A madcap quarantine comedy, a takedown of a once-iconic American brand, and a good old-fashioned spy thriller are all on the docket this month.
ON NETFLIX
Available April 1:
The Bubble
Shot during the 2020 lockdowns and savvily integrating COVID protocols into the narrative itself, Judd Apatow’s latest comedy is a meta riff on moviemaking during a pandemic and a satire on shallow blockbuster cinema. It’s October 2020, and a group of actors has gathered in a film set in England to shoot “Cliff Beasts 6,” a bloated and tacky knock-off of “Jurassic Park,” only to find that the daily headaches of filming a movie during a plague are only the beginning of their problems, as drugs, paranormal activity and perhaps, delirium begin to wreck havoc on the shoot. As usual with Apatow, the cast is multilayered and surprising, and includes David Duchovny as the “Cliff Beasts” star, Keegan-Michael Key as an actor who relishes doing his own stunts, and Kate McKinnon and the studio head producing the film within the film.
Available April 8:
Metal Lords
Heavy metal’s grip on the youth of America may not be as ironclad as it was in its mid-80s heyday, but it’s been enjoying an underground revival of late, one aided by nostalgia and a proper rejection of the sorts of the tame music still being force-fed on commercial radio. “Metal Lords,” about two teenage boys who form an unlikely metal act with a female cellist from the marching band—and encounter the inevitable creative and romantic friction—captures this subterranean zeitgeist for long hair, ripped T-shirts and kick drums. It’s directed by Peter Sollett, who knows a thing or two about music-driven teen comedies (“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”), and with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello producing, you know it’ll capture the textures of hard rock with authenticity.
Available April 19:
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch
Cue the schadenfreude, because not since the Fyre Festival documentary has a rotten idea received such an appropriate cinematic takedown. The latest doc from Alison Klayman (“Jagged,” “Take Your Pills”) delves into arguably the most iconic suburban clothing line of the ‘90s and Aughts, from its salacious marketing campaigns to the serial lawsuits, discriminatory hiring practices and exclusionary culture that has reduced the brand to a shell of its former dominance. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine a less woke company than Abercrombie & Fitch, but, I hope the movie asks, do us consumers deserve any of the blame for buying into it? (Netflix has not released a trailer.)
ON AMAZON PRIME
Available April 8:
All the Old Knives
There’s always time to squeeze in a twisty, time-jumping spy thriller, particularly when Chris Pine and Thandie Newton are leading the cast. They play CIA operatives Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, respectively, who shared more than a security clearance some 10 years earlier, around the time a hijacked plane took the lives of everyone on board. Now, Henry has arranged a dinner rendezvous with his ex-flame, under the suspicion from his supervisor (Laurence Fishburne) that she may have been a “mole” working with the terrorists. Paranoia, spy jargon, bedroom trysts—it’s all here in droves, directed by Janus Pedersen and written by Olen Steinhauer, adapting his own best-selling novel.
ON HBO MAX
Available April 27:
The Survivor
The latest release from Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “Rain Man”) appears to be his most substantial movie in two decades. It’s the fact-based chronicle of Polish Holocaust survivor Harry Haft (Ben Foster, already receiving wide acclaim), who boxed in the concentration camps for the amusement of his captors, and who is rediscovered in postwar Germany by a journalist (Peter Saarsgard) eager to tell his story and promote a latent career in professional boxing. Grim black-and-white flashbacks from the Shoah contrast with the muted colors of late ‘40s Europe for a sobering and layered meditation on sacrifice, compromise and survival. Co-starring John Leguizamo and Danny DeVito, “The Survivor” will be released on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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