A new month has brought another wave of streaming acquisitions for Max subscribers to enjoy. The streaming platform just added a wide array of films to its library in April, including one of 2024’s late financial and critical hits and an early 2025 thriller that still ranks as one of the best movies of the year so far. April, in other words, gives you the chance to catch up on a pair of recent films that you may have missed. There are, of course, more than a few easily recommendable movies released before last year that have also made their way to Max this month.
Here are TheWrap’s picks for the seven best movies streaming on Max in April.
“Aftersun” (2022)
A mesmeric, wrenching exploration of grief, love and memory, “Aftersun” is the haunting, rightly acclaimed directorial debut of writer-director Charlotte Wells. Set both in the present day and the late ’90s, the film depicts a vacation to Turkey taken by Calum Patterson (Paul Mescal) and his young daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio). Partly autobiographical, Wells’ film cuts between Calum and Sophie’s time together at their Turkish resort, quiet moments of an adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) watching video footage of the vacation years later and surreal, dreamlike imagery of her trying to reach her father in the middle of a pitch-black, spaceless rave.
Bucking the rules of a traditional narrative, “Aftersun” reveals its story — and the wound at the center of it — slowly through details, murmured confessions and tiny memories that seem huge when revisited. By the time it has reached its inspired, gut-punch of a climax, “Aftersun” has overwhelmed you in waves of emotions that roll continuously throughout its final minutes and will likely continue to hit you even hours and days after you’ve finished watching the film.
“Companion” (2025)
“Companion,” one of the best films of 2025 so far, is finally coming to Max in April. Written and directed by Drew Hancock, the film is a lean slice of sci-fi horror that follows Iris (Sophie Thatcher), the loving girlfriend of Josh (Jack Quaid), who discovers one horrifying morning that she is actually an AI companion. To say anything more about the movie’s plot would be to spoil its many surprises. Over the course of its 97 minutes, though, “Companion” takes turns that are funny, brutal and frequently bloody and violent.
The film was produced by “Barbarian” filmmaker Zach Cregger, and while “Companion” never matches the tension or sheer unpredictability of that breakout 2022 horror hit, it does share the same willingness to take big creative swings and the same ability to keep viewers constantly engaged. It is a slick, immensely entertaining takedown of one-sided relationships and male egotism, and it is elevated at every turn by Thatcher’s dynamic lead performance. If you missed it when it hit theaters in late January, you can rectify that mistake this month on Max.
“Drinking Buddies” (2013)
A low-key, charming riff on a traditional studio rom-com, “Drinking Buddies” is one of the best and most worthwhile entries in the largely dead Mumblecore film movement. Buoyed by charismatic, natural performances from stars Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson, the Joe Swanberg-directed film follows a pair of Chicago brewery co-workers (Wilde and Johnson) whose unspoken feelings for each other are complicated by their relationships to other people and their own immature hang-ups.
Light, funny and pleasingly restrained, “Drinking Buddies” is a rom-com made in a time when Hollywood was not interested in producing them anymore. It is understated, observant and non-judgmental, a refreshingly unfussy dramedy about the messiness of human relationships that — like all great rom-coms — relies on the chemistry and star power of its leads to hook you and draw you in.
“Logan” (2017)
Superhero movies do not get much better than “Logan.” Originally intended to be a swan song for both Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, this ultra-violent neo-Western pulls inspiration from 20th-century genre classics like “Shane” and modern Hollywood masterpieces like “Children of Men” to tell a story about guilt, trauma and hard-earned redemption. Directed by James Mangold, “Logan” is the rare superhero movie that feels like it was made without any last-minute studio tampering or story-altering notes.
The result is a fully realized, uncompromising vision of death and sacrifice that both honors Stewart’s Professor X and Jackman’s Wolverine and says goodbye to them. The fact that its dramatic power has not been ruined by the two actors’ subsequent reprisals of their characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe only speaks further to just how well “Logan” works, regardless of how much the finality of its story has been diminished by the likes of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Deadpool and Wolverine.”
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019)
2019 was an exceptionally good year for movies. “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood,” “Parasite,” “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story” and “Knives Out” were all released within a few months of each other that year, and yet there is a case to be made that writer-director Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” was then and still is the best of the bunch. Set in the late 18th century, the French drama follows a female painter (Noémie Merlant) who is hired to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a young woman living on an island in Brittany whose mother (Valeria Golino) has forced her to leave her life in a convent behind in order to marry a Milanese nobleman.
Her portrait is intended to convince her distant, prospective husband of her beauty and marital potential. As she paints her, however, Merlant’s Marianne quickly finds herself falling in love with Haenel’s Héloïse and finds her feelings reciprocated. Their affair provides a vessel for “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” to explore the ever-lasting power of love and the inherent inequality between an artist and their subject, as well as how real love, at its purest and best, develops when two people learn to see each other both fully and equally.
“Suspicion” (1941)
“Suspicion” is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most underrated films. Released in 1941 and shot in striking black and white, the thriller follows a shy heiress (Joan Fontaine) who meets and falls in love with a handsome, charming playboy (Cary Grant). After eloping with him, she begins to suspect that he is secretly planning to murder her in order to assume full control of her family’s wealthy estate. What follows is an intense psychological thriller in which Fontaine’s Lina finds reason for concern in every one of her husband’s often suspicious, potentially incriminating acts.
Deftly directed and paced by Hitchcock and editor William Hamilton, “Suspicion” is incredibly effective at trapping you in the same paranoid, increasingly panicked mental state as its heroine. Clocking in at just 99 minutes long, the film does not overstay its welcome, either. Instead, it tells its story of how easily love can become corrupted by money and social status with unsentimental efficiency and eye-catching style. Above all else, it proves that Hitchcock was truly gifted at finding the tension and terror in even the most seemingly mundane human interactions and relationships.
“Babygirl” (2024)
Daring and unrepentantly sexy, “Babygirl” is the kind of film that Hollywood largely does not make anymore (i.e., an erotic thriller). Written and directed by “Bodies Bodies Bodies” filmmaker Halina Reijn, the film follows a powerful CEO (Nicole Kidman) who begins an ill-advised affair with a young male intern (Harris Dickinson) at her company. Their relationship allows Kidman’s Romy the chance to explore her long-buried interest in submissive sexual pleasure, but it also threatens to tear apart her carefully maintained life with her husband (Antonio Banderas) and their children.
Psychologically gripping and yet surprisingly playful, “Babygirl” is funnier, sexier and thornier than even its premise suggests. It benefits greatly from Kidman’s outstanding central performance, which keeps “Babygirl” grounded in believable human emotions even as its story and relationships get increasingly messy and wild in its second half. It’s coming to Max on April 25.
