Netflix has a big month coming up; it’s as though they’re trying to lure you back indoors, away from the sun. Their siren song comes in the form of movies huge and small, as well as random. In July, they’ve got “Free Willy,” “Best in Show,” Ridley Scott’s weirdo sentimental comedy “Matchstick Men,” even “Police Academy” and “Boat Trip,” in which Cuba Gooding Jr. made a film stocked stem to stern with gay panic jokes. Here are some of the bigger additions next month:
‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ (July 18)
Confess your unpopular opinion: We’re not huge fans of the first “Star Wars” spinoff movie. It’s clumsily plotted; the characters are thin. (Though, we should add, they’re played by excellent, game actors.) The fan service reaches vomit levels with the digitized Peter Cushing, who died in 1994. But what do we know? It made a billion dollars worldwide, and that’s what counts. Some of it is definitely cool, even the wholly crass Darth Vader-kills-rebels bit. We may skip around here and there when it hits Netflix.
‘Titanic’ (July 1)
Speaking of movies that made all the money, James Cameron’s Best Picture winner is still hanging out in the second slot of highest grossing movies ever, right behind James Cameron’s “Avatar.” The world of 1997 embraced “Titanic” the way the Red States embraced Donald Trump, though Cameron’s clunky dialogue is far superior to POTUS-speak. We haven’t seen this since around 1998, and we’d love to see what it looks like now.
‘E.T. — The Extra Terrestrial’ (July 1)
A month ago, through a soiled hankie, we solemnly reported that “E.T.” was leaving Netflix. We should have known better. After a 30-day hiatus, Steven Spielberg’s devastating look at alien-boy love is back to streaming. It’s like if E.T. himself had left Elliott only to return a handful of weeks later for a sequel. Anyway, are you ready to cry like a baby again?
‘Delicatessen’ (July 1)
Whatever happened to “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet? We, movie journalists, know what happened: He stayed in France and no one in America sees his movies anymore. His last film, “The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet,” was barely released here. (And with a title like that!) But Jeunet’s back catalog is well worth exhuming. Back in the ’90s, his films with Marc Caro were treated like godsends. “The City of Lost Children” scored Jeunet the gig helming “Alien: Resurrection.” But we’ve always preferred their debut: this nutty and grimy black comedy about an apartment building a post-apocalyptic France, whose landlord likes to serve his tenants human flesh. Bon appetit, indeed.
‘Punch-Drunk Love’ (July 1)
We love it when Adam Sandler saunters away from his Happy Madison films and tries his hand at, like, you know, real filmmakers. This summer we’ll be seeing him in a Noah Baumbach film, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).” But even that will have a tough time beating “Punch-Drunk Love,” his nutso Paul Thomas Anderson movie, in which the “Boogie Nights” director fashioned a bizarre whatzit around Sandler. One of Anderson’s best tricks is takes one of the actor’s most defining traits — his capacity for comic rage — and ramps it way up; when Sandler gets angry in “Punch-Drunk Love,” he’s scary (though also funny).
‘Bad Santa 2’ (July 8)
We laughed. The 13-years-later sequel is kind of a piece of crap — dirty, foul, stupid, crass, kind of a repeat of the first. But that’s probably what we deserve.
‘Lion’ (July 9)
It was the movie the Weinstein Company rammed down our throats last year — keeping it in theaters for months until enough people saw it, campaigning for it so hardcore that it couldn’t help but nab six Oscar nominations. Dev Patel scored one of those, though he doesn’t appear till the second half. Before that we get super-cute Sunny Pawar, playing a boy from remotest India who goes missing; years later, after being adopted by an Australian couple (including a very good, very subtle Nicole Kidman), he finally tries to locate his family. All we’ll say is we like the first half a lot.
‘Dark Night’ (July 31)
July’s the perfect time for Tim Sutton’s dreamy, haunting, menacing Sundance favorite, which unfolds over a long, boring Florida summer day. It’s not a spoiler to say it will be ruined by a movie theater shooting, very much like the one that happened to “The Dark Knight” in 2012. But don’t think of “Dark Night” as “the movie about the Aurora massacre.” As we said in our review, it’s a poetic meditation that jumps around a group of characters — lonely, anguished, maybe unhinged people struggling to get attention, anyone’s attention. It doesn’t try to explain the shooting so much as take the temperature of America right now. And it discovers that we’re all of us ready to snap.
The complete list below:
July 1
Titanic
The Originals: Season 4
Free Willy
Disney’s The Mighty Ducks
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Capo “El amo del tunel”: Season 1
El Barco: Season 1
The Truth Is in the Stars
Deep Water: Season 1
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Hostages (Israel): Season 2
Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang
The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo)
Albion: The Enchanted Stallion
Liar’s Dice
Offspring: Season 6
Boat Trip
Mixed Signals
Delicatessen
Caramel
Yours Fatefully: Season 1
The Ultimatum: Season 1
Unriddle
Unriddle II
Yes We Can!: Season 1
Spice Up: Season 1
World at Your Feet: Season 1
Emma
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Last Night
Out of Thin Air
Witnesses: Season 2
The Longest Yard
Jackass: Number Two
Punch-Drunk Love
Are We There Yet?
Are We Done Yet?
Dad
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure
The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving
Here Alone
Spawn: The Movie
Code Name: The Cleaner
The Astronaut Farmer
Best in Show
Proof of Life
Matchstick Men
Taking Lives
Police Academy
July 2
El Chema: Season 1
July 3
Diamond Cartel
Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story
July 4
The Standups: Season 1 (Netflix original)
July 5
iZombie: Season 3
July 6
Speech & Debate
The Void
Butter
July 7
Castlevania: Season 1 (Netflix original)
Dawn of the Croods: Season 4 (Netflix original)
Degrassi: Next Class: Season 4 (Netflix original)
Luna Petunia: Season 2 (Netflix original)
1 Mile to You (Life At These Speeds)
July 8
Bad Santa 2
Horse Dancer
July 9
Lion
July 11
Gabriel Iglesias Presents The Gentleman Jerry Rocha
July 14
Friends From College: Season 1 (Netflix original)
To the Bone (Netflix original)
Chasing Coral (Netflix original)
Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile (Netflix original)
July 15
Rake: Season 4
West Coast Customs: Season 4
July 17
Uncertain Glory
Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness
A Cowgirl’s Story
July 18
Aditi Mittal: Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say (Netflix original)
Ari Shaffir: Double Negative: Collection (Netflix original)
Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce: Season 3
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
July 20
Pretty Little Liars: Season 7B
July 21
Ozark: Season 1 (Netflix original)
Last Chance U: Season 2 (Netflix original)
The Worst Witch: Season 1 (Netflix original)
July 22
Railroad Tigers
July 24
Victor
July 25
Joe Mande’s Award-Winning Comedy Special (Netflix original)
Munroe Island
July 28
The Incredible Jessica James (Netflix original)
Daughters of Destiny: Season 1 (Netflix original)
The Adventures of Puss in Boots: Season 5 (Netflix original)
July 31
After The Reality
Checkpoint
Dark Night
Taking Earth
