You's a bitch.
AMC/Regal/Cineworld Theaters may go bankrupt (CINEWORLD GOES DOWN!)
- Thread starter 850credit
- Start date
Opened up... lot of places opened up, 10,000s at baseball, nba games... I was at the casino fri for the 6th time in the past few months since it opened back up.. thousands upon thousands of people inside of it every single time.. open up not pandemic over
You's a bitch.
You'll be ok
Nobody sits near the handicap sections in the front unless it's Friday or Saturday night anyway
Grab your oxygen tank and shuffle off to the movies.
It was suppose to be the climax to all these movies and I think it would have came close without the pandemic closing things down but we will never know but I get what your saying. AMC problem now is the games being paid with it on Wall Street not the theaters.
Summer Movies 2021: Here’s What’s Coming to the Big (and Small) Screen
From an urban musical to a demonic possession to a hectic first date, here’s everything you need to know about this season in film.
A scene from “In the Heights,” Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes.Credit...Warner Bros.
By Ben Kenigsberg
May 28, 2021
Here is a list of noteworthy films scheduled this summer. Release dates and platform are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.
June 1
CHANGING THE GAME (on Hulu) This documentary profiles three transgender athletes and their high school sports careers, with a particular focus on Mack Beggs, a transgender man who as a teenager wanted to compete in boys’ wrestling but, because of a rule in Texas, could only wrestle against girls.
June 4
ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE (in theaters) The biases of surveillance — by the eye, by police body cameras and in the composite photography of the eugenics proponent Francis Galton, for example — are the subject of this haunting, wide-ranging essay film from the Baltimore experimental director Theo Anthony (“Rat Film”). It won a special jury prize at Sundance.
THE ANCIENT WOODS (in theaters) The biologist and filmmaker Mindaugas Survila investigates the floral and faunal mysteries of a mostly untouched forest in Lithuania. Film Forum says the movie, poised between nature documentary and folklore, is suitable for children “whose attention spans have not been destroyed by technology.”
BAD TALES (in virtual cinemas) This Italian feature, winner of best screenplay at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, pulls back the facade of family life in a seemingly idyllic Rome suburb.
THE CARNIVORES (in theaters and on demand) The illness of a dog triggers the unraveling of a couple (Lindsay Burdge and Tallie Medel). The trailer promises ample servings of the dark and the grotesque.
CITY OF ALI (in virtual cinemas) Other documentaries have captured the highlights of Muhammad Ali’s career, but “City of Ali” deals specifically with his life in Louisville, Ky., where he was born and raised.
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Patrick Wilson, left, Julian Hilliard and Vera Farmiga in the latest “Conjuring” movie.Credit...Warner Bros.
THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (in theaters and on HBO Max) Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) return for what’s either the third or the eighth “Conjuring” movie. (Spinoffs like “Annabelle” and “The Nun” only sort of count.) This one involves the case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), who was convicted of manslaughter but who some believe was possessed. Michael Chaves (who directed another spinoff, “The Curse of La Llorona”) assumes the helm from the “Conjuring” director James Wan.
THE REAL THING (in virtual cinemas) Koji Fukada (the Cannes prizewinner “Harmonium”) directed this four-hour feature, based on a manga and condensed from a 10-episode series, about a toy seller who rescues a woman from being hit by a train and gets a whirlwind of adventure as his reward.
SLOW MACHINE (in virtual cinemas) In a fractured narrative, Stephanie Hayes plays an actress who has a series of bizarre encounters with a man who identifies himself as a New York City police intelligence specialist. The movie was shown in an experimental section of last year’s New York Film Festival.
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Riders voiced by, from left, Mckenna Grace, Isabela Merced and Marsai Martin in “Spirit Untamed.”Credit...Dreamworks Pictures
SPIRIT UNTAMED (in theaters) The daughter (voiced by Isabela Merced) of a legendary horse rider (voiced by Eiza González) hops into her mother’s saddle in this computer-animated feature. Julianne Moore, Jake Gyllenhaal and Andre Braugher round out the vocal cast.
