July’s streaming picks are a well-rounded selection for those feeling patriotic, looking to celebrate marriage equality, or wanting to celebrate the birthday of the Governator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Happy streaming!

What to Watch Next On Netflix July 2015

Independence Day Movies on Netflix

Every July, Americans come together, eat some grilled meats and set off controlled explosions all for the love of this great country. Independence Day is truly one of the great American holidays, and one of the few that hasn’t really lost its true meaning. With the ever-complicated geopolitical landscape and its own citizens divided on many issues, it is even more important to take some time to reflect on all the great things America stands for. There probably isn’t a better medium than film for capturing patriotism in all of its forms—from cathartic war films to thrilling sports films.

Rocky IV (1985)

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers, Dolph Lundgren
Synopsis: The scrappy American boxer is faced with his biggest test in Soviet ultra-athlete Drago. One of the most brashly patriotic sports films, with no metaphoric blur between character and country. Can a man end the decade-long tensions between super-power countries with a jab and a montage? Emphatically, yes.

Rocky IV will be available to stream on Netflix July 1, 2015.

Team America: World Police (2004)

Director: Trey Parker
Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller
Synopsis: A group of elite counter-terrorism agents recruit a popular Broadway actor – the only man who can infiltrate Kim Jong Il’s South Korea and take him down. Yes, this animated puppet movie is highly satirical of American global politicking, but it’s hard to not get wrapped up in its over-the-top rhetoric and music, f*ck yeah.

Stream Team America: World Police on Netflix Here

Top Gun (1986)

Director: Tony Scott
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards
Synopsis: Students in the U.S. Navy’s elite weapon school compete to be the best. It’s 1980s style and themes may not completely hold up today, but it is a glorious advertisement of the American military way.

Stream Top Gun on Netflix Here

Forrest Gump (1994)

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Robin Wright, Mykelti Williamson, Gary Sinise
Synopsis: See Forrest fight in the Vietnam War, play college football, start a small business, shake hands with Presidents, become a cause, and other wholly American pursuits. The sprawling epic spans decades and runs like a summary of American cultural history.

Stream Forrest Gump on Netflix Here

Marriage Equality Movies on Netflix

Appropriately timed, you probably heard about the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold gay marriage, giving marriage equality to all American citizens. It was a hard-fought win for the community, but not their first. The LGBTQ social movement has been active and visible since the 1980s, tackling issues related to public health, job discrimination, transgender rights, and more. This certainly won’t be the last fight for the LGBTQ community, but it is a great example of hope for an equal society.

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

Director: David France
Synopsis: A harrowing found-footage documentary of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), whose hard work led to breakthroughs for AIDS research and containment. Using only archival footage, the film tells a completely captivating narrative of activism.

Stream How to Survive a Plague on Netflix Here

Bridegroom (2013)

Director: Linda Bloodworth-Thomason
Synopsis: Documentary about Shane Bitney Crone and Thomas Bridegroom, lovers intending to marry after California passed their same-sex marriage law—but a tragic event leads to sad circumstances. A stark reminder of why the equal marriage laws are vital and the shifting social landscape offers so much hope.

Stream Bridegroom on Netflix Here

Call Me Kuchu (2012)

Director: Katherine Fairfax Wright & Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Synopsis: Profile of David Kato, the first openly gay man and activist in Uganda, where a bill was introduced that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. A terrifying inside look at a heavily publicized struggle not for equality, but the right to be gay.

Stream Call Me Kuchu on Netflix Here

Weekend (2011)

Director: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Tom Cullen, Chris New
Synopsis: After a drunken hookup, two gay men spend the majority of a weekend together, where they talk about the many issues facing their community. Less exclusively about gay rights, but an incredibly normalizing romance. Haigh would go on to produce HBO’s Looking, about a group of gay men in San Francisco.

