Four Reasons June Is a Great Month in Texas Culture

The Checklist: Willie Nelson
Illustration by Anthony Gerace; Nelson: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP; Topography: The Portal to Texas History/UNT Libraries Government Documents Department; Big Bend: Getty
Music

Four Reasons June Is a Great Month in Texas Culture

Willie reflects on borders, Emma Stone stars with Jesse Plemons, Jeff Nichols heads out on the highway, and Eva Longoria holes up in Spain.

music

The Border, Willie Nelson

May 31 

By our count, this is the 91-year-old’s 152nd album. (You can see the full list, “Willie Nelson Albums, Ranked,” on our website.) But with Willie, age doesn’t mean a thing. The title track, sung from the perspective of a border patrol officer, is a Rodney Crowell song from the Houston native’s 2019 album, Texas. But Willie doesn’t stick around the Rio Grande; the album is much more interested in the borders of the heart. Willie walks, and sometimes straddles, the line between lust and love before arriving at “Nobody Knows Me Like You.” It was written by legendary Nashville songwriter Mike Reid, and Willie repurposes it as a tender tribute to his wife of 33 years, Annie D’Angelo. 

film

Kinds of Kindness

In theaters June 21

Fresh from a successful awards season for Poor Things, which netted newly minted Austinite Emma Stone an Oscar, director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with Kinds of Kindness. Billed as a triptych, it stars Stone alongside Jesse Plemons, who graced the cover of Texas Monthly’s April issue and seems to play a role in almost every movie of late (Civil War, Killers of the Flower Moon). 

film

The Bikeriders

In theaters (at last!) June 21

Directed by Austin’s Jeff Nichols and starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Tom Hardy, The Bikeriders, about a fictional sixties motorcycle club turned criminal organization, finally rolls into theaters. (The Hollywood strikes caused its release, originally set for December, to stall out.) Come for Nichols’s gritty realism but stay for Comer’s performance, which received early Oscar buzz when the film showed on 2023’s festival circuit.

tv

Land of Women

Apple TV+, June 26 

Corpus Christi native Eva Longoria stars in this dramedy as Gala, the wife of a man who disappears after getting financially crosswise with a group of dangerous criminals. Gala, her daughter, Kate (Victoria Bazua), and Gala’s mother, Julia (Carmen Maura), decamp to a small village in Spain that Julia fled decades earlier and hoped never to return to. Their presence opens up old wounds in the community, and the women are soon grappling with deep family secrets while trying to keep a low profile.    

This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Texas Monthly.  Subscribe today.