12 Best New Movies on Netflix: April 2021’s Freshest Films to Watch

10 years ago, Hollywood decided that the world needed not one but two rom-coms about sex friends. The Ashton Kutcher-Natalie Portman starrer No Strings Attached got to market first and generally enjoys the upper hand in this battle. But I’m here to tell you: the better sex friends movie is Friends with Benefits with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. It’s funnier, sweeter and more fully explores the possibility of whether two people can have a physical relationship without developing an emotional one.

Watch Friends with Benefits on Netflix

Thanks to the recent Britney Spears documentary, we’re currently in a big period of reassessing some unfortunate cultural misogyny from the early ‘00s. While there’s a lot to critique from that period, not everything got it wrong! Case in point: Legally Blonde, a film that turns its fish-out-of-water concept about a fashionista turned Harvard law student. Beyond being an indelible cinematic creation by Reese Witherspoon, the character of Elle Woods is a beacon of hope for professional women who want to succeed by embracing their true self – and without putting other women down.

Watch Legally Blonde on Netflix

In terms of pure cinematic spectacle, there’s little that can compare with ‘60s Hollywood musicals. As the medium fought to fend off the rise of television, movies leaned into sweeping widescreen vistas, vibrant colors, opulent grandeur, and larger-than-life stories. There’s all that and more in Best Picture-winning My Fair Lady, an adaptation of the stage show where uptight aristocrat Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) convinces himself he can civilize street urchin Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) by fixing her accent.

Watch My Fair Lady on Netflix

Movies set during the Holocaust are never easy to watch (and, arguably, nor should they be). But it’s worthwhile to set aside the time for The Pianist, the harrowing story of how Polish-Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody in an Oscar-winning turn) survives the Nazi invasion and occupation of his country. The lived experiences of director Roman Polanski seep into the very fabric of the film, both in terms of his own time spent in the Kraków ghetto and his belief in the salvation of art.

Watch The Pianist on Netflix

Feeling a little burnt out by the cut-and-paste Netflix original teen movies these days? You’ve almost certainly never seen a coming-of-age story quite like Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy, which the streamer acquired out of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. This father-son drama starring Idris Elba and Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin might hit some familiar beats, though the north Philadelphia setting is certainly unique with its deep rooting in a tight-knit community of urban cowboys.

Watch Concrete Cowboy on Netflix

The Social Dilemma was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the scary role technology is playing in our lives. The documentary Coded Bias goes a layer deeper to examine the digital forces directing the contemporary world – algorithms, AI, and more – to uncover how they are reinforcing inequalities through their own implicit biases. It’s time to start this conversation before we lose our ability to right the ship and fix the damage done.

Watch Coded Bias on Netflix

Marvel and DC don’t have a duopoly on all the superhero fun. Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer are getting in on the action in Thunder Force, a new Netflix original film that pairs these comedic dynamos as estranged friends newly minted with superstrength. At the very least, we’ll get some hilarity from this dynamic duo. Plus, it will be nice to get all the fun of superhero action without having to worry about how it all plays into the mythology of some larger extended universe!

Watch Thunder Force on Netflix

If you thought Joaquin Phoenix was at his most feral and unpredictable in Joker, just wait until you see his turn in The Master. As Freddy Quell, a World War II veteran overcome with undiagnosed PTSD, Phoenix holds the screen with a power that can only be described as animalistic. But his seemingly unstoppable force meets quite the immovable object in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd, the founder of a new religious movement who feels an indescribable impulse to save Freddy. Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece might feel a bit inscrutable, but it’s always beguiling and riveting to behold.

Where to stream The Master

Is it any wonder Marvel hired Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead to make their upcoming Moon Night series? The directing duo has spent the last decade making some of the most interesting and inventive sci-fi films within the indie space, and their latest work Synchronic is no exception. It’s best to know as little as possible so they can surprise and transport you. But know that where the film starts, two New Orleans paramedics (Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan) investigating a mysterious new drug, is nowhere near where it ends.

Where to stream Synchronic

Hell hath no fury like a Jessica Chastain protagonist scorned. The actress is at her absolute steeliest in Miss Sloane where she plays a skilled lobbyist playing a long game to get gun safety legislation passed. This is the kind of edge-of-your-seat political thriller for adults that just isn’t getting made as a movie anymore, so enjoy this one that might have slipped past your radar in the busy 2016 awards season.

Where to stream Miss Sloane

Even though we’re still a long way off from actually sending humans to Mars, at least we have no shortage of movies about the journey to the Red Planet. The latest entry into this canon is Netflix’s original film Stowaway, which appears to stage a small-scale moral drama against the vastness of space. A three-person crew on a scientific mission faces many tough choices when they discover a fourth passenger on board, putting their lives and work at risk.

Watch Stowaway on Netflix

The screen adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County might not have set the Oscars on fire, yet that doesn’t diminish all the film has to offer. For starters, you still get all the sprawl of this twisted Midwestern family saga from the movie. And if that’s not enough, you get quite the acting battle between generation-defining talents Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts … with Ewan MacGregor, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Margo Martindale, Chris Cooper, and Benedict Cumberbatch all there as well.

Where to stream August: Osage County