Most summer movie seasons get started in May. And I suppose this one is no exception, with movies like Thunderbolts at the start of the month, and Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, towards the end. In between there was Lilo and Stitch the live action version.But the real summer movies don’t get started until July. That’s right. Not even June.
In June, we really only got two high profile movies…Ballerina (a John Wick spinoff), and F1. Of those, only one of them is supposedly good. Ballerina. It carries the same manic energy that the John Wick films have with enough references to the world that those other movies established, so that it feels right at home in that universe. The action is solid, and for these movies, that’s really all you can ask.
But July is where it’s at. This is the month that starts off with Jurassic World: Rebirth (which is just okay, certainly one of the better films in the series, but that’s not saying much.) Jurassic Park was the only real good movie in this series. After that it’s Jurassic World and then Jurassic World Rebirth, coming in at third. But neither of those sequels is anything great.
But then things really kick into gear with the superhero movies we have all been waiting for. Not Captain America: Brave New World (which came out in February,) not Thunderbolts, but Superman and the Fantastic Four. It’s a one-two punch with these movies separated by only about two weeks. And they both look very promising.
August gives us The Bad Guys 2, The Naked Gun, (August 1st) and Weapons (August 8th.) But that’s just the start. We also get Nobody 2 and Americana on August 15th. Nobody 2 is of course the follow up to the first film starring unlikely action star Bob Odenkirk. And Americana looks like a Tarantino-esque humorous crime film starring Sidney Sweeney and Paul Walter Hauser. At the very least, it looks like it should be pretty funny.
From there we go to August 22nd, and the release of two interesting looking movies… Highest To Lowest (A Denzel Washington, Spike Lee directed movie,) and Honey Don’t, an Ethan Coen movie about a female detective investigating a series of murders. That one stars Margaret Qualey, Aubry Plaza, Charlie Day, and Chris Evans. There’s also Caught Stealing, (August 29th) a Darren Aronofsky movie that also looks like a Tarantino-inspired crime comedy and starts Auston Butler, Matt Smith, and Zoe Kravitz.
After Pulp Fiction came out, there were a whole series of Tarantino-inspired movies from Kiss of Death to Two Days in the Valley to Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead. Now, thirty years later it looks like with the end of this summer, we are right smack in the middle of a similar tidal wave, Three movies in particular…. Americana, Honey Don’t, and Caught Stealing, seem right up that alley. And all three look promising.
Here is the calendar once and for all…
July 11th: Superman
July 18th: I Know What You Did Last Summer
July 25th: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
August 1st: The Bad Guys, The Naked Gun
August 8th: Weapons
August 15th: Nobody 2, Americana
August 22nd: Highest to Lowest, Honey Don’t.
August 29th: Caught Stealing