Everything coming to Netflix in June, Culture Whisper
Da 5 Bloods
UK Netflix release date: 12 June
Spike Lee ‘joints’ function best when they’re packed with politics, which is why he’s enjoying some success in this horrifying climate. Following 2017’s BlackKklansman, Lee now examines the Vietnam War from the African-American perspective in Da 5 Bloods.
Even though a fair number of classic Vietnam movies have featured black characters (Platoon and Apocalypse Now in particular), white soldiers have usually been the central focus. Lee aims to change that, showing an African-American squad (the ‘Bloods’) as they enter, endure and exit the brutal jungle together.
But this is more than another war film; it’s also a treasure hunt. Speeding forward to the Trump era, the ‘Bloods’ return to Vietnam to find the remains of a fallen friend (played in flashback by Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman)… as well as gold treasure they buried at the time. But will they use the gold, originally lost by the CIA, to benefit others or themselves?
The Sinner season 3
UK Netflix release date: 19 June
Whodunits have been done to death, which is what makes The Sinner so attractive. We know the crime and we know the people involved, but the reason why echoes into mystery. That’s where Bill Pullman’s classically gruff and bearded detective Harry Ambrose, a specialist in the ‘why’, comes in. He dealt with a spontaneous stabbing on the beach in season one and an 11-year-old committing parricide in season two, so surely a car crash in season three should be an easy 'case closed'… right?
Wrong, of course. This time, putting a different spin on the formula, it’s about a potential criminal instead of a convicted one. Jamie (Matt Bomer) has life sewn up: good job, a wife (Jessica Hecht), a baby on the way. But when Nick (Chris Messina), an old college friend, arrives unannounced things start to get strange. They’re involved in a crash together, and Nick dies – but Ambrose suspects more is at work here.
