The Downstream: June 2024

10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.

Well, we blinked and we’re almost done with June. If you’re looking for some Pride Month viewing of queer cinema that is more than just coming out and trauma, might I recommend the 10 films I curated in the newsletter linked below back in 2022 👇

Pride-fully Cinematic

Elsewhere, here are 10 movies to watch before they leave their current streaming homes this month. (Ironically, the first recommendation is the exact opposite of what the aforementioned list covers, but it’s still great.)

Brokeback Mountain, Apple TV+

It really goes to show just how little nuance there was to discussing sexuality in 2005 that this got labeled the “gay cowboy” movie given that neither the movie nor the character spends a moment concerned with putting a label on their feelings. Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist, two men who cannot find a way to express the love and affection they have for each other, never spend a moment concerned with putting a label on their feelings. Brokeback Mountain is a film about the straightjacket of traditional masculinity — especially as embodied within the context of the American West — as anything else. The beauty of the film is the connection that flourishes organically between Ennis and Jack as the two work as Wyoming farmhands in 1963, while the tragedy of the film is that society away from their titular bucolic love nest strips them of the vocabulary to give voice to their desires.

The Immigrant, Criterion Channel

Let’s just say, hypothetically, you share a Criterion Channel account with me. You know that I think The Immigrant is one of the best — if not the best — movies of the 21st century. You started watching it but didn’t finish it, as I can see by the tiles at the top of the app. You might want to do that (or better yet, restart from the beginning and watch as it’s meant to be seen, but I’m not going to judge either way) before it leaves the service at the end of the month!

The rest of you should watch The Immigrant, too, by the way.

Joshy, Amazon Prime Video

Some comedies are far more than meet the eye. Jeff Baena’s Joshy is one such movie. While on its surface, the premise of a guy’s weekend (including Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, and Nick Kroll) in Ojai feels like an excuse to play out some wild shenanigans. And there’s that, but also more. The comedy opens up to something startlingly vulnerable as Baena confronts head-first the tactics men take to avoid sharing how they really feel and confronting what they actually need. It’s quietly revelatory and sneakily insightful on top of being just a fun hang.

Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Netflix

Strangely, only the second half of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga seems to be leaving Netflix in June. So if you want to do the full double feature without leaving the auspices of the same platform, best to see to it this month. While Vol. 1 has more of the iconic fight scenes, I think Vol. 2 has significantly better dramatic payoff as it lingers on the consequences of revenge in extended sequences between The Bride and her mark Bill.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, Apple TV+

While attempts to sequelize and spinoff Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman have gone disastrously, that does not alter my affection for the series’ kickoff The Secret Service. This is a blissfully funny, irreverent, and exciting action flick that strikes a rarely found balance between spy movie classicism (like a Bond flick) and outright parody (à la Austin Powers). Unlike most overstuffed studio tentpoles, Vaughn finds the right times to shift gears between these two modes. The result is an experience that plays like all the fun of two movies for the price of one rather than a confused mess.

The Lodge, Max

Nothing says escapist entertainment during New York City’s “heat dome” quite like watching a tale of snowbound captivity like The Lodge! Austrian filmmakers Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala crank up the heat in an icy rural locale while Riley Keough’s Grace gets stuck inadvertently caretaking her boyfriend’s two kids … alone. Her past traumas from escaping a Heaven’s Gate-like cult don’t exactly lend themselves well to claustrophobia, and that’s even before the meddlesome kids get up to their antics. Scary stuff!

The Pianist, Amazon Prime Video

“To say there is a ‘better’ form of Holocaust movie strikes me as saying there’s a ‘correct’ way to grieve or a ‘right’ way to feel pain,” I wrote in an essay about The Pianist for paid subscribers earlier this year.

Revisiting THE PIANIST

If you want to revisit Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning tale of survival in the face of Nazi atrocity in light of recent genre breakthrough The Zone of Interest, your time is running short to do so on Amazon Prime Video.

Sunset Boulevard, Criterion Channel

I was startled to find that my Bright Wall/Dark Room essay on six-time Oscar-winner Billy Wilder made no mention of his masterpiece Sunset Boulevard. This canonical cautionary tale about the ephemerality of show business might not have the same misdirect of an ending like the other films I spotlighted in the piece. But if you don’t know the full context leading up to Gloria Swanson delivering the devastating dagger of a line “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up,” brace yourself for impact.

The Tillman Story, Amazon Prime Video

“Patriotism isn't about making everyone stand and salute the flag,” Jason Kander wisely observed. “Patriotism is about making this a country where everyone wants to.” The Tillman Story does the important work of attending to the latter definition of patriotism by uncovering the truth behind a widely propagated and propagandistic myth. The military was quick to martyr NFL player turned soldier Pat Tillman, but the truth behind his death in Afghanistan does not fit the neat narrative around the unassailable nobility of the United States’ military operation. This documentary sets the record straight so Americans can make an honest assessment of our role in the world.

Vertigo, Amazon Prime Video

I believe I’ve threatened to drop my “Canonical movies that I think are as good as their reputation” list on this newsletter before, but let me give you an additional spoiler: Vertigo is on it. It took me a while to soften up to this slightly inscrutable and self-reflexive Hitchcock thriller, sure. But it’s now a movie I can’t wait to keep rewatching so I can find new angles and points of entry. A movie about desire, obsession, and image-making … what a dangerous and daring place for a cinephile to keep finding out about themselves!

Ghostlight is one of my favorite movies of the year, and I’m grateful I got to wax poetically (and personally!) about it in my review for Slant Magazine. It begins opening wider tomorrow — don’t miss this beautiful tribute to the power of theater.

On a less exciting note, I wanted to issue a watch-out on a movie I reviewed at last year’s Tribeca Festival, Reverse the Curse (then titled Bucky F*cking Dent). Not good, not worth your time.

You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.