The Upstream: June 2025
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
To my wonderful paid subscribers, you didn’t miss a newsletter over the weekend — I'll send it out at the end of this week in tandem with this year’s edition of my year in theater post.
It was a busy week on top of a wild May, which culminated in something I never thought would ever happen: I interviewed Wes Anderson (and Michael Cera).
June is shaping up to be a great month here on Marshall and the Movies with great posts planned for Pride Month, the New York City mayoral primary, and the birthday of an iconic star. But we’ll start where every month does — with The Upstream, a collection of ten films that are making their debuts on a new streaming platform.
Barbarian, Netflix
Zach Cregger’s Weapons (releasing August 8 in theaters) has been tipped as the next big original horror sensation of the year. If you want to get a jump on that conversation, his debut feature Barbarian is now at your fingertips. This sleeper success from 2022 feels like it derived from a prompt from a screenwriting competition: “What if you crossed an Airbnb horror story with Justin Long’s midlife crisis?” And yet it holds together surprisingly well given the way it attempts to span two very different realms in its story. Legitimately a bit unsettling, too!
BlacKkKlansman, Paramount+
Noted New York Knicks fan Spike Lee may not have made a film as riotously funny and grippingly thrilling as BlacKkKlansman. The story recounts the true adventures of how undercover cop Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrates a Colorado Klan chapter by fooling them with his voice … and using the body of Jewish officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver, more stealthily brilliant than usual) to surveil their activities in person. While I could do without a few of the most obvious winks to the parallels to the first Trump era, this ranks for me among Spike Lee’s very best works: evocatively shot, precisely assembled, cogently furious. (If you want to nerd out a little bit, I wrote some here about how it subverts one of cinema’s most noxious and racist works.)
The French Connection, Criterion Channel
When will the Gene Hackman memorialization stop? TBD, but not now. The Criterion Channel has a full series celebrating the late actor beginning this month, and I realized I had never officially recommended his first Oscar-winning role in The French Connection. William Friedkin’s electrifying thriller about police corruption cracked the top 20 of my Best Picture power rankings in 2023, when I wrote:
“Though this zippy thriller is famed for its immersive daredevil chase sequence as a car tries to keep pace with an elevated subway train, that's just the cherry on top of an entirely engrossing police procedural. Friedkin and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman have more on their minds than simply NYPD detectives trying to bust up a French heroin ring. It's never as simplistic as the thin line of morality separating cops and criminals so much as it's an examination of whether there's any line Gene Hackman's "Popeye" Doyle won't cross in the dogged pursuit of his target.”
Hitchcock, Netflix
While I shiver at the branding of Netflix’s series celebrating Alfred Hitchcock — “The Original Cinema Influencer,” gag — I’m glad it means some of the Master of Suspense’s movies are hitting the screen at New York’s Paris Theater (which the streamer owns) as well as their own service. If you want something a little bit frothier than one of his heady and heart-pounding classics, I’d recommend throwing on the 2012 biopic Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins. Sacha Gervasi’s film, which recounts the struggles bringing Psycho to the big screen, respects the mastery of Hitchcock but does not fear him as an untouchable deity. It works as an allegory for the troubled state of the movies while also celebrating the joy that goes into making them.
The Hunger Games, Max
No one is going harder in Hollywood right now than the person casting the new Hunger Games movie with absolutely banging dead ringers for the OG 2012 cast. (Jesse Plemons! Elle Fanning! KIERAN CULKIN!) It’s taken a bit more of a forceful push to keep Suzanne Collins’ series alive in the cultural imagination, but I’m glad something seems to be sticking. Now might be a good time to refresh your memory on that first film, which holds up better than you might think. Director Gary Ross took a bold swing by turning a YA series into something that looks grimier and feels more frenetic in its editing. And, of course, there’s the Jennifer Lawrence factor. I will continue to bang the drum that we are already taking her talents for granted!
