The 7 Best Movies New to Netflix in June 2021

7. “The Wind” (2019)

Western horror is hard to find, but films like Emma Tammi’s “The Wind” make it perfectly clear that the unsettled American frontier is still fertile ground for some chilling genre stories. Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) is a resourceful 19th century woman who knows how to live off the desolate stretch of prairie that she shares with her husband, but as the nights grow darker and the howling wind outside their house assumes a sinister intensity, Lizzy starts to believe that the land itself is trying to scare them away. When a newlywed couple moves in to the cabin “next door” (Dylan McTee and “Bunheads” star Julia Goldani Telles), Lizzy’s uncertain suspicions crystallize into bursts of violence every bit as gruesome as the film’s blood-spattered prologue anticipates. Sunsetting the men who dominate the Western genre and turning the camera to focus on the women they so often left behind, Tammi’s film draws equal inspiration from “The Searchers” and “Carrie” as it swirls together a genre-bending tale about the true horrors of frontier survival.

Available to stream June 1

6. “Sailor Moon Eternal: The Movie”

The first “Sailor Moon” movie to get the theatrical treatment in Japan since 1995 (who doesn’t remember “Sailor Moon SuperS: The 9 Sailor Soldiers Unite! Miracle of the Black Dream Hole!”?), the two-part, 160-minute “Sailor Moon Eternal” is another anime feature that plays like pure catnip to fans even as it’s utterly impenetrable to newcomers. “Eternals” picks up with Usagi, everyone’s favorite schoolgirl/reincarnated Princess of the Moon Kingdom, as she meets a pegasus named Helios and prepares to fight the Dead Moon Circus. It’s just another Tuesday for our gal Usagi, and people who grew up watching her fight to save the universe should enjoy this smooth, nostalgic trip back to a time when life was simple enough for Sailor Moon to make everything right. 

Available to stream June 3.

5. “Million Dollar Baby” (2004)

Clint Eastwood’s most recent Best Picture winner has been caught in a 17-year custody battle between those who find the boxing melodrama moving and those who find it mawkish (a debate that’s only grown more complicated in tandem with Eastwood’s political legacy). But regardless of which side you’re on, “Million Dollar Baby” will probably make you cry harder than a haymaker to the head. Here’s what IndieWire’s Jude Dry had to say about it when the film punched in on our list of the saddest movies of the 21st century:

“An elegy on paternal guilt, Eastwood’s film tells the story of a lifelong underdog (Hilary Swank) who convinces surly gym owner Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) to train her, becoming a proxy for his estranged daughter while accumulating prize money. On her path to become champion she endures a busted nose, a broken neck, and plenty of insults to go along with those injuries, eventually putting Dunn in a position where his fatherly faith in her begins to shake his faith in God.”

Available to stream June 1

4. “The Best Man” (1999)

“Girls Trip” and “Undercover Brother” director Malcolm D. Lee has never gotten the credit he’s deserved as one of the best mainstream comedy directors in modern Hollywood — probably because studios have a long history of writing off Black-led hits as box office flukes — but Lee’s strongest movies have enough staying power to suggest that he’ll eventually get his due (fingers crossed that “Space Jam: A New Legacy” burnishes his legacy better than “Night School” did, even though that busted Kevin Hart vehicle still made a fortune). 1999’s “The Best Man” is still the strongest of them all. A charming, funny, and impeccably cast rom-com that’s told with the kind of patience and integrity that’s hard to find in a genre that doesn’t have much use for either, Lee’s debut stars a “how is any human this handsome?” Taye Diggs as Harper Stewart, an Oprah-approved author who’s too busy playing the field to commit to his girlfriend (Sanaa Lathan). Things come to a head at the celebrity wedding of Harper’s friend Lance (Morris Chestnut), where our man is forced to spend a fraught weekend with the college buddies and could’ve-beens who inspired his novel (Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard), all of whom are more than happy to give him some juicy material for his next book.

Available to stream June 1

3. “Killing Them Softly” (2012)

Andrew Dominik’s follow-up to “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is about as subtle as Brad Pitt holding a shotgun to your head, but this blunt indictment on the every-man-for-himself savagery of American capitalism hits that much harder in these historically unsubtle times. Fronting a ridiculous cast that also includes Richard Jenkins, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard, Scoot McNairy, and James Gandolfini in one of his finest film roles, Pitt stars as a merciless hitman who gets involved in a bone-stupid mob heist involving an illegal poker game and a litter of stolen purebreds. Tense from the moment it starts and prone to sudden bursts of explosive violence (this is one of the rare movies where every single gunshot jolts you out of your chair), “Killing Them Softly” shoots its underworld mishegoss against a backdrop of legal criminality in a way that irrevocably conflates the two. Pitt’s “America is not a country; it’s just a business” kiss-off has always uncomfortably on-the-nose, but watching this movie in 2021, well… anything less in-your-face would feel like it was lying to you.

Available to stream June 28

2. “Tragic Jungle” (2020)

Baking the delirium of “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” into the animalistic eros of “Tropical Malady” in the service of a mysterious film that’s much hornier than Werner Herzog or Apichatpong Weerasethakul would ever allow themselves to get onscreen, Mexican filmmaker Yulene Olaizola’s updates the Yucatán Mayan myth of Xtabay — a centuries-old story about a female demon said to lure men to their deaths if they entered her forest updates — to the 1920s and roots it in the verdant maze of a Mayan rainforest along the Rio Hondo, at that time a border separating Mexico from British Honduras. A beautiful young virgin named Agnes (played by Belizean actress Indira Andrewin with a blank pout that men use as a screen on which to project their wants) makes her way upriver with her nurse sister Florence (Shantai Obispo) and a field worker of some kind (Nedal McLaren). 

With little in the way of clear meaning, it’s tempting to think of Agnes’ sordid fate as an allegory for nature itself, and the jungle as a woman harassed by mankind — a woman who wanted to share herself with a loving partner, only to be exploited by the greed and gluttony of primitive beasts. Desire doesn’t ask for an explanation, and “Tragic Jungle” (or “Selva Trágica”) doesn’t offer any. On the contrary, Olaizola’s fifth and most assured feature seduces you away from the legibility of its premise so gradually that you don’t realize you’ve lost your bearings until it’s already too late and the whole movie has gone mad with at least one kind of lust.

Available to stream June 9

1. “The Big Lebowski” (1998)

The Dude abides.

Available to stream June 1