If HBO and Netflix are pushing hard into each other’s space with Netflix investing in original programming and HBO untethering from cable with HBO Go, the biggest difference between the two these days is that HBO seems to have doubled down on its movie selection, while Netflix shifts its focus to a huge selection of TV programming. Next month, HBO will air several great movies and we’ve picked out a few of the best for you. For our current recommendations, check out The 50 Best Movies on HBO Go & HBO Now
Here are some great movies coming to HBO in June:
1. The Martian
Year: 2015
Director: Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott’s The Martian is largely a cold, deliberate film, but there’s still something undeniably stirring about it. Instead of showering us with treacle, the film pays tribute to simple human attributes such as smarts, teamwork, sacrifice and determination, going about its business much like its resourceful characters do. And yet, the film’s underlying message is nonetheless inspiring: We can do great things if only we put our minds to it. Based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, The Martian is set in a not-too-distant future in which U.S. astronauts are conducting manned missions to the Red Planet. The latest expedition finds a crew that includes Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) getting ready to return home to Earth when a deadly storm suddenly bears down on them. In the rush to return to their ship, Watney is hit by debris and presumed dead, Lewis reluctantly taking the rest of her crew into space. Except, of course, Watney hasn’t really died. As you might imagine, much depends on the film’s outcome, and Scott finds a way, even in the story’s final moments, to undercut the obviously emotional stakes with a calm precision that makes it all the more thrilling and harrowing. Consequently, The Martian is subtly heroic, peeling away the potential histrionics of the stranded-on-Mars plot to look at the very human men or women who ensure that the spaceships can fly in the first place.—Tim Grierson
2. High Fidelity
Year: 2000
Director: Stephen Frears
Nick Hornby really is tapped into the psyche of the turn-of-the-century male. John Cusack plays the every-man type who retraces his past girlfriend history only to find he let the perfect woman slip through his fingers. Funny, insightful and insanely quotable, High Fidelity plays like an ultra-hip Woody Allen movie, which is a very good thing indeed.—Jeremy Medina
3. The Wrestler
Year: 2008
Director: Darren Aronofsky
American filmmakers may have rediscovered emotional realism, but no conversion is more surprising than Darren Aronofsky’s. His unadorned portrait of a pro-wrestling has-been is built around a fantastic, physical performance by Mickey Rourke, captured with a documentary style that renders his dingy world all the more strange, funny and heartbreaking. In his own words, he’s “a broken-down piece of meat,” and Rourke, back from actor purgatory, brings ample baggage to the role—including his bulked-up, modified body, his sandpapered larynx and his craving for an unlikely comeback. Randy “The Ram” Robinson can’t keep doing pile drivers forever, especially as the game evolves into something even more brutal, but what else is there? He’s distant from his daughter, but he has a flirtatious, tentative relationship with an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei) who’s facing the same injustice of the ticking clock. The movie, with its dime-store romance, breezy dialogue and telegraphed emotion, feels a bit like a grungier Rocky, but at times the understated attitude, grime and destitution are closer to Raging Bull.—Robert Davis
4. Independence Day
Year: 1996
Director: Roland Emmerich
Independence Day is basically a compilation of the best explosions ever. Treasured monuments and government buildings get decimated, and then the alien mother ship follows suit. This movie is a pyrotechnician’s dream, which makes the title that much more fitting. Starring Will Smith as the earth’s savior, the film also gave us one of the better Jeff Goldblum characters, an MIT-graduate character discovers the countdown to a possible alien attack hidden in satellite transmissions. The brain to Will Smith’s brawn, Goldblum played an unlikely hero protecting the world from an impending alien invasion, among an all-star cast including Mary McDonnell who would later go on to lead a team against an invasion of another kind, the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica and the President Bill Pullman.—Staff
5. Wall Street
Year: 1987
Director: Oliver Stone
Like many fine actors before and after him, Douglas will be remembered for taking home an Oscar for a role that’s probably not his best work. Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko may be too showy, too much of a representation of 1980s greed to be a flesh-and-blood person. (And on a nit-picky level, he’s not even the lead character: That’s Charlie Sheen’s impressionable Bud Fox.) But it’s the kind of strapping, swaggering bit of gusto that Douglas could execute with that slightly oily charm of his. If his other performances from the time suggested that such strutting men had weaknesses, Gekko threw cold water on our hopes: Even when the character finally gets his comeuppance, there was a sense that he remained master of the universe. It’s an iconic performance that unfortunately still feels all too relevant.—Tim Grierson
New Original Programming:
HBO First Look: Warcraft (6/1)
Quincy Jones: Burning the Light (6/2)
Suited (6/20)
Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons (6/22)
Game of Thrones: Season 6 Finale (6/26)
Silicon Valley: Season 3 Finale (6/26)
VEEP: Season 5 Finale (6/26)
After the Thrones: Season 1 Finale (6/27)
How to Let Go of the World (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change) (6/27)
Theatrical Premieres:
Maps to the Stars, 2014 (6/1)
Black Sea, 2014 (6/1)
The Martian, 2015 (6/4)
Everest, 2015 (6/11)
The Boy Next Door, 2015 (6/15)
Ted 2, 2015 (6/18)
Freeheld, 2015 (6/20)
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, 2015 (6/25)
En Español:
Quedate (Stay), 2014 (6/1)
El elefante desaparacido (The Vanished Elephant), 2014 (6/3)
Francisco, recen por mi (Francis, Pray For Me), 2015 (6/10)
Available June 1:
101 Dalmatians, 1996
102 Dalmatians, 2000
American Gangster (extended cut), 2007
The Astronaut’s Wife, 1999
A Beautiful Mind, 2001
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, 1991
Dr. Dolittle 2, 2001
Eight Legged Freaks, 2002
High Fidelity, 2000
Igby Goes Down, 2002
Independence Day, 1996
Jet Li’s Fearless, 2006
Jumper, 2008
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, 2008
The Maze Runner, 2014
MI-5, 2015
Next Friday, 2000
Ocean’s Thirteen, 2007
Problem Child, 1990
Problem Child 2, 1991
Problem Child 3, 1995
The Transporter, 2002
Wall Street, 1987
The Wrestler, 2008
Ending June 30:
Fifty Shades of Gray, 2015
Get Hard, 2015
The Godfather Epic
The Hills Have Eyes II, 2007
Home Alone 2, 1992
Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2014
Knocked Up, 2007
Malcolm X, 2002
Music and Lyrics, 2007
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1978
Pretty in Pink, 1986
The Purge: Anarchy, 2014
The Rainmaker, 1997
Satisfaction, 1988
Scary Movie 2, 2001
She’s All That, 1999
Tammy, 2014
Troop Beverly Hills, 1989
Unfinished Business, 2015
What We Do in the Shadows, 2014
Wish I Was There, 2014
X-Men: Days of Future Past