Stream Weekend on Netflix Here

Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies on Netflix

The month is capped off by the birthday of our beefiest politician slash Hollywood star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even if he isn’t American, his incredible career is the American Dream encapsulated—European immigrant comes to America barely able to speak the language and through hard work, determination, and huge biceps, he rises to places no one could have expected. And are there any films that stand more for America than his work?

Hercules in New York (1969)

Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang, Deborah Loomis
Synopsis: Arnold’s first film role as the Greek God sent to earth. This cult flick features the baby-faced star before he quite figured out his persona, or the English language.

Stream Hercules in New York on Netflix Here

Total Recall (1990)

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside
Synopsis: Arnold as everyman Douglas Quaid who has virtual vacation memories of a time on Mars implanted into his head. Or is he the dangerous and wanted special agent Hauser?

Stream Total Recall on Netflix Here

The Running Man (1987)

Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jesse Ventura, Richard Dawson
Synopsis: Arnold is a wrongly-convicted man who is chosen to participate in a cutting-edge reality television show where felons are hunted to the death. Prophetic to American television tastes decades later, it is a flashy and action-packed ride with cool characters and a satirical edge.

Stream The Running Man on Netflix Here

The Last Stand (2013)

Director: Kim Jee-woon
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Knoxville, Peter Stormare, Luis Guzmán
Synopsis: Arnold as small-town sheriff Ray Owens, the last stand between a violent drug cartel and the Mexican border. May not be a perfect English-language debut for Korean genre auteur Kim Jee-woon, but it is a fun full-time post-politician return for its star.

Stream The Last Stand on Netflix Here

We are a mere 36 days until the official winners are announced at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards, so I will offer my predictions of who the winners will be this year. Last year my predictions were pretty solid, with an roughly 70% accuracy I correctly predicted 9 of the 13 unannounced awards. Unlike last year’s juggernaut The Artist, I believe this year there are two films that could both easily win the top awards. Both Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook stand good chances of being winners, making the predictions more difficult this year. I predict that Beasts of the Southern Wild will win the top two awards while Silver Linings Playbook cleans up the top acting awards. In addition to picking the winners for each category, I explain the reasoning behind my picks in detail under the categories.

Watch IFC on Saturday, February 23rd to see how my predictions hold up.

2013 Independent Spirit Award Predictions:

(My prediction for the winners are highlighted in bold red font)

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Bernie
Keep The Lights On
Moonrise Kingdom
Silver Linings Playbook

Wes Anderson – Moonrise Kingdom
Julia Loktev – The Loneliest Planet
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs – Keep The Lights On
Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Fill The Void – Rama Burshtein
Gimme The Loot – Adam Leon
Safety Not Guaranteed – Colin Trevorrow
Sound of My Voice – Zal Batmanglij
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chobsky

Jack Black – Bernie
Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook
John Hawkes – The Sessions
Thure Lindhart – Keep The Lights On
Matthew McConaughey – Killer Joe
Wendell Pierce – Four

Linda Cardellini – Return
Emayatzy Corinealdi – Middle of Nowhere
Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook
Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Mary E. Winstead – Smashed

Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike
David Oyelowo – Middle of Nowhere
Michael Pena – End of Watch
Sam Rockwell – Seven Psychopaths
Bruce Willis – Moonrise Kingdom

Rosemarie DeWitt – Your Sister’s Sister
Ann Dowd – Compliance
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
Brit Marling – Sound of My Voice
Lorraine Toussaint – Middle of Nowhere

Breakfast With Curtis – Laura Colella
Middle of Nowhere – Ava DuVernay
Mosquita y Mari – Aurora Guerrero
Starlet – Sean Baker
The Color Wheel – Alex Ross Perry

How To Survive A Plague – David France
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present – Matthew Akers
The Central Park Five – Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
The Invisible War – Kirby Dick
The Waiting Room – Peter Nicks

Amour – Michael Haneke
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Rust and Bone – Jacques Audiard
Sister – Ursula Meier
War Witch – Kim Nguyen

