What do you mean it’s too sunny outside to go see a movie? Who needs the great outdoors when you can watch those emoticons on your phone come to life, see Rihanna as a shape-shifting exotic dancer, or ogle Harry Styles’s freshly shorn locks as he tackles his first film role? With summer offerings this diverse, the beach/Grind/mall can wait.
War for the Planet of the Apes (July 14)
Is it just me, or do those apes get a little more human with every sequel (I swear Caesar looks more like my great uncle with each film). In this instalment of the man-versus-primate drama, Caesar (a motion-captured Andy Serkis) is on a revenge mission against Woody Harrelson.
Girls’ Trip (July 21)
Four friends reunite after five years apart for a raunchy weekend in New Orleans. With a few nods to Bridesmaids, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall and Tiffany Haddish tear up the town in a big-easy way.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (July 21)
Dane DeHaan and Carla Delevigne star in this future-world action film based on French comic books and directed by sci-fi maestro Luc Besson (The Fifth Element). It features scores of hideous futuristic monsters and Rihanna is one of them.
Dunkirk (July 21)
The most anticipated epic of the summer is helmed by Christopher Nolan, who gets historical in glorious 70mm with Dunkirk, the true story of how almost 400,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated after being pinned down by Germans on a French beach. Nolan is backed by an all-star cast including Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and last year’s Oscar winner Mark Rylance. Surprise casting choice: former boy-band heartthrob Harry Styles.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (July 28)
Al Gore continues in his crusade to staunch the bleeding from climate change in this behind-the-scenes doc from Paramount Pictures. Do something good for your brain and for your planet, and for God’s sake, ditch that plastic water bottle.
Atomic Blonde (July 28)
Charlize Theron plays an MI6 agent trying to stay alive while fellow intelligence operatives are being picked off one by one. Nuclear secrets, pesky Russians: Theron’s character kicks more ass than can be counted but most memorable is her use of a red stiletto to fend off danger.
Detroit (Aug 4)
Kathryn Bigelow directs John Boyega (Star Wars) in this true-life story of one the most intense urban uprisings in U.S. history: the 1967 Detroit riots. Bigelow pares down the unrest to an intense, intimate standoff between police and an interracial couple caught between cultures. It’s becoming tiresome to say the mistrust of police and hate crimes perpetrated in the film could be culled from today’s headlines, but there you have it.
The Emoji Movie (Aug 4)
We laughed when they made a film about a Disney theme park ride, so who knows: maybe someday there’ll be an Academy Award category for Best Emoticon in a Motion Picture. T.J. Miller, James Corden, Steven Wright, Jennifer Coolidge and Maya Rudolph lend their voices to the story of an emoji who yearns to have more than one expression. Sir Patrick Stewart is the Poop emoji, which alone is worth the price of admission.
The Dark Tower (Aug 4)
Based on Stephen King’s series of novels about ancient gunslingers and alternate worlds, the sci-fi thriller stars Idris Elba as the good guy and Matthew McConaghey as The Man In Black who threatens the existence of not one, but two, planets. (As if those Lincoln ads weren’t bad enough.)
The Glass Castle (Aug 11)
It’s uncertain how many of the myriad abuses recounted in Jeanette Walls’ best-selling memoir will make it into the film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12). Walls (Brie Larsson) and her siblings endure a poverty-stricken, nomadic childhood at the hands of unconventional parents (played by Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts) before going mainstream and having to confront the resentment, joy and anger of her childhood years all over again.
Wind River (Aug 11)
From Taylor Sheridan, the writer of Sicario and Hell or High Water, comes Wind River, an icy thriller set on a reservation in a remote, frigid pocket of Wyoming, least populous state in the U.S. Starring Elizabeth Olsen as an FBI investigator flown in to solve a murder and Jeremy Renner as a hunter who knows more than he’s letting on.
Step (Aug 18)
The girl-power movie of the summer is Step, a documentary chronicling the high school senior year of an all-girls step dance team in the tough streets of Baltimore. As they step their way through competitions and toward graduation, the girls look to a way out of a life of poverty and uncertainty.
Ingrid Goes West (Aug 18)
Stalking, the dark side of social media, is highlighted in this film starring Aubrey Plaza as a woman who will do anything to get close to her Instagram obsession (Elizabeth Olsen). The coal-black comedy created big buzz in Sundance.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (Aug 18)
The hilarity begins with the fact that Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” is used in the trailer, which features Ryan Reynolds playing bodyguard to the world’s most notorious hitman (Samuel L. Jackson). The buddy movie of the summer features slick suits, explosions and mother f-bombs galore.
Gook (Aug 18)
A young African-American girl finds refuge and friendship with the Korean-American owners of a shoe store in her rough neighbourhood. Then the Rodney King verdict hits and threatens a tenuous peace. Justin Chon (Twilight) stars and directs.
Logan Lucky (Aug 18)
The most madcap-looking flick of the summer is Logan Lucky, featuring Daniel Craig as a platinum blond jailbird, Adam Driver as a one-armed bartender, and Channing Tatum as the mastermind who decides to pull off a heist during a NASCAR race. Riley Keough, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Dwight Yoakham and Hilary Swank star; Steven Soderbergh (the Oceans movies, Magic Mike) directs.
Beach Rats (Aug 25)
An aimless teen with a dying father at home finds connection – but little solace – in chatroom conversations with older men, and later in the near-abandoned boardwalks and beaches of Brooklyn. Frankie (Harris Dickinson, in a much-touted debut performance) is jobless and rudderless, exploring his sexuality with vacillating ennui and vulnerability.
Polaroid (Aug 25)
That cute, vintage-inspired Polaroid camera you got for Christmas is haunted and can kill you, according to the makers of Polaroid, a horror film in which the subjects of a teen’s snap-happy spree all wind up dead. Skins alum Kathryn Prescott stars.
