The best movies new to Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, and Hulu (May 2023)

Completely satisfied Might, Polygon readers. Every month, the foremost streaming providers add a bevy of latest films and exhibits to their platforms. Generally they’re titles rotated from different platforms, generally they’re titles making long-anticipated debuts (or returns) on streaming usually. Every month, we spherical up the perfect films so that you can watch which might be new to Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Hulu, and different streaming platforms.

This month is a very sturdy month, with nice films premiering throughout a lot of the main platforms. There’s an all-time nice Jackie Chan film returning to Paramount Plus, a cult basic comedy coming to Hulu, among the best comedies ever made coming to HBO Max, and an all-timer superhero story on Netflix. Oh, and Parasite involves HBO Max. It’s fairly a month.

Let’s get to it!

New on Netflix

Cliffhanger

Picture: TriStar Footage

Yr: 1993
Style: Motion
Run time: 1h 53m
Director: Renny Harlin
Solid: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker

Cliffhanger is a blast of a Nineteen Nineties motion film, with all of the honest dedication to a ridiculous premise you’d anticipate. Sylvester Stallone and Michael Rooker (since reunited within the Guardians of the Galaxy films) are mountain rescue rangers who discover themselves caught as unwilling contributors in a serious heist. The chief of the legal crew (a delightfully unhinged John Lithgow) and his crew of sadistic henchmen tried a mid-air heist on a Treasury aircraft, just for the cash to fall throughout the Rocky Mountains. Stallone and Rooker are tasked with serving to them retrieve it, at gunpoint.

A lot of the film was shot within the attractive Dolomite mountains in Italy, and legendary skilled climbers Ron Kauk and Wolfgang Güllich dealt with a lot of the climbing scenes due to Stallone’s concern of heights (which, sure, could be very humorous, contemplating the function). The stunts are terrific, together with a jaw-dropping second the place any individual transfers from one airplane to a different in mid-air on a climbing rope. And even the Stallone scenes filmed on a soundstage are lovely, due to the matte work used to create the backgrounds.

A reboot, starring Stallone and directed by former stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, is reportedly within the works, so the time is correct to look at the unique Cliffhanger. —Pete Volk

Cliffhanger is streaming on Netflix.

Justice League Limitless

Picture: Warner Bros. Animation

Yr: 2004-06
Style: Superhero
Run time: 39 episodes
Administrators: Joaquim Dos Santos and Dan Riba
Solid: Kevin Conroy, George Newbern, Phil LaMarr

Okay, I’m dishonest a bit. Justice League Limitless isn’t a film, it’s a TV present. But it surely’s among the best items of superhero media ever produced, and it’s now on Netflix, so you don’t have any excuse to not watch this all-time basic.

A direct sequel to the animated Justice League collection (additionally now on Netflix, and value watching, particularly the three-part premiere, even when it doesn’t match Limitless’s highs), JLU aired from 2004 to 2006 and benefited tremendously from the elevated function of the legendary Dwayne McDuffie, who was promoted from employees author on Justice League to story editor and producer on Limitless. —PV

Justice League Limitless is streaming on Netflix.

New on Hulu

Black Dynamite

Picture: Sony Footage House Leisure

Yr: 2009
Style: Blaxploitation motion comedy
Run time: 1h 24m
Director: Scott Sanders
Solid: Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, Arsenio Corridor

Black Dynamite has rightly grown right into a cult favourite. The trendy tackle the blaxploitation motion comedy is each a parody of the style and an homage to it. It’s additionally one of many funniest films I’ve ever seen, and all of it works due to the distinctive expertise of Michael Jai White.

A uncommon expertise, White is a world-class martial artist and actor, who has plied his commerce within the motion and romantic comedy genres all through his storied profession. White not solely starred as Black Dynamite — he additionally co-wrote the script, together with director Scott Sanders and collaborator Byron Minns.

The long-awaited follow-up from White and Minns, The Outlaw Johnny Black, lastly obtained a trailer this week. The Western has been years within the making, together with some fan-funding, and appears completely hilarious. When you’re ready, go forward and watch Black Dynamite to your coronary heart’s content material. —PV

Black Dynamite is streaming on Hulu.

The Ebook of Eli

Picture: Warner Bros. Footage

Yr: 2010
Style: Submit-apocalyptic motion
Run time: 1h 58m
Administrators: Allen and Albert Hughes
Solid: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis

Denzel Washington stars within the Hughes Brothers’ 2010 apocalyptic thriller as Eli, a mysterious wanderer trekking via the wasteland of America thirty years after a nuclear battle has devastated the planet. Journeying to the West Coast on a mission to ship a uncommon guide, Eli runs afoul of the henchmen of Invoice Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a warlord who occurs to be looking for that very same guide. With assistance from Solara (Mila Kunis), the daughter of Carnegie’s blind mistress, Eli makes an attempt to finish his mission and cease Carnegie from acquiring the guide in any respect prices.

As anticipated, Denzel Washington is as intimidating as he’s effortlessly charismatic within the function of Eli, whereas Gary Oldman’s efficiency as Carnegie seems like a extra relaxed although no much less menacing reprise of his function as villainous Norman Stansfield from 1994’s Léon: The Skilled. As darkish as it’s exhilarating, The Ebook of Eli is a stable post-apocalyptic motion thriller with a memorable climax. —Toussaint Egan

The Ebook of Eli is streaming on Hulu.