Yoni Brook – Valley Of Saints
Lol Crawley – Here
Ben Richardson – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Roman Vasyanov – End of Watch
Robert Yeoman – Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola – Moonrise Kingdom
Zoe Kazan – Ruby Sparks
Martin McDonagh – Seven Psychopaths
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias – Keep The Lights On

Rama Burshtein – Fill The Void
Derek Connolly – Safety Not Guaranteed
Christopher Ford – Robot & Frank
Jonathan Lisecki – Gayby
Rashida Jones and Will McCormack – Celeste and Jesse Forever

After the cinematic high that was 2011, 2012 naturally looked weaker. My top 5 consists of leftovers from 2011 (they only got a US release this year and therefore qualify) but 2012 was filled with plenty of highlights. Only a few films really felt like masterpieces to me but for the most part this year was consistently strong. At this time I’ve seen 94 films from this year, and while there’s still a large amount that I wish I could have seen before submitting this list, here are my 10 favourite films of 2012. (Special note: While I can’t include it since it comes out in 2013, Leviathan literally blows these films out of the water. Do yourself a favour and see it when it comes out.)

C.J. Prince’s Top 10 Films of 2012

Honorable Mentions

The Comedy
Detention
In Another Country
Starlet
Cloud Atlas

Léa Pool’s documentary Pink Ribbons Inc. points out early on that the breast cancer awareness movement originally had an activist background. One of the documentary’s talking heads points out that before women were running for a cure they were marching in the streets for one. How to Survive a Plague follows the response to the AIDS epidemic throughout the 1980s and 90s, which also had a strong activist movement behind it. The difference between the two films is that, while Pink Ribbons Inc. shows the failures of the breast cancer movement, How to Survive a Plague highlights the progress AIDS activists made in getting proper treatment. Unlike most advocacy documentaries that have to explain how much of a difference they made, How to Survive a Plague, which is largely made up of camcorder footage made by the protest groups, actually shows results.

Starting in 1987 (with the worldwide death toll from AIDS hitting over 500,000, but soon ballooning to over 3 million by the 90s), the documentary uses footage taped by members of ACT UP, an activist group formed in New York City. The meetings were ways to organize protests against people and institutions that were discriminating against people with the disease or keeping silent on the issue. Soon Iris Long, a chemist and housewife, enters the picture and starts to give advice on how to go after the scientific community.

It’s at this point that anyone watching How to Survive a Plague has to marvel at the work done by ACT UP. The group’s members immediately get together and go through scientific journals in order to try and understand everything they can. Mark Harrington, a graduate from Harvard, starts distributing a glossary of terms to help people know what they’re reading. Protests are organized around the FDA and medical research facilities to try and speed up their trials so medications with results don’t get delayed for years. They start smuggling drugs into America that have signs of helping based on studies in Europe and Asia.

The footage and ACT UP’s efforts to find treatment for the AIDS virus is riveting to watch, filled with moving and cinematic moments that show the scale of ACT UP’s battle. Moments like Larry Kramer’s attack on the group’s infighting (“We are in the middle of a plague!” he yells at the group) and protestors pouring the ashes of their loved ones on the White House lawn are some of the most powerful images to come out this year. Every moment resonates with the urgency that these people, most of whom have AIDS, are feeling as they’re literally fighting for their lives.

At the end we learn about how real, successful methods of treatment were discovered. The surviving ACT UP members still express regret over how the initial treatments they fought for were useless, but nobody denies how important their involvement was in being able to prolong the lives of people with AIDS. Over the last several years there’s been a trend in doomsday documentaries, where talking heads go on about how terrible a situation is until the last 5 minutes when a brief optimistic message is thrown out before the credits roll. While the fight to cure AIDS is far from over as millions still can’t get the proper treatment, How to Survive a Plague will leave people feeling hopeful that it can be done sooner rather than later. If a small, concentrated group of people can get results like this, what’s stopping anyone else from getting things done?