March is finally here! The snow is beginning to melt and the cool briskness of spring is just around the corner. Not to mention a whole slew of fantastic new movies to stream on Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, Criterion Channel, and more. From Wes Craven’s horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street and Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi military satire Starship Troopers to Guy Ritchie’s new heist thriller Wrath of Man and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (as well as highly-anticipated streaming premieres of Oscar-nominated films like Drive My Car and West Side Story), there’s something for virtually everyone to stream this month.

With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a list of the best movies new to streaming in March to help you figure out what to watch this month. We also have complete lists of everything coming to Netflix and Disney Plus in March, if that’s your cup of tea.

Got something else you’re excited to check out this month? Planning to check one of these out? Already did and loved it? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Image: New Line Home Video

The sensation that launched a franchise, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street lives on as a horror masterpiece decades later. Teenager Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and her friends become the targets of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a deceased serial killer now haunting (and hunting) people in their dreams. As Nancy’s friends start dying in their sleep one by one, she tries desperately to stay awake to survive. A timeless slasher that might also keep you from sleeping, Elm Street and Krueger have staying power for a reason. —Pete Volk

A Nightmare on Elm Street is available to stream on Netflix and HBO Max.

After Yang

Photo: Sundance Institute

The latest from Columbus director Kogonada, After Yang is a melancholy science fiction movie that balances the question of how we should think about artificial life with the more intriguing question of how it should think about us. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith star as adoptive parents raising a young Chinese girl, with the help of a “technosapien” — an android programmed as her language tutor, cultural advisor, and big brother. When his systems fail, the family goes through exactly what they’d experience at the death of any family member, with the added question of what his death tells them about their lives and relationships. It’s a small, quiet, meditative film, but it’s visually rich and packed with ideas about prejudice and assumptions, cultural assimilation, and the way everyone is navigating an inner life that would astonish everyone around them. —Tasha Robinson

After Yang is available to stream on Showtime Anytime and Showtime on Amazon.

Blue Velvet

Image: The Criterion Collection

David Lynch’s psychological neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet ranks among the director’s very best films, featuring iconic performances courtesy of frequent Lynch collaborators Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern, a terrifying turn for Dennis Hopper as the villainous Frank Booth, and a heart-wrenchingly memorable performance by Isabella Rossellini as the troubled lounge singer Dorothy Vallens. Surreal, sensuous, thoroughly captivating, and frequently disturbing, Blue Velvet is Lynch in his prime. —Toussaint Egan

Blue Velvet is available to stream on Hulu and Paramount Plus.

Casino

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Martin Scorsese’s Las Vegas drama is a high mark in his renowned gangster picture oeuvre. Ace Rothstein (Robert DeNiro), a star sports gambling handicapper, is asked by the Italian mob to run the new Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas. When his hothead old friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) shows up in town and Rothstein falls for local hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), things get complicated. Inspired by the lives of real people, Casino is another enthralling study by Scorsese on the allure and dangers of power, and where leading such a life will leave you. —PV

Casino is available to stream on Peacock.

Dazed and Confused

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Set during the waning days of the senior class of a Austin, Texas high school in 1976, Richard Linklater’s 1993 coming-of-age comedy follows a group of teenagers navigating that awkward crossroads period of looking to future all while also looking to get stoned, drunk, and lucky in the here and now. It’s wickedly funny and boasts a cast of nascent names that deliver breakout performances, including Milla Jovovich, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, and Parker Posey. Haven’t seen it yet? Well, it’d be a lot cooler if you did. —TE

Dazed and Confused is available to stream on Peacock.

Drive My Car

Photo: Janus Films

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s drama was recently nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and finally makes its highly anticipated U.S. streaming debut.

From our best movies of 2021 write-up:

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car runs 179 minutes long, but it earns every single minute. The opening preamble, nearly an hour before the opening credits plays, covers an outwardly happy marriage between stage actor Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his television producer wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). The pair enjoy a lively sex life, as Oto makes intercourse into writers-room sessions by crafting stories aloud for Kafuku’s arousal. But soon, the actor learns a devastating secret about his wife. Before he can confront her, tragedy strikes.

Drive My Car is a critical darling, with highly lauded writing, direction, and acting performances. It’s an experience well worth the three hours of its running time. —PV

Drive My Car is available to stream on HBO Max.

Hell Hath No Fury

Image: Well Go USA Entertainment

Jesse V. Johnson is one of the best filmmakers working in the direct-to-video action space today, and his latest film Hell Hath No Fury is one of the high points of his prolific career. Marie DuJardin (Nina Bergman), a French woman, has been marked as a traitor for her relationship with a Nazi officer (Daniel Bernhardt). As World War II comes to a close and Marie’s place in the future French society is uncertain, she is rescued by a group of American soldiers on one condition: she must reveal the location of a secret stash of Nazi gold and lead the group there.

What follows is a gripping, tense thriller almost entirely set in a cemetery, with a palpable air of uncertainty throwing everything you think you know into question. Bergman is excellent in a complicated, layered role, and Bernhadt brings an uncanny combination of menace and charm in one of the richest roles he’s had the opportunity to play. There are no heroes in this story, only survivors. —PV

Hell Hath No Fury will be available to stream on Hulu on March 14.

