The summer movie season is upon us, which means a seemingly endless pile-up of superheroes, reboots, and sequels will crowd the multiplexes. While a very select few show some promise, we’ve set out to highlight a vast range of titles–40 in total–that will arrive over the next four months, many of which we’ve already given our stamp of approval.
There’s bound to be more late-summer announcements in the coming months, and a number of titles will arrive on VOD day-and-date, so follow us on Twitter for the latest updates. In the meantime, see our top 40 picks for what to watch this summer below, in chronological order, and let us know what you’re looking forward to most in the comments.
Knock Down the House (Rachel Lears; May 1)
Rachel Lears’ Knock Down the House is a fun, emotionally powerful, inspiring look at the incredible wave of would-be politicians that sought, in 2018, to challenge status quo Democrats and enact meaningful change—all while refusing money from Wall Street fat cats and big business super PACs. – Jake H. (full review)
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas; May 3)
Who needs a middle man’s subjectivity when you have algorithms predicting what people will like? Critics don’t matter much in Olivier Assayas’ talkative Non-Fiction, but they are not the only supposedly anachronistic relic to be thrown out of the window in this gentle and profoundly compassionate human comedy that draws from the ever-widening rift between old and new trends in the publishing industry to conjure up a tale of societal changes and those caught in between them. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Shadow (Zhang Yimou; May 3)
With its gorgeously choreographed sword duels, sabers slicing through paddles of blood and rain, watercolor bi-chromatic palettes and sumptuous costumes, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow (Ying) is a film of visual charms. To enter into the Fifth Generation maestro’s latest period piece is to be invited to marvel at a 116-minute long dance – a stunning return to form from a director who’d previously ventured into semi-autobiographical terrain with the 2014 moving Coming Home, and later veered into the bombastic Chinese-cum-Matt Damon blockbuster epic letdown The Great Wall (2016). Shadow brings heart and spectacle together, and the result is a bombastic martial arts wuxia replete with duels of breath-taking beauty that will please longtime Zhang acolytes and newbies alike. – Leonardo G. (full review)
The Biggest Little Farm (John Chester; May 10)
After getting evicted from their apartment in Los Angeles due to taking in a stray dog, filmmaker John Chester and food writer Molly Chester decide to try and cultivate a storybook farm in The Biggest Little Farm. The latest entry into the canon of films exploring food and ecosystems, like Aube Giroux’s Modified and Andrew Grace’s Eating Alabama, the documentary works as well as it does because of a reliance on its relatable subject and the director as its narrator. – John F. (full review)
Pasolini (Abel Ferrara; May 10)
“Cinema is a never-ending long take,” Pier Paolo Pasolini once said. “And death is a form of instant editing of a whole life, picking and arranging our most significant moments.” There’s a lot of cinema and one devastating death in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini, but instead of a series of “most significant moments,” this unconventional biopic limits its scope to the last day in the life of a writer, poet, director, and leading intellectual voice in Italy’s post-war era. – Tommaso T. (full review)
The Third Wife (Ash Mayfair; May 15)
It’s 19th century Vietnam and fourteen-year-old May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) has just been married to a wealthy landowner named Hung (Long Le Vu). She wears a genuine smile on her face, this next chapter in life as hopeful as it is scary. She has two other women to help steer her through womanhood, motherhood, and sexual pleasure (Nu Yên-Khê Tran’s first wife Ha and Mai Thu Huong Maya’s second wife Xuan) and a future of comfort awaiting her with but one goal: bearing a son. A bloody sheet is displayed to represent consummation; a growing belly to prove no time was wasted for conception. And as the days progress with less and less to do thanks to servants, May’s eyes and mind begin to gradually wander. – Jared M. (full review)
The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg; May 17)
The Souvenir melds two well-trodden subgenres and through Joanna Hogg’s refreshingly unique vision makes each feel entirely original. Her much-anticipated return after 2013’s Exhibition tells both a painful addiction story and a behind-the-scenes look at film school struggles as we follow Julie (a beautiful debut performance by Honor Swinton Byrne). The daughter of Tilda Swinton (who also briefly turns up), Swinton Byrne is in every scene, and steals them all. Akin to the revelatory introduction to Tom Hiddleston in Hogg’s first two films, Unrelated and Archipelago, she is the lifeblood of The Souvenir, which follows doomed lovers in a story that is conveyed with feels mined from achingly personal memories. – Jordan R. (full review)
Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi; May 17)
Following his riveting five-hour-plus drama Happy Hour, Ryusuke Hamaguchi is back with Asako I & II, in which he employs more stylistic flourishes in an absorbing riff on Vertigo. Based on Tomoka Shibasaki’s novel Netemo Sametemo, it follows a woman who falls in love, but her significant other disappears. Two years later, another man appears with a striking resemblance to her former lover. Less melodramatic than that plot synopsis sounds, Asako is fascinating in its use of surreal touches and enveloping playfulness, making for one of 2019’s most delightful cinematic experiences. – Jordan R.
