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Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms caters to its own niche of film obsessives.
From the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel to the new frontiers of streaming offered by the likes of Ovid and Peacock, IndieWire’s monthly guide highlights the best of what’s coming to every major streamer, with an eye toward exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.
Here is your guide for March 2024.
Apple TV+ subscribers think they’re so great because they have BOATS. Ridley Scott’s latest — and funniest — historical epic comes to streaming this month, so everyone who missed “Napoleon” in theaters will finally have a chance to watch Joaquin Phoenix get cucked on an imperial scale and think to themselves: “I bet the long-promised director’s cut of this is going to be so much better.” There’s no doubt that it will be, but for now, this ain’t bad.
Available to stream March 1.
As usual, Disney+’s monthly slate is mighty light on original content, and — as usual — the streamer is banking on a single movie to make up for it. This March, however, that movie is probably more than enough to get the job done. Everything about “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” suggests that it should be the biggest thing on streaming for the foreseeable future. Exclusivity? Check. A long, appetite-whetting window between its blockbuster theatrical release and its home video debut? Check. A degree of rewatchability that’s typically reserved for kids fare like “Bluey?” Swifties are going to stream this thing on such a constant loop that it’s going to feel like part of the wallpaper. Compared to what it cost to see Taylor in concert last year, that ever-increasing Disney+ subscription fee suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
Available to stream March 15.
Other highlights:
– “Madu” (3/29)
The Razzies have always been a dumb and misguided endeavor (one that blessedly seems less popular than ever these days), but the anti-Oscars have finally served a meaningful purpose for the first time since giving us that clip of Halle Berry showing up to claim her Worst Actress prize for “Catwoman.” That purpose: Providing a useful context for the Criterion Channel to package some of the most unfairly maligned films of the last 40 years into a single retrospective… a retrospective that allows Tom Green’s “Freddy Got Fingered” to take its rightful place on the hallowed streaming platform alongside the work of masters like Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. Daddy, would you like some sausage? Well, it’s time to eat up (other must-watch standouts from the package include Friedkin’s “Cruising,” Fassbinder’s “Querelle,” and Brest’s “Gigli,” which is both a lot better and so much worse than you may have heard).
Never one to let a single retro hog the spotlight, the Channel has also put together a tribute to method acting that spans from the 1927 Lon Chaney vehicle “The Unknown” to “The Master” and Robert Greene’s “Kate Plays Christine,” a Jane Russell series that includes the likes of “Macao” and “The Tall Men,” and an essential spotlight on the early films of Hou Hsiao-hsien (which inspired the great David Bordwell’s final blog post before his recent death). Also, be sure to put aside three hours for Claire Simon’s remarkable “Our Body,” an observational documentary that sees the entire world and the way women are forced to navigate through it from within the gynecology ward of a Paris hospital.
All movies available to stream March 1.
It’s a big month for Hulu subscribers, as two of the year’s strongest Best Picture nominees are coming to the service in addition to one of the greatest movies from the director of this year’s inevitable Best Picture winner, Christopher Nolan (I can see the future, and it’s pretty much just Ludwig Göransson’s score blaring through the Dolby Theater on a constant loop as several reserved European men and Robert Downey Jr. walk up to the stage). “Poor Things” would be enough to backstop a fantastic new release slate on its own, but “Anatomy of a Fall” is perhaps the most exciting Hulu exclusive this month.
When was the last time a French legal drama was able to break through to a mainstream audience, get nominated for just about every American movie award, and inspire more fancams than a CW show during the glory days of Tumblr? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please take a moment to google Swann Arlaud). Now that America is starting to get over its aversion to subtitles, this — largely English-language — is poised to become an even bigger sensation.
Available to stream March 22.
Other highlights:
– “Dunkirk” (3/1)
– “Goodfellas” (3/1)
– “Poor Things” (3/7)
Well there’s chocolate, and there’s choc-o-late, and Paul King’s mega-successful follow-up to “Paddington 2” certainly proved to be the latter, despite months of understandable pre-release negativity around the idea of a musical origin story starring Timothée Chalamet as cinema’s most demented candyman. Hot on the heels of its blockbuster theatrical run, “Wonka” is making its way to streaming, where it stands a decent chance of cementing its status as the first new holiday classic since “Elf” (one look at Hugh Grant’s oompa-loompa is enough to know that there’s no trace of God in this film, but yes, “Wonka” is a Christmas movie, and no, I will not be taking any questions on the matter at this time).