UNDINE (in theaters and on demand) Interweaving mythology and the history of modern Berlin, the German director Christian Petzold reunites the stars of his acclaimed “Transit” for a love story of sorts between a recently spurned tour guide (Paula Beer) and a diver (Franz Rogowski) who repairs bridges. What the film means is as slippery as the protagonists, who get soaked when a fish tank explodes during their meet-cute and are continually drawn to water.
June 8
THE AMUSEMENT PARK (on Shudder) In one of the stranger collaborations in cinema history, George A. Romero, just a few years removed from “Night of the Living Dead,” accepted an assignment from the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania to make a film about the mistreatment of the elderly. True to form, he turned it into a horror movie. Made in the early 1970s and rarely shown until the recent arrival of a restored version in 2020, it will be widely available for the first time.
June 9
AWAKE (on Netflix) A cataclysm knocks out Earth’s power grids and gives the world’s population insomnia; the collective exhaustion leads to “Purge”-like conditions. Gina Rodriguez plays a former soldier whose daughter is somehow immune to the sleeplessness, but harnessing the cure isn’t as simple as giving everyone valerian tea. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Frances Fisher co-star.
TRAGIC JUNGLE (on Netflix) Yulene Olaizola directed this 1920s-set magical-realist feature, shown at the Venice and New York film festivals last year. It centers on a fleeing woman (Indira Andrewin) who finds herself in the company of gum workers in the Mayan rainforest.
THE WOMAN WHO RAN (in theaters) In the latest film from the prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, a character played by Hong’s frequent star Kim Min-hee visits with three friends. There is also an argument with a neighbor about whether it’s all right to feed stray cats.
June 11
ASIA (in theaters) Shira Haas of “Unorthodox” plays a Russian immigrant in Israel who faces challenges both with her health and her mother (Alena Yiv). Ruthy Pribar directed, and it won the top prize from the body that gives out Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
CENSOR (in theaters) Shown at Sundance, this stylized British horror film is set in the 1980s, when what became known as “video nasties” — violent, cheaply made movies available on cassette — were all the rage. Niamh Algar plays a censor who does her utmost to protect the public (but maybe wasn’t so great at protecting her sister years earlier). Prano Bailey-Bond directed.
DOMINO: BATTLE OF THE BONES (in theaters) No, it’s not a sequel to Tony Scott’s 2005 movie “Domino,” in which Keira Knightley played a bounty hunter, or one to Brian De Palma’s recent film of the same title. Rather, it’s the story of how a man and his stepgrandson compete in a domino tournament. Baron Davis, the former N.B.A. star, directed and co-wrote.
HOLLER (in theaters and on demand) Jessica Barden plays a promising Ohio student who begins working in scrap-metal yards to keep her family together. Nicole Riegel directed; Pamela Adlon and Gus Halper co-star.
IN THE HEIGHTS (in theaters and on HBO Max) Expected to have been a huge hit in the summer of 2020, now destined to be a return-to-the-movies toe-tapper in 2021, this film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s best-musical Tony winner — the one before “Hamilton,” that is — stars Anthony Ramos (a.k.a. Philip Hamilton) as Usnavi, the bodega owner Miranda played on Broadway. Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) and Miranda also appear. Jon M. Chu, who showed his skill with screen musicals in two of the better “Step Up” movies, directed from a screenplay by the musical’s book writer, Quiara Alegría Hudes.
THE MISFITS (in theaters) Pierce Brosnan, two decades from his turn in the “Thomas Crown Affair” remake, plays another thief who joins forces with a group to steal gold bars that a businessman (Tim Roth) uses to finance terrorists. Renny Harlin directed.
PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY (in theaters) James Corden returns as the voice of Beatrix Potter’s famous hare, although Glenn Kenny of The Times wrote that the first film, from 2018, dispensed “with the sweetness and light and lyricism of the books.” Here, Peter ventures out of the garden to make trouble.
SKATER GIRL (on Netflix) Rachel Saanchita Gupta plays a teenager in northwestern India who discovers skateboarding and begins to dream of competing at a championship level.
SUBLET (in theaters) John Benjamin Hickey plays a grieving travel journalist (for The New York Times, no less) who rediscovers his zest for life in Tel Aviv. Eytan Fox directed.
