Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? The Russo Brothers have the top-secret answers to the world’s biggest superhero cliffhanger as summer movie season unofficially opened in late April with their epic Avengers: Endgame. Expect variety to be a spice of life more potent than popcorn salt at the multiplex this summer with superheroes, talking plush toys, remakes of animated films, hot rod hijinks, glimpses at bygone eras, girl power extravaganzas and whimsical musicals coming to a theatre near you.
This month’s Marvel multiverse ensemble adventure is just the beginning of a summer superhero season also touting a globetrotting Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which Tom Holland’s arachni-teen faces off against Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio. The X-Men spinoff, June’s Dark Phoenix with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, will strive to keep the long-running series afloat longer than a Cher farewell tour.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes as Ryan Reynolds voices the title character of the film noir comedy adventure Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. In fact, every doll will have its day this season as Kelly Clarkson and a bunch of misfit toys sing their way through the animated UglyDolls, and “Chucky” returns for a new terror-filled round of Child’s Play.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, featuring Kyle “Coach Taylor” Chandler, and John Wick: Chapter 3, with Keanu Reeves still on the run, promise to give moviegoers the action they crave. But summer isn’t summer without the “Will Smith effect,” and this movie star’s presence or lack thereof can make or break a summer tentpole (Did you see the Smith-free Independence Day sequel? Neither did we!). Despite no Will in a title role, Men in Black: International marches on with Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth as the central alien-fighting duo. Smith’s actual summer movie is Aladdin, a live-action film of the hit Disney cartoon, and typically macho director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) is betting you ain’t never had a friend like “Blue Genie” Will Smith, and a whole new world of profits are sure to stimulate the economy of Agrabah.
Family films are center stage with another live-action Disney remake, Lion King (Beyoncé and Donald Glover are part of the crooning pride), plus Woody and Buzz are back for Toy Story 4. Even Dora the Explorer is making her primero trip to the big-screen in The Lost City of Gold.
Car buffs will revel in the action of Hobbs and Shaw, the movie spinoff of the Fast and Furious franchise with Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. Christian Bale and Matt Damon also star in Ford v. Ferrari, the true story of the battle between racecar rivals to win Le Mans in 1966.
Set in the Golden Age of filmmaking in 1969, Quentin Tarantino’s much-anticipated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood features Leo DiCaprio as a fading TV star, Brad Pitt as his stunt double and general retro craziness. Other prestige pics include Nicholas Hault as Middle Earth maker Tolkien, hallucinogenic horror movie Midsommar (some are calling it Wizard of Oz for adults-only, from the director of Hereditary) and the hypnotic The Last Black Man in San Francisco with Jimmie Fails as a man refurbishing his grandfather’s Victorian home in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left him behind.
Woman take center stage in The Kitchen, as in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen, starring Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Hadish as women with a score to settle. Director Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart features a sassy duo of straight-A women letting loose in epic fashion.
Summer is also a great time for movies with music. Yesterday is a drama by Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle in which the catalogue of The Beatles is mysteriously erased from memory in modern day, and the one guy on earth who remembers the Fab Four’s songs embarks on a mission to make bank by introducing the world to these catchy originals. Folks rhapsodic for musical biopics will be over the moon to watch the story of Elton John in Rocketman, embodied by The Kingsman’s Taron Egerton.
Get ready to binge screen!
Adam McKay’s genre-hopping Vice (B) is a distant cousin to Oliver Stone’s similarly dark comedic Natural Born Killers, admirable for creative storytelling about issues ripped out of the headlines but a bit confounding in what it’s intending to explore about its caricatures. Christian Bale is as good as you’ve heard brilliantly inhabiting the enigmatic role of Dick Cheney at various points in his life; he’s best in his quietest moments utterly lacking in expected reactions (his multiple heart attacks are treated like an occasional case of the hiccups). Amy Adams is magnificent as his deeply humanizing wife Lynn; she’s in fact his beating heart and just as ruthless. Many others in the ensemble simply feel like stunt casting, although Sam Rockwell does indeed make a spiffy W. The plot largely explores the build-up of the case for unilateral presidential (and strong vice presidential) authority and for the Iraq War. McKay so blissfully plays with the conventions of cinema – never trust a closing credit scroll or that a sequence won’t show up in iambic pentameter – that he often loses track of his central themes. In the film’s straight down the barrel of a shotgun portrayal of Wyoming’s famous son who stays pretty resolute in his principles and doesn’t care if you like him or not for it, you can find traces of character to please both sides of the aisle. But largely it’s a blistering assessment of power and an indictment of what the Cheney/Bush (or was it the other way around?) administration did with said power when they had it. There wasn’t a big record to clear up here, and the film doesn’t attempt to rose color it.
You may want to cover your eyes and frankly shut down all of your senses for Sandra Bullock’s overhyped dystopian suspense film playing exclusively on Netflix. Susanne Bier’s Bird Box (C) follows Bullock’s heroine who, along with a pair of precious children, embarks on an adventure through the woods and down a river blindfolded to avoid supernatural entities which cause people who lock eyes with them to take their own lives. Bullock and co-star Trevante Rhodes acquit themselves pretty well in the acting department, while a supporting cast including John Malkovich overplay wildly underwritten roles. The action and effects are quite average, and the end result is not worth all the fuss. It’s mostly a wobbly endeavor and a far cry from the similarly themed A Quiet Place, one of 2018’s best movies.
