It’s gonna be May! And to celebrate, Netflix is coming out with a whole bunch of film and television content, including a number of original movies and series (like the Emmy-nominated Grace & Frankie), classic films like Pleasantville and The Nutty Professor, and two of the Bring It On movies, because you know you need more cheerleading in your life. Read on for some of our recommendations and the full list of programming.
Sixteen Candles
Year: 1984
Director: John Hughes
It’s the movie that made Molly Ringwald a star, and rightfully so: as Samantha, the everywoman whose parents forgot her birthday and whose crush doesn’t know she exists, she appeals to the angsty high-schooler yearning to be seen in all of us. Samantha’s undeniably middle-of-the-road—she’s not popular, but she’s not a geek; her home life is messy, but it’s not dysfunctional—and that gives her mass appeal, so much so that her story’s become sort of a modern fairy tale, the American Dream of teen romantic comedies.
—Bonnie Stiernberg
The Keeping Room
Year: 2014
Director: Daniel Barber
Available: May 4
The Keeping Room is the intimate story of three women and two men—the women, Southern daughters, sisters and slaves, and the men a pair of marauding Union soldiers rampaging through Georgia in the days before Sherman’s conquest of Atlanta. At its heart, the strongest comparison is to call it something akin to a home invasion period piece, although the film is continuously reaching for something more poetic. That gravitas, however, is just barely outside its grasp, despite beautiful imagery and a near-perfect capturing of the stifling, war-torn American South, captured in high definition, bathed in reality and natural light.
—Jim Vorel
Goosebumps
Year: 2015
Director: Rob Letterman
Available: May 11
A riff on R.L. Stine’s enormously popular series of children’s horror stories, at its best it’s a kids’ movie like Joe Dante’s
Explorers or some of the better Pixar entries. While many filmmakers in recent years seem to be motivated by their love of the ’80s,
Goosebumps is the first film I’ve seen that actually recreates the charm of something like
The Goonies or (again, from Dante)
Gremlins and successfully updates it rather than merely imitating it.
—Jim Hemphill
We Are Still Here
Year: 2015
Director: Ted Geoghegan
Available: May 15
The movie never wants for scares. It might actually be the single most terrifying movie of 2015, even next to David Robert Mitchell’s acclaimed and unsettling
It Follows. But Geoghegan handles the transition smoothly, from the story
We Are Still Here begins as to the bloodbath it becomes. There’s no sense of baiting or switching; the director flirts with danger confidently throughout. Plus, there’s that New England winter to add an extra layer of despair. The elements forebode and forbid in equal measure. The weather outside is frightful—and the carbonized wraiths in the basement even more so.
—Andy Crump
May 1
A Study in Sherlock (2016)
Admiral (2015)
Ava’s Possessions (2015)
Bring It On (2000)
Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006)
Easy Living (Seasons 1-3)
El Crítico (2013)
FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue (1998)
Finger of God (2007)
Gary Gulman: It’s About Time (2016)
Great Expectations (1998)
I Am Road Comic (2014)
Jesus Town, USA (2014)
Just Friends (2005)
Kevin Hart Presents Keith Robinson: Back of The Bus Funny (2015)
Kevin Hart Presents Lil Rel: RELevent (2015)
Kevin Hart Presents: Plastic Cup Boyz (2015)
LoliRock: Season 1 (2014)
My Last Day Without You (2011)
The Nutty Professor (1996)
Off the Map (2013)
Palm Trees in the Snow (2015)
Pleasantville (1998)
Shark Lake (2015)
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
Sugar Coated (2015)
Terra (2015)
Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream (2007)
Who’s Driving Doug (2016)
May 2
The Replacements (2000)
May 3
Submerged (2015)
May 4
The Keeping Room (2015)
Shanghai Knights (2003)
May 5
Fourth Man Out (2015)
Marseille (Netflix Original)
May 6
Ali Wong: Baby Cobra (Netflix Original)
Baby Daddy (Season 5)
Grace and Frankie (Season 2: Netflix Original)
Young and Hungry (Season 3)
May 8
The Chosen Ones (2015)
May 9
A Stand Up Guy (2015)
May 10
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)
May 11
Chelsea (Netflix Original)
Goosebumps (2015)
They Look Like People (2015)
May 12
Bleeding Heart (2015)
May 15
We Are Still Here (2015)
Yo Soy la Salsa (2014)
May 17
American Dad! (Season 10)
Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016)
Slasher (Season 1, 2016)
May 18
A Girl Like Her (2015)
May 19
Benders (Season 1, 2015)
May 20
Lady Dynamite (Season 1, Netflix Original)
May 22
David and Goliath (2015)
The Letters (2014)
The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death (2015)
May 23
Electricity (2014)
May 26
Graceland (Season 3)
The Last Man on the Moon (2016)
May 27
Bloodline (Season 2, Netflix Original)
Chef’s Table (Season 2 Part 1, Netflix Original)
The Do-Over (2016, Netflix Original)
Mako Mermaids (Season 4, Netflix Original)
May 28
Hell on Wheels (Season 5)