WISH DRAGON (on Netflix) Jimmy Wong provides the voice of a college student and John Cho the voice of a wish-granting dragon in this animated feature, which is set in Shanghai and counts Jackie Chan among its producers.
June 15
REVOLUTION RENT (on HBO Max) How does “La Bohème” transplanted to Alphabet City play when it’s transplanted to Cuba? This documentary follows Andy Señor Jr., the son of Cuban exiles, as he works to put on an American-produced staging of “Rent” in that country. Señor directed with Victor Patrick Alvarez.
AN UNKNOWN COMPELLING FORCE (on demand) This documentary delves into the murky matter of what killed nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959. (A study published earlier this year said it was quite possibly an avalanche.)
June 16
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Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds in “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.”Credit...David Appleby/Lionsgate
THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD (in theaters) “Samuel L. Jackson is the hit man. Ryan Reynolds is the bodyguard. What more do you want me to say?” A.O. Scott wrote of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” in 2017. Well, Salma Hayek played the hit man’s wife in that movie, too, and now they’re all back for a sequel. Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman also star.
June 18
A CRIME ON THE BAYOU (in theaters) Nancy Buirski (“The Rape of Recy Taylor”) directs this documentary about Gary Duncan, who was convicted of simple battery in Louisiana after trying to stop a skirmish near an integrated school. The Supreme Court ultimately found that he had a right to a jury trial.
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Kevin Hart’s single parent shows up at a support group in “Fatherhood.”Credit...Philippe Bosse/Netflix
FATHERHOOD (on Netflix) Kevin Hart plays a widower adjusting to life as a single father in this drama directed by Paul Weitz. It’s adapted from a book by Matthew Logelin.
LUCA (on Disney+) In Pixar’s latest, two sea monsters disguise themselves as boys to experience the wonders of the Italian Riviera on land. Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer voice the two main characters; Enrico Casarosa (the Pixar short “La Luna”) directed.
RISE AGAIN: TULSA AND THE RED SUMMER (on National Geographic and Hulu) This documentary from Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) looks at the 1921 massacre in Tulsa when white residents destroyed what was known as “Black Wall Street.”
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Rita Moreno, an Oscar winner for “West Side Story,” gets the documentary treatment.Credit...MGM, via Sundance Institute
RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT (in theaters) The EGOT-winning actress revisits her career, recounting her experiences with discrimination in Hollywood, her breakthrough role in “West Side Story” and more. Mariem Pérez Riera directed.
SIBERIA (in theaters and on demand) The idea of Abel Ferrara directing Willem Dafoe as a bartender in Siberia will be irresistible to fans of a certain brand of uncompromising cinema. In an interview, Ferrara described it as “an odyssey movie.”
THE SPARKS BROTHERS (in theaters) Edgar Wright directed what feels like the definitive portrait of the band Sparks, a.k.a. the brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who straddle an almost imperceptibly thin line between the comic and the earnest and whose most consistent trait over 50 years has been their interest in reinventing their sound. Their first movie musical, “Annette” (Aug. 6), also comes out this summer.
SUMMER OF 85 (in theaters) François Ozon directed this tale of young summer romance, which was selected for the canceled Cannes Film Festival last year. A boy (Félix Lefebvre) is saved from a boating accident and then taught worldly ways by his rescuer (Benjamin Voisin).
SWEAT (in theaters) Another selection from the Cannes-that-wasn’t, this Polish feature from Magnus von Horn stars Magdalena Kolesnik as a “fitness influencer” who faces the burdens of being extremely online.
SWEET THING (in theaters) Alexandre Rockwell, a mainstay of American independent filmmaking in the 1990s with films like “In the Soup,” directs his children in a coming-of-age film about a long and fantastical day.
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The documentarian Lisa Immordino Vreeland puts Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams in an artistic dialogue with each other. Jim Parsons reads Capote’s words in voice-over and Zachary Quinto reads Williams’s.
12 MIGHTY ORPHANS (in theaters) Luke Wilson, Vinessa Shaw and Martin Sheen star in this true story of a how an orphanage’s football team went to compete for championships in Texas during the Great Depression.
