The 7 Movies You Have To Watch Before They Leave Netflix In June

Revered as a masterful effort in storytelling and the leading exemplar of space dramas, director Ron Howard's Apollo 13 rocked the world when it premiered in 1995, and has continued spellbinding cinema lovers ever since. The film takes its name from and tells the tale of the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission that took place on April 11, 1970 — the Apollo space program's third attempt to land on the moon.

Adapted from the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, the Oscar-winning feature stars Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell, Kevin Bacon as backup Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, and Bill Paxton as Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise — the trio of men aboard the ship who experienced a mid-mission explosion that threatened their oxygen and power supplies. The unexpected detonation dashed NASA's dream of additional lunar exploration at the time, and turned the expedition from one filled with hope and possibility to a race to bring the men back to Earth in one piece.

There's a reason why Apollo 13 is regarded as a "soaring salute to space exploration" and Ron Howard's best film yet, and why it won all those Academy Awards at the 1996 ceremony. Netflix subscribers have until June 1 to discover the magic of Apollo 13 — or else they'll be left saying, "Houston, we have a problem."

Before Will Smith was the singing-and-dancing big blue CGI Genie in Disney's live-action Aladdin, he was a bona fide leading man who played around in all sorts of film genres. One of his most memorable performances came in Francis Lawrence's 2007 film I Am Legend, in which Smith gives a hell of a turn as U.S. Army virologist Robert Neville, who lives in near-total isolation after a re-engineered measles virus meant to cure cancer wipes out the vast majority of the world's population and turns most of the survivors into deadly, light-sensitive creatures known as Darkseekers. Smith's dazzling performance is the best part of I Am Legend, described by one critic as the actor's "astounding one man show [that] is never less than physically and emotionally shattering."

Aside from all the soul Smith poured into I Am Legend, the film is great because it tickles the fancies of just about every kind of film fan: it's post-apocalyptic, it's sci-fi, it's horror, it's drama, it's a gritty "what if?" story, it's basically a dark version of Cast Away, and it's, at times, genuinely funny.

Those interested in catching I Am Legend on Netflix have until June 1 to do so.

Neill Blomkamp's sci-fi action flick District 9 is almost universally loved — and it isn't hard to see why. Blending together fictional found footage and traditional cinematic storytelling as it adapts Blomkamp's own short film Alive in Joburg, District 9 takes place in an alternate Johannesburg, South Africa, and ranges over a number of heavy-hitting themes in the process. Led by Sharlto Copley as the gentle-natured Wikus van de Merwe, a bureaucrat working for MNU Department of Alien Affairs, the film explores what it means to be a human, how segregation affects individuals, and the insidiousness of xenophobia as it tells the story of the South African government stumbling upon a group of malnourished aliens and then sequestering them on the internment camp known as District 9.

Nearly 30 years after the initial discovery, the government and the weapons manufacturer Multinational United (MNU) are relocating the resource-squandering aliens (a.k.a. "prawns") to a new location. An alien called Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope), his son, and his friend try to make a break for it — eventually crossing paths with van de Merwe himself. Things quickly go sour, and what follows is a thrilling and thought-provoking character drama wrapped up in sci-fi goodness.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, queue up District 9 on Netflix before it leaves the platform on June 4.

Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now is haunting, visually rousing, and valiant — one of cinema's most enduring pieces of art. Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando lead the film as U.S. Army special ops officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard and the highly feared, heavily decorated renegade officer Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, whom Willard is tasked with killing.

Though Apocalypse Now received mixed reviews upon its release in 1979, it went on to receive eight Academy Award nominations, be preserved in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry and designated as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," and get elected as one of the greatest films in history across various outlets' rankings. People are still praising Apocalypse Now to this day, writing that audiences will "never see the likes of Francis Ford Coppola's war epic again."

Apocalypse Now is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and will depart from Netflix on June 15, so there truly is no better time to revisit it or watch it for the very first time.