I Was a Simple Man

Image: Criterion Channel

Christopher Makoto Yogi’s (August at Akiko’s) ghost story is a slow burn meditation on death, memory, and what lives on after we depart. As the elderly patriarch (Steve Iwamoto, excellent in his first lead feature role) of a fragmented family nears the end of his life, he is visited by both family in the present and ghosts from the past, including his long-deceased wife (Constance Wu). Intergenerational tensions arise as the ghosts of past conflicts return, too – squabbles and fights between family members long estranged, as well as the history of Hawaii’s path to statehood.

I Was A Simple Man takes us on this journey across different time periods and with evocative use of surrealism and dream aesthetics. A beautiful movie filled with stunning images of the gorgeous landscapes and rich textures of Hawaii, it won the Made in Hawaii Award for Best Feature at the 2021 Hawaii International Film Festival. I Was A Simple Man is an unforgettable experience that ventures to capture the final days of one life on Earth. —PV

I Was a Simple Man is available to stream on Criterion Channel.

Land of the Dead

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

George A. Romero’s earlier zombie movies like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are what the horror master is known best for, but the 2005 Land of the Dead is an excellent entry to the zombie film canon. Set in a post-zombie apocalypse feudal Pittsburgh (ruled by a deliciously cold-blooded Dennis Hopper), the zombies are now organizing and setting up for an assault on the city. The wealthy residents of Pittsburgh live in a luxury apartment building, with everyone else lucky enough to be within the city walls relegated to a life of poverty on the streets. Like many other Romero films, Land of the Dead effectively wrestles with complicated themes, reflecting the problems of our current world through the distance of a fictional one. —PV

Land of the Dead is available to stream on Hulu.

Rear Window

Image: Paramount Pictures

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1954 parable of the perils of voyeurism stars James Stewart as L. B. Jefferies, a professional photographer (nursing a broken leg after a snafu at the race track) who just can’t help but snoop on his neighbors to dull the tedium of his recuperation. Suspecting that the man across from him may have murdered his wife, he enlists the aid of his girlfriend Lisa and his visiting nurse Stella to help him investigate, searching for answers that just might put all of their lives in peril. Exquisitely well-paced and impeccably well-performed, Rear Window is one of the greatest mystery thrillers ever filmed. —TE

Rear Window is available to stream on Peacock.

Sorry to Bother You

Photo: Annapurna Pictures

Boots Riley’s 2018 black comedy Sorry to Bother You follows Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a telemarketer from Oakland dispirited by his thankless job pitching products to predominantly white customers over the phone. Things quickly take a turn for what at first seems the better when Cassius learns to use his “white voice,” propelling him to success as he shoots up the corporate ladder to the venerated position of “Power Caller.” Absurd, hilarious, and unapologetically political, Sorry to Bother You is an unabashedly unique film filled with twists that’ll have you scratching your head as frequently as you’ll be shouting at the screen. —TE

Sorry to Bother You is available to stream on Netflix.

Starship Troopers

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

A satirical adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name, Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 biting sci-fi film Starship Troopers takes place in a far off future where the Federation, a fascistic military organization that rules the Earth through a planet-wide system of mandatory conscription, instigates a full-scale war against a fearsome race of giant alien insects. Though derided when it first released, the film has since experienced a reappraisal in the decades since to such a point that it’s now championed as one of the best and most perceptive science-fiction films of its era. Would you like to know more? —TE

Starship Troopers is available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max.

Unstoppable

Image: 20th Century Fox

The late Tony Scott’s last film is one of his very best, a working-class drama with a lot of thrilling action and even more heart. Denzel Washington stars as Frank Barnes, a veteran railroad engineer who begrudgingly has to train Will Colson (Chris Pine), a newly hired young train conductor. When a runaway train threatens an entire Pennsylvania town, the two have to work together to stop it, against all odds. Washington and Pine are superb in a complicated working dynamic, with Pine representing a younger class of workers unknowingly pushing Washington’s older group out of jobs. An exciting 98-minute thrill ride, Unstoppable is loosely based on a true story. —PV

Unstoppable is available to stream on Hulu.

West Side Story

Photo: The Walt Disney Company

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the legendary stage musical is an absolute delight to behold. Filled with color and life, the new West Side Story pays homage to the first while still distinguishing itself as its own item. Rachel Zegler (in her film debut) and Ariana DeBose shine as Maria and Anita, earning an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actress for DeBose. That’s one of seven nominations for the film, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design. Ansel Elgort is a drag every time he’s on screen, but Tony was never the most interesting character here anyway. New West Side Story is a delight, start to finish. —PV

West Side Story is available to stream on HBO Max.

Wrath of Man

Image: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Guy Ritchie’s latest collaboration with Jason Statham is equal parts heist and revenge thriller. H (Statham), a new security guard at a cash truck company in Los Angeles, surprises his co-workers during a heist attempt with an efficient and skillful display of violence. As H comes into clearer focus for viewers and his co-workers alike, we learn the real reason he has decided to ply his trade at this particular business. With a supporting cast that includes Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan, Josh Hartnett (playing a character named “Boy Sweat”), and Scott Eastwood, Wrath of Man is a fun two hour thrill ride. —PV

Wrath of Man will be available to stream on Hulu and Paramount Plus on March 23.

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• Source: https://www.polygon.com/what-to-watch/22954937/best-new-movies-netflix-amazon-hbo-march-2021