Here Are the Must-Stream Movies of April 2016
The biggest film ever–at least in terms of American box-office receipts–will be available at home this month, as J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits Blu-ray, DVD, and just about every digital retailer come April 1st. However, for those uninterested in revisiting that galaxy far, far away, the coming weeks bring with them an amazing number of high-quality classics available via your online service of choice. Action, sci-fi, drama, comedy–no matter your taste, April will be a streaming month to remember.
Streaming on Netflix:
16 Blocks (April 1)
Bruce Willis must transport Mos Def to a courthouse sixteen city blocks away–a task that turns nightmarish when crooked cops attack them both–in this sturdy 2006 genre film from Richard Donner.
2001: A Space Odyssey (April 1)
Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film is an unforgettable masterpiece of chilly human space explorers, a terrifyingly human computer, and a trip through the hallucinatory cosmos. The Star Child awaits.
A Clockwork Orange (April 1)
A teen (Malcolm McDowell) with a taste for ultra-violence embarks on an odyssey of mischief and mayhem in dystopian England in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel.
Best in Show (April 1)
Christopher Guest's finest mockumentary (well, at least since the Rob Reiner-helmed This is Spinal Tap) follows the bizarre competitors of a highly contested dog show.
Boogie Nights (April 1)
Paul Thomas Anderson established himself as one of America's most promising directors with this 1997 opus, starring Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds, about a well-hung rising star in the '70s California porn scene.
Deep Impact (April 1)
Armageddon may now be remembered as the winner of summer 1998's battle of the killer-asteroid blockbusters, but Mimi Leder's film about humanity's attempts to deal with a comet on a catastrophic collision-course with Earth is still a sturdy disaster picture buoyed by strong performances from Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, and Morgan Freeman.
Mystic River (April 1)
Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won their first Oscars (for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively) for this acclaimed Clint Eastwood-directed Boston drama about three childhood friends who are reunited as adults when one of their daughters is murdered.
The Perfect Storm (April 1)
Based on real events, this Wolfgang Peterson-directed film starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg details the tragic last voyage of the Andrea Gail, a New England fishing vessel lost at sea during a historic storm.
The Right Stuff (April 1)
Boasting a cast that includes Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, and Barbara Hershey, Philip Kaufman's rousing 1983 adaptation of Tom Woolfe's 1979 bestseller concerns the story of America's pioneering test pilots and astronauts during the '40s, '50s and '60s.
The Running Man (April 1)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wrongly convicted soldier forced to literally fight for his life on a futuristic game show in this action-packed adaptation of a Stephen King short story.
The Shawshank Redemption (April 1)
Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are inmates struggling to make it through their prison sentences (and escape confinement) in this beloved Stephen King adaptation from director Frank Darabont.
Scrooged (April 1)
Charles Dickens' holiday classic receives a sarcastic modern update courtesy of Bill Murray, who stars as a TV executive visited on Christmas Eve by three spirits.
Sunset Boulevard (April 1)
Hollywood gets the scathing satirical treatment courtesy of Billy Wilder, whose film charts the unlikely meeting between a down-on-his-luck screenwriter (William Holden) and a desperate-for-the-spotlight former silent movie star (Gloria Swanson).
Hush (April 8)
Making its world premiere on Netflix after a successful debut at this year's South by Southwest festival, Mike Flanagan's horror film concerns a deaf woman (Kate Siegel) who's stalked in her home by a mysterious stranger (John Gallagher, Jr.).
Minions (April 24)
Despicable Me's tiny, yellow, gibberish-spouting sidekicks strike out on their own in this story of their humble villain-assisting origins.
Team Foxcatcher (April 29)
A Netflix exclusive, this documentary tells the real-life story of John du Pont, the wealthy wrestling enthusiast who committed murder in 1996–and whose saga was dramatized in the 2014 film Foxcatcher.
Premiering on Amazon Prime Video:
Amistad (April 1)
An African slave ship rebellion leads to courtroom drama involving Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins in this 1997 Steven Spielberg historical drama.
Bananas (April 1)
Woody Allen heads to Latin America, where he quickly becomes the center of attention during a military rebellion, in this laugh-out-loud funny 1971 comedy.
Batman (1989) (April 1)
Before Ben Affleck donned armor to fight Superman as the Dark Knight, Michael Keaton was Gotham's hero–tasked with taking down Jack Nicholson's Joker–in Tim Burton's 1989 superhero blockbuster.
Crimes and Misdemeanors (April 1)
Perhaps Woody Allen's finest film, this 1989 black comedy involves two men (Allen's documentarian and Martin Landau's ophthalmologist) whose lives intertwine in murderous ways.
