It’s no surprise that the Criterion Channel is honoring Pride with the deepest slate of LGBTQ+ classics that you’ll find on any streaming platform (“Portrait of Jason,” “The Watermelon Woman,” and “Misericordia” are but three of the many films in an expansive retro), or paying tribute to wedding season with a handful of masterpieces about a couple’s happiest day (“Melancholia,” “Rachel Getting Married,” and our pick of the month “Marie Antoinette” top the list with a laugh), but I can’t remember the last time the streamer’s monthly lineup was so responsive to current movie culture. Can’t wait for Christopher Nolan’s imminent summer blockbuster? Criterion has you covered with a collection of cinematic odysseys, ranging from Homeric adaptations like “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to the equally searching likes of “Walkabout” and “The Darjeeling Limited” (not to mention “The Searchers”). Excited for Steven Spielberg’s new alien adventure, or eager to put it into broader context? “Close Encounters of the First Kind” is waiting to be revisited. Itchy for Jeff Bezos to stop dicking around and pick the next Bond? The Spy Who Loved Me’s first three adventures are streaming on Criterion for what I believe is the first time. Courtney Love doesn’t have anything coming up as far as I’m aware, but at this point the Channel’s package of her acting work (e.g. “Basquiat,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” 200 Cigarettes”) is enough to convince me that she might.

All movies available to stream June 1.

While “Toy Story 5” is about to complicate the narrative that Pixar has sullied its brand with a string of needless sequels, there’s still great truth to Wilson Chapman’s praise for the studio’s recent “Hoppers,” and for how it restored some of the old brand magic:

“‘Hoppers’ came to theaters as the once-mighty studio has lost its luster, with a run alternating between sequels that are mere shadows of their predecessors and original films like “Elio” or “Elemental” that felt constrained and formulaic, attempts to reverse engineer the type of heartfelt, high-concept experience people have come to expect from Pixar without taking any actual risks. The dimming prestige of the brand perhaps allowed “Hoppers” the freedom to be something much more modest, and also way more fun and satisfying — a hilarious, joke-a-second comedy that has its moments of sweetness and emotional resonance, but isn’t looking to force tears out of you.

Whereas much of the studio’s recent output feels like it could have been made by anybody, ‘Hoppers’ is the first Pixar film since ‘Turning Red’ in 2022 to have a strong, evident creative voice. Director Daniel Chong started making the film after the conclusion of his Cartoon Network series “We Bare Bears,” a sitcom about three wild bears in the Bay Area trying and mostly failing to integrate with human society. Much of that show’s DNA has carried over to Chong’s feature debut, a quirky, humorous look at the animal kingdom with a streak of cringe comedy that derives as much pleasure from how gross and dumb mammals can be — with their shrill, shrieking voices and body oils — as it does from how cute they are.”

Available to stream June 3.

Other highlights:

– “The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Director’s Cut” (6/11)
– “Avatar: Fire and Ash” (6/24)

Film Movement Plus’ Pride Month selections are highlighted by Wanuri Kahiu’s Cannes sensation “Rafiki,” which IndieWire’s former executive editor and current artistic director of the Southampton Playhouse was on hand to see at its world premiere back in 2018:

“In ‘Rafiki,’ a pair of young women in a small town fall in love, then face the repercussions of an oppressive community unwilling to permit their romance. The star-crossed plight of Kena (Samantha Muatsia) and Zika (Sheila Munyiva) is familiar, but it’s never been done in Kenya, and that imbues this slight, endearing feature with a progressive context. Banned in its native country ahead of its Cannes premiere, Wanuri Kahiu’s sophomore feature is just good enough to give its modest intentions a historic purpose, bringing fresh context to an old formula while hitting the expected emotional beats.

At a concise 82 minutes, “Rafiki” uses a traditional narrative to play up the textures of its setting. Based on the short story “Jambala Tree,” the movie lingers in the small, dusty village where Kena, a genial woman with a determined gaze, cruises around town on her skateboard. She spends most of her time hanging at a scrappy outdoor cafe with her pal Blacksta (Neville Misati), who can’t seem to comprehend why his friend won’t just marry him and settle down. That’s the first indication that even as Kena may understand her own sexuality, it’s a reality that others in her orbit refuse to comprehend. As church scenes that bring together the entire community make clear, religion leads the day; individual desire is sidelined. If Kena dates anyone, she’ll face serious repercussions.”

Available to stream June 19.

Other highlights:

– “An Unfinished Film (6/5)
– “Skin of Youth” (6/26)
– “Candy Mountain” (6/26)

A Christmas movie (of sorts) that was released on Valentine’s Day, “Pillion” comes to HBO Max in search of a new season to conquer. Here’s Ryan Lattanzio on the leather daddy movie of the decade: 

Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a movie like writer/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and strangely moving BDSM romance, ‘Pillion’  But for a British queer film that puts the particulars of a gay dominant-submissive affair (or arrangement, better yet) up front and up close, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling find the sweet center of a story marked by clamps, cages, and assless unitards.