For those less enamored by the idea of watching Paul Atreides milk a computer-generated giraffe, Max is also premiering the wickedly clever “Dream Scenario” along with other A24 hits like “Good Time” (RIP Buddy Duress) and “The Green Knight.”
Available to stream March 8.
Other highlights:
– “Good Time” (3/1)
– “The Green Knight” (3/1)
– “Dream Scenario” (3/15)
IndieWire Managing Editor Christian Blauvelt was the first person on staff to see Felipe Gálvez’s “The Settlers” before it premiered at Cannes last year, and he couldn’t stop raving to the rest of the team about how the Un Certain Regard premiere would be one of the best movies at a festival that also went on to produce the likes of “May December” and “The Zone of Interest.”
When MUBI released the Chilean Western last fall, Christian leapt at the chance to review this story about a wealthy landowner who recruits a Scotsman to exterminate the Indigenous Selk’nam people on his land in Tierra del Fuego.
Calling it “one of the most chilling art-Westerns to come along in some time,” Christian wrote that “‘The Settlers’ may remind some viewers of a Budd Boetticher film when they’re watching it: following three men on horseback on a cross-country journey, it dramatizes questions of identity and belonging, and how these things can be written in violence. Most Boetticher-like, in a tight 98 minutes ‘The Settlers’ says more than a lot of films double its length. It’s also a deeply felt work of activism with a message that needs to be heard in Chile. Just as nothing about the Pinochet coup in 1973 or the resulting dictatorship is taught in Chilean schools today, so is nothing about the genocide of the Selk’nam, a culture that is considered extinct, with only one living person today able to speak their language. This is a film that shows that, as easy as it is to forget about the past, it’s easier still when it was never taught in the first place.”
Available to stream March 29.
Other highlights:
– “Goodbye, First Love” (3/1)
– “Ishtar” (3/1)
– “Mami Wata” (3/22)
As amusing as it is that Netflix is streaming “Bodies Bodies Bodies” the day before the release of the platform’s mega-budget new sci-fi show “3 Body Problem,” and as oddly compelling as it is to watch a sad Czech astronaut played by Adam Sandler open his heart to a fourth-dimensional alien spider who sounds a lot like Paul Dano, none of the original — or at least temporarily exclusive — movies on Netflix’s March release slate are as exciting as the millennial classics that will be streaming alongside them.
Carl Franklin’s “Devil in a Blue Dress” just missed the cut for IndieWire’s list of the 100 Best Movies of the ’90s, while “Beverly Hills Ninja,” well… that one wasn’t really in contention, but even Chris Farley’s least iconic films only seem to get funnier with every passing year.
And if we ever get around to celebrating the aughts, I can guarantee that Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Love & Basketball” will be a major topic of conversation, as that long under-appreciated sports romance has finally been canonized as the modern classic that it is. If you haven’t picked up the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray, Netflix would be happy to remind you why you should.
Available to stream March 1.
Other highlights:
– “Beverly Hills Ninja” (3/1)
– “Devil in a Blue Dress” (3/1)
– “Spaceman” (3/1)
“If you unearthed a glittery demon with one hairy arm who awakened your deepest desires from the third eye between her legs, what lengths would you travel to find her again?” So begins former IndieWire writer Jude Dry’s review of Bertrand Mandico’s seductive and ethereal “After Blue,” which only becomes more intriguing from there.
Jude continues: “Set on a fantasy planet where only women can survive the harsh climate, the adventure follows a mother and daughter on a grueling journey to find and kill the evil ‘Kate Bush,’ rumored to be death herself. One part ‘Annihilation,’ one part ‘The Love Witch,’ and cast under the veneer of a sadistic ‘The NeverEnding Story, the film creates a lush — sometimes grotesque — alternate universe ruled by unique rules, creatures, and longings. Love it or hate it, you’ve never seen anything quite like ‘After Blue.’”
Available to stream March 21
Other highlights:
– “Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege” (3/7)
– “Violet” (3/8)
I may not be the world’s biggest Denis Villeneuve fan (I’m told that my negative review of “Dune: Part Two” didn’t sit well with the kind of people who plan their holy wars around Rotten Tomatoes scores), but I’m happy to join the love parade whenever he directs something with enough humanity to offset his signature bombast. Ironically, it took a movie about aliens for Villeneuve to really wrap his arms around what makes people tick.
