A couple weeks ago, we looked at the first half of the summer and the Big Movie that was being released that week.
This week, we’ll look at the second half of the summer.
When we left off, we left off with July 6th releasing Ant-Man and The Wasp. Which brings us to:
July 13th!
We’ve got Hotel Transylvania for the kid in you and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Skyscraper for the slightly older kid in you. The Hotel Transylvania Universe is surprisingly enjoyable until you realize that Genndy Tartakovsky is the director and you say “Oh, I shouldn’t be surprised at all.” As for The Rock… well, he hasn’t had that many missteps. I haven’t watched the trailer yet but as far as I can tell from the posters, he’s going to beat up a building. Yeah, I’d pay 8 bucks for that.
July 20th FINALLY gives us The Equalizer 2. A million years ago, The Equalizer came out around the same time as John Wick and provided a wonderful counterpoint. I saw the Equalizer as movie that made some vague attempt to give a nod to the “substance over style” debate and John Wick as an example of a movie that said “we’ll put substance in during post-production” (not intended to be a criticism of either, mind). John Wick gave us a blank character… and Denzel Washington gave us a somewhat more fleshed out human being. Denzel is back. And he’s going to be shooting even more people. After giving them one last chance to make things right, of course.
July 27th gives us the SIXTH (COUNT ‘EM!) movie in the Mission Impossible universe. Tom Cruise is 55, by the way. (You know, ever since Mission Impossible 3, these movies have been silly smorgasbords of delightful and impossible action. I’ll probably see this one. I am consistently shocked at the quality of movies that Tom Cruise’s agent finds for him.)
August 3rd gives us Christopher Robin, a movie starring Ewan McGregor as the titular character as a grown-up but, and here’s the point, Jim Cummings provides the voice of Pooh. See it by yourself to make sure that it’s okay for the kids, then take the kids as your excuse to see it a second time.
August 10th gives us Jason Statham playing Jason Statham in The Meg. If we told you that Jason Statham kicked the butt of a shark, you wouldn’t be impressed. LL Cool J has kicked the butt of a shark. Jason Statham needs to kick the butt of a Megalodon.
August 17th gives us the most confusing movie of the summer: The Happytime Murders. In a world where puppets are second-class citizens, Phil Phillips is a hard-boiled puppet investigator who tags up with his former partner (Melissa McCarthy) to investigate who killed his brother… and it looks like whomever did it is murdering cast members of the 1980’s show The Happytime Gang. They have a red-band trailer (warning: Seriously. It’s a red-band trailer. I ain’t even going to link to it. Seriously.) Sesame Workshop sued over the tagline “No Sesame. All Street.” Brian Henson directed it. (Seriously: Don’t think “Oh, Brian Henson directed it… the red-band trailer can’t be that bad. It is.)
And, right around then, the kids start going back to school and the horror flicks start coming out.
So… what are you most looking forward to this summer?
There were some good art house movies that are coming out this summer. I am currently sitting on rooftop pool in LA. I suspect this is the closest I will be at summer.
June is a crazy travel month for me with work. I am going to be away part of every week except the last week of June.
There are some art house movies coming out in the summer and SFMOMA has a Magritte exhibit.
I think my most carefree summer was 2006.Report
Which art house movies do we need to keep an eye out for?Report
Benedict Jacka’s next Alex Verus urban fantasy book is due out in July. Urban fantasy series are divided into two categories: one where there’s a long-term overarching plot line, and the other where there’s not. It took Jacka several books to really get the long-term plot going. Now that he has, he writes consistently good cliffhangers that leave you (or at least me) asking where he’s going to go with it.Report
Saw the movie Upgrade. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
I had a blast. You should totally see it unless you don’t like violence. BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT.
But if you can handle violence, you should see it. That way we can talk about it on next Sunday. And we can talk about major spoilers.Report