Lighton, adapting Adam Mars-Jones’ book ‘Box Hill,’ really does take us there in the delightful “Pillion,” with Skarsgård getting more emotionally naked than ever and almost physically more than he ever got as Eric Northman on TV’s “True Blood.” But not without, at first, this leather-clad biker, who seeks a submissive with seemingly disinterested vibes, radiating aloof energy when he first meets barbershop quartet singer Colin (Melling, in a truly special and wonderful breakout performance). A parking garage attendant by day and dandied-up singer by night who’s just a bit too old to still be living with his parents — though his mum (Lesley Sharp) is dying of cancer, which in part keeps him home — Colin isn’t so much looking for love or companionship or sex as much as he finally happens to fall into it when on Christmas Eve he’s asked for a date, of sorts, by Ray (Skarsgård, who looks and sounds more and more like his father with each day).”

Available to stream June 5.

Other highlights:

– “Stoker” (6/1)
– “They Drive by Night” (6/1)
– “Undertone” (6/26)

Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples” is a spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy about a grief-stricken cantor (a note-perfect Jason Schwartzman) who loses his voice, only to find that he’s surrounded by a chorus of well-intentioned people who are happy to speak for him — most crucially, his grade school music teacher, Carla (Carol Kane). Its punny title pointing towards the kind of latitude that Ben and Carla are begging for in order to find their bliss, the film ultimately isn’t sure if happiness is viable in the long-term. But in focusing less on the happiness we imagine for other people than on the happiness we get to share with them instead, its characters find enough joy in each other to make being alive feel like its own eternal reward.

Available to stream June 21.

Other highlights:

– “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (6/1)
– “Lincoln” (6/1)
– “Kneecap” (6/2)

Horrified by the country of his birth and heavy with the weight of its sins, Nadav Lapid has created modern cinema’s most splenetic filmography by fighting his Israeliness as if it were an incurable virus infecting his body of work. That trend continues with the deliriously provocative “Yes,” a veritable orgy of self-loathing surrender that reaffirms Lapid as the world’s most visceral director on a shot-by-shot basis.

In a movie that unfolds like an Ecstasy-addled cross between Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom” and the Jim Carrey comedy “Yes Man,” Lapid doubles down on the frenzied violence of his filmmaking at the same time as he fully embraces his growing appetite for submission.

A distended epic about a struggling jazz musician and his dancer wife who afford a life for their newborn by acquiescing to every demand made of their talent and bodies by Tel Aviv’s militaristic ruling class, Lapid’s film doesn’t rage against the worst monstrousness of the modern age by speaking truth to power, but rather by volunteering his characters to get crushed under the heel of its boot. And then — with a literalness no one else would dare — by forcing them to lick that boot so clean the whole world can see the dehumanizing nature of Israel’s crimes reflected in its leather. Needless to say, the underside of its sole leaves a memorable impression.

Available to stream June 18.

Other highlights: 

– “Aimée & Jaguar” (6/4)
– “Luz” (6/9)
– “Queen Kelly” (6/16)

The saying goes that miracles are everywhere for those with eyes to see them, which helps to explain why Rita Lopez — the most pious and competitive member of her rural Argentinian community — seems to find one in the first place she looks. Nearing 70, terminally bored of her marriage, and desperate for a heavenly sliver of the recognition that she’s been denied here on Earth, our heroine decides that an old sculpture she uncovers in the musty storeroom of her local church must be the statue of Saint Rita that’s been missing for 30 years, and was assumed to be lost forever. 

It’s a big deal. So big, in fact, that Rita (Argentinian icon and “Wild Tales” star Mónica Villa) enlists her sweet and doddering husband Norberto (Horacio Marassi) to help smuggle the statue out of the church so she can spruce it up and unveil it to the rest of the village in style, thereby consecrating an eternal bond with her patron namesake. And she might’ve gotten away with it too, if not for the meddling results of her Google search.

Rita asks the internet. “If you have to ask, it’s definitely not a miracle,” the online universe replies. For a while, Tomás Gómez Bustillo’s “Chronicles of a Wandering Saint” seems poised to be a cute little comedy about a covetous old woman who cons her way into local fame. Muted but heightened in a way that combines the Scandinavian deadpan of Aki Kaurismäki with the self-amused quirk of a Sundance movie from 2006, the first half of the film is a sustained half-smile that’s as unassuming — but desperate for attention — as its main character. But miracles, Bustillo suggests, are what we make of them. And Rita is only just getting started.

Available to stream June 1.