Aniara (Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja; May 17)
The title shares its name with a city-size spacecraft ferrying humans from Earth to Mars in barely three weeks. It’s a routine trip that’s never run into problems with many passengers already having family on the red planet to greet them upon arrival. But there’s a first time for everything as a small field of debris forces Captain Chefone (Arvin Kananian) off course. Unfortunately a screw breaches their hull anyway, pushing their nuclear fuel supply to critical mass. Expelling it may save them for the moment, but without it they cannot steer. So despite having enough self-sustaining electricity and algae (for air and food), there’s no way to return onto their necessary trajectory. Either a celestial body interrupts their path to slingshot back or they simply drift forever. – Jared M. (full review)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (Chad Stahelski; May 17)
John Wick is back, and for the first time he’ll be doing his business during the summer movie slate. Once again directed by Chad Stahelski, the story follows Keanu Reeves’ character on the run after the cliffhanger that ended the last chapter, which featured a global call-out that put a price on his head. Also starring Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Jason Mantzoukas (!), Anjelica Huston, and Ian McShane, we’re only a few weeks away from what’s shaping up to be the action spectacle of the summer. – Jordan R.
Photograph (Ritesh Batra; May 17)
Street photographer Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) makes a living snapping tourists in front of the Gateway of India. He has a simple sales pitch: the sun you feel, the wind you hear, and the people around you will be gone when you leave, but you can keep the feeling with a single photograph. This detailed attention to the environment is also the greatest strength of Ritesh Batra’s Photograph, a lush, willfully low-key romantic drama that explores the age-old tale of how the class divide is a barrier for what the heart may desire. – Jordan R. (full review)
The Wandering Soap Opera (Raúl Ruiz; May 17)
Tackling this posthumous release from renowned experimental filmmaker Raúl Ruiz with limited knowledge of telenovelas and the subtleties of early ‘90s Chilean politics is like trying to eat a rough cut of meat with a butter knife: there’s every chance it’s delicious — it might even be good for you — but it remains difficult to pin down. Indeed, there is a lot going on in The Wandering Soap Opera (La telenovela errante), a previously unfinished project that has been completed for release by Ruiz’s widow and long time editor Valeria Sarmiento. – Rory O. (full review)
Booksmart (Olivia Wilde; May 24)
While Olivia Wilde’s SXSW hit and directorial debut Booksmart was praised mostly for its laughs from its festival premiere, it certainly has its moments in that category, but it’s most endearing as a story of friendship. Starring Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, the coming-of-age, R-rated comedy follows a pair of studious high school friends trying to let loose on the day before graduation. The film certainly owes a debt to Superbad and the others that came before it, but after a rocky, over-the-top first half, it blooms into a something entirely and beautifully its own. – Jordan R.
Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt; May 24)
If the protagonist of Diamantino reminds you of a certain celebrity it is, as we can only presume, not accidental. The character in question–for whom this hallucinatory tale is named after–is a professional footballer who plays up front for the Portuguese national team. He sports diamond stud earrings (one in each ear), has a glow best described as maintained bronze, and apparently has yet to find a greater joy in life than pulling off his jersey after scoring a winning goal in order to better share with the world his rippling abs. Are we there yet? – Rory O. (full review)
Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor; May 31)
Halfway through Dominga Sotomayor’s movingly tender coming-of-age tale Too Late to Die Young(Tarde Para Morir Joven), my mind jolted back to a movie I saw and instantly fell for a couple of months prior, Carla Simón’s Summer 1993. It took me a while to figure out why. Summer 1993 is set in early 1990s Catalunya; Sotomayor’s takes place at the decade’s outset, but on the opposite side of the world: a commune nestled in the arid cordillera towering above Chile’s capital, Santiago. Yet at some fundamental level, the two films speak the same language. Underlying Sotomayor’s follow-up to her 2012 feature debut and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday is a deep-seated nostalgia – the same longing for a long-gone era that rang achingly true in Summer 1993. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Domino (Brian De Palma; May 31)
Only Brian De Palma would make a terrorism thriller in which he’s most interested in their filmmaking methods. His latest and long-awaited, Domino, is hugely entertaining in spurts (mostly setpieces and high melodrama), if noticeably compromised elsewhere (transitional scenes perhaps hacked up in editing and standard crime drama machinations). Another bombastic Pino Donaggio score layers nearly every moment and José Luis Alcaine’s cinematography is a peculiar mix of buoyantly colorful and DTV-esque flatness. Capping things off with an I-can’t-believe-he-did-this banger of an ending, De Palma may not have had full control over the production, but what’s left has enough of his mark to make for what’s sure to be one of the summer’s most entertaining films. – Jordan R.
The Image You Missed (Donal Foreman; May 31)
A few minutes into Donal Foreman’s The Image You Missed, a voice-over comes to an abrupt stop: “each film is a mission impossible, but this one here, it was the most…” It’s a truncated snippet from an interview given in French by Foreman’s father, Arthur “Art” MacCaig, the late Irish-American director who raised to fame after his resolutely partisan documentary on Ireland’s Troubles, The Patriot Game (1979), and who here acts as the epicenter of a deeply personal and powerfully moving documentary-essay that weaves together an estranged parent-son relationship with a two-handed portrait of a country the two both filmed and experienced – in markedly different ways. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov; May 31)
At a time when freedom of expression titters on the brink in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there’s something thrillingly contemporary about Kirill Serebrennikov’s Soviet-set musical drama. Early 1980s St. Petersburg proves a breeding ground of underground music as rebellion, however tacit, emerges in home-grown rock and punk. Leto’s melancholic ode to rough-and-ready counterculture proves ever more relevant as Serebrennikov, himself an avant-garde theater director, remains under house arrest in Moscow. – Ed F. (full review)
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese; June 12)
Martin Scorsese continues his long, strong tradition of music-focused docs by focusing once more on Bob Dylan, but don’t expect something kin with his more strait-laced (and excellent all the same) No Direction Home. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is described as “part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream” that “captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975″ and earns the designation of “story” rather than “portrait” or some such. (Let’s just open a dialogue about how documentary films are also narrative films, it’ll be fun.) Appearing in one of his only interviews this decade, Dylan is joined by “many of the alumni of that period” — a list that could, reasonably, include Joan Baez, Sam Shepard, Joni Mithcell, T-Bone Burnett, Ringo Starr, and Patti Smith. While no one is confirmed — to say nothing of the fact that Shepard died in 2017 — the film has apparently been in development for some number of years, perhaps as many as ten. – Leonard P
The Chambermaid (Lila Aviles; June 12)
Set entirely within the confines of a luxurious Mexico City hotel, mostly in rooms and service corridors, The Chambermaid is a fascinating observational drama and occasional allegory for the haves and have-nots. Gabriela Cartol stars as Evelina, a 24-year old single mother working on her GED in a program provided (and later canceled) by the hotel’s union. Like Blue Crush, another film that contained explicit scenes of hotel maids cleaning up after guests, The Chambermaid doesn’t shy away from the usual demands of the job, from a guest who insists on having his room stocked with five times the amenities he needs to a wealthy Argentina woman who calls Eveline to her room to essentially babysit. When her son takes to Eveline, she’s given a tentative offer to leave the hotel behind for a new life in Argentina. – John F. (full review)
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch; June 14)
I don’t need to further sold on a Jim Jarmusch, but when it’s a zombie comedy and it stars Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, and Tom Waits, consider our hype through the roof. Set to open Cannes Film Festival, it’ll thankfully arrive quickly in theaters, hopefully being one of the spooky bright spots of the summer. – Jordan R.
