As you decompress from those grueling final exams and lovingly gaze toward the serene horizon that is summer break, venture into the fantastical with one of the season’s most enduring pastimes, especially as it exhibits an immense resurgence. The following are the most notable highlights for the summer movie season and are listed in order of dates.
May 6:
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Seismic events in last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and Disney+ outings WandaVision and Loki have ruptured the multiverse, and everyone’s favorite sorcerer Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) strains to piece it back together with the sage Wong (Benedict Wong) and bereaved Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Marvel remains secretive of more specific details for its mystical, brooding and cryptic next chapter in its shared cinematic universe, which only promises shocks and surprises galore. Acclaimed director Sam Raimi, returning to the superhero genre after famously helming the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films, is expected to imbue the proceedings with his signature gonzo verve. -PG-13/Theaters
May 13:
Firestarter
Adapted from the unnerving and scorching Stephen King novel, a young girl grapples with her newfound power: to spontaneously incinerate anything she wants with the power of her mind. As a dubious federal agency pursues them, her father (Zac Efron) struggles to keep his volatile daughter defused before she reduces everything in her path to ash. -R/Theaters and Peacock
May 20:
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Take another quaint stroll with the Crawley royal family in this second cinematic follow-up to the hit British television series. The Crawleys and their staff take a trip to the South of France, with breezy and lavish delights sure to ensue. In other words, it’s a period costume drama. -PG/Theaters
May 27:
The Bob’s Burgers Movie
A more adult-skewing animated film is novel and a rarity, and this cinematic treatment of the beloved FOX animated series could fulfill that latent demographic. The main voice cast reprises their roles as the Belcher family who tries to prevent the closure of their restaurant when a sinkhole forms in front of it- all in raucous fashion, of course. -PG-13/Theaters
Top Gun: Maverick
Suffering from a glut of pandemic-related and production delays, the long-belated legacy sequel to the splashy 1984 classic is finally soaring into theaters. For over thirty years, the intrepid and seasoned lone wolf naval aviator Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) has evaded any rank promotions that would ground his adventurous sky spirit, but training a group of Top Gun graduates may give him a new passion that is surprisingly earthbound. Thunderous aerial sequences will make this essential summer spectacle. -PG-13/Theaters
June 10:
Jurassic World Dominion
In this grand finale to the Jurassic World trilogy and sixth entry overall in the Jurassic saga, ethologist Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and dinosaur specialist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) find themselves entrenched in a fraught new world ecosystem as humans and those ancient beasts now coexist after the catastrophic events of 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Like the 1993 classic denotes life itself, this franchise “always finds a way” to evolve, whether that is upping the rip-roaring dinosaur ante or, notably in this case, having Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum reprise their roles from the beloved original films. -PG-13/Theaters
June 17:
Lightyear
The science-fiction character that the action figure is based on in the Toy Story universe receives a galactic origin story in Pixar’s latest animated offering. Chris Evans lends his voice to the iconic Space Ranger as the studio continues to stretch its creative muscles to infinity and beyond, framing this tale as a sprawling space opera teeming with awe, reverence, nostalgia and visual grandeur. -Rating TBD/Theaters
Cha Cha Real Smooth
If you are seeking to counteract all the bombast of the summer film season, writer-director-actor Cooper Raiff’s tender dramedy and Sundance Film Festival hit may be the perfect tonic. Andrew (Raiff), an aimless college graduate roped into being a bar mitzvah emcee, finds solace in an unconventional friendship with a beguiling woman named Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter with autism. Cha Cha Real Smooth delicately threads the needle between scathing humor and nuanced pathos, bearing insight into that tricky time between college and real adulthood. -R/Apple TV+
June 24:
The Black Phone
Pulpy horror films often help define and dominate the summer season, and the palpable no-frills-all-thrills approach of Insidious director Scott Derickson should satiate any avid fan of this genre. Adapted from the chilling short story, a 13-year-old boy trapped in the basement of a sadistic serial killer (Ethan Hawke) starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the masked man’s past victims, offering him clues on how to escape before it is too late. -R/Theaters
Elvis
Biopics are often strenuous to make compelling, but auteur Baz Luhrmann of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! fame intends to inject tired tropes with his famous psychedelic exuberance, which seems promising. Austin Butler stars as the titular King of Rock and Roll in what is sure to be a breakout role, capably supported by Tom Hanks as his fiery manager. -Rating TBD/Theaters
July 1:
Minions: The Rise of Gru
This animated sequel to the 2015 Despicable Me spin-off chronicles the fateful meeting between a young Gru (still voiced by Steve Carrell, assisted by some audio manipulation) and those manically cute yellow helpers that ultimately breeds the deceptively diabolical yet ultimately endearing “evil” enterprise from the original film. Sometimes being bad can be so fun for the entire family, especially with vibrant animation and lively slapstick. -PG/Theaters
July 8:
Thor: Love and Thunder
Marvel’s Norse god Thor (Chris Hemsworth) continues his recent odyssey of self-discovery and personal reckoning after Avengers: Endgame, and congruent with this exhilaratingly radical reinvention of the character, director Taika Waititi, who made the previous entry Thor: Ragnarok, retains his lightning-fast wit and riotous energy. In this heavy metal sequel, Thor teams up with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who has mysteriously adopted the mantle of the God of Thunder, to prevent Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from, well, butchering all the gods. -Rating TBD/Theaters
July 15:
Where the Crawdads Sing
Adapted from the best-selling novel and produced by Reese Witherspoon, this adult thriller set in the deep South will tantalize you to get lost in its marshes. After raising herself in the nature of North Carolina, a resourceful young woman named Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) becomes embroiled in a murder trial of a man she was once involved with. Think of the twisty populist thrills of Big Little Lies or Gone Girl but with a primal, haunting southern edge. -Rating TBD/Theaters
July 22:
Nope
Comedian-turned-filmmaker Jordan Peele has been vital in the recent renaissance of the horror genre with incendiary, topical spine-tinglers Get Out and Us, and his third feature Nope promises more chilling suspense and stimulating sociopolitical subtext. Residents (played by Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun) of a desolate inland California town make an uncanny-and seemingly supernatural- discovery. Like Peele’s other films, the marketing is ambiguous but mystifyingly alluring: It’s a lockbox that exerts a gravitational pull, and you’ll want to find the key with this one. -Rating TBD/Theaters
July 29:
Bullet Train
David Leitch, the co-director of John Wick and director of Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Hobbs and Shaw, crafts another whizzing wallop of kinetic action in Bullet Train. Set on a neon-soaked highspeed railway propelling from Tokyo to Morioka, a jaded assassin named Ladybug (Brad Pitt) takes one last job that tangles him in a web of conspiracy and competing assassins, having to battle his way through one car at a time. Sandra Bullock, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Joey King, Brian Tyree Henry and Bad Bunny co-star. -Rating TBD/Theaters
DC League of Super-Pets
With all the reality-shattering events occurring in other superhero realms, why not indulge in some less demanding fluff in that genre? In this jovial, family-friendly and animated comics fare, John Krasinski voices Superman while Keanu Reeves voices Batman, but the focus this time falls on the former’s best animal- and similarly superpowered- pal Krypto (Dwayne Johnson), who stages a rescue mission with a ragtag gang of furry counterparts when his owner and the rest of the Justice League are kidnapped. -Rating TBD/Theaters
Photo Credit/Disney-Universal-Sony-Paramount-Apple TV+-Warner Brothers
