Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime Video NZ: May 2023

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video’s New Zealand library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top picks

Plane (May 19)

Man (Gerard Butler) fly plane. But lightning hit plane. Plane land on island. But bad island people kidnap plane people. What Man do? Man need help of Criminal (Mike Coulter—good man from TV show Evil) to stop bad island people and save plane people. Movie is called Plane. Because there is plane in movie. I will watch Plane.

Bros (May 25)

With an overly pushy marketing campaign and producer Judd Apatow’s typically overlong, indulgent runtime, the gay AF Billy Eichner vehicle Bros had a shaky run in cinemas. But for any queer viewers who’ve been longing for their own big, funny, high-energy rom-com (and really anybody with a soft spot for the genre), I’m here to tell you that Bros is worth a watch. Heaps of gay royalty icons show up to spit fast-paced screwball quips (Debra Messing, even, is surprisingly game), and the film has some surprisingly complex stuff to say about the unfair standards and stereotypes imposed upon queer people—both from a patronising society and from within the communities themselves.

Carnifex (May 25)

Nothing beats a good old-fashioned Aussie creature feature! Although this one looks to be more in the vein of classy, contemporary enviro-thrillers rather than the splashy ridiculousness of classic Ozploitation horror. It follows a documentary filmmaker teaming up with conservationists, heading into the dark outback to chronicle bushfire devastation. But when an ancient and very hungry mammal species awakens, they’ll be the ones getting devastated. A good one to show gullible tourists or friends overseas to scare them away from this hemisphere.