Our Time (Carlos Reygadas; June 14)
At least based of its original title of Where Life is Born, director Carlos Reygadas’ fifth feature film from the outset seemed to promise the ultimate realization of his festival-approved Transcendental Vision. Yet what we finally received instead six years after his last feature is a three-hour cuckold drama that’s thankfully at least a little closer in spirit to the lizard-brained surrealism of Post Tenebras Lux as opposed to his banalization of Dreyer (and still art-house calling card) Silent Light. One almost wants to describe it as admirably awkward; the feeling of both watching a train-wreck unfold in (very) slow-motion and a work of art that very boldly and genuinely seeks to please no one. – Ethan V. (full review)
Yesterday (Danny Boyle; June 28)
There’s a trace of comedy running through much of Danny Boyle’s work and for his next film, it looks to be a bit more full-blown. He’s teamed with Richard Curtis for the new musical comedy Yesterday starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran, and Ana de Armas. The high-concept story follows an upcoming artist who is the only person to remember The Beatles. Looking to be Boyle’s return to a full-blown crowd-pleaser, with Curtis’ influence felt throughout, it’ll close Tribeca Film Festival, so look for our review soon. – Jordan R.
Midsommar (Ari Aster; July 3)
After Ari Aster’s Hereditary became A24’s highest-grossing film, earning over $77 million at the global box-office, it was a no brainer that his next feature would see the light of day sooner. Starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, and Will Poulter, Midsommar follows a young couple’s vacation to a Swedish village, where they discover the residents’ peculiar traditions and rituals. As one of the main characters carries pain from a recently deceased loved one, these rituals become cloaked in a sense of dread. “It’s an apocalyptic breakup movie,” Aster has said of the project, which gives off major Wicker Man vibes in the first trailer. Recently moved up to a precisely mid-summer release, we can’t wait to see the horror he has up his sleeves. – Jordan R.
Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham; July 10)
If there is an image to best introduce audiences to the grimy cinematic world of Ray & Liz–the remarkable debut feature of Turner prize-nominated visual artist Richard Billingham–it might be, fittingly, the very first one to hit the screen: that of a cracked, burnt-out light bulb filmed dangling beneath a nicotine-stained ceiling. Billingham has spent much of his career as an artist documenting and, in his short films, dramatizing the lives of his father Raymond (a chronic alcoholic played here by Patrick Romer and, as a younger man, by Justin Salinger ) and mother Elizabeth (Deirdre Kelly and–best of all–Ella Smith) and Ray & Liz could be viewed as a culmination of that work. It’s an immersive poetic-realist dive into the artist’s fractured memories of his parents during the time he spent growing up in Birmingham in the ‘70s and ‘80s. – Rory O. (full review)
The Farewell (Lulu Wang; July 12)
There’s something special about The Farewell. Written and directed by Lulu Wang and starring Awkwafina, this is the kind of film that feels specific and universal all at once. The film opens with the title card: “Based on an actual lie.” Wang builds this narrative from personal experience: her family chose to hide a cancer diagnosis from her grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen) and spend the final days celebrating instead of mourning. Or at least that was the idea. A fairly elaborate plan is hatched, involving a sham wedding that forces an abrupt reunion back in China. – Dan M. (full review)
The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns; July 12)
If Fight Club taught us one thing and one thing only it is to never underestimate the power of a bored single man with nothing to lose. And that is, in some ways, also the central thesis of Riley Stearns’ delightfully twisted The Art of Self-Defense, a pitch-black comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg as sad sack Casey, a lonely auditor who, in the film’s opening scene, is mocked at a distance in French by a couple. He, unfortunately, has become proficient in French, working his way through cassette tapes on his commute to work. He’s an easy and perhaps asexual target, turning to a meticulously photocopied men’s lifestyle magazine for advice and masterbatorial materials. – John F. (full review)
Sword of Trust (Lynn Shelton; July 12)
After finding her voice in humorous, touching films like Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister, Lynn Shelton has dedicated more time recently to the world of TV with GLOW, Love, and more. She’s now back with her latest film, Sword of Trust, which premiered at SXSW and will arrive in theaters this summer. Starring Marc Maron, Jillian Bell, Michaela Watkins, Jon Bass, Toby Huss, and Dan Bakkedahl, it follows the peculiar story of attempting to pawn off an inherited sword purported to be from the Civil War. – Jordan R.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino; July 26)
As it pertains to Hollywood studio tentpoles, nothing this summer arrives with more anticipated (and dread, when it comes the thinkpieces) than Quentin Tarantino’s Manson era movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The delightful trailer was the ideal tease for the film, which centers on a TV actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and stuntman buddy’s (Pitt) attempt to enter the studio system, all the while living next door to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) in the summer of 1969. Also featuring Al Pacino, Bruce Dern, Timothy Olyphant, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Scoot McNairy, Zoë Bell, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Luke Perry, and many more, it’s not known yet if the director will finish in time to premiere at Cannes, but regardless, we’ll see the final results in just a few months. – Jordan R.
