Every month, the best streaming services have a bit of a clear-out and some movies drop out of their catalogs to make way for everything new on Max in June. And on Max this month some of the casualties include genuine classics, so you don't have long to catch them or rewatch them before they're banished to wherever it is movies go when their streaming rights expire.
Some of this month's departures are among my favorite movies, and I'd describe them as masterpieces even though I'm sure some movie buffs would disagree with me. We've got three movies from three fascinating directors: Martin Scorsese, Paul Verhoeven and George Miller. We've got three beautifully realized, often violently ugly worlds: a dystopian Detroit; a post-apocalyptic Australia; and a late 20th-Century New York. And we've got guns, knives and at least one vat of highly toxic waste.
I'm very fond of all three of the best Max movies here, and I'm sure you will be too. I'd really recommend you get them watched before Max gets them gone.
Robocop
The original Robocop was often very funny, but it doesn't feel quite so amusing these days because, like much satirical sci-fi, reality has caught up with its dystopian vision of overstretched cops in a corrupt city where the worst criminals are in corporate boardtooms. Set in a dilapidated Detroit where criminal gangs run riot, it's a tale of an honest cop (Peter Weller) murdered on the job and brought back as a crime-fighting cyborg by a cynical corporation. It's cynical. It's camp. And it's quite gleefully violent, because it's a Paul Verhoeven action movie so of course it is.
As The Hollywood Reporter said back in 1987, "While those whose tastes don’t include the spectacle of large machines noisily blasting at each other are not likely to be enticed by Robocop, this shocked look at the urban future should engage and crank up action fans."
"RoboCop was obviously inspired by that other 80s classic, The Terminator – but The Terminator didn’t have this sophisticated, subversive element," The Guardian says. Robocop may be an old movie now but I'd still buy that for a dollar.
Mad Max
As fun as the modern reboots are, the original Mad Max from 1979 was a striking debut by director George Miller and an equally unknown actor called Mel Gibson. As The Boston Globe put it, "If punk is a sensibility as well as an adjective, Mad Max is a punk movie." And CinePassion agrees: "No imitation can compete with the grindhouse jaggedness of Miller's original pursuit".
It's a simple story, but then so were Jaws and The Terminator. In this case our hero, Max Rockatansky, tries to escape a hellish gang of outlaw bikers only for them to follow him and set in motion a chain of events that will lead to Max wreaking terrible revenge.
The Guardian rewatched it in 2015, and wrote: "Through the haze of nostalgia, it’s easy to forget how plain weird the film is; how many moments challenge any kind of logic definition.... Mad Max has always radiated an otherworldly vibe, a slightly sickly sensation that something at its core is fundamentally wrong."
Mad Max is "messy, oddly paced, and has some definite plotting issues but one could never criticize it for lacking vision," says Gatecrashers. "To me, it is one of the most inspiring films ever made, a project made out of a pure desire to challenge its audience and to make something that’s just rad as hell, the kind of movie that makes you believe you can make a movie." And it doesn't get much more punk than that.
Goodfellas
If the words "as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" don't give you chills, you haven't seen one of the greatest gangster movies ever made. Based on the memoir by real-life mafia member Henry Hill – played here by Ray Liotta – the movie is one of Martin Scorsese's finest, and it features stunning performances by Robert De Niro and a frankly psychotic Joe Pesci.
The story begins in New York in the 1950s and ends in the FBI's witness protection program, and while many subsequent gangster movies have matched its violence they tend not to focus on the other key element here: this is a movie about consequences. As Empire puts it: "It's Marty's most visceral movie, and a genuine challenger to The Godfather for the title of greatest Mafia flick ever made... it's brutally funny, and often plain brutal."
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