Best Movies Streaming in June 2024: Hit Man, Origin

The Glenaissance is here. After earning buzz in major hits like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Anyone but You,” Glen Powell is the main star in Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man.” Inspired by a true story, Powell plays an undercover New Orleans police officer who pretends to be a contract killer in order to arrest his clients. However, his latest case goes awry when he falls for the woman who hired him, played by Adria Arjona. Netflix bought the film out of the Toronto Film Festival for $20 million, and with “Twisters” coming up this summer, Powell’s star continues to grow.

Just a couple months after Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine stole hearts in Prime Video’s “The Idea of You,” Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman are going at it in Netflix’s “A Family Affair.” Efron plays Chris Cole, an arrogant movie star, who falls for Nicole Kidman’s Brooke Harwood. The catch? Brooke’s daughter Zara (Joey King) is Chris’ assistant. A complicated, steamy love affair follows as Zara is caught between her mother and her annoying boss.

Paul Mescal broke into Hollywood and earned his first best actor Oscar nomination with the poignant, coming-of-age film by first-time director Charlotte Wells. He plays a young father on vacation with his 11-year-old daughter, and they both struggle to come to terms with themselves and their place in the world. “For a depressive young dad at a Turkish resort with his pre-teen daughter, the pressure to maximize that time out of reality only draws the reality nearer; Charlotte Wells‘ sensuous, sharply moving debut shows that no amount of pool time and fruity drinks and Macarena dance-alongs can keep either the past or future at bay,” wrote Variety critic Guy Lodge. Check out this emotionally devastating movie before Mescal further blows up in this fall’s “Gladiator II.”

Comedian Tig Notaro directs this coming-out story starring Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a woman who realizes she’s a lesbian after all her dates with men fail miserably. “Emotionally, she’s as awkward as a freshman with her first pimple. Lucy has never been in love, never had a real relationship, and never ends her dates with anything more than a handshake,” wrote Variety critic Amy Nicholson. Johnson and co-star Sonoya Mizuno earned positive reviews after the film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and now more people have the chance to check it out.

Thanks to Warner Bros. Discovery’s new cross-platform deal, some of the movies previously only found on Max are now coming to Netflix, including the most recent entry in the terrifying “Conjuring” universe. “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” follows paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) as they help a young man accused of murder who claims he was possessed by a demon. The real story went down in history as the first time demonic possession was used as a defense. Watch this movie ahead of the upcoming “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” which brings the Warrens’ story to a conclusion.

Ariana DeBose stars in this outer space thriller that follows two diplomatic crews of scientists aboard the International Space Station who are each ordered to take control of the vessel at all costs. As geopolitical tensions ignite on the surface below, the astronauts, adrift from national identity and their fellow man, quickly begin to unravel. Gabriela Cowperthwaite directs.

This directorial debut by French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme stars Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as a pair of housewives whose sisterly bond begins to crack after tragedy strikes their neighborhood. Part melodrama, part noir, the feature promises two transformational roles for its two leads.

This ripped-from-the-headlines ensemble comedy retells the GameStop meme stock phenomenon that put Wall Street in a noogie during the COVID pandemic — less than three years after it all went down. Paul Dano, America Ferrera, Pete Davidson and many more stars feature as the online investors hoping to pump up the retail brand’s value so they can cash out against the rich suits that bet against the company. Craig Gillespie directs.

Damien Chazelle’s bittersweet ode to Los Angeles arrived on Netflix June 1. The movie musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone won six Oscars, including best director for Chazelle, best actress for Stone, best original score and best original song. It follows struggling artists Seb (Gosling) and Mia (Stone), a jazz musician and actress, who fall in love and must juggle their relationship while chasing their dreams in Hollywood. The film was a hit with critics and audiences, raking in $447 million worldwide. Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman loved the film, calling it in his review “the most audacious big-screen musical in a long time.”

Who is Poolman? Why, it’s Darren Barrenman, the L.A aficionado and all-time chiller played by Chris Pine, who is pulled into a web of urban planning conspiracies that endangers the wellness of himself, his friends and his beloved pool. Helmed by Pine in his feature directorial debut and shot in sumptuous 35mm photography, “Poolman” has style and vision. It most closely resembles Pine’s goofball turn as an over-the-hill rocker in Netflix’s comedy series “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” In a phrase: it has the funny.