June 24
SISTERS ON TRACK (on Netflix) Three sisters — Tai, Rainn and Brooke Sheppard — raised in tough circumstances in Brooklyn won medals in the Junior Olympics and were declared “SportsKids of the Year” for 2016 by the children’s edition of Sports Illustrated. This documentary tells their story, on the track and off.
June 25
AGAINST THE CURRENT (in theaters) No, it’s not a “Great Gatsby” spinoff. It’s a documentary about Veiga Gretarsdottir, a transgender kayaker who sets out to circumnavigate Iceland in the more difficult counterclockwise direction.
F9 (in theaters) Just when Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) thought they had settled into a quiet family life, Dom’s brother (John Cena) — who is every bit the driver Dom is, and also an assassin — turns up to settle scores. Justin Lin directed.
FALSE POSITIVE (on Hulu) Ilana Glazer and Justin Theroux play a couple trying to get pregnant who discover that their doctor (Pierce Brosnan) has a dark side.
I CARRY YOU WITH ME (in theaters) The documentarian Heidi Ewing (“Detropia”) turns to dramatized filmmaking, though not entirely (to say more would be a spoiler), with this story of the love between two Mexican men (Armando Espitia and Christian Vázquez) and how their bond endures after one, with his eye on working as a chef, crosses into the United States.
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Liam Neeson shifts into action gear again as a trucker in “The Ice Road.”Credit...Netflix
THE ICE ROAD (on Netflix) Liam Neeson plays a badass big-rig driver trying to rescue entombed miners in the frozen reaches of Canada.
KENNY SCHARF: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (in theaters and on demand) Malia Scharf, with Max Basch, directed this look at her father, who emerged from the East Village art world of the 1980s.
WEREWOLVES WITHIN (in theaters) Holed up in a snowstorm, the residents of a small town must contend with lycanthropy. Josh Ruben directed; Milana Vayntrub and Sam Richardson star.
WOLFGANG (on Disney+) Not Amadeus Mozart, but Puck. David Gelb (“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”) directed this portrait of the celebrity chef’s career.
June 30
AMERICA: THE MOTION PICTURE (on Netflix) With the voice of Channing Tatum as a “chainsaw-wielding” George Washington, this irreverent animated feature makes a travesty of key figures of the American Revolution. Jason Mantzoukas and Olivia Munn also supply voices. Matt Thompson directed.
LYDIA LUNCH — THE WAR IS NEVER OVER (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The New York underground filmmaker Beth B directed this portrait of another figure from the scene, the No Wave singer Lydia Lunch.
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Riley Keough, left, and Taylour Paige in the strippers-on-a-road-trip adventure “Zola.”Credit...Anna Kooris/A24
ZOLA (in theaters) A tale originally told in a viral 148-tweet thread (and then in a Rolling Stone article about the thread) is now a major motion picture, directed by Janicza Bravo (“Lemon”) and written by Bravo and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”). Taylour Paige stars as a waitress and occasional stripper who is taken on a wild trip to Florida by another stripper (Riley Keough). Colman Domingo also stars.
July 1
NO SUDDEN MOVE (on HBO Max) The pandemic hasn’t slowed down Steven Soderbergh. His latest feature is a crime thriller starring Don Cheadle as an ex-con who plots a convoluted scheme that goes awry. Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm and Amy Seimetz are among the many familiar faces populating Detroit in 1954, when the film is set.
July 2
BEING A HUMAN PERSON (in theaters) The Swedish commercial director turned deadpan filmmaker Roy Andersson is the subject of this documentary, which follows the making of his latest movie, “About Endlessness,” which opened in April.
FEAR STREET (on Netflix) R.L. Stine’s “Fear Street” books have become three feature films — set in 1994, 1978 and 1666, respectively — that will be released on a weekly basis starting July 2. Stine has said that the content won’t be toned down for children. Leigh Janiak directed all three movies, and cast members recur throughout.
