June 26th will see both the return of Ray Donovan to Showtime, as well as the debut of Cameron Crowe’s new one-hour comedy series Roadies, taking a look at the backstage crew that makes the arena show happen. But the premium cable channel will also be broadcasting and streaming several new movies next month. Here are our top picks:
1. Reservoir Dogs
Year: 1992
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Reservoir Dogs’ debut at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival launched not only the career of one Quentin Tarantino but an American indie genre unto itself characterized by extreme violence, profane dialogue, nonlinear storytelling and a curated soundtrack. Many have tried, but none of his imitators has achieved the visual and aural poetry at work in Tarantino’s oeuvre, particularly his magnum opus Pulp Fiction, upon whose release in 1994 newly minted fans went back to discover the aftermath of Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink and Mr. White’s botched diamond heist (but not the heist itself). This is where it all began.—Annlee Ellingson
2. 3:10 to Yuma
Year: 2007
Director:
Based on the original 1957 film and a story by Elmore Leonard, Russell Crowe plays the notorious outlaw Ben Wade who has been captured in a small western town. Low on money and about to lose his ranch, family man Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and others are hired to help escort Wade on a three-day journey to the nearest train bound for the prison in Yuma while his ever-loyal gang waits for the opportunity to set their leader free. (Ben Foster is wonderfully evil and despicable as Wade’s unfailingly loyal lieutenant Charlie Prince.) Director James Mangold turns the trip into a mini-epic on the historical changes of the Old West. As the relationship between Wade and Evans transforms, the fine line between good and evil is well played, serving as a just tribute to earlier, classic Westerns such as The Searchers and, more recently, Unforgiven. The film hurtles toward the inevitable climax at the train station where it comes close to imploding from the weight of its own cleverness, but manages to hold it all together.—Tim Basham
3. Battle Royale
Year: 2000
Directors: Kinji Fukasaku
It’s okay to compare Battle Royale to The Hunger Games movies—or, rather, to find how the lasting accomplishments of the latter franchise were essentially done better and with so much more efficiency by the former—because you probably will anyway. Battle Royale, like the immensely successful four-film crash course in crafting an action star who is really only a symbol of an action star, chronicles a government-sanctioned battle to the death between a group of teens on a weird, weapon-strewn island. (There are even regular island-wide announcements of the day’s dead as the sun sets on the remaining children.) Yet, Battle Royale is so lean in its exposition, so uninterested in dragging out its symbolism or metaphor, that one can’t help but marvel at how cleanly Fukasaku (who had a full career behind him when he made this, only three years before he died) can lend depth to these children, building stakes around them to the point that their deaths matter and their doomed plights sting. What the director can do with such a tenuous premise (which The Hunger Games takes multiple films to do, and without a single ounce of levity) is astounding—plus, he wrangled Beat Takeshi Kitano to play the President Snow-type character, which Kitano does to near-perfection. That Battle Royale II sets out to up the stakes of the first film, especially given the first film’s crazy success in Japan, is to be expected, but stick to the first: Battle Royale will make you care about kids murdering each other more than you (probably) would anyway.—Dom Sinacola
4. Sleeping With Other People
Year: 2015
Directors: Leslye Headland
The romantic comedy is a genre crying out for an update. We’ve had a few worthy entries in the 21st century—the imaginative Amelie, the clever and quirky Silver Linings Playbook, even the irreverent Knocked Up. But none of those films embraced the genre and all its tropes quite like the latest from Leslye Headland does. With her third film, which is little more than 90 minutes of sexual tension building between two friends, Headland has managed to create a direct descendent of Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron—and make it just as uproariously funny as its forebears’ best works. Sleeping With Other People pushes at every boundary without ever feeling unnecessarily tawdry; it’s the Cards Against Humanity version of When Harry Met Sally (there’s even an “I’ll have what she’s having” moment involving a bottle of tea). Alison Brie could be our decade’s Meg Ryan, and Sudekis could be our Hanks—but there’s no doubt that Leslye Headland will keep making us laugh for years to come. —Josh Jackson
Available June 1:
3:10 To Yuma
The Accidental Spy
All Over the Guy
Alone in the Dark
Battle Royale
Dreamscape
Free Money
Girl House
Hannibal
Happy Endings
Hidalgo
Mission: Impossible 2
The One
Reservoir Dogs
Revolutionary Road
I Survived a Zombie Holocaust
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Supernova: Available 6/1
Available June 4:
Woman in Gold
Available June 13:
Miami Vice
Available June 18:
Sleeping With Other People