There are monthly streaming lineups that feel like content dumps, and then there are Criterion Channel lineups that actually seem programmed with an argument in mind. Its May slate, which begins rolling out on May 1, is built around one of the service’s better hooks in a while: a side-by-side conversation between Reagan-era remakes and the films that inspired them. That means John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” Paul Schrader’s “Cat People,” and Jim McBride’s “Breathless” turning up alongside “The Thing from Another World,” Jacques Tourneur’s original “Cat People,” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless”—a smart way to frame the decade not as a graveyard of recycled ideas, but as a period of aggressive reinvention.
READ MORE: The 150 Most Anticipated Films Of 2026
Criterion doesn’t stop there. The month also folds in a lineup of office romances—where newsroom speed, workplace rivalry, and old-school screwball energy collide in films like “His Girl Friday,” “Woman of the Year,” and “The Apartment”—while a new Adventures in Moviegoing installment hands the reins to David Chase, whose selections trace the cinematic education behind “The Sopranos” creator’s sensibility. On another track entirely, the service makes room for radical political work through a Caribbean activist cinema program. At the same time, one of the month’s biggest original-event titles is Debra Granik’s five-part documentary series “Conbody vs Everybody,” which premieres exclusively.
The exclusive premieres give the month some extra weight. Lav Diaz’s “Magellan,” starring Gael García Bernal, brings one of 2025’s most acclaimed festival titles to the service. This sweeping anti-imperial epic reexamines Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage and the violence embedded in colonial mythmaking. Then there’s Thierry Frémaux’s “Lumière, le cinéma!,” a guided trip through more than one hundred restored shorts from Auguste and Louis Lumière—part film-history lesson, part reminder of how quickly cinema discovered its grammar.
Elsewhere, the month stretches outward with spotlights on Kimi Takesue, the Ross brothers, and Bill Douglas’s trilogy, plus repertory staples, restorations, and newer titles that keep the slate from feeling too locked into one lane. So yes, there’s room forKen Loach’s “The Spirit of ’45,” Jill Sprecher’s “Clockwatchers,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “Point Break,” Sierra Pettengill’s “Riotsville, U.S.A.,” Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film,” and Michel Gondry’s “Maya, Give Me a Title.” But the bigger appeal is the shape of the month itself: Criterion’s May lineup moves from remake culture and workplace comedy to anti-colonial cinema and prison-industrial-complex nonfiction without ever feeling scattered.
Complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel this month:
95 and 6 to Go, Kimi Takesue, 2016
Against All Odds, Taylor Hackford, 1984
An Unfinished Film, Lou Ye, 2024
The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
The Big Clock, John Farrow, 1948*
Bitter Cane, Ben Dupuy and Kim Ives, 1983
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV, 2020
Bound, Kimi Takesue, 1995
Breathless, Jim McBride, 1983
Cat People, Jacques Tourneur, 1942
Cat People, Paul Schrader, 1982
A Chinese Ghost Story, Ching Siu-tung, 1987
A Chinese Ghost Story II, Ching Siu-tung, 1990
A Chinese Ghost Story III, Ching Siu-tung, 1991
Clockwatchers, Jill Sprecher, 1997
Conbody vs Everybody, Debra Granik, 2024
D.O.A., Rudolph Maté, 1949
D.O.A., Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, 1988
Daughter’s Daughter, Huang Xi, 2024
Desk Set, Walter Lang, 1957
E=NYC2, Kimi Takesue, 2005
Él, Luis Buñuel, 1953
Four Letter Words, Sean Baker, 2000
Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us, Carmen Ashhurst, Samori Marksman, and John Douglas, 1983
Haiti: The Way to Freedom, Arnold Antonin, 1973
Heaven’s Crossroad, Kimi Takesue, 2002
His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, 1940
House of Cardin, P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes, 2019
K-On! The Movie, Naoko Yamada, 2011*
Looking for Adventure, Kimi Takesue, 2013
Lumière, le cinéma!, Thierry Frémaux, 2025
Man Wanted, William Dieterle, 1932
The Man Who Loved Women, François Truffaut, 1977
The Man Who Loved Women, Blake Edwards, 1983
Maya, Give Me a Title, Michel Gondry, 2024
More Than a Secretary, Alfred E. Green, 1936
My Ain Folk, Bill Douglas, 1973
My Childhood, Bill Douglas, 1972
My Way Home, Bill Douglas, 1978
No Way Out, Roger Donaldson, 1987
The Office Wife, Lloyd Bacon, 1930
Onlookers, Kimi Takesue, 2023
Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow, 1991
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Tay Garnett, 1946
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Bob Rafelson, 1981
Queen Bee, Ranald MacDougall, 1955
Riotsville, U.S.A., Sierra Pettengill, 2022*
Rosewater, Kimi Takesue, 1999
The Shepherd and the Bear, Max Keegan, 2024
The Spirit of ’45, Ken Loach, 2013
Summer of the Serpent, Kimi Takesue, 2004
Suspended, Kimi Takesue, 2009
Sweet Sugar Rage, Harclyde Walcott and Honor Ford-Smith, 1985
The Terror and the Time, Rupert Roonaraine, 1978
That Which Once Was, Kimi Takesue, 2011
The Thing, John Carpenter, 1982*
The Thing from Another World, Christian Nyby, 1951
Tokyo Trial, Masaki Kobayashi, 1983
We’re No Angels, Michael Curtiz, 1955*
We’re No Angels, Neil Jordan, 1989*
Western, Turner Ross, and Bill Ross IV, 2015
Where Are You Taking Me?, Kimi Takesue, 2010
The Whole Town’s Talking, John Ford, 1935
Woman of the Year, George Stevens, 1942
Women of Suriname, At van Praag, 1978
Working Girls, Dorothy Arzner, 1931
*Available in the U.S. only
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
