What’s New on Netflix in June 2020

The traditional summer movie season may have been all but canceled, but that doesn’t mean summer movies are a thing of the past. Case in point, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. The high-concept comedy from director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as a pair of Icelandic singers chosen to represent their home country at the titular world-famous song competition. In years past, a Ferrell comedy like this one would have been an expected fixture on the summer release schedule; now, it’s a Netflix film, one of the many major new releases and library titles debuting on the service next month. Ahead, some highlights of what’s coming to Netflix in June.Cape Fear (June 1)A tantalizing Hollywood what if: Back in the late 1980s, Steven Spielberg controlled the rights to remake the 1962 film Cape Fear. Martin Scorsese, meanwhile, had his sights set on adapting the Thomas Keneally novel that would become the film Schindler’s List. As luck would have it, both filmmakers felt unsure about going forward with the respective projects. “I wasn’t in the mood; it’s as simple as that,” Spielberg told the New York Times in 1991. “I just couldn’t find it inside me to make a scary movie about a family being preyed on by a maniac.” So they switched, with one condition: Spielberg wanted to make sure Scorsese wouldn’t kill the film’s central family unit, the Bowdens (played in the film by Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and a young Juliette Lewis). Scorsese acquiesced to the demand—but that doesn’t mean he used kid gloves. The Bowdens are put through the wringer by the villainous Max Cady (an unhinged and unleashed Robert De Niro) throughout the film, and their eventual victory over him feels pyrrhic at best. His sweaty Cape Fear is often considered a lesser work from a Hollywood master, but few filmmakers have more fun in the muck than Scorsese.West Side Story (June 1)Before the release of the long-awaited Spielberg adaptation of West Side Story, the 1961 original hits Netflix in all its widescreen glory. Good news for those who haven’t rewatched the classic best picture winner: it still cooks, with a soundtrack full
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