Cube (April 1)
Vincenzo Natali's 1997 mind-bender generates horrifying suspense from a simple set-up: awakening in cube-shaped rooms filled with deadly traps, a group of amnesiac strangers struggle to escape their bewildering confinement.
Death Wish (April 1)
The vigilante film that spawned a thousand imitators (and a few sadistic sequels of its own) finds Charles Bronson taking the law into his own hands after his wife is murdered and his daughter is raped during a home invasion.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (April 1)
Skipping school has never been as snarky as in this 1986 John Hughes comedy about a know-it-all Chicago delinquent (Matthew Broderick) taking a day off from his educational duties with his best friend (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend (Mia Sara).
Gremlins (April 1)
A boy ignores his father's warnings and breaks all the rules pertaining to his new mystical pet–thereby unleashing an unholy army of tiny monsters on his hometown–in this superlative Joe Dante horror-comedy.
Men in Black II (April 1)
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones reunite for more alien-policing action in this serviceable sequel to the 1997 action-comedy hit.
Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear (April 1)
Leslie Nielsen is back for more buffoonish slapstick-y antics as Lieutenant Frank Drebin, head of the Police Squad, in this memorably absurd comedy sequel from Airplane! mastermind David Zucker.
Pootie Tang (April 1)
Louis C.K. wrote and directed this astonishingly absurd 2001 comedy–based on a sketch from HBO's The Chris Rock Show–about an incomprehensible jive-talking superman known as Pootie Tang (Lance Crouther).
Pumpkinhead (April 1)
A mythic demon is summoned by a man seeking vengeance against those who killed his boy in this horror gem directed by special effects master Stan Winston.
Rescue Dawn (April 1)
Director Werner Herzog dramatizes his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly with this gripping 2006 film starring Christian Bale as a German-American pilot who's shot down and captured behind enemies lines during the Vietnam War.
Risky Business (April 1)
Tom Cruise dons sunglasses and slides cross the living room floor as a high-schooler mixed up with a beautiful prostitute (Rebecca De Mornay) in this 1983 coming-of-age comedy.
Ronin (April 1)
Robert De Niro is a criminal hired to work alongside a gang of similar special-ops crooks in order to steal a coveted briefcase in this John Frankenheimer-helmed thriller, which features some of modern action cinema's best car chases.
The Big Lebowski (April 1)
Joel and Ethan Coen created an icon of laid-back stoner cool with The Dude (Jeff Bridges), who embarks on a screwball-noir odyssey after his rug is stolen.
The Dead Zone (April 1)
Christopher Walken awakens from a coma to find that he's lost the love of his life but gained terrifying extrasensory powers in this unsettling David Cronenberg adaptation of Stephen King's novel.
Mad Max (April 12)
Long before he was nabbing Oscar nominations, George Miller's Max Rockatansky was just a young fresh-faced cop (played by Mel Gibson) trying to cope with unruly street gangs in this, his big-screen debut.
Debuting on iTunes:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (April 1)
Han, Luke, Leia, and a host of equally compelling new faces unite for this sterling continuation of cinema's preeminent sci-fi series.
Joy (April 4)
David O. Russell's drama about the real-life rags-to-riches story of Joy Mangano–who built a home shopping network empire thanks to her Miracle Mop–again pairs him with his favorite leading lady, Jennifer Lawrence.
The Invitation (April 8; also in theaters)
A hit at last year's SXSW festival, this thriller from director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Aeon Flux) involves a guest at a dinner party who begins to suspect that his ex-wife and her new husband are up to no good.
Creative Control (April 8)
One of this year's most creatively daring new films, Benjamin Dickinson's sci-fi indie concerns a man who, in the future, uses groundbreaking technology to sleep with his best friend's girlfriend.
Ride Along 2 (April 12)
Kevin Hart and Ice Cube continue to bicker like odd-couple brothers-in-law–even though Hart's buffoon is now also a cop–in this sequel to the 2014 hit comedy.
Krampus (April 12)
The holidays become hellish for one suburban family after their angry son mistakenly conjures an ancient Yuletide monster in this over-the-top seasonal horror-comedy.
Ip Man 3 (April 19)
The third installment of this popular martial-arts franchise finds its protagonist, Donnie Yen's based-in-reality grandmaster Yip Man, squaring off against a brutal adversary played by none other than Mike Tyson.
Son of Saul (April 26)
Last year's most harrowing movie was this Hungarian import, which recounts–in constant up-close-and-personal style–one man's nightmarish ordeal as a prisoner at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp.
High-Rise (April 28; in theaters in May)
Tom Hiddleston is the wealthy resident of a luxury high-rise apartment building in 1975 London that fractures into warring factions in this intense, bleakly funny new film from director Ben Wheatley (A Field in England).