Other highlights:

– “A Bigger Splash” (6/1)
– “Keep the Lights On” (6/1)
– “Stranger by the Lake” (6/1)

A slight but sensitive and fantastically assured first feature that unfolds with the pointillistic detail of a great short story, India Donaldson’s “Good One” is a coming-of-age story that jettisons all of the genre’s most familiar trappings in favor of a long walk in the woods. 

There were supposed to be four people on the upstate New York camping trip, but one of the teens dropped out because he didn’t want to spend one of their last pre-college weekends sleeping in a polyester tent with his dad. That leaves anxious divorcee Chris (character actor James Le Gros, feasting on a nuanced leading role), his avuncular best friend Matt (Danny McCarthy, playing a character actor who would kill for a part this good), and Chris’ queer 17-year-old daughter Sam (extraordinary newcomer Lily Collias), who dutifully comes along because she’s always seen it as her job to keep what little peace is left in her family. To not be a burden. To make her parents feel like they still know her, even if they’ve been too busy dealing with their own shit to recognize the young woman she’s in the process of becoming. By the time Sam and her two large adult chaperones make it back to their car in the final moments of this tender and knowing debut, that process will be painfully, rivetingly complete.

Available to stream June 26.

Other highlights:

– “BPM” (6/1)
– “Bull Durham” (6/1)
– “Thelma” (6/1)

Ad exec André Ricciardi wasn’t just the kind of guy who decided to make a comedic documentary about his terminal cancer diagnosis, he was also the type of guy who decided to open that documentary — titled “André Is an Idiot” — by looking directly into the camera and recounting a particular memory from when he was 13 years old: The night he masturbated by rubbing the head of his penis against a panel of exposed wood in the bathroom of his grandparents’ house. He calls it the second-biggest mistake he would ever make in his entire life. 

The first was failing to get a colonoscopy when he turned 45. Or even when he was 50, and his best friend Lee suggested they both get their innards scoped out together as part of a boys night out. By the time Ricciardi finally volunteered himself for the procedure two years later (concerned about the blood that kept dribbling out of his ass), the polyps that a doctor might have found during an earlier examination had grown into a fist-sized mass and metastasized throughout his liver. The first thing his mother said when he told her the grim news: “What a fucking idiot.” 

And sure, I suppose you might feel pretty stupid about dying from an eminently preventable cancer after skipping multiple opportunities to let doctors to nip it in the butt (so to speak), but we’re all mere rookies here on Earth, and even the luckiest among us will live just long enough to learn what they might have done differently the second time around. Tony Benna’s film, which fondly eulogizes Ricciardi’s life in the interest of making a feature-length PSA out of his death. It’s one thing to chuckle at a clever ad campaign reminding you to get a colonoscopy, it’s another to spend 88 minutes watching a fun-loving father waste away before our eyes because he neglected to do that. “André Is an Idiot” is a much lighter experience than its logline might suggest, but its buoyancy in the face of oblivion is the source of its power: If this guy was cheated out of another few decades on this planet, how dare we — who make so much less of every moment — just sit on our asses instead of getting them probed?

Available to stream June 17.

Other highlights:

– “Muriel’s Wedding” (6/1)
– “You Can Live Forever” (6/4)
– “Color Book” (6/19)

Morgan Neville’s “Lorne” is a documentary about Lorne Michaels. It’s also — more acutely — a documentary about how hard it is to make a documentary about Lorne Michaels. Most of all, however, it’s a documentary about how those two subjects are effectively the same thing.

If that description makes this light and fluffy portrait sound like a layered, probing, even formally playful exploration into the man behind “Saturday Night Live,” well… it’s not. On the contrary, it’s exactly the kind of film that you’d expect the media-obsessed director of “20 Feet from Stardom” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” to make about a TV legend: A warm, gentle, lovingly curious profile that’s spackled together with sketch clips, newsreel footage, and talking heads out the wazoo. But Michaels, in stark contrast to most of Neville’s previous subjects, is alive. Even worse, he’s reluctant to be on display. 

But Neville, who’s never seen all that drawn to “difficult” matters, delights in the challenge of trying to show 30 Rock’s greatest luminary in a more revealing light than usual, and the palpable fun of that challenge — not unlike the fun of putting together a decent comedy show from scratch in the span of just five sleepless days — is often enough to keep this film afloat even when it fails. Not unlike “SNL,” “Lorne” fails a lot. And not unlike “SNL,” that failure rate is a key part of the film’s appeal, if only because it makes it that much easier to appreciate the miracle of the rare moments where it manages to succeed.

Available to stream June 5.

