It still feels, as I groused last month, that the excitement of The Movies Are Back! has somewhat deflated in the face of a summer blockbuster season that has largely consisted thus far of Top Gun: Maverick and “the other ones”. But at least there will be more movies in July than in June, and one of those has every reason to be at least big enough – financially, at least – so that there will be two actual real-deal Big Movies by the time things are said and done. Still, I look at this list and feel a lot of “hm”, and precious damn little “ooh!”
1.7.2022
For example: “hm, Mr. Malcolm’s List, I wish that looked less… fucking boring”. Because the mission of self-consciously casting a Regency costume drama romcom with a very calculated mixed-race cast is at least interesting, though it is extremely the only thing about this horribly bland-looking Jane Austen knock-off for which the adjective “interesting” could possibly apply. Like, why not just make an actual Austen movie with this cast, and then you’ll at least have snappy dialogue? And then the rights would be free, as opposed to paying the publisher of some random-ass 2020 novel that I refuse to believe actually exists.
Though that’s still nicer thoughts than I have to spare for Minions: The Rise of Gru, which is less “hm” than it is “oh fucking gross, get it off of me”.
8.7.2022
I do wish I could be more excited for Thor: Love and Thunder, which will of course be the biggest hit of the month by no small margin & probably the last movie that We All Have To See until like November. It looks very much in keeping with 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, one of the last Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that I genuinely enjoyed watching. But in those intervening five years, Taika Waititi has plummeted from “one of our best comic voices in the movies” to “a pernicious force for cinematic evil” in my estimation (and not only because of his dreadful Jojo Rabbit, though that’s certainly a big part of it), and the MCU itself has gone from largely annoying to the embodiment of our culture’s slow death by strangulation. Still, it looks colorful and has Russell Crowe in a small role, apparently to be shamelessly campy. So that’s something.
The good news is that, in a month almost as understocked with interesting looking limited releases as with wannabe blockbusters, we’re getting a new Claire Denis film coming out. And I regret to say that I have been specifically warned against having my expectations too high for Both Sides of the Blade by people I trust, but the arrival of a new Claire Denis film is always a matter for great anticipation, even if it ends up as one of her not-terribly-infrequent missteps.
15.7.2022
We’re basically just looking at a bunch of films being dutifully lined up to serve as sacrifices to Thor‘s second weekend, but I will confess to being weirdly obsessed with the animated “dog becomes a samurai” movie Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank. It looks awful and feels like some kind of money-laundering or tax write-off scheme. For one thing, it feels like it’s been coming soon for like six years now; for another, it somehow is an official remake of Blazing Saddles, and it even has Mel Brooks on-hand as an executive producer. It feels like an actually cursed object in some way, like if you watch it, you’ll disappear off the face of the earth and nobody will remember you ever existed. I might try to see it opening night.
Elsewhere, two adaptations of beloved books from very different generations, both trying target what feels like awfully similar audiences, which isn’t how counter-programming works. One of these is Where the Crawdads Sing, which has a solid hook – feral girl in the bayou gets accused of murder – but the ad campaign, led by executive producer Reese Witherspoon earnestly discussing how important she things this material is, is just so repulsively aggressive in trying to make us understand what a great prestige picture this is going to be. Just, like, do a bayou melodrama, please. Those are fun. You’re making this sound un-fun.
The other adaptation is Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, which feels like a monkey’s paw-type situation, where somebody says, “do you want a movie starring both Lesley Manville and Isabelle Huppert?” and I say, “yes, please!!!” and then it turns out to be this gormless Mrs Henderson Presents thing.
22.7.2022
Jordan Peele is making his third movie, and based on the little bit that has trickled out through the mystery box ad campaign, it seems to be yet a third new tone after Get Out was a satiric thriller with comic overtones and Us was a weird hallucinatory family drama. I’d love for him to keep going on in that latter mode – I’m not at all ashamed to say that I think Us is by a considerable margin the better of his films – but Nope looks like it’s going a bit more in the direction of comedy still, or at least mysterious sci-fi thrills in a particularly broad mood. I can’t say that anything I’ve seen so far other than Daniel Kaluuya’s deadpan line readings in the trailers has actually started pulling me in, but Poole is such an obvious movie-movie guy that I think it’s safe to assume the film will at least be a fun, easy sit.
29.7.2022
Even in the same month as Minions 2 and The Hank Movie, the character animation in DC League of Super Pets looks like a very special crime against art and insult to the idea of a humane universe. Just seeing stills of it makes me feel unwell. Seeing it in motion makes my eyes water. And the voice acting sounds like Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are downright contemptuous of the idea of “trying at least slightly”. It looks like the most hideous bastardisation of the beautiful art of the animated film we’ve been forced to endure in, quite literally, several years. I’m definitely going to see it opening night.
Last up, and maybe least, I don’t know – it’s the only one of the month’s nine wide releases that I am for sure not going to see, at any rate – is Vengeance, in which writer-director-star B.J. Novak tries his hand at cultural satire that looks like it was written by Extremely Online six-year-olds.