The DC universe’s fishing expedition for a worthwhile film remains an ongoing upstream journey. James Wan’s foray into surf and turf sci-fi fantasy Aquaman (C+) has all the subtlety of a Super Bowl commercial, with either a tidal wave of action as bait or a dreamboat dilf as its siren call to adult moviegoers over the age of 13. Awash in largely inconsistent or indifferent special effects, the film is basically a palace intrigue barnburner between Jason Mamoa as the quip-happy mer-man hero versus Patrick Wilson as the bland opposing heir to the throne of Atlantis. It’s all underwritten, overlong and underwhelming but not without its occasional charms (although the flowing underwater hair effect is not one of them). Kudos to Nicole Kidman for classing up the joint. Otherwise it’s lots of inconsequential action, some akin to wrestling matches. If the film were a dish at a restaurant, it would ironically need more salt.
Mimi Leder’s On the Basis of Sex (B) takes a page out of the Spielberg Lincoln playbook by telling the story of a pivotal player in American life through the lens of a single subplot that succinctly illuminates an individual’s singular belief system. In this new movie, that person is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (also chronicled in an awesome recent documentary 
Although there’s nary a line as memorable as Gran Torino’s “Get off my lawn!” this time around, Clint Eastwood’s The Mule (B+) continues the actor/auteur’s loving curmudgeonly entreaty to the next generation to be kind to people even when the words coming from your mouth fail to express it, to take time for those you love even if you weren’t always great at this gesture in the past, to seek inner peace inside your family over the clarion calls of the outside world and to quit living on your damn cellphone. Eastwood as both director and leading man imparts his brilliant life lessons through an unconventional, deliberately paced tale and brings out lived-in performances from cast mates ranging from Bradley Cooper and Michael Peña as federal agents, Andy Garcia and Ignacio Serricchio as drug-lords and Dianne Wiest as the protagonist’s estranged ex-wife. The plot answers the question about what second career an old-school gardener can take in the internet age, and it’s not greeter at the local discount superstore. Eastwood’s enlistment as an inauspicious 90-year-old drug courier for a ruthless Mexican cartel provides the spry senior with a new job involving seeing the countryside, singing along to favorite radio oldies and procuring ample envelopes of cash, before the runs get increasingly dangerous. Many of Eastwood’s late-career (or is this mid-career?) films contemplate Big Issues, and he and screenwriter Nick Shenk (the man behind the words of Torino as well) do a splendid job balancing tangible tension and action, a marvelously relatable flawed hero and a small dusting of issues related to crime, class and race to be sorted out at your own leisure. Some mild quibbles include the hero’s occasional muttering of self-conscious soliloquy under his breath, inconsistencies about his spectrum of naiveté, some tender moments that get a little too treacly and pacing that could be a good bit tighter. But overall Eastwood’s metaphors are in full bloom, and he’s no passive rider in chronicling the American story. He’s still a major voice making movies that matter.
All hail Saoirse Ronan! As the titular star of Josie Rourke’s absorbing mostly historical drama Mary Queen of Scots (B), the fierce young actress adds to her sterling repertoire of strong female roles and brings pulse pounding verve to what could have been a dull period piece. The actress is commanding and imaginative and summons viewers to follow her anywhere. Eschewing some of the wilder audacity of another costume drama on the market right now, Rourke’s entertaining film is straightforward in plot and purpose, but it’s a fitting and feminist take on what royal women have to do to maintain power even as sovereigns surrounded by manipulative men. Under pancaked prosthetics, Margot Robbie successfully disappears into the role of Elizabeth I of England, rival to the throne versus Ronan’s Mary Stuart of Scotland. The film gets high marks for inclusive casting and upping stakes often as the women contemplate various pathways to extend their respective royal bloodlines. In addition to the strong women, Jack Lowden, David Tennant, Guy Pearce, Adrian Lester and Ismael Cruz Córdova shine in the ensemble. The film handles a few pivotal sequences a bit oddly, but overall it’s rousing.
This is a case of a director already known for playing with too many toys still trying to build a better mousetrap while the perfectly good cheese sitting right before him simply needs a more restrained pairing. Robert Zemeckis’s treacly Welcome to Marwen (D+) dramatizes events about a real-life artist who, after experiencing a traumatic assault rendering him frail and without memory, picks up the pieces through building a miniature city populated with dolls representing the support system and demons he must confront in his healing. Steve Carell’s sincere central performance isn’t well served by the director’s fussy technical gobbledegook and cloying blasts in tone between an unreal real world and a half-baked fantasy story. The filmmaker constantly pays self-homage to many of his other, better works and transports viewers right out of the moment (was a Back to the Future flying time travel device or a backwards Death Becomes Her head entirely necessary in telling this tender tale?). The dolls are unappealing stiffs, waxy and wobbly in the same way Zemeckis’s Polar Express characters’ eyes were moribund. It looked too much like the Team America squad had arrived to teach everybody a manipulative morality play. The first half of the film was so deficient in dialogue and storytelling that it was a pleasant surprise midway for some strangely moving moments to claw through all the claptrap. Singular acting kudos go to Leslie Mann, fun to watch with all her wonder and whimsy in an underwritten role. The story’s occasional snatches of sentiment are undercut by the filmmaker’s balderdash, tossing in hate crimes and opioid addiction subplots just in case there’s anything else of seeming significance he can trot out onto the playroom floor. Simply unable to let the allegorical material speak for itself, gadget happy Zemeckis is still playing in his Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump met Beowulf world while his ho-Hummell misfire plops into the porcelain pot.