Other highlights:

– “Jurassic Park” (6/1)
– “Last Breath” (6/25)
– “The Holdovers” (6/28)

It’s taken longer than it should, but Kelly Fremon Craig’s “Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret” is finally starting to find the audience it deserves. By the end of the decade it’s on track to be recognized as the generational classic that it is. Here’s Kate Erbland on its wonders: 

“Judy Blume never talked down to kids or adults, and such is the spirit that drives Kelly Fremon Craig’s film adaptation of the author’s most beloved book, ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.’ It’s an adaptation that Blume long resisted, at least before ‘The Edge of Seventeen’ filmmaker and her mentor and producer James L. Brooks pitched their idea to her, but Blume’s book translates beautifully to the big screen with same zip, pep, and good humor of Blume’s books.

A wonderfully specific story about a pre-teen girl eagerly anticipating the arrival of her first period, ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ is also a story that doubles as a deeply universal tale of searching for life’s meaning at any age. That’s the magic of Blume’s books: Ostensibly for kids and young adults, the author treats all of her characters and their concerns as being worthy of examination. The stakes might seem different for, say, Margaret’s mom worrying about reconnecting with her parents after they cut her off long ago over her choice of husband versus her sixth-grade daughter agonizing over when she’ll need her first bra, but here these people and their problems are all important, all vital, and all worthy of respect. ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ isn’t just the best Blume adaptation currently available, it’s also an instant classic of the coming-of-age genre.”

Available to stream June 11.

Other highlights:

– “Bull Durham” (6/1)
– “The Night of the Hunter” (6/1)
– “Priscilla” (6/23)

Céline Sciamma’s most perfect and powerful film to date — an 18th century period romance starring Adèle Haenel as a reluctant bride-to-be, and Noémie Merlant as the woman who’s hired to paint her wedding portrait in secret — came as something of a curveball when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year. Austere where “Tomboy” was anxious, and hesitant where “Girlhood” was rash, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is the first of Sciamma’s movies that could be described as “classical” in any sense of the word. While all of her earlier offerings have told profound and tender stories of self-discovery and the images that women project, this film is more concerned with the ones they leave behind, and how stunning they can be when they aren’t forced through male filters. 

It would be an understatement to say that Haenel and Merlant leave an indelible impression, just as it would be a lie to say that you’ll be able to trace it clearly through the veil of tears they leave in their wake. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” isn’t subtle, but its heart-shattering intensity sneaks up on you as the film slowly explores the full power of a shared look between two people who have never really been seen before. Traditional in some ways, progressive in others, and altogether so damn real that it might feel more like staring into a mirror than it does running your eyes along a canvas, this is as tender and true as any love story the movies have ever told, and its sledgehammer of an ending flattens you right into the frame.

Available to stream June 1.

Other highlights:

– “Adventureland” (6/1)
– “Farewell My Concubine” (6/1)
– “The Summer Book” (6/1)

Any movie that inspires a critic to reference “The Craft” and “Jawbreaker” is enough to get my attention, and so I can’t wait to check out Meredith Alloway’s “Forbidden Fruits” on Shudder this month, even if IndieWire’s Alison Foreman wasn’t fully sold on its ripeness:

“In her mesmerizing feature debut, ‘Forbidden Fruits,’ director Meredith Alloway reaches for the candy-coated cruelty of late-’90s cult classics — think ‘The Craft,’ ‘Clueless,’ and ‘Jawbreaker’ — only to draw back an intermittently delightful mess that never quite figures out which kind of witch movie it wants to be.

Set inside a suspiciously anachronistic Dallas-area shopping mall, this recent SXSW premiere follows a quartet of young women working and worshipping at Free Eden. The boutique looks reverse-engineered from a discarded Free People mood board and bears all the hallmarks of a bygone Instagram era. There’s Apple (Lili Reinhart), the poised but unpredictable queen bee; Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), a sexed-up cartoon with the bandwidth of a bobbypin; Fig (Alexandra Shipp), the vaguely “scientific” smart girl, who doubles as a wild card; and Pumpkin (Lola Tung), a wide-eyed newcomer who gets plucked from the store’s neighboring pretzel stand and pulled into the titular clique’s dreamlike orbit. 

Together, the Fruits form a coven — or, at least, something like a coven — wielding their soft supernatural powers between shifts, on and off the sales floor. The film is ostensibly aiming for biting satire in the post-#girlboss era, but its foundation already feels out of step with reality in early 2026. Co-written by Alloway and Lily Houghton (adapting Houghton’s 2019 play), the script leans heavily on a version of supposedly contemporary mall culture that never really existed; the effect isn’t pop-infused escapism so much as temporal confusion. Still, there are flashes of something funnier and more self-aware in ‘Forbidden Fruits,’ as even its weakest points have enough glamor and guts to justify most genre girlies taking the journey eventually.”

Available to stream June 26.

Other highlights: 

– “Interview with the Vampire” (6/1)
– “Raw” (6/1)
– “Find Your Friends” (6/12)