Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson surveys each month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.
Top Picks: TV
Midwich Cuckoos (June 2)
John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos is one of the most potent source texts in science-fiction, repeatedly adapted for film and radio in its original British setting and America. The concept of an unknown entity blacking out the population in a town for the day, only for every woman to fall pregnant afterwards and give birth to a brood of otherworldly children, is rich in maternal guilt, inexplicable phenomena, and official dread.
This limited British series comes from David Farr, who has written the likes of Hanna and The Night Manager while also directing canonical works for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His divergent influences bode well for a story headlined by Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard), although the real star may well be the adolescent brood.
P-Valley: Season 2 (June 3)
Strip clubs are an eternal backdrop on television, with female bodies the punctuation to male pleasure. Soaked in Mississippi Delta vernacular and a keen understanding of working-class economics, P-Valley upends those expectations. Created by the playwright Katori Hall and directed by women, the first season of the show examined power, profit, and faith with a predominantly Black cast that treated gender and sexual orientation as a spectrum, that could engage with personal trauma, historic wrongs, and a dose of fantastical pleasure. It was uncompromising but inviting, and the second season should be readily able to further that.
Queer as Folk (June 10)
The original Queer as Folk, created for British television in 1999 by Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who), was a ground-breaking depiction of gay life that became a source text for queer kids around the world. It’s already been rebooted once with an American setting of Pittsburgh, airing between 2000 and 2005, and this latest incarnation moves to New Orleans while adding an instigating event that comes to define how the city’s LGBTQI community express themselves publicly and privately.
Canadian independent filmmaker Stephen Dunn is the showrunner, with the young leads backed by a supporting cast that includes Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis.
Becoming Elizabeth (June 12)
Courtesy of the American cable network Starz, Stan has had a succession of torrid historical dramas dealing with noble female protagonists negotiating contentious eras of Britain’s history: The White Queen, The White Princess, and The Spanish Princess all mix period detail with Game of Thrones-like machinations.
The subgenre grows with this new series, which looks at the early life of Queen Elizabeth 1, whose path to English throne in 1558 at the age of 25 followed a precarious upbringing where she was more often powerless than powerful. The German actor Alicia von Rittberg (Fury) plays the future monarch for creator Anya Reiss, with an understanding of political and sexual power that has contemporary parallels.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
You’re Next (June 1)
A decade before Godzilla vs Kong, director Adam Wingard delivered this thrilling and bloody independent horror movie, where a wealthy American clan’s family celebration becomes a fight for survival. Sibling rivalry and barely suppressed enmities are apparent, but the real nightmare at the first night’s dinner is a slew of crossbow bolts, which signal a murderous assault by masked intruders. With an outsider in Erin (Sharni Vinson) leading the resistance, Wingard plays with horror tropes—there really is someone under the bed—and doubles back on himself, while the black humour comes from family feuds that can’t be halted even when one brother is bleeding to death.
Hustlers (June 11)
It’s a sadly short list: filmmakers who implicitly understood how to capture Jennifer Lopez’s mix of steely self-determination and compelling physicality. Steven Soderbergh sat alone and atop for years thanks to Out of Sight, but Lorene Scafaria joined him thanks to blackly comic 2019 crime drama, where Lopez plays the leader of a group of exotic dancers who decide to treat their wealthy clients with the same disdain the guys show to the financial markets, by drugging and bilking the men. Languorously wrapped in fur or dominant on stage, Lopez’s Ramona is a mentor to a newcomer, Constance Wu’s Destiny, and their rise and fall puts a new dynamic on a familiar arc.
Sami Blood (June 16)
Bodies are brutally marked and beliefs broken in this wrenching Swedish coming-of-age drama, which draws on the history of the country’s Sami population, an Indigenous people from the far north. Framed by a powerful, bitterly quiet encounter in the present day, where the ageing Christina (Maj-Doris Rimpi) attends the traditional funeral of her sister, it’s set in the 1940s when the duo were teenage girls alternating between semi-nomadic life with their family and a state-run boarding school.
The Sami children are routinely discriminated against, with the parallels to Australia’s colonial history obvious. Writer-director Amanda Kernell’s camera stays with the teenagers, creating a simultaneous sense of discovery and reckoning that’s grounded in documentary-like observation and adolescent rites.
All titles arriving on Stan in June
June 1
13 Assassins
Absolutely Anything
Another Year
Blessed
Bright Young Things
Creation
You’re Next
June 2
The Midwich Cuckoos: Season 1 Premiere
The Black Balloon
Dot: Season 1
Land of Mine
Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health
LOL
June 3
P-Valley: Season 2 Premiere
Paranormal Activity
Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath: Seasons 1 & 2
Escape From Planet Earth
Saving Santa
June 4
Joker
Buried
Kiki, Love to Love
Diego Maradona
June 5
Thelma
The Spy Who Never Dies
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Second Act
June 6
Darkland
June 7
La Linea Invisible: Season 1 Premiere
Champions
Go! (2020)
June 8
Everything I Know About Love: Season 1 Premiere
Hamish and Andy’s Perfect Holiday
True Story with Hamish and Andy: Season 1 & 2
Cheri
June 9
Devil’s Knot
Mile 22
Hopelessly Devout
June 10
Queer As Folk: Season 1 Premiere
Paddles The Huggable Polar Bear: Season 1 Premiere
The Switch (2010)
June 11
Hustlers (2019)
The Florida Project
La Quietud (The Quietude)
June 12
Becoming Elizabeth: Season 1 Premiere
Witching And Bitching
Semi Pro
June 13
Hunger
Midway
June 14
Make Me Famous
The Mighty Boosh—A Journey Through Time and Space
The Dinner (I nostri ragazzi)
Five Feet Apart
June 15
The Justice of Bunny King
Love
Birds
Get Hard
June 16
The Lazarus Project: Season 1 Premiere
Adrift (2017)
Sami Blood
June 17
Rutherford Falls: Season 2 Premiere
Machete Kills
The Wiggles: Big Ballet Day
The Aliens: Season 1
Go Jetters: Season 3 Part 2
Jamie Johnson: Season 1— 2
June 18
The Gentlemen
Only God Forgives
My Masterpiece
Sir Chris Hoy:
From Velodrome to Le Mans
June 19
Once
Magari (If Only)
Child’s Play (2019)
June 20
Never Gonna Snow Again
12 Strong
June 21
Eagle Vs Shark
June 22
Astrid: Season 2 Premiere
Triangle
I’m Your Man
21 Bridges
June 23
Doctor Doctor: Season 5
Starter for 10
Revealed: No Mercy, No Remorse: Premiere
June 24
Littlest Pet Shop: Season 3
Littlest Pet Shop: A World Of Our Own
Transformers Prime: Season 3 & Predacons Rising Special
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Seasons 7—9
Transformers: Rescue Bots: Season 4
Angel Has Fallen
May God Save Us
June 25
Ugly Dolls
Missing Link
Rambo: Last Blood
Killers (2010)
No Kids
June 26
Infamous
Indivisible
Hellboy (2019)
June 27
The Dune
The Hurt Locker
June 28
Coriolanus
I Can Quit Whenever I Want: Masterclass
Midsommar
June 29
The Peanut Butter Falcon
Wishlist
June 30
Wild Target
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Wrath of the Titans
This Time with Alan Partridge: Season 2
Fireman Sam: Season 12
See also
* Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Australia
* Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime
* Best new movies and TV series on Disney+
* All new streaming movies & series
