24 Films to See in April

by Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – April 3, 2023

While this April lacks the big-budget tentpoles that are typical of the season, it makes up for it with a diverse array of promising films, ranging from a Ben Affleck crowd-pleaser to festival hits to intriguing new titles from Ari Aster, Kelly Reichardt, Cristian Mungiu, David Lowery, and more. Oh, and did we mention that there's even a good new Nicolas Cage film? And a good Evil Dead sequel?

In the gallery on this page, our editors have selected the most interesting films debuting in North American theaters this month, listed in alphabetical order.

Additional content by Jason Dietz

16 of 24 photo by Disney

61 Peter Pan & Wendy

Action-adventure/Fantasy/Family | Directed by David Lowery
Streams on Disney+ beginning April 28
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A streaming exclusive, Disney's new live-action retelling of the Peter Pan story—it's both a new adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic novel and a remake of Disney's animated 1953 film Peter Pan—stars Jude Law, Yara Shahidi, Jim Gaffigan, Alan Tudyk, and Molly Parker, plus teen actors Alexander Molony and Ever Anderson as the titular pair. While the most recent Peter Pan film outings—Benh Zeitlin's 2020 feature Wendy and the dreadful 2022 film The Lost Girls—were disappointments, this one comes from writer-director David Lowery (The Green Knight), who rarely makes a bad movie. (He even had success with a previous Disney live-action adaptation.)

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