21 Best Movies New to Streaming in May: ‘Air,’ ‘Quantumania,’ ‘A Man Called Otto’ and More

Ben Affleck’s “Air” will be available to stream on Prime Video beginning May 12. “Air” debuted in theaters April 5 on more than 3,500 screens, which marked an unprecedented theatrical release for Amazon. Directed by Affleck from a script by Alex Convery, “Air” tells the true story of how Nike’s basketball division signed then-NBA rookie Michael Jordan into a historic partnership that revolutionized the world of endorsement deals with the creation of the Air Jordan brand. To date, “Air” has grossed $74.7 million worldwide, with praise from audiences (with an “A” Cinemascore) and critics, alike. In his review, Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge compared the underdog tale to “this generation’s ‘Jerry Maguire.’”

Tom Hanks’ “A Man Called Otto” defied skeptics and became a surprise box office hit this winter, grossing over $100 million worldwide in a big win for Sony Pictures and for adult audiences. Based on the 2012 novel “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman, the film casts Hanks as a grouchy and depressed widower whose heart softens when he befriends his new neighbors. Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review that Hanks was “well-cast as a misanthropic loner,” adding, “Hanks, make no mistake, is the right actor for this role. For years, when he was America’s top movie star, Hanks was routinely described as our own James Stewart, the soul of guy-next-door decency, but going back to his earliest performances in films like ‘Bachelor Party’ Hanks has always had an edge to him.”

Marvel had a rough go of things with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which tied “Eternals” as the worst-reviewed Marvel Cinematic Universe movie on Rotten Tomatoes. While the film opened with a franchise-best $105 million, poor word of mouth killed the tentpole at the box office and now “Quantumania” and its $474 million gross won’t even surpass the totals of “Ant-Man” ($519 million) or “Ant-Man and the Wasp” ($622 million). That’s a huge misstep, especially since “Quantumania” was meant to kick off a brand-new phase of the MCU by introducing its new Thanos-like villain, Kang the Conqueror. Perhaps more fans will check out the space adventure when it makes its Disney+ debut this month. 

“Director Davis Guggenheim reminds audiences why the ‘Family Ties’ star was one of the 1980s’ most beloved personalities in a portrait that hits the same notes as Fox’s best films,” Variety film critic Peter Debruge writes in his review of “Still,” a new documentary on the life and career of Michael J. Fox. “Guggenheim sees Fox as a trouper, focusing on how the actor fought to hide his Parkinson symptoms for years, burying himself in his work so as not to face his handicap head-on…Through ‘Still,’ Fox lets audiences see him as he is now. He’s smaller than many realize, and that’s another source of self-deprecating humor. But allowing his disability to be shown is a kind of strength.”

The original “White Men Can’t Jump” starred Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as a pair of street basketball hustlers who team up for a big match-up. The 1992 sports comedy was a box office success upon release and remains a sports comedy classic. Now comes a reboot with Sinqua Walls and rapper Jack Harlow in the lead roles. Charles Kidd II directs from a script by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris and Doug Hall. Described as a “modern remix” of the original, the film stars Harlow as Jeremy, a former star basketball player whose injuries stalled his career, and Walls as Kamal, a promising player who derailed his own future in basketball. The film’s official synopsis explains: “Juggling tenuous relationships, financial pressures and serious internal struggles, the two ballers — opposites who are seemingly miles apart — find they might have more in common than they imagined possible.”

After telling the Pamela Anderson story earlier this year, Netflix turns its attention to Playboy model and tabloid sensation Anna Nicole Smith. The new documentary, “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,” tracks the model’s meteoric rise, controversial romances and tragic death. “I want audiences to understand that Anna Nicole was a complex woman,” director Ursula Macfarlane told Tudum. “She was someone who above all else wanted to be a good mother and a free-spirited exuberant woman who wanted to live life on her own terms. But her story is also a cautionary tale about how the desire for the American dream can swallow you up and spit you out, blurring your self-image and make you lose sight of your authentic self.”

Willem Dafoe is the only actor on screen for the majority of “Inside,” in which he plays an art thief who loses his sanity after getting trapped inside a penthouse apartment. Variety praised Dafoe’s “riveting” performance in its review, writing: “Whether he’s playing Christ, Antichrist or somewhere in between, there’s always something slightly off that makes him watchable. In ‘Inside,’ director Vasilis Katsoupis provides him with a showcase part in what is essentially a one-man show that Dafoe carries with aplomb.”

Jennifer Lopez is a killer and a mother in Netflix’s upcoming action movie “The Mother,” which will start streaming just in time for Mother’s Day weekend. Lopez plays a former killer who left her old life behind to protect her 12-year-old daughter. After her daughter is kidnapped, Lopez’s character must come out of hiding and re-enter the assassin life to save her. The cast includes Joseph Fiennes, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Paul Raci and Gael García Bernal. Here’s the official logline from Netflix: “A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men.”

The original “Chicken Run” arrives on Netflix ahead of the long-awaited sequel, “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” premiering on the platform later this year. The 2000 original centers on a group of British chickens who are forced to team up with an American rooster in order to escape their farm owners, who are hellbent on turning them into meat pies. “Chicken Run” was a sensation at the turn of the century, grossing $227 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing animated movie ever made at the time (it was surpassed by “Shrek”). From Variety’s review: “Technically superb and witty, ‘Chicken Run’ marks a delightfully clever feature debut by Britain’s Aardman team of stop-motion animators.”

David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” stars Brad Pitt as a man who is aging backwards, and Cate Blanchett as the beauty who wins his heart. “The film represents a richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling,” Variety wrote in its review of the sweeping drama, which picked up 13 Oscar nominations (including best picture and best director) and $335 million at the worldwide box office. “This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.”

