After a string of flops throughout the first three months of 2025, April finally brings some much-needed wins to the box office. Love it or hate it, A Minecraft Movie is giving cause for celebration by outperforming internationally, giving movie theaters a sigh of relief. Upcoming blockbusters like Thunderbolts* and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning are also poised to do solid business and provide hope for the rest of 2025.
For all those who aren’t in the mood to go to the movie theater, streaming comes to the rescue with several underappreciated movies available from the comfort of their home. From delightful period dramas to underrated movies from the last decade, these streaming hidden gems are perfect to enjoy throughout the month.
Lady Macbeth (2016)
Academy Award nominee Florence Pugh has been a pretty consistent presence in movies for the past five years or so. However, her breakthrough came in 2016 with the chilling historical drama Lady Macbeth. The then-twenty-year-old stars as Katherine Lester, a recently married woman who engages in a passionate and twisted affair with a groom from her vast estate, played by Cosmo Jarvis.
Lady Macbeth is one of the most wicked dramas of the past decade, largely thanks to Pugh’s tour de force. The actress is brilliant in the role of a demure woman concealing a Machiavellian persona that gets slowly revealed as the movie goes on. Pugh delivers an Oscar-worthy performance in this historical drama, which dazzles through her work. Indeed, what it lacks in striking production values and scope, it makes up for in intensity.
Lady Macbeth is available to stream on Prime Video.
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Action movies are a dime a dozen these days. The success of John Wick pretty much redefined the genre and launched a new wave of stories that, while not carbon copies of each other, definitely share similar DNA. Gunpowder Milkshake doesn’t quite fit the mold of a John Wick copycat, but it is obviously inspired by it. The film follows a young hitwoman who must care for a young girl after killing her father.
Karen Gillan makes for a very compelling action lead, and the supporting cast — Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, and Carla Gugino —are all spectacular. The action is very decent, and a few sequences are quite impressive, especially the climactic showdown in the library. Gunpowder Milkshake is an above-average action flick that could benefit from a larger audience, largely because it often gets lost in the vast sea of Netflix content.
Gunpowder Milkshake is available to stream on Netflix.
Saint Maud (2021)
Like action, horror consistently produces critical and commercial hits on both the big and small screens. Thus, many worthy movies will get lost in the shuffle, but it’s worth going the extra mile to watch them. Such is the case for 2021’s Saint Maud, starring Morfydd Clark (The Rings of Power) as a young, traumatized nurse-turned-nun who will go to extreme lengths to save the soul of her new charge, a retired dancer battling cancer.
Saint Maud might not be outright horrifying, but it is a chilling and often profoundly unsettling study on faith, obsession, and delusion. Clark and her co-star, the ever-underappreciated Jennifer Ehle, deliver standout performances, and writer/director Rose Glass cements herself as one of the most promising talents in genre filmmaking. Those looking for a more cerebral and disturbing take on psychological horror will surely appreciate Saint Maud.
Saint Maud is available to stream on Prime Video.
Read the full article here
