The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

What’s new on Netflix, Prime Video, Crave and CBC Gem this week

The Underground Railroad, Amy Adams thriller The Woman in the Window, Sound of Metal and more.

A weekly round-up of the new movies and TV series streaming on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video and CBC Gem

New on Netflix

new on Netflix
The Woman in the Window (new on Netflix)

The Woman in the Window, a long-delayed salvage job from Joe Wright that Netflix picked up due to pandemic-related logistical concerns, comes out today. Amy Adams plays an agoraphobic woman who believes she has witnessed a crime in the house across the street. The film is getting savagely terrible reviews, though I must admit that I personally found a lot to like in its ragged insanity. It’s the big streaming release this week alongside season 3 of the paranormal “pseudo-documentary” Haunted, also out today. Internationally, the streaming giant has the South African crime thriller I Am All Girls and the Belgian crime drama Ferry (a spinoff of the Belgian show Undercover), all coming out today. 

Ewan Macgregor stars in Ryan Murphy’s Halston, a miniseries based on the life of fashion designer Halston, a mainstay of the fashion world from the 1960s to the disco era; Halston died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.

Other highlights include the Anthony Mackie / Jamie Dornan sci-fi thriller Synchronic (which I did not love when I saw it at TIFF two years ago), the Regina Hall vehicle Little (May 16), Men in Black: International (May 18) and season 2 of Special (May 20), a comedy about a gay man with cerebral palsy.

See what’s new on Netflix Canada here.

New on Amazon Prime Video

The Underground Railroad (new on Amazon Prime Video)

The biggest streaming event of the weekend has to be the premiere of Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, a 10-episode miniseries adapted from the novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. Thuso M’bedu, Chase W. Dillon and Aaron Pierre star, with Joel Edgerton, William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) and Damon Herriman (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Charles Manson) rounding out the supporting cast. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive across the board. Also coming out on Prime today is the Swedish thriller Horizon Line starring Allison Williams (Girls, Get Out) and Alexander Dreymon (The Last Kingdom). On May 20 you can stream Waiting for the Barbarians, the English-language debut of director Ciro Guerra. Much hope was hung on this adaptation of the novel of the same name by J.M Coetzee, but the film sort of came and went in anonymity due to the presence in the cast of one Johnny Depp; Robert Pattinson and Mark Rylance co-star.

See what’s new on Amazon Prime Video here.

New on Crave

new on Netflix
Sound of Metal (new on Crave)

Crave has Doing the Most With Phoebe Robinson, an unscripted talk show starring the 2 Dope Queens host and celebrity guests as they engage in activities that “take them out of their comfort zone.” It’s unclear what this looks like, exactly, though the website cites “horseback riding with Whitney Cummings” as one of the aforementioned activities. Also on Crave as of today is the Oscar-nominated Sound of Metal and a plethora of family movies from the last couple of decades including Fred Claus, Unaccompanied Minors and The Iron Giant. All are out today.

See what’s new on Crave here.

New on Disney Plus

High School Musical The Musical The Series (new on Disney Plus)

Season 2 of High School Musical The Musical The Series premieres today. The unwieldy-titled series is a spinoff of the hugely popular High School Musical series from the oughts.

See what’s new on Disney Plus here.

New on CBC Gem

new on Netflix
Blackstone (new on CBC Gem)

Season 2 of the Paula Beer-starring show Bad Banks is on as of today, as is season 3 of Blackstone and the Alicia Keys documentary Live in L.A.

See what’s new on CBC Gem here.


For more film and TV coverage, please visit the Film & TV section.

A weekly round-up of the new movies and TV series streaming on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video and CBC Gem