New on Prime Video

Shutter Island

Picture: Paramount Footage

Yr: 2010
Style: Thriller
Run time: 2h 18m
Director: Martin Scorsese
Solid: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

Martin Scorsese’s twisty asylum thriller stays certainly one of his neglected fashionable gems. Shutter Island follows Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has been despatched to an island asylum along with his accomplice, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), to research the disappearance of a affected person. Whereas he’s there, Teddy discovers that no matter’s happening with this asylum is much extra difficult than he initially imagined.

That is the form of thriller that grabs you by the collar and yanks you from one twist to the following each time you suppose you already know what’s occurring, precisely like a very good thriller ought to. Simply as importantly, the film is punctuated with an amazing solid of supporting characters who present up for his or her one massive scene earlier than calling it a day. Max von Sydow is a Nazi scientist, Jackie Earle Haley a very terrifying affected person, Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson sufferers who know greater than they are saying, Ben Kingsley a kindly physician with a secret, and Ted Levine and John Carroll Lynch play the warden and deputy warden respectively.

All of those twists and characters are held collectively superbly by Scorsese, who shoots Shutter Island with a beautiful blown-out coloration palette that offers it the look of a ’50s Hollywood basic, which completely contrasts with the darkness of the plot and serves to maintain us much more off steadiness. —Austen Goslin

Shutter Island is streaming on Prime Video.

Memory

Picture: Ben Rothstein/Warner Bros. Footage

Yr: 2021
Style: Sci-fi thriller
Run time: 1h 56m
Director: Lisa Pleasure
Solid: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton

Hugh Jackman stars in Westworld co-creator Lisa Pleasure’s neo-noir function debut as Nick Bannister, a non-public detective residing in a post-apocalyptic Miami that’s been flooded on account of local weather change. Using a specialised machine to navigate via his consumer’s reminiscences as 3D projections, Nick embarks on a private journey to resolve the mysterious disappearance of his consumer and former lover Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). Diving into the depths of town’s legal underbelly, Nick shall be confronted with tough questions and inconvenient truths that threaten to engulf him — that’s, except his accomplice Emily “Watts” Sanders (Thandiwe Newton) can discover a technique to halt his obsessive spiral into self-destruction.

One of the vital hanging elements of Memory is its portrayal of a post-climate-change Miami not as an issue to resolve, however as a plainspoken actuality to be confronted. It’s a good sci-fi thriller that understands one of many quintessential rules of any noir story: You may’t save the world and also you won’t even be capable of save the reality, however when you’re fortunate, you simply may be capable of save your self. —TE

Memory is streaming on Prime Video.

New on HBO Max

Parasite

Picture: CJ Leisure/Neon

Yr: 2019
Style: Thriller
Run time: 2h 12m
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Solid: Track Kang-ho, Lee Solar-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong

Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning movie Parasite is a many-featured organism as terrifying as it’s darkly hilarious. Track Kang-ho (Reminiscences of Homicide) stars as Kim Ki-taek, the patriarch of an impoverished household simply barely making a residing out of the basement condominium they reside in. When his son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) will get a job as an English tutor for a rich household residing in an extravagant fashionable residence, the 2 households slowly but absolutely intertwine in a symbiotic spiral of greed, exploitation, and sophistication earlier than exploding into an incredibly unpredictable finale.

Trenchant social commentary mixed with a breadth of memorable performances culminate in a exceptional movie that’s greater than the sum of its components. Parasite was the primary non English-language film to win Finest Image on the Oscars, and is certainly one of solely three films ever to win the Cannes Palme d’Or and Finest Image, becoming a member of The Misplaced Weekend (1945) and Marty (1955). —TE

Parasite is streaming on HBO Max.

Some Like It Sizzling

Picture: United Artists

Yr: 1959
Style: Comedy
Run time: 2h 1m
Director: Billy Wilder
Solid: Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe

One of many funniest, most groundbreaking, and most influential comedies of all time, Some Like It Sizzling’s runaway success is broadly thought of one of many major elements for the dissolution of the Hays Code, which censored content material within the film business.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians who witness a mafia homicide and disguise themselves as girls to flee with their lives. An uproarious, transgressive masterpiece, Some Like It Sizzling has an unmatched lead trio in Curtis, Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, and all of it ends with one of many funniest strains of dialogue ever uttered. For those who haven’t seen it, I implore you to test it out. —PV

Some Like It Sizzling is streaming on HBO Max.

New on Paramount Plus

Venture A

Picture: Golden Harvest

Yr: 1983
Style: Motion comedy
Run time: 1h 45m
Administrators: Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung
Solid: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao

If I’m searching for a assured good time, there’s no higher guess than placing on a Jackie Chan film from this period. Within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, he was working with childhood mates Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, constantly placing out electrical motion comedies that examined the bounds of motion cinema as a lot as they did the our bodies of Jackie and his fellow performers.

A historic martial arts comedy, Venture A is about in Nineteenth-century Hong Kong and follows Jackie as an keen Marine Police Sergeant who needs to cease a gaggle of pirates.

Apart from being an absolute blast, it’s a landmark film for quite a lot of causes. Venture A was the beginning of the legendary Jackie Chan Stunt Staff, as Jackie honed his motion additional into the stunt-heavy, comedic type he turned identified for. It was the primary time Jackie, Sammo, and Yuen Biao co-starred in a film collectively. And the clock tower stunt (you’ll realize it once you see it) stays one of the well-known from a profession stuffed with memorable ones. —PV

Venture A is streaming on Paramount Plus.