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      Stream These Movies and TV Shows Before They Leave Netflix in June

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      A handful of great titles are leaving as early as the first weekend of the month. Catch them while you can.Oscar winners and tasteful trash get equal footing among the titles departing Netflix in the United States next month, alongside a compulsively watchable crime show, a pitch-perfect Jane Austen adaptation and a cult classic in the making. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)‘Beginners’ (June 1)Stream it here.The writer and director Mike Mills crafts a lovely, lively combination of memory play and serio-comic romance, weaving together two tales of complicated romance. Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a modern man, scruffy and sensitive, who falls for a French actress (Mélanie Laurent); his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), a recent widower, has just come out as gay at the tender age of 75 and is rapturously in love with the much younger Andy (Goran Visnjic) when his health takes a turn. Mills’s sharp and sensitive screenplay gracefully sidesteps the clichés of both the coming-out movie and the disease-of-the-week movie, with a big assist from the talented cast. Plummer took home a well-deserved Oscar for his memorable supporting turn, Laurent and Visnjic are lovable but not overly idealized, and this is one of the best showcases to date for McGregor’s cozy charm.‘Burlesque’ (June 1)Stream it here.Critics were not exactly kind to this 2010 ode to the pleasures of contemporary burlesque from the writer-director Steven Antin — a world in which that old time hoochie-coo has been reclaimed as a rich text of performative femininity, peekaboo voyeurism and good old-fashioned camp. And it’s easy to see why; little in his screenplay is particularly original. But that familiarity is part of the movie’s appeal. Without winking at the audience or condescending to the material, he cheerfully borrows and deploys the standard narratives of such lower-rung showbiz tales. Christina Aguilera is charismatic as that old chestnut the naïve Midwestern girl with big dreams, while Cher plays the wise old veteran who shows her the ropes with offhand wit and seen-it-all wariness.‘Pride & Prejudice’ (June 1)Stream it here.The striking success of the recent 20th anniversary theatrical rerelease of this 2005 award winner is even more surprising when reflecting on its presence on Netflix — viewers could quite easily have stayed home to stream this adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, but its admirers love it so much that they plopped down their ticket money all over again. It’s not hard to understand why; Joe Wright’s direction is both sweeping and intimate, tender and evocative, while Deborah Moggach’s screenplay captures succinctly the wit and romantic longing of Austen’s text. Throw in a peerless cast (including Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Keira Knightley, Jena Malone, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland and a pre-“Succession” Matthew Macfadyen) and you’ve got one of the finest Austen adaptations to date.‘Two Weeks Notice’ (June 1)Stream it here.Once upon a time, the multiplexes were filled with affable little romantic comedies, in which great-looking stars bantered gamely and pretended not to be perfect for each other for 90 minutes before finally realizing what we all knew during the opening credits. Now, when those films are made at all, they often go straight to the streamers, rarely showcasing stars as bright as Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant, who shared the screen in this 2002 rom-com from the writer and director Marc Lawrence (one of the writers of Bullock’s 2000 treat “Miss Congeniality”). The plot is negligible and the complications silly; all that matters is the chemistry, and Bullock and Grant have chemistry to spare.‘Trap’ (June 11)Stream it here.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Last Year’s Cannes Winners Won Big at Oscars. Can the 2025 Crop Do the Same?

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      The most likely movies to grab academy voters are “Un Simple Accident,” “Sentimental Value” and “Nouvelle Vague.” But none are primarily in English.Awards strategists used to be wary of the Cannes Film Festival, claiming it came too early in the calendar to launch a lasting Oscar campaign.They don’t say that anymore.The last two editions of Cannes have proved to be a veritable gold rush, producing three best-picture nominees each. The 2024 festival proved particularly fruitful, as films that premiered at Cannes — including “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” “Flow” and the eventual best-picture winner, “Anora” — won a combined nine Oscars.But this year’s crop of Cannes contenders may have a harder time hitting those highs. The three films with the strongest best-picture potential are all primarily in a language other than English, and the academy has never nominated more than two such films in a single year for the top Oscar. Still, as the academy grows ever more global, it’s possible all three could break through.The first big contender is Jafar Panahi’s “Un Simple Accident,” a taut moral drama about former Iranian prisoners who believe they’ve tracked down their old torturer. The winner of the Palme d’Or, “Un Simple Accident” is the most accessible movie yet from Panahi, a dissident filmmaker who has twice been imprisoned by Iranian authorities. And like the last five Palme winners, the film will be distributed by Neon, which has a track record of steering them to Oscar glory.Only one thing gives me pause. Neon also handled last year’s Cannes entry “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which had a similar back story: It, too, was directed in secret by an Iranian dissident, though even with that compelling narrative, it couldn’t muster more than an international-film nomination. Hopefully, Panahi’s Palme win will nudge Neon to campaign even harder for “Un Simple Accident,” which could factor into the picture and director categories with the right push.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As George Lucas’s ‘Starship’ Museum Nears Landing, He Takes the Controls

