A brand new month has introduced one other wave of streaming acquisitions for Max subscribers to get pleasure from. The streaming platform simply added a big selection of movies to its library in April, together with considered one of 2024’s late monetary and important hits and an early 2025 thriller that also ranks as among the finest motion pictures of the yr to date. April, in different phrases, provides you the prospect to compensate for a pair of current movies that you will have missed. There are, after all, various simply recommendable motion pictures launched earlier than final yr which have additionally made their solution to Max this month.
Listed here are TheWrap’s picks for the seven best movies streaming on Max in April.
“Aftersun” (A24)
“Aftersun” (2022)
A mesmeric, wrenching exploration of grief, love and reminiscence, “Aftersun” is the haunting, rightly acclaimed directorial debut of writer-director Charlotte Wells. Set each within the current day and the late ’90s, the movie depicts a trip to Turkey taken by Calum Patterson (Paul Mescal) and his younger daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio). Partly autobiographical, Wells’ movie cuts between Calum and Sophie’s time collectively at their Turkish resort, quiet moments of an grownup Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Corridor) watching video footage of the holiday years later and surreal, dreamlike imagery of her making an attempt to achieve her father in the course of a pitch-black, spaceless rave.
Bucking the foundations of a standard narrative, “Aftersun” reveals its story — and the wound on the heart of it — slowly by way of particulars, murmured confessions and tiny reminiscences that appear large when revisited. By the point it has reached its impressed, gut-punch of a climax, “Aftersun” has overwhelmed you in waves of feelings that roll repeatedly all through its remaining minutes and can possible proceed to hit you even hours and days after you’ve completed watching the movie.
“Companion” (Credit score: Warner Bros.)
“Companion” (2025)
“Companion,” among the finest movies of 2025 to date, is lastly coming to Max in April. Written and directed by Drew Hancock, the movie is a lean slice of sci-fi horror that follows Iris (Sophie Thatcher), the loving girlfriend of Josh (Jack Quaid), who discovers one horrifying morning that she is definitely an AI companion. To say something extra concerning the film’s plot could be to spoil its many surprises. Over the course of its 97 minutes, although, “Companion” takes turns that are funny, brutal and frequently bloody and violent.
The movie was produced by “Barbarian” filmmaker Zach Cregger, and whereas “Companion” by no means matches the strain or sheer unpredictability of that breakout 2022 horror hit, it does share the identical willingness to take big creative swings and the identical skill to maintain viewers always engaged. It’s a slick, immensely entertaining takedown of one-sided relationships and male egotism, and it’s elevated at each flip by Thatcher’s dynamic lead efficiency. If you happen to missed it when it hit theaters in late January, you’ll be able to rectify that mistake this month on Max.
“Consuming Buddies” (Magnolia Photos)
“Consuming Buddies” (2013)
A low-key, charming riff on a standard studio rom-com, “Consuming Buddies” is likely one of the finest and most worthwhile entries within the largely lifeless Mumblecore movie motion. Buoyed by charismatic, pure performances from stars Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson, the Joe Swanberg-directed movie follows a pair of Chicago brewery co-workers (Wilde and Johnson) whose unstated emotions for one another are sophisticated by their relationships to different individuals and their very own immature hang-ups.
Mild, humorous and pleasingly restrained, “Consuming Buddies” is a rom-com made in a time when Hollywood was not all in favour of producing them anymore. It’s understated, observant and non-judgmental, a refreshingly unfussy dramedy concerning the messiness of human relationships that — like all nice rom-coms — depends on the chemistry and star energy of its results in hook you and draw you in.
“Logan” (Twentieth Century Fox)
“Logan” (2017)
Superhero motion pictures don’t get a lot better than “Logan.” Initially supposed to be a swan tune for each Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, this ultra-violent neo-Western pulls inspiration from Twentieth-century style classics like “Shane” and fashionable Hollywood masterpieces like “Youngsters of Males” to inform a narrative about guilt, trauma and hard-earned redemption. Directed by James Mangold, “Logan” is the uncommon superhero film that feels prefer it was made with none last-minute studio tampering or story-altering notes.
