Max subscribers are in for a treat this month: a new batch of films has arrived on the streaming service in June. These additions include a late ’90s classic, an underrated early 2000s comic book movie and a Martin Scorsese masterpiece that deserves even more respect than it typically gets. The streamer has also added one of the greatest parody films of all time to its platform, as well as the best “Hunger Games” adaptation that Hollywood has produced to date.
Here are the seven best movies that are now streaming on Max in June.
“Casino” (1995)
“Casino” has had a difficult time escaping the shadow of “Goodfellas.” Its narrative, cast and stylistic similarities to that film have invited comparisons between the two titles ever since “Casino” hit theaters in 1995. It has inevitably fallen short in those comparisons — as would most movies when compared to “Goodfellas” — but that does not mean that “Casino” is not a masterful crime epic in its own right. Based on real events, the film explores how the friendship between gambling expert Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and mobster Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) is gradually corrupted by greed, glamour and love when they are tasked with overseeing the operations of a Las Vegas casino.
The assignment leads De Niro’s Ace right to the beautiful, materialistic Ginger (Sharon Stone), and it is his love for her that eventually inspires toxic jealousy, countless bad decisions and horrifying moments of violence. Scorsese ties Ace and Ginger’s relationship into the rest of the film’s many narrative threads with his usual style and control — spinning together a cinematic web of deceit, vanity and violent brutality that is shot with lurid, bright light by cinematographer Robert Richardson and elevated by Stone’s performance as Ginger, which ranks high among the best Scorsese has ever captured onscreen.
“Fight Club” (1999)
A perennial fixture on college dorm room walls and one of the most oft-quoted movies of all time, director David Fincher’s “Fight Club” is somehow better and punchier than its reputation suggests. Anarchistic in both its storytelling and style, “Fight Club” is an unrepentantly depraved adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel of the same name about an unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) who forms an underground fight club with an eccentric soap salesman (Brad Pitt). Over the past 26 years, the film’s surface-level nihilism and criticisms of contemporary consumer culture have revealed themselves to be shallower than “Fight Club” wants you to think.
But what the film lacks in thematic and philosophical depth, it more than makes up for in mood, style and seediness. Few films better communicate the self-hatred and worthlessness that late capitalist America often inspires in its citizens, and even fewer do so with the same maniacal, memorable glee that “Fight Club” does. It is a film that, fittingly, functions less like a well-articulated screed than it does a slick one-two punch, first to your face and then to your gut.
“Hellboy” (2004)
One of the most underrated comic book movies of the 21st century, director Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy” is an atmospheric, immersive mashup of the horror, fantasy, steampunk and sci-fi genres that feels entirely and confidently like its own thing. Ron Perlman is perfectly cast as the film’s eponymous protagonist, a half-demon who is as haunted by his own outsiderness as he is by his apocalyptic potential.
Del Toro uses practical effects, sets and makeup to believably bring the film and its unique, subterranean supernatural world to life onscreen. While it is based on Mike Mignola’s original Dark Horse comic books, “Hellboy” feels, in its fantastical imagination and ability to balance both gothic romance and pure horror, like a del Toro film through and through. “Hellboy” is, in other words, a rare thing: a comic book movie with a clear, distinct directorial perspective and identity.
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978)
One of the greatest horror movies of the 1970s, director Philip Kaufman’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is a far more significant and impressive film than its 21st-century meme legacy suggests. Based on a 1955 novel by Jack Finney, the film follows a group of characters as they come to realize — much to their increasing terror — that every human on Earth is being replaced by perfectly identical alien duplicates who exhibit no empathy or humanity. Tapping fully and masterfully into the cold, cosmic horror of its source material, Kaufman’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is an improvement on its 1956 film predecessor in just about every way.
It submerges viewers in dread and paranoia for the entirety of its 115 minutes, and it offers no escape from those feelings in its closing moments, which bring the film’s apocalyptic story to its only logical conclusion with chilling, brutal finality. If you have been on the internet at all over the past 15 years, you have likely seen the horror film’s ending in some kind of GIF or meme form, but your familiarity with it cannot prepare you for just how impactful of a gut-punch it actually is.
“Split” (2017)
The film that cemented writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s comeback as a (mostly) reliable, mainstream Hollywood filmmaker, 2017’s “Split” is a claustrophobic, nerve-wracking thriller. It follows Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), a teenage girl who is kidnapped along with her two friends by a man (James McAvoy) with dissociative identity disorder who plans to sacrifice them to an ominous alternate self known as “The Beast.”
In 2017, the film’s last-minute twist made waves when it hit theaters — reframing its entire story and encouraging viewers to look forward to its follow-up. In a movie that features one actor playing multiple personalities, the twist in “Split” remains the most gimmicky thing about it. Fortunately, time has been kind to the modest and yet ambitious thriller. It is a film that stands on its own and delivers a rewarding cinematic experience regardless of how much you know or feel about its loosely connected sequel and predecessor.
“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (2013)
The first four “Hunger Games” movies have all come to Max in June. All of them are, at the very least, good and entertaining, but none are as great as 2013’s “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” Directed by Francis Lawrence, the franchise’s second installment is a more propulsive and confidently staged dystopian thrill ride than its Gary Ross-directed 2012 predecessor.
Featuring one of the most well-timed IMAX transitions in all of contemporary cinema, the film follows Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) as she and her fellow Hunger Games survivor Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are forced to compete in another brutal, government-sanctioned battle royale. Elevated by scene-stealing supporting turns from Sam Claflin and Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Catching Fire” is the most visually striking installment in its YA franchise, and it builds to its bittersweet, perfectly executed climax with dread-inducing patience and control.
“Spaceballs” (1987)
One of the most iconic parody films of all time, “Spaceballs” is writer-director Mel Brooks’ knowingly ridiculous send-up of “Star Wars,” “Star Trek” and other popular sci-fi film franchises like them. Released 10 years after “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” “Spaceballs” remixes the plot of that 1977 film, telling an absurdist story about a crew of misfits, led by Bill Pullman’s rogue Lone Starr, who end up fighting against an incompetent president (Brooks himself) and his Darth Vader-inspired enforcer, Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis).
What ensues from that conflict is a satirical comedy full of intentional merchandising advertisements, fourth-wall breaks, cheeky visual gags and enough farcical mishaps to leave you rolling on the floor with laughter. The film has more quotable lines than you could count, but this writer has always been fond of the moment when Moranis’ Dark Helmet pokes fun at inelegant franchise exposition dumps by following up a necessary piece of plot information by turning to the camera and asking the audience, “You got that?”
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