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      After years of delays, the mammoth Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is finally approaching completion in Exposition Park in Los Angeles.Despite its looming presence, though, the museum being built by George Lucas, creator of the “Star Wars” franchise, has long seemed to lack the sort of defining mission that would protect it from being dismissed as a vanity project.What is a museum of narrative art? And why is Lucas building one?Even now — 15 years since Lucas first proposed a museum, and eight years after ground was broken in Los Angeles — many questions remain about an ambitious but somewhat amorphous project that is now slated to be completed next year.There has also been turbulence as the museum nears its final approach. In recent weeks the museum has parted ways with its director and chief executive of the past five years and eliminated 15 full-time positions and seven part-time employees, including much of the education department. Lucas is now back in the director’s chair, installing himself as the head of “content direction” and naming Jim Gianopulos, a former movie studio executive and Lucas Museum trustee, as interim chief executive.The filmmaker George Lucas has appointed himself head of “content direction” at the museum he is creating in Los Angeles. Laurent Koffel/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIts former director, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, had been hired five years ago from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her outsider’s eye and knowledge of the museum world had been expected to broaden the raison d’être for the institution so that it would do more than serve as a monument to things that Lucas has collected or produced. But as of April 1, Jackson-Dumont departed in a move that was framed as a resignation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A ‘Mission: Impossible’ Fan Favorite Returns 3 Decades Later

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      When Rolf Saxon first auditioned to play William Donloe in Brian De Palma’s 1996 “Mission: Impossible,” he didn’t think he had gotten the role of the bumbling C.I.A. analyst who is outsmarted by Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt during a break-in at Langley headquarters.He waited an hour and a half for De Palma, who then saw him for just five minutes. Saxon figured that was it. But not only did he get the role, making him a crucial player in what would become an iconic scene, he’s now back playing that same character nearly 30 years later in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.” It’s a return that distinctly raises the profile of the self-described “jobbing actor,” who spent the past 10 years mostly doing theater in the Bay Area.“When this came along, it was like, ‘Wow, are you kidding?’” he said in a video interview. “This is fantastic. This is a nice little cherry on top.”In the first film, Donloe only has a few minutes of screen time. He’s a working stooge who is poisoned by Ethan’s team in its quest to steal a list of covert agents off his computer housed in a secure vault. While Donloe goes back and forth to the bathroom to throw up, Ethan drops down from a ceiling vent to pull off his caper. When Donloe returns to the vault, he finds a knife on his desk and realizes he messed up big time. His fate is sealed by Kittridge, the Impossible Mission Force official, who says, “I want him manning a radar tower in Alaska by the end of the day.” Donloe’s main role is collateral damage.But according to the “Final Reckoning” director Christopher McQuarrie, Donloe made a big impact. In fact, he said in an interview, fans frequently asked him when he was going to bring the character back. For a long time, he didn’t understand why Donloe engendered such love, until he heard the question framed in a different way: “When is the team going to do right by what they did to Donloe?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michael Roemer, Maker of Acclaimed but Little-Seen Films, Dies at 97

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      His “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry” drew critical praise but never found an audience. He said he took “a certain pride in not having been a success.”Michael Roemer, an independent filmmaker who earned critical praise for his keen understanding of character and his sensitive exploration of relationships in a slender portfolio that included “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry,” died on Tuesday at his home in Townshend, Vt. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Ruth Sanzari.Mr. Roemer’s interest in moviemaking began at Harvard in the late 1940s. In 1939, when he was 11 and living in Berlin, he and his sister had been among thousands of Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany and sent to England. There he would stay — writing plays to improve his English, he said — until he came to the United States in 1945, at the end of World War II.His career as a director began when NBC gave him the opportunity to make “Cortile Cascino,” a 46-minute documentary about slum life in Palermo, Sicily, that he made with Robert M. Young. It was also the start of a pattern in which his films would all but disappear for decades at a time.“Cortile Cascino” depicted a Sicilian life so grim that NBC executives balked at putting it on the air. It did not reappear until it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993.Long delay also befell “Nothing but a Man,” directed by Mr. Roemer and written by him and Mr. Young, a frequent collaborator. With Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln in central roles, it tells the story of a Black railroad worker married to a preacher’s daughter who struggles to maintain his dignity in the segregated Alabama of the early 1960s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Cannes, Sneaky Period Pieces and Film Lovers’ Delights Rule the Screen

