Stream These 13 Movies and TV Shows Before They Leave in May

A vast buffet of noteworthy titles are leaving Netflix in the United States this month, including romantic comedies, pricey blockbusters and stoner favorites. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)

‘About Time’ (May 1)

Stream it here.

Richard Curtis has carved out something of a niche as the foremost practitioner of the contemporary British rom-com, a stake he claimed with his “Four Weddings and a Funeral” screenplay and continued to hone by writing and directing the likes of “Notting Hill” (also leaving Netflix this month) and “Love, Actually.” If those titles make you twitch, this one will not change your opinion of Mr. Curtis and his work. But those who adore such Anglophile delights will similarly enjoy this 2013 favorite, which fuses his signature brand of Brit character comedy with a lightly fantastical time-travel premise, in which Domhnall Gleeson uses his familial gift of temporal flexibility to romance Rachel McAdams. Both are attractive and likable, though it takes only a handful of scenes for Bill Nighy and Tom Hollander to steal the picture.

‘Definitely, Maybe’ (May 1)

Stream it here.

Before he was a mainstay of superhero movies, Ryan Reynolds was a romantic comedy leading man, and this 2008 charmer from the writer and director Adam Brooks is the best demonstration of his skill set in the genre. He stars as a single dad whose daughter (a disarming Abigail Breslin) starts asking questions about her mom, prompting him to tell her the not-quite-whole truth about his single days and search for love. His improvisational cleanup of the bachelor life details are a good running gag (albeit one that seems swiped from the contemporaneous “How I Met Your Mother”), but the real juice here comes from the casting, matching Reynolds with three potential life partners in the form of Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher — each of them beguiling in their own way.

‘Friday’ / ‘Next Friday’ (May 1)

Stream ‘Friday’ here and ‘Next Friday’ here.

Strange as it may seem, there was once a time when the idea of Ice Cube starring in a screen comedy seemed peculiar. If anything, “Friday” seemed, upon its 1995 release, like a riff on his film debut in “Boyz N The Hood”— set in the same South Central Los Angeles milieu (and even sharing a co-star, Nia Long) but in an altogether different style. Cube stars as Craig, a newly unemployed nice guy; Chris Tucker is Smokey, his motor-mouthed best buddy, who makes it his mission to get straight-arrow Craig high for the first time. The director F. Gary Gray (“Set It Off,” “Straight Outta Compton”) gets the laid-back hangout vibe just right, and Cube and Tucker generate palpable buddy chemistry. The 2000 follow-up, “Next Friday,” doesn’t quite measure up, due mostly to the absence of Tucker. But his substitute, Mike Epps, blends in nicely, and Cube is as charismatic as ever.

‘King Kong’ (May 1)

Stream it here.

Peter Jackson’s love for the original, 1933 “King Kong” became part of his super-director origin story after the worldwide sensation of his original “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. So it came as no surprise that he turned his attention next to this no-expense-spared 2005 remake. Unlike the story’s 1976 iteration, which updated the story to a contemporary setting, Jackson’s film keeps the original time frame intact, along with the surrounding story about a frustrated filmmaker (Jack Black), a would-be starlet (Naomi Watts) and the man who falls for her (Adrien Brody). (The titular great ape is played by Andy Serkis, a sensation as Gollum in the “Lord” movies.) “King Kong” isn’t as fleet-footed as it could be, but Jackson’s affection for the material is clear, and his first-rate cast goes all in — especially Watts and Serkis, who make their interspecies love story entirely probable.

‘Queen & Slim’ (May 1)

Stream it here.

This 2019 romantic drama, written by Lena Waithe and directed by Melina Matsoukas, feels strikingly, urgently of its moment, telling the story of a Black couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) whose uneventful first date is interrupted by a bloodthirsty cop whom they kill in self-defense. They go on the lam, becoming folk heroes along the way, and this story about racist policing and social protest has grown only more pointed with time. Kaluuya and Turner-Smith are electric, teasing out the wrinkles and nuances of what could have been stock characters, and Matsoukas’s direction is, by turns, both dirt-on-the-floor realistic and surprisingly lyrical.