The summer heat is here, which means it’s time for baseball, robots, drive-in theaters, and more. As we close the books on July, the best way to beat the heat is to stay inside and watch some movies you won’t be able to stream next month.
To help you out, we’ve rounded up some of the best movies streaming in July, including some great thrillers, one of the saddest and sweetest romantic comedies out there, a misunderstood gem, and one of the best summer movies you’ll ever stream.
These are the movies to watch this month that are new to streaming services.
Editor’s Choice: Moneyball
Photo: Sony Pictures releases
Director: Bennett Miller
Form: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Leaving Netflix: July 31st
Moneyball is, for better or worse, an absolutely perfect streaming film. This semi-factual account of the 2002 Oakland A’s season and the baseball revolution kicked off by their general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is endlessly watchable and endlessly entertaining.
Pitt is absolutely outstanding in the film, giving one of his best and most charismatic performances. The supporting performances, led by Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, are equally engaging, with a new parade of “those guys” popping up in every scene.
But the real star here is Aaron Sorkin’s script, which combines his usual mile-a-minute dialogue with one of the most jargon-heavy sports in existence. Whether it’s Pitt and Hill arguing that you can recreate the contributions of a great, expensive player with a variety of cheaper ones, or an old ballplayer critiquing a player’s intangibles like grit and heart, every scene is a treat. And that’s exactly why you should watch it. Moneyball before it leaves Netflix. Whether you’re watching it for the first time or the tenth time, every line and every moment is a new excuse for the film to keep your attention. —Austen Goslin
Movies to Watch That Are Leaving Netflix
The Great Wall
Image: Universal Pictures
Director: Zhang Yimou
Form: Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Willem Dafoe
Leaving Netflix: July 31st
One of the most unfairly maligned films of the 2010s, The Great Wall is an epic film about defending monsters from wuxia master Zhang Yimou, featuring nicely designed creatures, beautiful battle scenes (with fantastic, colorful uniforms), and a great sense of scale.
Matt Damon stars as a European mercenary held captive at the Great Wall of China. When monsters attack, he is freed to help in the fight. The star-studded film also stars Willem Dafoe, Pedro Pascal, Jing Tian and Andy Lau, but the real appeal of The Great Wall is the monster that attacks.
Zhang is one of the world’s top action film directors, with masterpieces such as house of flying knives And Shadow under his belt, and he’s having a lot of fun with the imaginative setting of The Great WallThe monsters are terrifying and unique in their moss-green design, and the Great Wall setting makes for some of the best siege scenes since the Lord of the Rings films. —Pete Volk
Movies to Watch When You Leave Prime
Punch drunk love
Image: Sony Pictures
Director: Paul Thomas Andersen
Form: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Leaving Prime: July 31st
In the oeuvre of Paul Thomas Anderson, Love full of drunkenness is often remembered fondly for its reputation as the film in which Adam Sandler first “locked up the f*ck.”
For Love full of drunkennessAdam Sandler was primarily seen as a comedian; a loud, exuberant personality known for his crude (but funny) voices and impersonations and even cruder (but still funny) jokes. Anderson’s film introduced audiences and critics to a side of Sandler that no one, perhaps not even Sandler himself, was fully prepared to see; a versatile dramatic actor with an uncanny gift for wringing painful beauty out of onscreen pain and frustration.
Sandler’s performance as Barry, a lonely and socially awkward entrepreneur who forms an unexpected romance with Lena (Emily Watson), the colleague of one of Barry’s seven overbearing sisters, is more than mere stunt casting but a thrilling and profoundly transformative performance, one that foreshadows the few but phenomenal dramatic performances he would later deliver in such films as Uncut gemstones or this year Spaceman. Combine that with an ingenious turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman as an antagonistic mattress salesman and part-time sex line owner, and you have one of the best cinematic confrontations of its time. What’s not to like? —Toussaint Egan
Movies to watch after Max
Ex-machine
Image: A24
Director: Alex Garland
Form: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Max left: July 31st
There’s one scene in Alex Garland’s sci-fi debut that stands out for me as the purest encapsulation of the film itself. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer who wins a contest to spend a week with his reclusive employer Nathan (Oscar Isaac) in his luxurious, isolated home, is having lunch with his boss. Nathan’s assistant, Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), stands quietly to the side, slicing sushi.
Caleb asks his host, whom he has spent the last few days helping test an artificially intelligent android named Ava (Alicia Vikander), why he has chosen to give his creation sexuality. The two men begin to debate the usefulness of sexuality as an evolutionary component, which in turn culminates in Nathan mocking Caleb’s prudishness before eventually admitting that Ava’s sexuality is not for her own good, but rather for Nathan’s own amusement.
All of this, mind you, takes place while Kyoko, the only other person living in Nathan’s compound, who remarkably speaks no English, stands within earshot of their conversation. The only person who has any real-life experience of the topic Caleb and Nathan are debating is given neither the space to speak for themselves, let alone the opportunity to speak at all. Ex-machine excels not only for its exemplary performances or its emotionally charged exploration of the dangers of artificial intelligence, but also for the way it probes deeper questions about the nature of human relationships, gender, and the patriarchal blind spots of the tech industry. It’s a film that reveals more about its characters than the audience might initially understand, but which gradually encourages deeper readings and questioning with repeated viewings. -AT
Movies to Watch Leaving the Criterion Channel
Goals
Image: Paramount
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Form: Tim O’Kelly, Boris Karloff, Peter Bogdanovich
Exit Criterion Channel: July 31st
There has never been a good time for Goalsand there has never been a bad time for Goals. Unfortunately, it’s always far too relevant. A terrifying, tense thriller about gun violence in America, Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut is a stunning, low-budget effort that only seems to grow more relevant with time.
Its relevance was an issue when the film first came out: while Goals was filmed in late 1967 and released shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Paramount positioned it as a political commentary (which, while Goals has that, sells the film short), and it flopped at the box office (but still managed to make a profit due to its small budget, which producer Roger Corman estimated for about $130,000.
Years later, the film is rightly regarded as one of the best American thrillers ever made, and a standout among Hollywood films of the late 1960s. The film revolves around two stories: one about a young man (Tim O’Kelly) who goes on a killing spree for no apparent reason, and a clever metanarrative in which a young director (played by director Bogdanovich) tries to convince a classic horror icon (played by Boris Karloff, a true classic horror icon) to star in his non-horror film. It’s a fascinating study in American violence, in economic filmmaking, and in balancing two seemingly unconnected stories. See it before it leaves the Criterion Channel. –PV