Celine Dion gets personal documenting her struggles with stiff-person syndrome in this new documentary. Helmed by Irene Taylor, the feature promises an intimate look at the world-famous singer’s recent health troubles and her wishes to return to performing live.

She’s Sydney Sweeney. He’s Glen Powell. Can it all work out? You’d be surprised how many speed bumps there are in this romantic comedy, which sees the two stars play spurned lovers forced to reunite and play the happy couple to make their exes envious — all of this while everyone absconds to a destination wedding in Australia, which is really asking a lot of people. Will Gluck directs, bringing his signature touch.

The final feature from esteemed British director Ken Loach, this drama continues the filmmaker’s decades-long project of combining sociological realism and fierce dramatic storytelling. The film follows a pub owner in a mining town struggling to keep his business afloat and the relationship he forms with a Syrian refugee to help steady its operations. Selected to play in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last summer, the feature provides a fitting capstone to Loach’s celebrated career.

Jessica Alba makes her return to the big screen in Netflix’s cleverly named “Trigger Warning,” her first film since 2019. She plays a Special Forces commando who takes ownership of her father’s bar after his death, but must contend with the dangerous gang causing trouble in her hometown. In the trailer, Alba shows off some “John Wick”-style action and must get to the bottom of her father’s mysterious death.

Wim Wenders received rave reviews — and an Oscar nomination — for his 2023 drama about a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Sharing its name with a Lou Reed song, “Perfect Days” premiered at Cannes Film Festival, where lead actor Kōji Yakusho won the best actor award. In his review for Variety, Guy Lodge called “Perfect Days” Wenders’ best narrative film in decades, praising its “humane, hopeful embrace of everyday blessings.”

Ava DuVernay’s latest film is an ambitious and untraditional adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” Starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Wilkerson herself, the movie follows the author as she travels through Germany, India and the United States, researching the deep-rooted social hierarchies in each country’s history. The film faltered at the box office but wowed critics, including Variety‘s Peter Debruge, who wrote in his review: “The film will get people thinking and talking. The way DuVernay directs it, ‘Origin’ is a swirling tornado of ideas.”

Right after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for his latest film “Anora,” director Sean Baker’s acclaimed film “Tangerine” is coming to Netflix. Shot entirely on three iPhones, the film is an exuberantly raw and up-close portrait of one of Los Angeles’ more distinctive sex-trade subcultures,” wrote Variety critic Justin Chang. “Centered around two sharply drawn transgender women who find the resilience of their friendship tested and affirmed over the course of one busy Christmas Eve, writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit.”

From Sarah Mani, “Bread and Roses” is a documentary that follows the effects of the 2021 Taliban offensive on women living in Afghanistan. As U.S. troops pulled out of the country and the Taliban strengthened its control, women lost the rights to work, go to school past sixth grade and walk unaccompanied. With Jennifer Lawrence boarding the film as a producer, the film premiered at Cannes in 2023 and was bought by Apple. In her review for Variety, Catherine Bray wrote, “This film is a necessary howl of rage, one that argues cogently — via the simple expedient of capturing life as it is lived — that to ignore what it happening in Afghanistan is to condemn half the population of the country to oppression under a dictatorship that is both political and personal.”

Australian writer-director Goran Stolevski crafts a whirlwind romance drama in “Of an Age,” which centers on a young man who develops an intimate relationship with the brother of his ballroom dance partner over the course of 24 hours. The disorienting and swoon-worthy pull of first love overflows in Stolevski’s handheld direction, while his script embraces the warmth of finding your person with the heartbreak of not having enough time to make it endure. While the film’s central character learns to embrace his sexuality over the course of the film, Stolevski refuses to let his romance drama become a derivative look at queer self-acceptance. It’s all the more refreshing for that. “Of an Age” is a warm-hearted gem tinged with beautiful melancholy.

Lily Gladstone is best known for her mesmerizing performance as Mollie Kyle in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. But before that movie premiered in theaters, Gladstone starred alongside Isabel Deroy-Olson in Erica Tremblay’s directorial debut “Fancy Dance,” which bowed at Sundance in 2023. Apple picked up the distribution rights to the film more than a year later, giving it a limited theatrical window on June 21 before it streams on Apple TV+ later in the month. Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge called the film “engaging” and “a rare glimpse into Native culture” that both educates and entertains.