Cinema Summer 2023
Last year, I don’t think I saw any new films in a theater between the months of May and October. I wanted to see Nope in theaters, but yada yada yada, COVID, new puppy, etc.
This summer, I feel I’ll be heading to the the movies a lot.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse just came out, and considering the last installment was probably the best Spider-Man film (in an increasingly wide field), I know I want to see this one on a big screen. It feels like the MCU took a big swing on multiverse stories so far and mostly whiffed it, so it would be nice to see this film stick the landing.
In a couple of weeks The Blackening, a comedy horror with an all-black cast and the tagline “They can’t all die first” is dropping, and for that line alone, I’m in.
Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City comes right after that. The French Dispatch a few years ago was good, and I enjoyed Isle of Dogs, but I’m looking forward to a live-action, non-anthology story from Anderson. It’s been an awfully long time since The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I adored.
Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird is one of the best coming-of-age films of the 21st century, and now she’s doing a Barbie movie. Sure, count me in. Plus, any movie where Ryan Gosling gets to play a goofy weirdo is a treat. (Here’s hoping that the Barbie Cinematic Universe includes an award-winning Ken trilogy.)
Christopher Nolan is back with Oppenheimer, and the lead is played by Cillian Murphy. Say. No. More. Murphy is one of my favorite working actors, and I skipped RIGHT OVER Tenet, so I haven’t had a new Nolan movie in a while. I’m psyched.
Disney’s new Haunted Mansion looks like it could be kind of good? Maybe? Rosario Dawson and Lakeith Stanfield? With Danny DeVito? Forget about it. If it’s good, what a fun surprise. If it’s not, I won’t be heartbroken.
And ending on true horror, The Last Voyage of the Demeter comes out at the end of the summer. It’s from the same director who created Troll Hunter, a terrific, Scandinavian horror film that not enough people have seen, and it follows the ship that brings Dracula to London in Bram Stoker’s novel. A good vampire movie is hard to find (I think Flannery O’Connor said that), and this one looks sick.
All in all, I’m looking forward to a lot of trips to Alamo Drafthouse this summer. And with the writer’s strike kicking up (and rightfully so), I want to enjoy this bounty of good films, because we’ve got some more lulls in our future.