Spring has just started and What to Watch is already looking forward to April.
There are a few good reasons why: Ryan Coogler’s vampire action movie Sinners with Michael B. Jordan is set to hit theaters, the World Junior Curling Championships will take place in Italy, and Black Mirror returns to Netflix to give everyone new nightmares about the tech apocalypse.
In addition, some pretty big movies from last year and this year are set to make their streaming debuts in April.
Two of last year’s most acclaimed and little-seen films will debut on Hulu while Netflix will premiere Gareth Evans and Tom Hardy’s long-delayed action movie. These three movies are absolutely essential to watch in April 2025 and beyond.
‘Small Things Like These’ (2024)
How do you follow greatness? Cillian Murphy reached the pinnacle of his career with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a three-and-a-half-hour brainy biopic that somehow made almost $1 billion and snagged him an Oscar. For his next film, the Irish actor opted to star in a low-budget drama about the Magdalene laundries that were still open and running in 1985, the year Small Things Like These is set.
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Bill Furlong (Murphy) is a coal merchant with a loving wife and five daughters. When he delivers coal to the local convent, he discovers a young pregnant girl, Sarah (Agnes O’Casey), scared and freezing in a shed. The convent’s Mother Superior, Sister Mary (Emily Watson), explains that Sara is a victim of a childish prank gone wrong, but Bill isn’t so sure. As he begins to investigate what’s really going on, he encounters pushback from the community and the Church itself.
Small Things Like These is a quiet drama that dramatizes a very real tragedy that occurred in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries. Murphy is as great as ever and conveys Billy’s moral dilemma of wanting to help Sarah but also not wanting to disrespect his religious leaders. The movie deals with heavy subject matter, but it’s never depressing, and the ending may make you whisper a quiet “hallelujah.”
Small Things Like These will stream on Hulu on April 8.
‘The Order’ (2024)
Amid the holiday rush last year, a few films were released and unjustly neglected by audiences. One of those movies was The Order, a superb period action-thriller that documents the rise of a white supremacist group in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s.
Jude Law stars as FBI agent Terry Husk, whose investigation of a suspicious murder leads him to Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), a charismatic leader of a terrorist group called The Order. Their goal is to promote white supremacy through domestic terrorism, and Husk, along with neophyte police officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), are the only ones who can stop him.
The Order looks like your standard macho action movie, but it’s also an intelligent examination of how insidious racist ideology can permeate in small-town America. You wouldn’t think the very English and very posh Law would excel as a balding, middle-aged American cop, but he does and gives one of his best performances. He’s matched by Hoult as Matthews, who gives his antagonist a disarming amount of charm.
The Order will stream on Hulu on April 18.
‘Havoc’ (2025)
A drug deal has just gone bad, and grizzled detective Walker (Tom Hardy) isn’t happy. His cover is blown, a gun-happy crime syndicate wants him dead, and his fellow cops don’t trust him. To make it worse, he has to save a crooked politician’s son, who was involved in the drug deal and is hiding more than just his addiction. Now Walker needs to save the kid while somehow trying to avoid getting shot at by both friend and foe.
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Havoc hails from director Gareth Evans, who made the modern action classics The Raid and Gangs of London, so expect a lot of gunshots, explosions, and face-smashing fights. Hell, there’s even a chase scene where someone throws a washing machine onto a pursuing cop car. The octane is at its highest level in Havoc, and there’s no one better to guide you through it than Hardy, who is a veteran of these kinds of movies. His Venom movies look like rom-coms when you compare them to Havoc.
Havoc finished shooting in 2021, but it’s been mired in post-production hell and endless reshoots since then. That typically doesn’t bode well, but the teaser trailer promises a fun time, and Evans hasn’t made a dud yet.
Havoc will stream on Netflix on April 25.
