A best picture Oscar winner, an unconventional biopic and a sly satire of nonfiction cinema are among the most noteworthy titles U.S. Netflix subscribers should move to the tops of their watch lists. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)
‘12 Years a Slave’ (May 1)
The Academy Award winner for best picture of 2013, this dramatization of the true ordeal of Solomon Northup — a free northern Black man kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery — is a harrowing, heart-wrenching, visceral experience, brought to vivid life by the director Steve McQueen, the screenwriter John Ridley (who also won an Oscar) and the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Northup with an absorbing combination of tragedy and tenacity. He is supported by a brilliant ensemble cast, including Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender as plantation owners (one seemingly kind, one undeniably cruel) and Lupita Nyong’o, whose stunning work as a perpetually abused slave won her the Oscar for best supporting actress.
‘Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation’ (May 1)
This fifth entry in the durable “Mission: Impossible” film franchise was a turning point for the series, which until then had been directed by a rotating series of noteworthy auteurs (including Brian De Palma for “Mission: Impossible,” John Woo for “Mission: Impossible 2” and J.J. Abrams for “Mission: Impossible III,” all of which are also leaving Netflix in May). “Rogue Nation” was the first “M:I” film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning writer of “The Usual Suspects” who ended up doing likewise for the three films that followed, infusing the series with a continuity that was previously absent. “Rogue Nation” also introduced Rebecca Ferguson to the franchise as the tough-as-nails superspy Ilsa Faust, who dominates the Vienna Opera House sequence, one of the most memorable set pieces in the series.
‘Priscilla’ (May 1)
When Sofia Coppola’s adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis and Me,” hit theaters in 2023, it played like an answer to Baz Luhrmann’s razzle-dazzle “Elvis” from the previous year — quiet and contemplative rather than showy and caffeinated, focused on how Presley affected one young woman (rather than the entire world). Cailee Spaeny is a stunner as Priscilla, all of fourteen years old when she first meets Presley (Jacob Elordi, who nudges past iconography to play the King as a sensitive, temperamental, overgrown adolescent) and embarks on an all-or-nothing relationship where she is alternately ignored and smothered. Coppola’s fleet-footed drama nimbly avoids the land mines of the music biopic, focusing instead on the solitude and sadness of being in the proximity of the most famous man in the world but never really knowing him.
‘Documentary Now’: Seasons 1-4 (May 9)
This IFC comedy series was created by the four “Saturday Night Live” alums Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas. But it is delightfully unshackled from the need to appeal to a mainstream audience: Each of the 27 episodes sends up a documentary film with such attentiveness to niche detail that it risks alienating those not in the know. But even if you aren’t familiar with “The Thin Blue Line,” “Grey Gardens,” “Original Cast Album: Company” or “The War Room” (to name only four of the funniest targets), you’ll find much to love in the show’s inspired silliness, pitch-perfect aesthetics and riotous performances.
‘Kumiko the Treasure Hunter’ (May 16)
Besides being one of the great indie movies of the 1990s, Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Fargo” was something of a nesting doll of fact and fiction — a film that opens with on-screen text claiming, “This is a true story,” but was in fact manufactured out of whole cloth. That playful prank seemed to have an unintended tragic consequence: Urban legend had it that the real-life Tokyo office worker Takako Konishi, who died in 2001, had gone to her death in the Minnesota snow searching for the ransom buried at the end of “Fargo.” That, too, was inaccurate, but the “Kumiko” filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner treat that explanation as fact, spinning it into an eccentric and insightful scripted feature that examines the power of films over collective imagination. Rinko Kikuchi (an Oscar nominee for “Babel”) is heartbreaking in the title role.
Also Leaving:
“Annie” (2014), “Call Me Kate,” “Darkest Hour,” “Dawn of the Dead” (2004), “Dune” (1984), “Erin Brockovich,” “Focus,” “Fury,” “Hell or High Water,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Jaws,” “Joy Ride,” “Lee Daniels’s The Butler,” “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Rooster Cogburn,” “Sicario,” “Whiplash,” “You’ve Got Mail” (May 1); “Lola,” “Train to Busan” (May 2); “The Joneses” (May 4); “The Infiltrator” (May 7); “Sing Street” (May 9); “ABBA: Against the Odds” (May 11); “Peter Rabbit” (May 16); “Pig” (May 26); “Your Honor” Seasons 1-2 (May 31).
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