This month on our sister site Galxy, we’ve got a brand new slate of movies for all our readers (and viewers) to check out, spotlighted from June 1st. Our Cinepride collection highlights captivating stories such as Cherry Grove Stories, as well as our Juneteenth collection with films such as the inspirational A Walk in Her Shoes. Here’s a list with some of what we’ve got lined up!

A Walk in Her Shoes

Selina Garcia’s A Walk in Her Shoes tells the story of personal trainer and author Metra Lundy’s trip from Maryland to Canada, retracing the steps taken by Harriet Tubman as a part of the Underground Railroad. On this journey where she learns more about herself and the history of the path, Lundy shakes hands with many new faces on a trek hundreds of miles long, yet ever-expansively important.

Baseball and the Ballerina

Following the death of his wife, a professional baseball player finds himself struggling to raise his daughter alone. As she struggles with baseball practice, his daughter expresses interest in what she believes is her true calling, ballet. Will King sway towards his own passion, or let his daughter explore her own?

Dementia 13

The feature film debut of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, Dementia 13 is a horror movie that leads with death. When widow Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) fears her late husband John (Peter Read) may not leave her a fortune in the will, she begins plotting on his own plot of land. However, Louise is far from alone, as an axe murderer soon makes themself known on the premises.

Cherry Grove Stories

This documentary takes place on Fire Island, New York during the 20th century, long before any federal legislation allowed much of the freedom gay Americans would have today. Cherry Grove Stories shows the community of queer folks Fire Island would come to foster a safe and welcoming space for, as well as anecdotes of how the area got to this point.

The Street Fighter

This classic 1974 martial arts film was the first of its kind to land an X-rating in cinemas on the basis of its graphic violent content alone! Assassin Terry Tsurugi intercepts a plan to kidnap the daughter of a late oil tycoon, opting to protect her from members of the Yakuza and mafia who hatched said plan.

Master of the Flying Guillotine

Yes, that is the titular master and his flying guillotine in the image above. A follow-up to The One-Armed Boxer, again directed by and starring Jimmy Wang Yu, a blind lama seeks revenge after his peers were killed by Yu Tien-lung (Jimmy Wang Yu) in the previous film.

Ganja & Hess

When Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is stabbed with a cursed dagger by his assistant, he finds himself caught in the paranormal when he finds he’s become a vampire. Meeting with his assistant’s now widow Ganja (Marlene Clark) as she searches for her husband, Hess finds himself drawn to the woman, not just for her blood, but her heart.

Phenomena

A serial killer lurks the halls of a Swiss boarding school, targeting its pupils. Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) is one such student at the school, though she harbors a dark secret: she has a psychic link with any insects in her vicinity. Jennifer uses these powers to her advantage as she tracks down and targets the perpetrator.

The Brother from Another Planet

Joe Morton plays The Brother, an alien escaped from the planet he was enslaved on. Using nothing but expressions, body language, and gestures, The Brother tries his best to navigate a strange new world while making a few friends and enemies along the way.

Brotherly Love

Director Anthony J. Caruso stars in this religious romance film as Vito Fortunato, a Brother of the Catholic Church. When his true feelings come forth for one of his friends, Brother Vito finds himself having to choose between what his faith and their fate feel is best.

My Big Gay Italian Wedding

Based on the off-Broadway play of the same name, this film tells the story of Antonio and Paolo, a happy couple residing in Berlin. In the process of getting married, the two land in a small village in Italy where Antonio’s family resides, unaware of his relationship with Paolo.

These spotlighted films for the month of June and more can all be viewed now on Galxy. Safe travels!

Already having crossed its production budget 14 times over, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms marks another meteoric success for indie low-budget horror films in theaters following Curry Barker’s Obsession. Watching Backrooms take off the way it has is like witnessing history, with Parsons now being the youngest director to hit #1 at the box office. The $118 million in its opening weekend made this the highest ever opening for an A24 film, with the film set to soon pass Everything Everywhere All at Once and Marty Supreme‘s worldwide earnings. Domestically, Backrooms is already A24’s most successful film ever released. The studio made a great choice taking a chance on Parsons as a young filmmaker more familiar with the mythos of the Backrooms than anyone. With a whole industrial career now possible for him at such a young age, where could Parsons take audiences next?