The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent; Aug. 2)
Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale features some of the most atrocious on-screen violence in recent memory. It is a cauldron of blood, murders, and rapes so unflinching in vividness and brutality as to make it impossible to go through its 136 minutes without ever turning away from the screen, let alone to come out of it untouched. But it is also, in a way that’s indissolubly bound to role that violence plays in Kent’s work, and to the depiction she offers of it, one of the most memorable works in its genre – a parable that never turns violence into a spectacle, but is resolutely committed to expose the poisonous double prism of racism and sexism it feeds upon. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Luce (Julias Onah; Aug. 2)
Star of the debate team, straight A student, soon to be high school valedictorian: from his handsome looks and stellar CV, Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is the shining example of the all-American teenager—minus, of course, his history as a child adopted from war-torn Eritrea. As a name, Luce means “light” in Latin, the idea being Luce, a now-beaming youth in the Arlington, Va., area, was removed from unimaginable darkness. But there’s another spin on the allegory here that’s just as meaningful: when people are placed into boxes—stereotypes, to be clear—only so much light can filter in and out of them. – Jake H. (full review)
La Flor (Mariano Llinás; August 2)
I am starting this review of La Flor from a segment that in the film’s Borgesian labyrinthic narrative would probably go unnoticed, because I think it goes some way toward making sense of that early remark Llinás had made in the prelude, his head bent over a notebook, his hands sketching La Flor’s structure through an intricate series of lines and arrows merging into a skeleton flower. This film is about its four actresses in the sense that it is a testament to how their craft developed through time. And the feeling of awe that transpires from that late montage, the feeling of having watched four artists grow, is indissolubly contingent on the film’s colossal length. – Leonardo G. (full review)
In the Shadow of the Moon (Jim Mickle; August 9)
With his last film being released in 2014, we’ve been waiting some time for Jim Mickle to return after Cold in July and now he’s back, reteaming with Michael C. Hall. Set for a Netflix release, In the Shadow of the Moon follows a police offer (Boyd Holbrook) on his way to becoming a detective as he tracks down a serial killer. As the synopsis reads, “When the killer’s crimes begin to defy all scientific explanation, Locke’s obsession with finding the truth threatens to destroy his career, his family, and possibly his sanity.” Initially reported to include some sci-fi elements, we’re looking forward to Mickle and company delivering another hard-boiled genre outing. – Jordan R.
