Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime Video Australia: May 2021

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video‘s Australian library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top picks

David Byrne’s American Utopia (May 13)

David Byrne has already been the star and subject of arguably the greatest concert film of all time, Jonathon Demme’s Talking Heads doco Stop Making Sense. So it’s kinda greedy of him, tbh, to release American Utopia, Spike Lee’s uplifting film version of the Broadway stage show and album of the same name. The now-white-haired Byrne is joined onstage by 11 other musicians, all dressed alike in his signature oversized pale suit.

Some of the renditions of Talking Heads classics are even (dare I say it) stronger than the band’s definitive performances in the Demme film, but there’s also plenty of fresh new material and even a deeply political Janelle Monáe cover. For the first time, American Utopia will be in Prime Video‘s free library, and it’s a once in a lifetime watch (sorry).

Solos (May 14)

What’s the deal with these funky, abstract ensemble anthologies we’ve been getting lately? Apple TV+ gave us famous voices with its conceptual Calls show, and Prime Video has even done it with Anne Hathaway already in the romantic series Modern Love. Solos stars Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Uzo Aduba and more of the ‘finest actors of our time’ in unconnected stories of human connection.

Whilst all we know so far is that the settings may be as vast as the outer reaches of the universe, the Black Mirror-esque anthology setup means you’re certain to love at least a few of the episodes, and the intimate lead performances should be staggering regardless of that innate hit-or-miss format.

Panic (May 28)

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