Mountainhead, Max
I’m already seeing some takes rolling in around Mountainhead, the freshly dropped movie from Jesse Armstrong, that negatively compare it with the artist’s work as the showrunner of Succession. It’s a fair point of reference, although there’s something so scraggly about this production that makes me resist such a close comparison. Armstrong transformed this compartmentalized tale of four business magnates enjoying a self-radicalizing weekend getaway within a matter of months, imbuing it with a genuine “first draft of history” feel through its timely commentary on the men operating in the shadows of our emerging techno-oligarchy. The film is essentially the would-be salon “group chats” of business scions reported by Semafor on hyperspeed as it demonstrates these tycoons’ ability to delude themselves in ecosystems of their own making. At its best, Armstrong captures a chilling satirical current akin to a contemporary Dr. Strangelove.
Nowhere, Criterion Channel
“In the ’90s, there was just that sense of the world’s fucking ending,” director Gregg Araki told me about his apocalyptic-set teen party movie Nowhere as it hit the Criterion Collection. “What were we thinking? Now, it’s Nazis, and every goddamn fucking day people get shot in malls. It’s fucking so crazy. Unfortunately, the apocalyptic theme is much more relevant today.” The film is now part of the Criterion Channel’s “Queersighted: Coming of Age” collection and is worth a watch for how much the tragedy is out in the world and not among the characters’ journeys. This orgiastic black comedy also features quite the roster of up-and-coming talent for 1997: Ryan Philippe, Rose McGowan, Christina Applegate, Heather Graham, Scott Caan…
Risky Business, Paramount+
I know it’s hard to imagine now given the sexlessness of the new Mission: Impossible movie, but Tom Cruise’s star image used to be deeply wrapped up in his sensual desirability. No movie better demonstrates this than Risky Business, his 1983 breakout that’s worth watching with an eye toward more than just a fun time. “To understand the health of an economy, Risky Business posits, is to see how young people enact it,” I wrote in an essay for Crooked Marquee last summer. It took far too long for more teen movies to catch up with what Paul Brickman was putting down here, but it’s a genius critique of the Reagan-era consumer culture masquerading in white undies and a Polo shirt.
28 Days Later, Pluto TV (free with ads)
Just in time for 28 Years Later releasing later this month, the long-unstreamable 28 Days Later is finally available to revisit through official channels! This breakout success for star Cillian Murphy uses the emerging DV technology to give a grittiness and realism to the apocalyptic zombie takeover movie. Danny Boyle made George Romero proud here. I haven’t seen this in quite some time, but I’ll definitely be giving it a spin before watching the third entry in the saga.
Us, Netflix
While we patiently await Jordan Peele’s latest feature, it appears he may be gifting us with a revived discourse cycle around one of his previously released films. The release of his annotated screenplay for Us is imminent, and Peele has curated a series at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center entitled “The Other America: A Cosmology of Jordan Peele’s Us” to coincide with that release. Get Out is still the gold standard for me in part because its success predates the online intellectualization of Peele’s work, but I think there was a lot to love about Us as well — even beyond Lupita Nyong’o’s stellar dual leading performance, robbed of Oscar glory in a year that unquestioningly gave Renée Zellweger a second statue. (Who asked for that?) I eagerly anticipate diving in deeper on some of these influences and, who knows, maybe even dusting off the thinkpiece I started developing immediately after seeing the movie for the first time but never wrote…
It’s been a tough week filing some pretty blistering pans over at Slant Magazine. I’m bummed to report I had to bring the knives out for Mike Flanagan’s preposterous The Life of Chuck, which needs to be laughed out of the awards conversation. Contained within this review: “thought-terminating cliché disguised as a cinematic valentine” and “kindergarten Kierkegaard.”
Much less likely you’ll ever come across Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail, but this also got the 1.5-star treatment from yours truly.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
She’s just being Miley (complimentary).
For those who work at the intersection of entertainment and advertising (or just enjoy thinking about it), the pieces that made up Vulture’s “New Media Circuit” section last week were all exceptional. Nicholas Quah’s overview is the single piece to read if you only have time for one, but I’d also recommend the interview with Kareem Rahma of SubwayTakes and the analysis of a Call Her Daddy chat.
I loved learning more about what powers Screen Slate (the other newsletter every New York cinephile should be subscribed to) in this profile from SSENSE.
A toast to the theater comes your way this weekend!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall