eight Men Out” (May 1), “The Golden Compass” (May 1), “The House I Live In” (May 1), the “Rocky” sequels (May 1), the seven Sean Connery films in the “James Bond” series (May 1) “Rocky & Bullwinkle” Season 1 (Prime Original, May 11), and “Beatriz at Dinner” (May 19).

New to Hulu

No interest in baseball? No problem. The big game in this hit film is sex, which the earthy baseball groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) likes to offer to a different minor league rookie each season in order to be his … life coach of sorts. Her latest choice is the dimwitted pitcher Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), known as Nuke, but Annie has competition this time: A veteran pitcher named Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) wants to coach Nuke into the major leagues. With slick comic timing, Sarandon controls this situation for the most part, although Costner’s “I believe” speech (“long, slow, deep, soft kisses that last three days”) is a famous narrative curveball. Oh, my.
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What is the Matrix? A better question might be, what isn’t the Matrix? The Wachowskis stuffed so much into the this landmark film — borrowing from Hong Kong action cinema, cyberpunk, anime, philosophy, “Alice in Wonderland” and much, much more — that it has to be seen to be understood. Take the red pill.
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Freddy Krueger — overly tanned, uniquely gloved — was a fresh and actually scary creation in the first of Wes Craven’s phantasmagorical teen-slasher series. The character’s campy, wisecracking days lay ahead, but in the beginning, he was a pure, leering terror, a walking warning to never bury anything in the basement of your mind.
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Steven Soderbergh’s multiple, parallel narratives about the war on drugs suggests that the drug trade between the United States and Mexico is nourished above all by inequality. Benicio Del Toro, who won an Oscar for his performance, plays a street-smart Mexican cop who finds a way to reduce at least some of the violence on both sides of the border.
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Beatriz (Salma Hayek, never better) is a middle-aged immigrant who’s just getting by as a holistic healer. When her car leaves her stranded, a client invites her to stay for a fancy dinner party, at which the guest of honor will be the real estate billionaire Doug Strutt (John Lithgow). Director Miguel Arteta serves up an examination of privilege in its many forms as Beatriz and Doug become sparring partners. Cringe-worthy.
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There wouldn’t seem to be much that’s funny about Tonya Harding’s life: the grinding poverty, the belligerent mother (Oscar-winner Allison Janney), and a bizarre scandal that ended her ice-skating career. But director Craig Gillespie tees up this offbeat biopic as a comedy, and its star, Margot Robbie, drives it home with one of her grittiest performances. Bonus: The skating scenes are breathtaking.
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Also of interest: “Back to School” (May 1), “Dirty Pretty Things” (May 1), “Eight Men Out” (May 1), “The House I Live In” (May 1), the “Matrix” sequels (May 1), the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” sequels (May 1), the “Rocky” series (May 1), “Drunk History” Season 5 (May 5), “Claws” Season 1 (May 11), “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (May 12) and “The Strain” Season 4 (May 16).

Movies New to HBO

This cult charmer seems designed to trigger an immediate nostalgia for one’s own melancholic adolescence. The film’s writer, director and star, Zach Braff, plays Andrew Largeman, a failing actor who is recalled to his native New Jersey by the death of his mother, where he hooks up with some old pals and tries to figure out what to make of a lovable pathological liar named Sam (Natalie Portman). The movie skirts the outer shoals of whimsy, but its sweet likability is hard to resist, even if it’s largely to blame for the pop culture invasion of manic pixie dream girls. Conundrum!
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Director Jane Campion wanted a new kind of romantic fantasy, and Meg Ryan wanted to slam the door on her chirpy rom-com image. As it turned out, they were a smart match. In this erotic art-thriller, Campion focuses on the female gaze (Ryan plays a voyeur) and on female sexual pleasure, giving Ryan some of her steamiest moments on film to date.
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Well before “Fifty Shades of Grey,” this 2002 romance told the story of an oddball lawyer (James Spader) who recruits a mentally troubled young woman (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to be his secretary — and before long, his submissive sex partner. It sounds kinky — and the movie does have its moments — but director Steven Shainberg’s nonjudgmental approach to the material sidesteps sensationalism. Gyllenhaal and Spader are entirely engaging, and unexpectedly funny. This is a gently edgy sex-com.
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This hit rom-com, set early in the Internet Age and directed by Nora Ephron (she also partly wrote the screenplay), is a loose remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 “The Shop Around the Corner.” The question it asks is: Are we our truest selves online? And to work out an answer, it gives us two would-be lovers (Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks) who find friendship in an AOL chat room but then bicker during real life encounters. With its flirtatious musings about newly sharpened pencils and the then-emerging struggle between independent bookstores and chains, the movie already has a nostalgic glow.
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Christopher Nolan’s $100-millon movie about the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II might seem too big for streaming or TV — but that would depend on how big your screen is. Nolan’s narrative is light on dialogue and heavy on teeming extras and spectacular aerial vistas. Tom Hardy acts almost entirely with his eyes, and Kenneth Branagh contributes some requisite stiff upper lip as a navy commander waiting on the shore.
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Shot over 90 days in 21 countries, this documentary from Greg Barker follows the Obama administration’s foreign policy team during its final year and, thus, some of its biggest achievements (the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, the renewal of diplomatic relations with Cuba). Knowing that much of this work ends up being dismantled a year later can make watching this feel like an exercise in futility, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
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Also of interest: “A Dangerous Son” (May 7), “Fahrenheit 451” (May 19), “Patti Cake$” (May 26) and “The Tale” (May 26).

Noel Murray contributed reporting.

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