What’s New to Stream on Amazon Prime for June 2021

Crossing the Streams is our series of guides looking at all the offerings hitting the big streaming services each month. This time we’re checking out the new Amazon Prime arrivals for June 2021 including the latest (and last) season of a popular procedural, some stupidly entertaining comedies, and more!

Amazon Prime Pick of the Month for June 2021

Long-running procedurals are nothing new — just look at the CBS lineup on any given night — but only one of the current crop stars the great Titus Welliver in the title role. The seventh, and probably final, season of Bosch (premieres June 25th) once again puts Det. Harry Bosch front and center in pursuit of justice, and fans of entertaining, continuously solid police dramas/thrillers will want to tune in. The show works well to adapt Michael Connelly’s source novels by pulling threads big and small from the books and then weaving them through the series. The stories and characters are never less than engaging, the minimal action is electric when it comes, and Welliver is never less than a fascinating lead performer. Catch up now so you’re ready for the show’s final bow later this month.

Celebrate Anniversaries!

A fantastic new slice of werewolf-related horror/comedy arrives in theaters later this month, and that’s as good a reason as any to revisit perhaps the best the subgenre has to offer — John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (1981). The classic is forty years old and still every bit as entertaining, groundbreaking, and awesome today as it was back then. The story of two Americans backpacking the moors delivers big laughs, incredible transformation effects, gory demises, and an abundance of blackly comic beats. It’s a hilarious, sad, weird-ass movie, and it remains the king.

Speaking of royalty, Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991) is thirty and still, for my money, the best of the ex-Python’s oeuvre. Jeff Bridges stars as a down on his luck disc jockey, publicly disdained for an on-air stunt, who finds possible redemption in an oddball man living on the streets. Robin Williams gives an Oscar-nominated performance as the latter and manages to both delight and devastate in equal measure. Fantasy, drama, comedy — hell, there’s even a musical number — and more combine for a film that still manages to feel utterly unique and powerful from beginning to end.

I know people tend to point out Mud (2012) and Midnight Special (2016) as being the best of Jeff Nichols, but I say hogwash. Take Shelter (2011) is a decade old and still his best, most memorable, and most affecting feature. It helps that the great Michael Shannon stars in a rare lead role as a man convinced by visions that the end of the world is nigh. Or maybe he’s just mad as a hatter? It can honestly go either way, but neither undercuts the power of Shannon’s performance or of the film itself as one man’s faith in his own sanity is tested to the very end.

Dumb Comedies!

Stupid movies aren’t necessarily bad movies, and that’s especially the case when discussing great “dumb” comedies. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) fits the bill as a film filled with silliness and over-the-top characters, and while few would put it on a list of the genre’s best it’s no less entertaining for it. Vince Vaughn heads up a team of misfits hoping to win a dodgeball tournament, and the results are as goofy as you’d expect. Highlights include a bad-guy Ben Stiller, a highly quotable Jason Bateman, and a supporting cast that includes Rip Torn, Justin Long, Stephen Root, Alan Tudyk, and more.

On the list of funny people who deserve to be much, much bigger on the pop culture front, Anna Faris sits near the top. She had a good run in the Scary Movie franchise, but she should still be headlining comedies on an annual basis. The woman is hilarious and the closest we’ve ever gotten to another Goldie Hawn. Anyway, The House Bunny (2008) is a gem. Faris kills as an ex-Playboy Bunny who becomes the den mother for an awkward sorority house. The story is a slight tale about believing in yourself, but Faris and friends deliver more than a mere Revenge of the Nerds (1984) knock-off and find numerous laughs and smiles along the way.

Okay, technically speaking, David Goyer’s The Unborn (2009) isn’t actually a comedy. It is endlessly dumb, though, and if you can make it through without laughing at some of its unintentional humor then you’re a stronger person than I. Odette Yustman stars as a young woman who finds herself under attack by a demonic entity within, and she fights it by standing around in her underwear a lot. I probably misread those scenes, but the point remains that this Michael Bay-produced horror film aims to balance sex appeal alongside its jump scares and CG shenanigans. Your results with it may vary.

A Will Smith Double Feature!

Michael Mann is best known as the director of 1983’s The Keep. I kid, he’s a filmmaker known for tales of good guys and bad guys including Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995), and Collateral (2004) — female heroes, not so much — with the occasional offshoots exploring history and real-life whistleblowers. Ali (2001) remains an outlier for Mann, but it’s no less fantastic as his sole sports biopic. Will Smith embodies the great Cassius Clay in his every move and utterance, and the film’s focus on one decade in the champ’s life allows it and its characters time to breathe. Give it a spin if you only know Mann’s cops vs robbers endeavors.

At the other end of the spectrum sits Seven Pounds (2008). Smith stars as a man with a secret involving, well, I’m not going to spoil it. Said secret is a couple of steps above the doozy in 2016’s Collateral Beauty, but its denouement is no less silly. Still, the core theme here is one of guilt, redemption, and atonement for past wrongs. There’s romance, IRS shenanigans, jellyfish, and more, and the odds are probably 50/50 that you’ll shed a tear or two by the time the end credits roll.

The Complete Amazon Prime List for June 2021

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