“West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty” (dir. Med Hondo, 1979)

The Criterion Channel is kicking off the summer season — the summer movie season, anyway — on an appropriately steamy note, as the platform’s May slate is headlined by a series of classic office romances, ranging from Lloyd Bacon’s pre-code drama “The Office Wife” to the “shut up and deal” fun of “The Apartment” some 30 years later. Stops along the way include the obligatory (“His Girl Friday,” “The Desk Set”), and the somewhat less expected (Alfred E. Green’s pointedly titled 1936 rom-com “More than a Secretary”). 

That series ends well before the likes of “Working Girl” helped to modernize the office romance, but the Reagan era is extremely well-represented on the Channel this month thanks to a package that matches classic films with their ’80s remakes. Love “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946)? Try “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1981). “The Thing from Another World” is paired with “The Thing,” “Breathless” with “Breathless,” Jacques Tourneur’s “Cat People” with Paul Schrader’s take, and so on. 

Many of those movies tend to cycle through the Channel’s library on a regular basis, but the same can’t be said for the titles comprising the platform’s tribute to Caribbean Activist Cinema from 1978-1975. Dubbed “You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom,” and guest-curated by the Third Horizon Film Festival’s Jonathan Ali, this eye-opening series is top-lined by Med Hondo’s immortal “West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty,” which is the perfect entrée to the similarly vital likes of Jacques Arcelin’s “Bitter Cane” and Arnold Antonin’s “Haiti: The Way to Freedom,” which is often credited as being the country’s first feature film.

Subscribers eager to catch up with or revisit new arthouse fare can steel themselves for Lav Diaz’s epic “Magellan,” Hlynur Pálmason’s “The Love that Remains,” and — just in time for Cannes — Thierry Frémaux’s “Lumière, Le Cinema!, Le Cinema!,” which offers a spirited and informative crash-course on the brothers who brought the movies to life.

All movies available to stream May 1, except “The Love that Remains” which debuts at 8pm ET on May 12.