It’s officially summer, and it is is called. Some might even call it sultry. It’s enough to make you want to take a dip in a pool or, barring that, stay home on the couch and turn up the air conditioning before watching a good movie. There are a lot of great movies to watch this weekend before they air at the end of June, and we’ve put together a list of our favorites.
We have an underrated cult classic The exorcist director William Friedkin, a brilliant noir drama starring Denzel Washington, perhaps the best Die Hard sequel, and more.
Here are the new streaming service movies you should watch this month.
Editor’s Choice: Wizard
Image: Paramount Pictures/Warner Home Video
Director: William Friedkin
Form: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal
Exit criterion channel: June 30th
There was no one else like William Friedkin. The proud Chicago native and notoriously foul-mouthed director of The exorcist And The French connection was a master of his craft, able to conjure up both breathtaking performances and chilling scares. While not a horror film per se, his underrated 1977 remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 thriller The wages of fear is a striking representation of human fear in its rawest and most elemental form.
Located in a remote village in South America, Wizard follows four men: a disgraced French banker, a Palestinian militant, a Mexican assassin and an Irish gangster. They are all banished from their respective homes, on the run and quickly running out of time. Their chance to return to civilization comes in the form of a deadly job where they are tasked with transporting loads of unstable dynamite through a rugged jungle to stop an oil rig explosion.
Wizard is not a pleasant film. The humidity of the rainforest and the rising tensions of the men radiate from the screen, as does the pain of their precarious attempts to avoid fatal injury. How far would you go to get back everything you’ve ever loved? Friedkin opened a portal into the dark, roiling heart of human despair in a way that few other directors of his caliber could, and that even fewer directors after him have achieved since. —Toussaint Egan
Movies to watch when you leave Netflix
Devil in a blue dress
Image: Sony Images
Director: Carl Franklin
Form: Denzel Washington, Tom Sizemore, Jennifer Beals
Leave Netflix: June 30th
This sparkling neo-noir captures Denzel Washington as he climbed the mountain of movie stardom, all in a brilliant story of post-war racial tensions in Los Angeles, featuring some of the best cinematography of the 1990s.
Denzel is Easy Rawlins, a vet between jobs who just wants to make enough money to keep paying his mortgage. When he is recruited by a shady PI for what seems like a simple job, Easy becomes entangled in a complicated web of lies and deceit that proves to be very difficult to break out of. Featuring incredible supporting performances from Don Cheadle, Tom Sizemore and Jennifer Beals, Devil in a blue dress is a gem of a mystery thriller that does justice to the excellent original novel. —Piet Volk
Movies to watch when you leave Prime
Knowledge of meat
Image: MGM Home Entertainment
Director: Mike Nichols
Form: Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, Arthur Garfunkel
Prime exit: June 30th
Fans of 1970s cinema, Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, and the recent comedy Bottoms will all enjoy Mike Nichols’ frank musings on sex, which were controversial enough at the time demand a ruling from the Supreme Court. Knowledge of meat continues with two students: Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), who is trapped in a DTF vortex, and his best friend, Sandy (Art Garfunkel, of Simon & Garfunkel fame), who is currently struggling with his inability to connect on a physical level with women. Village Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s script, which depicts milestone moments from the two’s post-graduation lives from boys to men, combines bursts of intimacy with twisting introspection on male failure. Nichols locks the pair in rooms with the likes of Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret and Rita Moreno for barbed sex talk that is technically Knowledge of meat in the comedy category, but no one comes away unscathed. —Matte plasters
Movies to watch while leaving Max
The daughter of the Blackcoat
Image: A24
Director: Oz Perkins
Form: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton
Maximum exit: June 30th
If you’re just as excited about Oz Perkins’ new horror film Long legs like we are, then it’s probably time you started doing your homework on it. Of course, you should probably watch Seven, ZodiacAnd The silence of the lambs in anticipation of the new serial killer film helmed by Nicolas Cage, but one film that may be slipping through the cracks is Perkins’ directorial debut, The daughter of the Blackcoat.
The daughter of the Blackcoat takes place largely at a prestigious boarding school, while it is closed during the winter break. Two girls, Rose (Lucy Boynton) and Kat (Kiernan Shipka), are stuck there during the holidays and each have their own problems. Rose thinks she might be pregnant, and Kat has visions of her parents dying horribly and suffers from bizarre hallucinations. Meanwhile, a second storyline in the film follows Joan (Emma Roberts), a young woman who escapes from a mental institution and is picked up by a kind old man (James Remar).
The empty boarding school is a criminally underused setting for modern horror, and Perkins takes full advantage of it. The silent hallways, vast, isolating forests, and dense snow give the entire film a great contained atmosphere that only makes Rose and Kat’s storylines creepier and increases Joan’s mystery. Shipka, Boynton, and Roberts are all fantastic in their roles, especially as the film reaches its over-the-top and terrifyingly bleak conclusion.
The daughter of the Blackcoat is a remarkable debut for one of today’s most interesting horror filmmakers, and it’s even better Long legs is around the corner. —Austen Goslin
Movies to Watch When Leaving Hulu
Die hard with vengeance
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: John McTiernan
Form: Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson
Leaving Hulu: June 30th
After skipping the first sequel, John McTiernan returned to one-up That hard with a film that asks: What if Nakatomi Plaza, but all of Manhattan? Folks, he did a good job. Despite the fact that no annual debate arises about the worthiness of the Christmas film canon, Die hard with vengeance goes hard, throwing Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a quick investigation across New York (with minimal exposition – McTiernan knows how to get to the good stuff). The cat-and-mouse game mostly features Jeremy Irons cackling on the phone in his over-the-top Simon Gruber German accent, and Willis and Jackson sweating as they complete puzzles worthy of the Riddler. McTiernan risked becoming too big for a small-scale hangover hero like John McClane, but the director dismisses any concerns through set pieces; Revenge features one of the most amazing car chases of all time, set in Central Park, and we simply don’t talk about it enough. —M.P