Another month, another smattering of films soon to arrive on Netflix and Stan. What are these films, we hear you ask? Here’s a guide to titles arriving on Netflix and Stan in July, from critic Craig Mathieson.
NETFLIX
The Fast and the Furious franchise (July 1)
Need a high-octane binge? All seven films in the automotive-action series will be available on the same day: a mere 13 hours and 37 minutes of Vin Diesel being increasingly taciturn, the surrounding cast expanding – and then expanding some more – and the vehicular stunts growing ever more ludicrous. Chart how a tight little B-movie become an endless blockbuster.
The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter (July 6)
Josh Brolin changes gear to star in this satirical comedy from the team of Danny McBride and Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down), playing a famous hunter, Buck Ferguson, with his own television show whose attempts to initiate his disinterested son into shooting and camping go awry. The Netflix original co-stars McBride as the faithful cameraman to Buck’s lead gun.
Sing Street (July 9)
It’s a fact that Irish writer/director John Carney’s music-themed films are a good 40% better when they’re set in his homeland (Once) rather than America (Begin Again). Thankfully, this buoyant but bittersweet comedy about a budding songwriter starting a high school band in the 1980s takes place in Dublin, allowing for a sense of time and place that beds down the teenage fantasy.
The Shining (July 15)
Stanley Kubrick’s meticulous 1980 horror film continues to grow in reputation as the decades pass and its claustrophobic terror feels increasingly influential (although not always in its own genre). Jack Nicholson, his underlying anger funnelled into homicidal rage, plays the caretaker of a remote hotel closed for winter who turns on his family as the past’s crimes bloodily haunt them.
Extinction (July 27)
Like March’s Annihilation, Extinction was produced by a Hollywood studio, in this case Universal, which baulked at the commercial risk in releasing an original science-fiction thriller and instead sold the film to Netflix. Australian filmmaker Ben Young follows up the compelling Hounds of Love with the story of a man (Michael Pena) whose fears for his family are realised by an otherworldly invasion. Lizzy Caplan, Mike Colter, and Emma Booth co-star.
Also:
Pineapple Express (July 1), Superbad (July 1), This is the End (July 1), Tammy (July 5), Battleship (July 6), How it Ends (July 13), Geostorm (July 22), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (July 21), Bad Moms (July 23).
STAN
Song to Song (July 3)
Terrence Malick makes discursive arthouse narratives that are populated by Hollywood stars. Ryan Gosling, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, and Rooney Mara star in this romantic roundelay, which sets its shifting relationships amidst the vibrant Austin, Texas music scene. Expect a handheld camera that pursues the protagonists, emotional contemplation, and fragmented lives.
Suburbicon (July 24)
As a director George Clooney has exemplary taste in material, but it don’t always translate to the screen. Set in 1959 in a suddenly desegregated American community, Suburbicon was an unproduced Coen brothers screenplay (elements ended up in Fargo) with Matt Damon and Julianne Moore at the centre of noir-like plotting and political commentary. A busy mess might be an accurate description.
The Handmaiden (July 27)
The masterful Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) follows up the revolutionary ardour and dystopian nightmares of Snowpiercer with this thrilling, sensual drama set in Japanese-occupied 1930s South Korea. Told from shifting perspectives and suffused with female liberation, it tracks a criminal posing as a servant to a trapped heiress.
Also:
The Foreigner (July 10), The Well (July 10), Slumdog Millionaire (July 14), Sin City II: A Dame to Kill For (July 21), McLaren (July 22), Rebel in the Rye (July 24), Indignation (July 30).
