Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson surveys each month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down…
Top Picks: TV
Intergalactic season one (May 1)
Those old enough to remember the BBC’s classic science fiction drama from the late 1970s, Blake’s 7, will appreciate the set-up of this new warp drive British adventure. On its way to a 22nd century prison planet a transport is taken over by its female inmates, who divert course for the safety of a supposedly free world.
The women have to keep their ship moving to stay alive while an authoritarian regime pursues them and the dynamic in their improvised ranks sorts itself out. Among the career criminals is police officer Ash (Savannah Steyn), freshly framed and convicted on a dystopian earth. Another apt comparison? Firefly. If the mix of heists and banter matches that brief but influential series, Intergalactic could flourish.
The Girlfriend Experience season three (May 2)
With the 2009 film by Steven Soderbergh as inspiration, each season of this anthology series about female escorts and transactional relationships has been a showcase for independent film culture. The first two seasons, debuting in 2016 and 2017, were written and directed by Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan, with Riley Keough, Anna Friel and Carmen Ejogo headlining.
The belated season three is a clean slate again, relocating to London and giving German filmmaker Anja Marquandt, whose debut feature She’s Lost Control examined sexual surrogacy, creative control. Julia Goldani tells stars as Iris, a neuroscientist as a tech start-up who becomes an escort, opening her to the icy self-deception this drama specialises in.
Girls5Eva season one (May 7)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt writer Meredith Scardino has created this pop music satire, about fictional one-hit wonders from the original era of Britney and Backstreet Boys: the girl group Girls5Eva. They get to make a comeback as a woman group after decades of obscurity when their signature song gets sampled by a hip-hop hit. The worst of ambition meets the best of intentions as idiosyncratic members played by the likes of Busy Philipps and Sara Bareilles try to surf nostalgia culture while coming to terms with their questionable legacy.
Domina season one (May 15)
With that post-Game of Thrones void still to be filled, a return to the political deceit, privileged excess, and bloody power struggles of ancient Rome makes sense. The hook for this swords and sandals European co-production is that it focuses on Livia Drusilla (Dolittle’s Kasia Smutniak), a young woman raised by her distinguished father (Liam Cunningham, played by Ser Davos from Game of Thrones), to defend Rome’s senate even as she becomes involved with Gaius Octavius (Matthew McNulty), the victorious Roman general about to proclaim himself Emperor. Fans of Rome and Spartacus might have a new favourite.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
Belushi (May 6)
There’s a dichotomy at the centre of so many posthumous biographies of revered artists taken too early by their excess: why would someone waste such rare talent? Director R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) can’t crack that conundrum in his portrait of John Belushi—the anarchic comedian who shot to fame on Saturday Night Light in 1976, put his stamp on Animal House and The Blues Brothers, and overdosed in 1982—but the archival evidence and assembled testimonies are comprehensive. Carrie Fisher, Dan Aykroyd and Belushi’s widow, Judy, all contributed, illuminating his complex nature and chaotic energy.
Pinocchio (May 11)
There are numerous versions of Pinocchio in circulation or on their way (including a Robert Zemeckis musical for Disney with Tom Hanks) but this take gets the story of a poor woodcarver and the animated marionette who becomes his son back to its Italian roots. Filmmaker Matteo Garrone steps aside from the crime milieus of Gomorrah and Dogman to adapt Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s book, with Roberto Benigni as the impoverished artisan Gepetto and child actor Federico Ielapi as Pinocchio.
It was a box-office hit in Italy, while picking up two Academy Awards for its technical departments. Expect an idiosyncratic family film.
Rebel in the Rye (May 24)
Nicholas Hoult, who is somehow still only 31-years-old, has accrued a slew of fine performances while going from child actor to Hollywood first-choice: About a Boy, A Single Man, X-Men, Mad Max: Fury Road and The Great punctuate his credits. In this independent drama he does his best to personify someone who wanted to be unknowable, the original cult author J.D. Salinger.
Danny Strong’s 2017 feature debut traces the years that led Salinger to writing one of the classic of 20th century literature, Catcher in the Rye, which include his service in World War II, where he helped liberate a concentration camp, and losing his first love to Charlie Chaplin. Sarah Paulson and Kevin Spacey co-star as Salinger supporters.
All titles arriving on Stan in May
May 1
Intergalactic: season 1
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Down Under
Life As We Know It
Where the Wild Things Are
Two Weeks Notice
I Am Greta
May 2
Going in Style (2016)
May 3
My War on Drugs
Balloon
May 4
Tlamess
The Science of Fictions
May 5
Basketball: A Love Story season 1
Golden Youth
May 6
High Flyers season 1
Bloods season 1
Belushi
Lassie Come Home (2020)
The Flood
May 7
Girls5Eva
Conor McGregor: Notorious
May 8
Pacific Warrios
The Galahs
May 10
Midnight Runner
Rust
May 11
Pinochio (2019)
May 12
The Lost Kingdom of the Black Pharaohs
Whitney
May 13
Sofia
Those Who Work
May 14
Senna
May 15
Domina season 1
Liar: season 2
May 16
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
May 17
Kiss or Kill
With the Wind
May 18
End of Summer
Holiday
May 19
Retablo
May 20
Aroused by Gynmopedies
May 21
Tapage Nocturne
From the Ashes (2011)
May 22
The Battle of the Sexes (2017)
May 23
Fighters
May 24
The Rebel in the Rye
May 25
Augustine
Eastern Plays
May 26
Deep Water season 1
White Lily
May 27
Meteors
Endangered Wildlife Sanctuary season 1
The Bold Type season 5
May 28
Momentum Generation
Son of Sofia
May 29
You Cannot Kill David Arquette
Venus & Serena
May 30
The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskev
May 31
In a Savage Land
Boy Eating the Birds Food
Still River
See also
* Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Austalia
* Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime
* Best new movies and TV series on Disney+
* All new streaming movies & series