One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang, Lynn Zhang; August 9)
Winner of the top documentary prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Nanfu Wang follows up Hooligan Sparrow and I Am Another You with the harrowing One Child Nation, co-directed with Jialing Zhang. As the title previews, it explores China’s One Child Policy, which banned couples from having more than one child. Despite the law ending a few years ago, the ripple effects are devastating, as on display in this essential documentary. – Jordan R.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Richard Linklater; August 16)
Unfortunately getting the Under the Silver Lake treatment from Annapurna, we sincerely hope that Richard Linklater’s repeatedly delayed Where’d You Go, Bernadette isn’t as much of a dud as its distributor thinks it is. Led by Cate Blanchett, the adaptation of Maria Semple’s novel, narrated by the 15-year-old-daughter of an agoraphobic architect named Bernadette Branch, follows her as she goes missing prior to a family trip to Antarctica. Also starring Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer, Laurence Fishburne, Troian Bellisario, and James Urbaniak, here’s hoping this defies low expectations. – Jordan R.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger; August 16)
In 1961, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Africa under mysterious circumstances. Beginning as an investigation into his still-unsolved death, the trail that Mads Brügger follows in Cold Case Hammarskjöld is one that expands to implicate some of the world’s most powerful governments in unfathomably heinous crimes. Without revealing the specifics of the jaw-dropping revelations in this thoroughly engrossing documentary, if there’s any justice, what is brought to light will cause global attention and a demand for some kind of retribution. – Jordan R. (full review)
The Load (Ognjen Glavonić; Aug. 30)
The Load is about a man and a van. We’re in Yugoslavia in 1999, where the rumble of NATO bombers can be heard in the distance. The man’s name is Vlada (Leon Luvec) and his job is to drive a container full of who-knows-what from Kosovo to Belgrade, no questions asked. His consignment and consigners are not divulged. Even he sits uneasily in his driver’s seat as worrying clanks emit from his cargo. In times of war what is out of sight can so easily slip out of mind. – Rory O. (full review)
In Fabric (Peter Strickland; August TBD)
In Fabric is a film that’s wholly retro, and not just in how writer/director (and emerging remix artist) Peter Strickland embraces ’70s Euro-horror tropes (and even judging by one commercial glimpsed on a television; a little bit of vaporwave). Rather, the director longs for a time before Amazon decimated the retail industry, one when a person’s hopes and desires hinged on a trip to that one certain shop. – Ethan V. (full review)
Love, Antosha (Garret Price; August TBD)
From international stardom with Star Trek to roles in films from Jeremy Saulnier, Paul Schrader, and Joe Dante, Garret Price’s new documentary Love, Antosha, covers all sides of Anton Yelchin, an actor taken too soon. We spoke with Price and producer Drake Doremus, who collaborated with the actor in Like Crazy, at the Sundance Film Festival about making their documentary shortly after Yelchin’s death. One can read the conversation here, in which we also discussed the ethics of sharing his private diaries and erotic photos he took, along with industry-wide contributions of Yelchin material for the project. – Joshua E.
Midnight Family (Luke Lorentzen; Summer TBD)
The startling fact that there are only 45 official ambulances amongst Mexico City’s 9 million-plus population sets the intense, harrowing stage for Midnight Family. Following one family that runs their own operation, Luke Lorentzen takes an intimate look at the dedication required for such a task with a keen eye on the economic toll. With patients not requiring to pay, even if they may have died if not for this medical help, it creates a complicated situation when asking for the bill–and that’s only if they can beat out all the other private ambulances racing towards the scene of an accident. While one wishes this portrait was a little more fleshed out, the snapshot we get certainly sends a jolt, particularly in an unforgettable scene involving familial neglect. – Jordan R.
Honorable Mentions
Even with spotlighting 40 films, there’s much more to look forward to. One film unfortunately not to look forward to this summer seems to be James Gray’s Ad Astra, which the new Disney-owned Fox seems to be too lazy to move off its release date of just a few weeks from now, but hopefully we’ll get an update soon.
Also arriving is a few Sundance titles we wish we liked a bit better, including Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (May 3), I Am Mother (June 7), Late Night (June 7), The Last Black Man in San Francisco (June 14), Them That Follow (June 21), Corporate Animals (August 9), Blinded By the Light (August 16), and Brittany Runs a Marathon (August 23).
There’s also Long Shot (May 3), Werner Herzog’s new doc Meeting Gorbachev (May 3), Detective Pikachu (May 10), Edward Zwick’s Trial by Fire ( May 17), The Edge of Democracy (June 19), The Mountain (July 26), and the TIFF premieres Maiden (June 28), Skin (July 26) and Freaks (August 23).
What are you watching this summer?