Parsons recently talked to Variety about what’s next for him after the film, revealing how he felt drawn back to his internet presence and work ethic during the release cycle. “[T]here’s a lot of projects that I could just never do outside of Youtube, or outside of a more free-form internet multimedia container.” Kane explained to Variety’s William Earl last Friday. “I wouldn’t limit myself to just one spot[.]”

The extent of Kane’s technical knowledge and involvement in his own films speaks to their adaptivity regardless of platform. Doing layout work in Blender and music composition for both his internet and A24-published work, the only limit to Kane’s work is his own imagination.

Backrooms is now playing in theaters worldwide.

In today’s Galxy movie spotlight, we’re taking a look at Emmett Callinan’s Dark Space from 2013. Another indie space horror like last month’s It!, though with more of a focus on the survival horror aspect of the situation. A young crew is on their way to vacation out into the far reaches of the cosmos. However, the inexperienced group of friends bite off more than they can chew with their complex spaceship they rent. Before they know it, the crew has crash landed on the uncharted planet of Centari Five, though not uninhabited. With military units on their tail and mysterious native dangers in tow, the crew now must fight to survive as their only hope out in space.

Dark Space features a large cast including (but not limited to) Keith Raey, Steve West, Alana Dietze, Tonya Kay, Joseph Darden, and Avital Ash as the group of friends setting off on a soon-marooned vacation in space. Emmett Calinan himself does not cameo, though his role in the film is impressive as its sole director, writer, and editor.

The part that fascinates me about the crew in this space horror is their rapport and reactions being such a stark contrast from the usual professionalism that even still can slightly shine through in other space horrors. There’s no captains, engineers, or officers, it quite literally is just six friends who wanted to rent the ship like an AirBNB. I found that take on the premise unique from the getgo, and we hope you do too, all the way through!

Dark Space is now available to stream on Galxy.

This past weekend, Curry Barker’s Obsession opened in theaters to critical acclaim and box office success, already grossing over $23 million over a budget of < $1 million. The writing’s been on the wall that 2026 is a big year for horror—even May alone with hits like Hokum and soon Backrooms—and the release of Obsession has only strengthened that projection for many theatregoers. Director Curry Barker has long been creating sketches on YouTube with co-star Cooper Tomlinson (who stars in Obsession as Ian) on their channel “that’s a bad idea”, making his feature directorial debut with 2024’s Milk & Serial. The following year, he would shoot and premiere Obsession at TIFF where Focus Features would acquire the distribution rights.

Though Obsession is shot like a traditional narrative film, it thrives off the same realism in its writing and performances found in Milk & Serial. Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette star alongside each other as Baron “Bear” Bailey and Nikki Freeman respectively, two childhood friends who work at a local record store owned by their friend Sarah’s (Megan Lawless) father, played by Andy Richter. When Bear discovers the One Wish Willow while browsing a crystal shop for a gift to Nikki, his wish that she’d love him more than anyone in the world brings more than he’d bargained for. As their lives spiral out of control, the one constant remains that the two are together through it all, whether they truly want to be or not.

The concept of the film, while fairly easy to simplify in explanation, only gets more harrowing as the film drags on. I could feel myself getting tense as the entire audience, like we had to walk on eggshells for every cut the film would make at a certain point. With how grounded in reality as the writing of the film often is, the graphic nature of the film as it goes on caught me all the more off guard. Even when such a scene came to be, the atmosphere would remain tense as no one trusted this was as far as it would go.

Director Curry Barker has already gone on record about what’s next after Obsession: he’s already hard at work editing the footage for it. The Hollywood Reporter has a few early details on Barker’s Anything But Ghosts, in which Barker himself stars and writes alongside Cooper Tomlinson. The film seems more in the vain of Milk & Serial, but Focus Features will return for distribution. Barker and Tomlinson will play two ghost-hunting con artists whose careers spiral out of control once confronted with real spirits.

