Dupieux, Spider-Man, Viola Davis… What to see on Netflix in June? – Les Inrocks

Cheetah by Luchino Visconti (1963)

A triumph in Cannes crowned with a Palme d’Or and enjoying immediate critical and public recognition, the large and sumptuous historical fresco by Visconti nevertheless suffered some attacks. Some of the spectators see, in the illuminations tinged with academicism of the film, a renunciation – if not a betrayal – of the past neorealist manifestos of the Italian (Ossessione, Rocco and his brothers). Despite its appearance as a heritage film with outdated prestige, it is not so: the filmmaker fixes the raw material of reality with always this same formidable acuity which places him alongside Proust as one of the greatest painters of the slow decay of the aristocratic world.

Widows by Steve McQueen (2018)

No doubt, Steve McQueen is a great formalist. In just three films up to 2018 (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave), the British visual artist and filmmaker has constructed a work with a virtuoso and powerful aesthetic – for which, however, he has been criticized for recycling certain worn clichés of auteur cinema (distancing, emotional glaciation). By attacking Widows for the first time in genre cinema (the robbery film), the filmmaker signs a dry and tense thriller which preserves the extreme intensity of its staging while shedding the formalist dross of yesteryear.

The Salt of the Earth by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (2014)

Documentary on the photographer Sebastião Salgado co-directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, son of Sebastião, The Salt of the Earth celebrates all the sumptuous beauty of the work of the Brazilian artist and delivers a poignant testimony to the wars and sufferings that inhabit the world.

The deer by Quentin Dupieux (2019)

Currently in theaters with his latest film Incredible but true, Quentin Dupieux has created a singular and prolific filmography in just a few years (five films shot in four years). After paying strong homage to Buñuel and Blier in At office ! – even if it meant losing singularity – the filmmaker reconnected with his peculiar strangeness in The deera disturbing and depressive comedy carried by a Jean Dujardin offering one of his most touching scores of his career.

The Florida Project by Sean Baker (2017)

Discovered at Sundance with the very promising TangerineSean Baker continues in The Florida Project his study, as tender as it is fierce, of the America of the left behind. In this dive into the heart of a family white trash behind the scenes at Disney World in Orlando, the filmmaker captures with joyful sadness the disenchantment of the American dream, that old mirage from another century.

Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo (1988)

After a theatrical release in the summer of 2020, Ōtomo’s cult film, released in 1988, is coming to Netflix. A new acquisition which will be an opportunity for the young generation of anime fans to discover this chapel of the genre, which combines, in the same gesture, an incredible technical virtuosity for the time (without a doubt the most fluid and specifies never reached on its release) to a particularly visionary post-apocalyptic painting on the contemporary.

loving by Jeff Nichols (2016)

“What I love about John Ford’s work is that he always puts the character first.e”, wrote Truffaut. We could return the homage to Jeff Nichols, who has the same attention and lofty view for those he looks at. And particularly in loving, his most classic work to date (in the sense of: which continues the tradition of a certain classicism of the Hollywood golden age). The director restores with great delicacy the fight in the 1950s of a black woman and a white man to acquire the right to marriage then refused to the mixed couple in the state of Virginia.

Spider-Man: Next Generation by Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey (2018) – From June 30

After multiple attempts, the best (The Raimi Trilogy) to the most insignificant (The Amazing Spider-Man)what could we expect from‘a new onscreen port of the adventures of Spider-Man? This is the difficult question to be answered by the animated film by Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey. A fear swept away immediately as this Spider-Man: Next Generation insolently redistributes all the cards of the mythology of the masked superhero.

With a stunning formal inventiveness, pierced with multiple ramifications and narrative telescoping, the film is a particularly gratifying example of the son-work that knew how to kill the father. In a landscape of blockbusters surrounded by reboots and sequels, the animated film by Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey offers an invigorating model. Hollywood should perhaps draw more inspiration from it if it too wishes to rise from its ashes.