Best new movies and series arriving on NOW in June 2022

Every month, a new slate of titles is added to NOW’s library of films and TV shows—and critic Clarisse Loughrey picks the very best among them to watch. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

The Midwich Cuckoos (June 2)

If you feel like you’ve seen this all before, you probably have—The Midwich Cuckoos is the title of John Wyndham’s 1957 novel, famously adapted (twice!) as Village of the Damned. Now, the author’s flock of vacant-eyed sprogs gets another outing on screen, once again conceived when the people of a small town in the Chilterns awake from a sudden spell of unconsciousness to discover that the women are all pregnant. These kids have no fathers. They grow at an accelerated rate. And they have a tendency towards telepathy: what a headache.

The Night Manager’s David Farr has yanked Wyndham’s story into the present day, with a few significant alterations: the women here must make the choice whether or not to terminate their pregnancies; they’re forced to sign NDAs by the government, and Keeley Hawes’s child psychologist, Dr Susannah Zellaby, becomes key to the mystery after her own daughter (Synnøve Karlsen) is revealed to be among the pregnant women.

We Own This City (June 7)

A ghostly impression of The Wire lingers throughout We Own This City, always just out of frame. That seminal TV series, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, defined so much of how policing is depicted on screen. It’s now impossible to avoid the comparison—especially so here, with The Wire creator David Simon at the helm, alongside frequent collaborator George Pelecanos. But Baltimore isn’t the same as it was.

Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, at the hands of the police, threw a harsh and sudden light on an institution thoroughly rotted from the core. Drawing from Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s 2021 nonfiction book about the city’s scandal-plagued Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), and with a ferocious performance by Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, We Own This City’s rightful pessimism makes The Wire look like a daydream.

Westworld: Season 4 (June 27)

After a two-year absence, HBO’s beautiful mindf**k of a series is back to break the will of Reddit posters everywhere. The trailer’s been out for a while, and yet it’s still anyone’s guess as to what will actually happen this season.

Is Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores back, despite the version we know and love being definitively killed off at the end of season three? And who could a returning James Marsden be playing? What will become of the revolution led by Aaron Paul’s Caleb? And what about Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard? Will he ever unlock the secrets of the Sublime? Do you already feel overwhelmed? Good. The fun’s just about to begin.

Top Picks: Movies

The Matrix Resurrections (June 3)

The Matrix Resurrections is a Matrix sequel in the only way a Matrix sequel can be—a meta-extravaganza that re-introduces Neo (Keanu Reeves) back under his old, false identity of Thomas Anderson, now credited as the designer of a video game called “the matrix”, which happens to looks identical to the actual 1999 film.

What happens next is wild, extravagant, and rooted in the bold individualism of its director, Lana Wachowski (here taking solo reins of the franchise from her sister and usual co-director, Lily). Her vision not only rehabilitates The Matrix’s thorny cultural legacy, but offers sly comment on franchise culture in general, while sticking close to the original’s radical celebration of self-liberation and self-actualisation.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (June 19)

Did the Victorian artist Louis Wain, whose feline illustrations were rife with mischief and humour, pre-empt the cat meme? That’s the unusual question you might be left with after Will Sharpe’s colourful and endearing portrait of a man who was key in first normalising the ownership of cats as pets.

Wain’s genius—which saw him acquire multiple patents, compose an opera, and spend many years obsessing over electricity’s near-supernatural potential—never expressed itself by conventional means. And neither does Sharpe’s film, so alive is it with colourful flourishes, cinematic eccentricities (at one point, a room full of people all suddenly have giant cat heads), and unexpected celebrity cameos.

King Richard (June 24)

Overshadowed as it may be by the dramatic events of this year’s Academy Awards, Will Smith’s Best-Actor winning performance in King Richard is still a sight to behold. The actor sheds his movie star glamour to play Richard Williams, a man who, though he may not have achieved greatness himself, dedicated his life to fostering it in others—specifically, his daughters Venus and Serena Williams.

Richard planned their entire careers in an 80-or-so page manifesto, written before they were even born. He practised with them every day on the court in Compton, California. Was he motivated by his love for his children, and a desire to see them achieve greatness? Or by his own ego? Smith and director Reinaldo Marcus Green allow room for both those answers to percolate.