New Movies and Series Streaming in May 2023 You Won’t Want to Miss

If you feel like this month has gone by in the blink of an eye, you’re not alone. It seems like just yesterday that we were giving you our top picks of new movies and series streaming in April. But we’re already coming up on a new month, one with a day dedicated to celebrating mothers. Spoiler alert: one of our picks for new films releasing in May may or may not be Mother’s Day-related. Keep reading for all our recommendations of the movies and series premiering this month on streamers, as well as the noteworthy performances in them you’ll want to watch.

Series

A Small Light
Come May 1, you can take in an inspiring new limited series based on a true story. A Small Light follows a secretary in Amsterdam named Miep Gies whose boss Otto Frank — father to Anne Frank — asks for her help in trying to hide his family from the Nazis during World War II. With the help of her husband Jan, Miep watches over the Ottos, as well as the Pfeffer and van Pels families, for the next two years as they stayed hidden in a secret annex. She made countless sacrifices along the way and was ultimately the person who found and kept Anne’s diary so that it could be shared with the world as a testament to future generations.

Bel Powley plays Gies, and according to Disney+, her “fierce performance shakes the cobwebs off history.” The creators and executive producers of A Small Light, Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, also reinforced in a statement the value of telling how Miep and Jan risked their lives for others during the occupation. “We hope it leaves a lasting impact on viewers and helps to show the importance of discovering untold stories of the Holocaust and the lessons it continues to teach,” they asserted.

Besides taking in the work of Powley, you can also see Joe Cole’s performance as Jan, as well as Liev Schreiber’s portrayal of Otto. Billie Boullet undertakes the role of Anne while Ashley Brooke plays her older sister Margot. And Amira Casar is in the series as Edith Frank, their mother and the wife of Otto. You can take in all these portrayals of real-life people from not-too-long-ago history when A Small Light releases on Disney+ at the beginning of May.

Silo
If dystopian dramas are your thing and the season one wrap-up of The Last of Us left a hole in your watchlist, look no further than an upcoming Rebecca Ferguson-led series from Apple TV+. Silo is based on Hugh Howey’s novel series of the same name and is set in a future in which the last ten thousand people on earth live in a silo that runs one-mile deep underground. Living inside its walls supposedly keeps everyone safe from an outside world they are told is toxic and deadly. But none of its inhabitants really know when or why the silo was built, and those who want to know more face extreme consequences.

In the series’ trailer, a more-than-slightly creepy Tim Robbins can be heard uttering, “Some mysteries — they’re best left unsolved.” Ferguson’s character in the sci-fi drama, an engineer named Juliette, seeks answers after a loved one is murdered, only to stumble upon shocking secrets and the hidden truth of the silo. With a tagline like “if the lies don’t kill you, the truth will” and a star-studded cast that also boasts names such as Common, David Oyelowo and Rashida Jones, fans of any genre can anticipate the premiere of Silo on Apple TV+ come May 5.

Primo
Switching gears here, there’s an upcoming Freevee original that Shea Serrano created based on his own life growing up in San Antonio, Texas. The coming-of-age series is labeled a “new comedy about the drama of family” and centers on 16-year-old Rafa Gonzales, who’s being raised by his mother Drea and his five uncles. The show’s trailer has Rafa describing what it’s like to always have his uncles — or primos — around, which is apparently equivalent to being inside a cloud of bees. “Except, the bees are always cussing and punching at each other,” the teenager adds in the teaser.

According to the official Primo synopsis, Rafa, his mother, his primos, his friends and his crush will over the course of the series “all affect each other and help one another grow in ways they weren’t expecting.” Along with plenty of laughs along the way, the show’s trailer promises a stacked ensemble cast that includes Ignacio Diaz-Silverio as Rafa and Christina Vidal as Drea. Then there are the actors behind all the primos in Primo — Carlos Santos, Henri Esteve, Johnny Rey Diaz, Jonathan Medina, and Efrain Villa. You can catch them all when the upcoming comedy premieres on Amazon Freevee come May 19.

Films

The Mother
What can’t Jennifer Lopez do? (Besides age, that is.) Coming off the release earlier this year of the larger-than-life comedy flick in which she starred opposite Josh Duhamel, the A-lister can now be seen thrashing bad guys in the upcoming action-packed drama The Mother.

Lopez leads the film — in its titular role — as an assassin who comes out of hiding to save her young daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), who she’s had to love from afar over the years for Zoe’s protection. But after said offspring is kidnapped, Lopez’s character goes full-throttle to save her child and take down the dangerous men she’s up against. The Mother trailer teases that “vengeance is a mother” and showcases a particularly emphatic headbutt that J-Lo delivers to Gael García Bernal. You can also catch names like Omari Hardwick, Edie Falco, and Joseph Fiennes when the film drops on Netflix come May 12, just in time for Mother’s Day.

White Men Can’t Jump
In a film/TV landscape saturated with remakes, this is one we can get behind. Sinqua Walls and rapper Jack Harlow — in his feature acting debut — take on the roles respectively portrayed in the 1992 original by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. In the upcoming Hulu remake, Walls is Kamal, a basketball player whose once-promising career was derailed, and Harlow plays Jeremy, another baller whose future with the sport was put on pause. They decide to join forces and bring their streetball hustling to a tournament game in hopes of winning the $500,000 prize that they both could use. Besides taking in the performances from the film’s lead actors, you can also keep an eye out for Teyana Taylor, Laura Harrier, Vince Staples, Myles Bullock, and the late Lance Reddick when White Men Can’t Jump releases on Hulu on May 19.

F​​rom the impactful limited series A Small Light to the remade comedy feature White Men Can’t Jump — and some varied picks in between — this has been our list of new shows and movies streaming in May that you don’t want to miss. And whichever titles make it onto your watchlist, each one comes packed with plenty of noteworthy performances to enjoy.

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