Movies

3 Best Movies Criterion Channel Just Added for April 2025

These three movies should shoot to the top of your watchlist.

Criterion

The Criterion Channel is a must-have streaming service for any film lover, with thousands of classic and contemporary films you’ll never find on any of the other streaming services.

With all the movies the service constantly adds, it can be hard to decide what to watch. Here are three of the best movies added to the Criterion Channel in April.

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Showgirls

90s audiences were not ready for Showgirls. This campy, erotic satire about a Vegas stripper from RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven was called one of the worst films of all time upon its release, but has since been recognized as a powerful, incisive skewering of sex work and strip clubs. Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) hitchhikes to Vegas, where she has big dreams of making it as a showgirl—but first, she has to contest with her rival Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon) and her casino boss Zack Carey (Kyle MacLachlan).

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

No, not the Denzel Washington remake, which is very different and not as good. In this speedy crime drama, four disguised criminals hijack a New York City subway train and promise to kill one passenger every minute if the city government does not give them one million dollars by the hour. Tense, thrilling, and surprisingly funny, this is a must-watch.

Scanners

Body horror is all the rage these days, with movies like The Substance hitting it big at the Oscars. With Scanners director David Cronenberg considered the father of body horror, there’s no better time to see where the genre had its mainstream breakthrough. In this sci-fi-espionage horror flick, “scanners” are men with otherworldly psychic powers. Naturally, military contractors catch on to the existence of scanners and attempt to weaponize the men for profit.