It’s been a strong few weeks at the box office. Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning powered a record-breaking Memorial Day box office. While Ballerina stumbled the week after, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon got off to a fantastic start with an $84 million opening. June still has several high-profile releases coming, including 28 Years Later, Elio, and F1.
Many of these movies are sequels and IP-based projects, which tend to release during the summer blockbuster season. However, there are several underrated movies to watch this month. Some of these projects, like Ash, can be streamed at home.
When you’re done here, check out the best new movies to stream this week, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Max, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, and the best movies on Disney+.
Ash is exactly what a B-movie should be. Directed by Flying Lotus, Ash follows Riya Ortiz (Eiza González), an astronaut who wakes up in a space station on a foreign planet with no memories. As Riya explores the station, she finds several crew members have been brutally slaughtered. The key to Riya’s questions lies with Brion (Aaron Paul), a fellow astronaut who comes to the station after receiving a distress call.
At first, Riya cannot comprehend what happened to the crew. As she experiences flashbacks, Riya starts to consider that perhaps she had something to do with her team’s demise. Ash doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it packs a punch thanks to starry visuals, gory action, and a standout performance from González.
Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney star in Echo Valley, Apple TV+’s thriller ripped directly from the ’90s. Written by Mare of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby, Echo Valley introduces Kate Garrett (Moore), a horse trainer on her farm in Pennsylvania. Kate’s life is in shambles after the loss of her wife, which affects her ability to pay the bills and keep the farm running.
Kate’s daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), mistakenly throws a heroin stash in the river, leading to an explosive confrontation with the drug dealer on the farm. A few nights later, Claire shows up covered in the blood of her boyfriend. Kate now tackles the question faced by many parents: How far are you willing to go to protect your child?
Stream Echo Valley on Apple TV+.
It’s fitting that a new shark movie comes in the same month that Jaws celebrates its 50th anniversary. While a great white shark plays the villain in Jaws, a serial killer becomes the primary antagonist in Dangerous Animals. Tucker (Jai Courtney) runs a cage diving business, recruiting tourists to swim with sharks. Yet Tucker has a dark secret — he feeds his passengers to the sharks and films their deaths.
For his next victim, Tucker kidnaps the rebellious surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and shackles her on his boat. Zephyr won’t go down without a fight, which surprisingly excites the eccentric Tucker. Courtney lets it all go to play this flamboyant serial killer, while Harrison’s star-making performance shines in this effective summer thriller.
Dangerous Animals is now in theaters.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.