The result’s a totally realized, uncompromising imaginative and prescient of dying and sacrifice that each honors Stewart’s Professor X and Jackman’s Wolverine and says goodbye to them. The truth that its dramatic energy has not been ruined by the 2 actors’ subsequent reprisals of their characters within the Marvel Cinematic Universe solely speaks additional to only how effectively “Logan” works, no matter how a lot the finality of its story has been diminished by the likes of “Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity” and “Deadpool and Wolverine.”
“Portrait of a Girl on Hearth” (Neon)
“Portrait of a Girl on Hearth” (2019)
2019 was an exceptionally good yr for motion pictures. “As soon as Upon a Time in… Hollywood,” “Parasite,” “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story” and “Knives Out” had been all launched inside just a few months of one another that yr, and but there’s a case to be made that writer-director Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Girl on Hearth” was then and nonetheless is the perfect of the bunch. Set within the late 18th century, the French drama follows a feminine painter (Noémie Merlant) who’s employed to color a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a younger lady dwelling on an island in Brittany whose mom (Valeria Golino) has compelled her to go away her life in a convent behind with a purpose to marry a Milanese nobleman.
Her portrait is meant to persuade her distant, potential husband of her magnificence and marital potential. As she paints her, nevertheless, Merlant’s Marianne rapidly finds herself falling in love with Haenel’s Héloïse and finds her emotions reciprocated. Their affair gives a vessel for “Portrait of a Girl on Hearth” to discover the ever-lasting energy of affection and the inherent inequality between an artist and their topic, in addition to how actual love, at its purest and finest, develops when two individuals be taught to see one another each absolutely and equally.
“Suspicion” (RKO Radio Photos)
“Suspicion” (1941)
“Suspicion” is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most underrated movies. Launched in 1941 and shot in putting black and white, the thriller follows a shy heiress (Joan Fontaine) who meets and falls in love with a good-looking, charming playboy (Cary Grant). After eloping with him, she begins to suspect that he’s secretly planning to homicide her with a purpose to assume full management of her household’s rich property. What follows is an intense psychological thriller by which Fontaine’s Lina finds cause for concern in each considered one of her husband’s typically suspicious, doubtlessly incriminating acts.
Deftly directed and paced by Hitchcock and editor William Hamilton, “Suspicion” is extremely efficient at trapping you in the identical paranoid, more and more panicked psychological state as its heroine. Clocking in at simply 99 minutes lengthy, the movie doesn’t overstay its welcome, both. As a substitute, it tells its story of how simply love can turn out to be corrupted by cash and social standing with unsentimental effectivity and crowd pleasing type. Above all else, it proves that Hitchcock was really gifted at discovering the strain and terror in even probably the most seemingly mundane human interactions and relationships.
“Babygirl” (A24)
“Babygirl” (2024)
Daring and unrepentantly horny, “Babygirl” is the sort of movie that Hollywood largely doesn’t make anymore (i.e., an erotic thriller). Written and directed by “Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies” filmmaker Halina Reijn, the movie follows a robust CEO (Nicole Kidman) who begins an ill-advised affair with a younger male intern (Harris Dickinson) at her firm. Their relationship permits Kidman’s Romy the prospect to discover her long-buried curiosity in submissive sexual pleasure, nevertheless it additionally threatens to tear aside her fastidiously maintained life together with her husband (Antonio Banderas) and their kids.
Psychologically gripping and but surprisingly playful, “Babygirl” is funnier, sexier and thornier than even its premise suggests. It advantages enormously from Kidman’s excellent central efficiency, which retains “Babygirl” grounded in plausible human feelings at the same time as its story and relationships get more and more messy and wild in its second half. It’s coming to Max on April 25.
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