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      Movies from China, Brazil, Iran and elsewhere prove that there’s so much more to cinema than Hollywood would have us believe.On Thursday, a few minutes after 10 p.m. on the 10th day of the Cannes Film Festival, a multitude of exhausted attendees — critics, programmers, industry types — abruptly woke up. The Chinese movie “Resurrection” had started, sending an immediate jolt through the theater. It was electric, dramatic, fantastic. People shifted in their seats to lean closer to the screen in the 1,068-seat auditorium. Experiencing awe can transform brains and bodies, and we were lit.A deliriously inventive, elegiac, self-reflexive fantasy written and directed by Bi Gan, “Resurrection” tracks a tragic mystery being, an entity known as a Fantasmer (Jackson Yee), across cinema history. A dreamer who clings to illusions, the Fantasmer’s journey effectively mirrors that of film itself, from its beginnings to its uneasy present. What makes the film especially delectable is that Bi Gan changes visual styles and narrative techniques throughout this movie odyssey. The opening section seems to take place around the time that the 19th century gives way to the 20th, but more precisely looks like — and heavily references — films from the art’s first few decades. Sometime later, a guy out of a Hollywood noir or a Jean-Pierre Melville thriller shows up.Chockablock with nods to other films and filmmakers, “Resurrection” is a cinephile’s delight. It was especially pleasurable to watch Bi Gan’s references to the pioneering Lumière brothers in a festival that showcases its award ceremony in a theater that bears their name. “Resurrection” may be wreathed in melancholy, but Bi Gan’s own journey through cinema is enlivening and encouraging. It was another reminder that great movies continue to be made despite the industry’s continuing agonies, which only deepened when, the week before the festival opened, President Trump threatened to impose a crushing 100 percent tariff on movies that were produced in “foreign lands,” though the White House has said no final decision had been made.The threat cast a lingering pall. The world’s largest film marketplace — where an estimated 15,000 industry professionals meet, great and make deals — takes place simultaneously with the festival. And the news out of the market was less than happy. “Did Trump’s tariffs hijack the world’s busiest film market?” read a headline on the France 24 news site. “Strong Festival, Soft Market” is how The Hollywood Reporter characterized the event’s final stretch.Whatever that means for our moviegoing future, this year’s festival was gratifyingly strong, the finest in a long time. The selections in the main competition — which vie for the Palme d’Or — can be a mixed bag, the product of programming taste, yes, but also favoritism, backroom politicking and other considerations. The festival functions as a vital showcase for European cinema, but it also relies on celebrity-driven movies to attract the news media that promotes it. That’s one reason the event is so protective of its red carpet and helps explains some of its much-derided rules, like no selfies on the steps leading to the Lumière.Lav Diaz revisits an explorer’s brutal travels in “Magellan.”Rosa FilmesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Movies of 2025, So Far

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      Our critics picked 10 films that you might have missed but that are worth your time on this long holiday weekend.“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” are flooding theaters this Memorial Day weekend. But if you don’t want to follow the crowd, it’s also a good time to catch up on some terrific films you may have missed earlier in the year. I asked our chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and our movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, to recommend releases worth your time. All are in theaters or available online.‘Sinners’In theaters.The story: The twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return from Al Capone’s Chicago to open a juke joint in Clarksdale, Miss. That’s when the devil, or rather, an Irish vampire, shows up in this talker of a film.Manohla Dargis’s take: Directed by Ryan Coogler, this “is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history.”Read the review; interviews with Coogler and Jordan, and other cast members; and a critic’s essay.‘I’m Still Here’Stream it on Netflix or rent it on most major platforms.Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here.”Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures ClassicsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tom Cruise Really, Really Loves Movies

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      One of the industry’s biggest stars is also its most enthusiastic evangelist. He is hoping it pays off for the eighth “Mission: Impossible” film.Tom Cruise’s characters are defined by their enthusiasms. Jerry Maguire boosts his clients. Daniel Kaffee wants the truth, whether or not he can handle it. Maverick feels a need — a need for speed.In real life, Cruise, 62, has enthusiastically cast himself as the great champion of cinema. You can almost hear the deep-voice narration over the trailer: In a time when movies are endangered after a pandemic and the streaming age, one man stands up for old-fashioned filmmaking — with stark stories and real stunts intended for the Cineplex.In 2020, during the first Covid summer, Cruise posted video to social media of going to Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” (“Big Movie. Big Screen. Loved it”). An introduction ran before screenings of “Top Gun: Maverick” in the spring of 2022 in which Cruise thanked audiences for “seeing it on the big screen.” As Cruise put it in another short video: “I love my popcorn. Movies. Popcorn.”As he invariably does in his movies, Cruise has succeeded. “You saved Hollywood’s ass!” Steven Spielberg told him at a pre-Oscars lunch after “Top Gun: Maverick” grossed $1.5 billion, Variety reported. The turnout proved people would still go to the movies en masse.Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.” The 2022 film was widely credited with revitalizing the film industry after Covid.Paramount PicturesAs his latest blockbuster, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” hits theaters Friday, it is clear that Cruise’s persona has stuck. His press tour has featured his own paeans to moviemaking and fans’ appreciation for his commitment to doing his own stunts and even how he eats popcorn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More