Best Movies Streaming in May 2025: Last Showgirl, Spider-Verse, Twilight

Brutal it is! Brady Corbet’s sweeping and punishing historical epic is well worth the journey (and the destination!), landing on streaming after its 70mm theatrical release and formidable awards campaign. Adrien Brody stars in an Oscar-winning performance as a Hungarian architect, who comes to the United States after the Holocaust and falls into the company of a gruff, aristocratic benefactor (Guy Pearce). What could go wrong? The film also won Academy trophies for its remarkable score and cinematography.

The epic-scale animated sequel finally slings its way onto Disney’s streaming service this month, now standing alongside the Marvel Cinematic Universe entries that is kind-of, sort-of has some tenuous connections to. After blasting off with “Into the Spider-Verse” in 2018, Sony Picture Animation one-upped themselves with this follow-up that benefits from a slapstick army of Spider-Folk, a terrific voice performance by newcomer Jason Schwartzman and a refreshing narrative focus on Gwen Stacy.

Pamela Anderson scored a best actress nomination at the Screen Actors Guild Awards this past season for her lead turn Gia Coppola’s latest: a drama that follows a longtime Vegas strip performer in the twilight of her show’s tenure. Jamie Lee Curtis also got critical attention in a supporting role, and the cast includes Dave Bautista, Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka. Writing on the film, Variety chief film critic Owen Glieberman said that “the film reclaims Pamela Anderson as an actor, and part of what she achieves is to reclaim the humanity of so many women, not so different from herself, who took on a role the world insisted on seeing as ‘degraded,’ perhaps because it couldn’t see them.”

Paddington returns to his homeland in the third live-action adventure featuring the lovable immigrant to the United Kingdom — seven years after his last outing released to theaters with the critically acclaimed “Paddington 2.” Olivia Colman joins the series in a delectably villainous turn as a mischievous nun.

What do John Krasinski, Natalie Portman and Eiza González have in common? They’re all looking for the Fountain of Youth in “Fountain of Youth,” Apple’s new ensemble adventure film from director Guy Ritchie, bringing his signature caper flavor to a throwback premise. Filmed across the globe, the cast also includes Domhnall Gleeson, Carmen Ejogo and Stanley Tucci. If it all works out for these characters, they’ll never age a day — at least that’s how the story usually goes.

She’s the sheltered new kid in school surrendering to teenage passions; he’s the 104-year-old pretty boy that sparkles in the sun. How could they ever make it work? After some heart-to-hearts and an epic-maxing baseball game, they’re going to try. Netflix is also streaming all five entries of the vampire teen romance series, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner.

There’s some good intrigue around “Mountainhead,” what could be another study in the vanity and folly of the modern mega-rich from “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong (here, making his directorial feature debut.) The film shot in Park City, Utah in March and now, just two months later, it will debut on the Max streamer. The lead quartet of Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Yousef and Cory Michael Smith, each playing a ball-busting billionaire, is a comedy powderkeg, ready to blast in the snowy mountains as civilization teeters below.

Val Kilmer only donned the cowl for one “Batman” entry, but his classic chin and curveball performance style made him an ideal match for the oddball character. Along with other “Batman” films streaming on Tubi, “Forever” will be available on the streamer for those looking to revisit the late movie star’s turn as the superhero.

They should’ve called this one “Pack Swag” because that was surely the instructions that Steven Soderbergh gave to his cast before they traveled to the shoot. A sturdy caper dealing in espionage thrills — of both marital and geopolitical focuses — the film stars Michael Fassbender as an insect-like spy, bugging out as he carefully probes his peers, including his wife (Cate Blanchett, perfect as the femme fatale), to discover a traitor among the ranks. Aside from its own perfectly syncopated game of musical chairs, the story also functions as a terrific comedy about how intelligence agency jobs attract a certain type of narcissist — and how self-centered people secretly envy true love.

Those looking forward to the upcoming original HBO documentary “Pee-wee as Himself” can revisit Paul Reubens’ tour de force feature as the wily, wonderful man-child. “Big Adventure” also marked the directorial debut of Tim Burton; the film proves a perfect match for two supernovas of comedy, each at the peak of their powers.

Romcom tropes get a new horrific twist in this genre spin, streaming on Netflix after debuting in theaters in February for the Valentine’s holiday. The film stars Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding as a pair of co-workers mistaken for a couple by a killer who only targets those on lover’s lane. Speaking with Variety, director Josh Ruben shared that he took cues from Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan two-handers in crafting the tone of his gory slasher — the results are funny and fleet, while still spooky.

Can an octogenarian horticulturist smuggle drugs for the cartel? You better believe it. Clint Eastwood directs himself in a tender, graceful thriller that aptly turns the screws when the tension ramps up. There’s a scene in a Waffle House where Eastwood confronts Bradley Cooper, playing the fed hunting him down, that is unforgettable.

The heist film all but peaked when Steven Soderbergh got his hands on it with this remake, which sees George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac and — count ’em — seven other likable rogues teaming to drain the safe inside a casino, and make a cuckold of Danny Ocean’s ex-wife’s new boyfriend for good measure. Netflix is also streaming the lax and even better sequel “Ocean’s Twelve,” as well as the over-the-top trilogy-capper “Ocean’s Thirteen.”

After six seasons and counting on “Saturday Night Live,” Chloe Fineman gets a true comedy feature vehicle with this Hulu original, playing an exotic dancer hired to by a female high-schooler to seduce (and provide some bedroom guidance and rizz counseling) to her boy crush. Jillian Bell helms the production in her directorial feature debut, steering a cast that includes Charlie Day, Alex Moffatt and Natalie Morales.

Though this ensemble disaster film was the basis for the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker parody “Airplane!,” it’s an entirely different kind of movie — all together. Featuring a star-studded cast of wildly divergent performance quality, from Dean Martin to Jean Seberg to Helen Hayes (who won an Oscar) to even the eventual ZAZ regular George Kennedy, “Airport” is a sweeping, loopy throwback to what blockbuster filmmaking once was, better and worse. Netflix is also streaming two of its sequels, “Airport 1975” and “Airport ’77.”

Ben Affleck elevates what could be a dime-a-dozen crime story directing his second feature, a Boston-set one-last-job thriller where the criminals literally rob Fenway Park. Packed with local twang and neighborhood flavor, the film is a pretty epic programmer that demonstrates the irreplicable magic and swagger of great location shooting. Jeremy Renner, hot off his breakthrough Oscar nomination for “The Hurt Locker,” is truly on one as the wild card of Affleck’s gang.

Anytime Netflix streams a film older than 40 years seems like a miracle really and it’s even better when the company licenses a classic on the level of “The Jerk.” Most of us have been watching Steve Martin for our entire lives; it’s even easier to appreciate this, now, as a defining comedic voice entering the mainstream like a shot out of a cannon. Terrifically directed by Carl Reiner, too.

Joe Keery gets a role he was born to play in Eugene Kotlyarenko’s prankish and fearlessly contemporary neo-noir, centered on a rideshare driver who will do anything for online clout. The results are even better than freaky — it’s discombobulating, cringe and, to put it 2020-period-appropriate, poggers. In other words, it gets what it’s like to be online in the world today.

After staggering the release of the “Fear Street” movies week-to-week in the summer of 2021, Netflix returns to the R.L. Stine adaptation for a new fourth entry with “Prom Queen”: a standalone story about the cutthroat (perhaps literally) politicking between high school it girls. The plot takes place in 1981. Matt Palmer directs, with the cast including India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza, Ariana Greenblatt, Chris Klein, David Iacono, Ella Rubin, Lili Taylor and Katherine Waterston.