Spider-Man is finally web-slinging on Disney+. Up until recently, the Sony-owned Spider-Man movies have not streamed on Disney+ despite the studio sharing rights with Disney to the most recent iteration of the big screen superhero played by Tom Holland. Well, the times have now changed. Tobey Maguire’s trilogy of “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2” and “Spider-Man 3,” plus Andrew Garfield’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” arrived on Disney+ on April 21, making them the first batch of Sony superhero movies to debut on the Disney streamer. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will make his Disney+ debut when “Spider-Man: Homecoming” arrives May 12.

Spider-Man isn’t the only Sony character crashing Disney+. Tom Hardy’s Venom is also arriving on Disney+ in May courtesy of 2018’s “Venom,” a critically-panned superhero tentpole that nevertheless became a huge box office sensation with over $856 million worldwide. There’s no word yet on when the sequel, 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” will hit Disney+. From Variety’s review: “As anyone who saw his silky and cutting performance in ‘Locke’ can attest, Tom Hardy is one of the smartest actors around. So why, in ‘Venom,’ does it seem like he’s doing his impersonation of a benignly inarticulate stoner clown who’s only got half his marbles? It may be his way of lightening up and going with the flow of a popcorn movie.”

Bong Joon Ho’s historic Oscar winner “Parasite” streams on HBO Max this month. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and became the first non-English language movie to win the Academy Award for best picture. From Variety’s review: “Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho is on excoriating form in his exceptional pitch-black tragicomedy about social inequality in modern Korea…Bong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019: “Parasite” is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.”

Per HBO: “‘Love to Love You, Donna Summer’ is an in-depth look at the iconic artist as her voice and artistry takes her from the avant-garde music scene in Germany, to the glitter and bright lights of dance clubs in New York. A deeply personal portrait of Summer on and off stage, the film features a wealth of photographs and never-before-seen home video footage – often shot by Summer herself. Through a rich window into the surprising range of her artistry, from songwriting to painting, ‘Love to Love You, Donna Summer’ explores the highs and lows of a life lived on the global stage.”

Claire Denis won the best director prize at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival with “Both Sides of the Blade,” a romantic drama about a married couple (Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon) come undone by the ghosts of their past. “It was very difficult to do these scenes, they worked us more than we worked them, and they even ate us up inside, but we did it with courage, with fury,” Binoche told Variety about acting in the tumultuous and often crippling romantic drama. “I think we’ve been brave to make this film because the subject is extremely difficult and I think it’s changed us, we didn’t come out of it unscathed.”

Alice Diop’s shattering “Saint Omer” won the Silver Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. The story centers on a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach to be taken by the tide and the pregnant novelist who is covering her court case. From Variety’s rave review: “Documentarian Alice Diop’s extraordinary fiction debut retells a 2016 infanticide case while casually inventing a wrenching new grammar for the true-life tragedy genre…it’s a deceptively austere, extraordinarily multifaceted fiction debut.”

Danielle Deadwyler gave one of the best performances of 2022 in “Till,” starring as the mother of Emmett Till who used her son’s horrific murder to create a larger awareness of the Civil Rights Movement across America. From Variety’s review: “In her terrific performance as the mother of Emmett Till, Danielle Deadwyler wrestles a ghastly American tragedy into a story of resilience crucial to the civil rights movement… she makes Mamie’s love real and her grief relatable. No mother should experience what she did, and no one would blame her for wanting to bury him as discreetly as possible.”

David Harbor is an R-rated Santa Clause in “Violent Night,” which was a modest hit for Universal Pictures last December as it grossed $76 million at the worldwide box office. The “Stranger Things” star plays a grizzlier, more rueful version of Kris Kringle in the action movie, which is set on Christmas Eve as Saint Nick encounters a family being held hostage by a team of mercenaries and is forced to take matters into his own hands. Harbour is joined by an ensemble that includes Cam Gigandet, Beverly D’Angelo and John Leguizamo. Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review: “It throws every genre it can into the compactor, but that may prove to be a winning holiday buffet.”

“Parasite” favorite Song Kang-ho won the best actor prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival thanks to his role in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Broker.” The film centers on a criminal family seeking to sell a baby. From Variety’s review:  “Kore-eda is surprisingly generous toward his characters, nearly all of whom are breaking the law, but whose fundamental decency is brought out when dealing with others in need.”

After making its streaming debut on Peacock last November, the Harvey Weinstein scandal drama “She Said” arrives on Prime Video this month at no extra cost to subscribers. Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan play The Times reporters who broke the Weinstein abuse story in a movie Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman praised for being “tense, fraught, and compelling.” Gleiberman continued: “You may wonder how, exactly, ‘She Said’ is going to capture what that story felt like before it became a story. The movie accomplishes this by tapping into something that was always an essential part the Weinstein saga, but one I’ve never experienced as vividly as I did watching ‘She Said’: the pervasive, unfathomable fear that ruled Harvey Weinstein’s victims.”

All the great buzz for “Mad Max: Fury Road” couldn’t drive interest for director George Miller’s ambitious follow-up “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Tilda Swinton as a scholar who finds herself meeting a djinn (Idris Elba) and contemplating what three wishes to make. The film returns to Prime Video this month, where it deserves to find at least a cult following. Variety awards editor Clayton Davis wrote out of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, “You’ll hear the awards comparisons that call it Miller’s version of ‘The Shape of Water,’ Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winner for best picture, but it’s closer to Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’ but with an accessible and soulful core.”