A very good Ted Chiang adaptation that stops just short of greatness thanks to a bunch of third act mishegoss (endless love for Michael Stuhlbarg, but the story gets snagged on his character like a plastic bag on a tree branch), “Arrival” epitomizes Villeneuve’s enduring fascination with cycles of violence and the cold recognition of fate. In this case, that cycle is on a cosmic scale, but — with major assists from Amy Adams and Max Richter — it registers on crushingly intimate terms as well.
Available to stream March 1.
Other highlights:
– “The Last Temptation of Christ” (3/1)
– “Tár” (3/27)
– “Jackie Brown” (3/31)
Arriving a few years ahead of the Early Aughts Spoof Boom (you all remember that, right?), the unfettered meta genius of “Not Another Teen Movie” has been largely subsumed into the wretched likes of “Epic Movie,” “Disaster Movie,” and the rest of the witless parodies that followed in its wake. In truth, it should be a felony to mention those ghastly imitations in the same breath as Joel Gallen’s masterpiece, and I will gladly spend the rest of my life in jail if that’s what it takes to make this point.
A self-reflexive send-up of “She’s All That,” “Bring it On,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” and every other high school comedy since “The Breakfast Club,” “Not Another Teen Movie” so thoroughly skewered its subject that Hollywood had to rethink the entire genre (for better or worse).
Get past the gross-out gags and a handful of offensive punchlines, and you’ll be treated to the densest and most detailed satire of its kind since the likes of “The Naked Gun,” in addition to (what’s still) the funniest performance of Chris Evans’ career. But fair warning for the faint of heart: Watching “Not Another Teen Movie” means having to look at Janey Briggs for the better part of 90 minutes, and she can be a lot to stomach. As the great Jake Wyler once described the most abominable reject in his senior class: “She’s got paint on her overalls. What is that?!?” It’s disgusting, is what that is. But that’s the magic of this movie. By the time it’s over, you somehow believe that a swamp thing like her could actually become prom queen.
Available to stream March 1.
Other highlights:
– “Inside Llewyn Davis” (3/1)
– “Sleeping with Other People” (3/11)
– “Carol” (3/19)
Doug Liman’s “Road House” remake is obviously Prime Video’s biggest get this month (see this SXSW-opening, throat-ripping crowd-pleaser as it was meant to be seen: While watching Mormon tradwife cooking TikToks on the “For You” tab of your Twitter page), and yet Kinji Fukasaku’s ultra-provocative “Battle Royale” demands special attention, as this proto-“Hunger Games” satire about a class of Japanese high school students stranded on a remote island and forced to fight to the death had been so hard to see in the United States until it started bouncing between the various streamers.
America can stomach the idea of school kids shooting each other in real life, but add Beat Takashi and some exploding neck collars into the mix, well… that’s just obscene. The real shame is that Fukasaku’s twisted shootout has only become more relevant to our country in this age of zero-sum politics, and against the backdrop of the resulting culture war that’s twisted young bodies into a battlefield unto themselves.
Available to stream March 31
Other highlights:
– “Desperately Seeking Susan” (3/1)
– “The LEGO Batman Movie” (3/19)
– “Road House” (3/21)
Ahead of the three Renny Harlin(!?)-directed prequels that will be released this year, Shudder is inviting subscribers to remember why the original continues to endure in our minds. Bryan Bertino’s directorial debut is small as can be, but its simplicity is also its greatest virtue. The premise is so unnerving because — unlike a zombie apocalypse or a Texas chainsaw massacre — it could happen to anyone, anywhere. And in “The Strangers” it does. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a very ordinary couple whose very ordinary relationship drama is interrupted by a knock at the door; three masked villains, empowered by nothing but some knives and their sadistic desires, have dropped by to ruin their night. The wicked games they play are carried out with vivid rage and raw brutality, but this is the rare horror movie that only gets scarier with its final reveal. Why did these maniacs target this particular couple, and what neighborhood will they be in tomorrow? The answers to those questions continue to keep us awake at night.
Available to stream March 1.
Other highlights:
– “Alice, Sweet Alice” (3/1)
– “Grabbers” (3/1)
– “Southern Comfort” (3/18)
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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