Obsession is now playing in theaters nationwide. If you want more films about sudden possession, check out 13/13/13 over on our sister site, Galxy!

Last night, AMC presented the first wide screening of Tuner under their Screen Unseen banner. First screened at festivals last year, the film starts Leo Woodall as Niki White, a professional piano tuner with a hearing impairment. When his intricate and curious nature leads him into learning safe-cracking, he finds his life’s constants spiraling as he pursues a spontaneous double life.

The film also stars Dustin Hoffman and Tovah Feldshuh as Niki’s family, as well as Havana Rose Liu as Ruthie, a composer and pianist Niki meets on the job. The crime elements staying fairly low-key and street level combined with the delicate nature of Niki’s job help the film feel grounded in reality. The script feels very natural in its characters’ interactions, shortcomings, and struggles; It keeps the characters feeling more human than just “characters”.

The soundscape of the film is, on its own, so incredibly calculated that I’m tempted to see it again if there are Dolby releases nearby. The cut I watched last night is still so fresh in my mind with how it heightened every tense, overstimulating scene by taking the audience with it. The ringing, pulsing, muddled panic that accompanies each sensory attack Niki experiences is so stressful we were talking about it the whole car ride home. Often in Tuner, I would find myself second-guessing who had however much information about his condition, and who was loyal enough to be there for him in such vulnerable moments no matter what.

As is typical with AMC’s Screen Unseen, I went into this film completely blind, but I’d also never heard of this film at all prior to the screening. Walking out of the film satisfied, though, I did have to worry about the competition for its true opening weekend, May 22. This month has been big for horror as a genre, with hits like Hokum and Obsession and Backrooms in discussion. The weekend of the 22nd, however, Tuner will be up against André Øvredal’s Passenger. In addition, Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters already has much buzz for that weekend. Perhaps this should be viewed as the three films taking on the real big-budget juggernaut of that coming weekend, Jon Favreau’s Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu. I personally feel all the lower-budget hits of the coming Memorial Day weekend should be given equal spotlight—it is a three-day weekend, after all.

Tuner releases in theaters nationwide May 22nd before a wider release on May 29th, 2026. If you’re hungry for more out-of-this-world crime films, check out The Maltese Falcon over on our sister site, Galxy!

In our first Galxy movie spotlight, we’re taking a look at Edward L. Cahn’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space from 1958. In this indie science fiction space horror, a reconnaissance crew is the second team sent to Mars, scoping out the fate of a previously sent crew who had perished. All but one—Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), whose own account of events contradicts the general consensus. Widely believed to have been the reason for his crew’s passing, Col. Carruthers insists someone else—someTHING else—is to blame. Quickly, the second crew learns there’s more truth to the colonel’s words than anyone had thought.

The large ensemble cast playing off each other keeps the stakes in It! high without making the film feel like any other desolate space horror. Quite the opposite, with the lively nature of characters like Ann Anderson (Shirley Patterson), Col. Van Heusen (Kim Spalding), and even It (Ray Corrigan) itself keeping the rhythm of the film flowing from one beat to the next. This film marked Corrigan’s final role in a theatrical release.

In the cut of It! available on Galxy, the set pieces by Herman Schoenbrun still shine all these years later, right alongside the costume design work by Jack Masters. Retro-futurism as a style still holds up even in newer films as we’ve seen with Fantastic Four: First Steps, but this is a great example of the aesthetic in action in its prime. The light greys of the ship’s walls stand distinguished as the crewmates hide in the shadows from It, the gentle fade into each other emblematic of the very unknown the crew has delved into.

If you’re looking to check out one of the earliest, most affective space horrors in the medium, check the film out! Even in black and white, the film is anything but devoid of color. Whether in its cast, design, or narrative, there’s something lurking in It! that keeps people coming back a century later.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space is now available to stream on Galxy.