HBO Max launched in May, bringing a new major streaming service to the table and adding yet another library to endlessly scroll through while you try to find a movie to watch. With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, etc. constantly cycling content, it can be hard to find something for your movie night. We’re here to help.
A bunch of great films are being added to streaming services this month, from campy classics (Blacula, Dirty Dancing) to moody new films of the last few years (Ad Astra, Lady Bird.) We’ve got three excellent literary adaptations (Clueless, She’s the Man, The Iron Giant), two films starring Brad Pitt (Thelma and Louise, Ad Astra again) and one landmark film at the intersection of two 90s cinema movements (The Watermelon Woman.) Any one of them is worth watching in June.
AD ASTRA
Brad Pitt is sad about his dad. In space. That’s the gist of James Gray’s Ad Astra. Pitt plays Major Roy McBride, the son of pioneering astronaut Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones.) The senior McBride went missing in the depths of space 15 years earlier, but now an electromagnetic pulse threatening Earth’s power grid is emanating from the spot where he disappeared. Roy is tasked with finding his father and stopping the pulse, but soon learns that he’s not being told the whole store. It’s a moody, philosophical sci-fi that’s punctuated by breathtaking action set pieces like a chase scene on the moon and a zero-gravity fight with a baboon.
BLACULA
A classic of Blaxploitation horror, Blacula stars William Marshall as an 18th-century African prince named Mamuwalde. Prince Mamuwalde visits Dracula’s castle to ask the count’s help in suppressing the slave trade, but Dracula laughs at his request and turns him into a vampire instead, dubbing him “Blacula.” Two-hundred years later, Blacula’s coffin is brought to Los Angeles, where he awakens and starts drinking the blood of LA residents.