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Tyson Brown is a teenager who just needs a car to take his dream girl out in “First Date.”Credit...Manuel Crosby/Sundance Institute
FIRST DATE (in theaters and on demand) Tyson Brown plays a teenager who takes his dream girl (Shelby Duclos) on a misadventure-filled outing in a dilapidated Chrysler.
THE FOREVER PURGE (in theaters) In the “Purge” franchise, murder is made legal for one day a year. This fifth film in the series dares to ask, what if it were more than one day? Judging from the trailer, you should also count on commentary on United States-Mexico border politics.
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B.B. King was among the many stars of what became known as the Black Woodstock, concerts chronicled in “Summer of Soul.”Credit...Searchlight Pictures
SUMMER OF SOUL (… OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) (in theaters and on Hulu) In his first feature documentary as director, Questlove assembles joyous archival footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts that developed a reputation as the Black Woodstock. The film features electrifying performances from Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Ray Barretto and more.
TILL DEATH (in theaters and on demand) The “Jennifer’s Body” star Megan Fox plays a woman who wakes up handcuffed to her husband’s corpse in this thriller.
THE TOMORROW WAR (on Amazon). Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski and J.K. Simmons are all tapped for a war effort against aliens that won’t happen until 30 years in the future. Time travel makes this possible.
July 9
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Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow,” part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Credit...Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios/Disney, via Associated Press
BLACK WIDOW (in theaters and on Disney+) The Marvel universe continues to swallow promising actors by casting “Midsommar” and “Little Women” standout Florence Pugh as Yelena, who is brought together as a family with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. The Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (“Berlin Syndrome”) directed.
SUMMERTIME (in theaters) Carlos López Estrada (“Blindspotting”) directed this vibrant panorama of life in Los Angeles. It’s like a musical, but instead of bursting into song, the characters share their emotions in poetry, written by the cast members, who are poets.
THE WITCHES OF THE ORIENT (in theaters) Julien Faraut, an archivist whose documentary “John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” posed intriguing parallels between tennis and cinema, recounts how textile workers in Japan became an internationally celebrated volleyball team.
July 16
CAN YOU BRING IT: BILL T. JONES AND D-MAN IN THE WATERS (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The dancer Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz direct a portrait of the choreographer as LeBlanc oversees a production of his 1989 work “D-Man in the Waters,” which addressed the AIDS epidemic in dance.
ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (in theaters) Taylor Russell and Logan Miller, who played escapees in the first “Escape Room” (2019), find themselves ensnared again.
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (in theaters) Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor”) directed this portrait of the “Kitchen Confidential” chef, who died in 2018.
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LeBron James, center, stars in “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”Credit...via Warner Bros. Pictures
SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (in theaters and on HBO Max) In 1996, Michael Jordan joined the Looney Tunes on the basketball court. This time it’s LeBron James who assembles Bugs and the gang for a hybrid live-action/animated round of hoops, with a lot of other Warner Bros. intellectual property filling out the sidelines. Malcolm D. Lee directed.
July 23
AILEY (in theaters and on demand) Using archival footage and its subject’s words, the director Jamila Wignot’s documentary recounts the career of the dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-89).
EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE) (in theaters) The siblings Arie and Chuko Esiri directed this film set in Lagos, Nigeria, about two people separately trying to leave for Europe.
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA (in theaters) The transformation in this fourth feature of the animated franchise happens when a “monsterfication ray” turns humans into monsters and monsters into humans. But there’s a behind-the-scenes transformation, too: Dracula’s vocal cords aren’t supplied by Adam Sandler this time, but by Brian Hull.
THE LAST LETTER FROM YOUR LOVER (on Netflix). In this summer’s addition to the tear-jerker sweepstakes, Felicity Jones plays a journalist who uncovers an affair from the 1960s between another journalist (Callum Turner) and a married woman (Shailene Woodley).
MANDIBLES (in theaters and on demand) The French absurdist and electronic musician Quentin Dupieux (“Deerskin”) serves up another deadpan oddity, about two friends trying to train a giant fly.
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From left, Vicky Krieps, Thomasin McKenzie, Gael García Bernal and Luca Faustino Rodriguez in “Old.”Credit...NBCUniversal
OLD (in theaters) It wouldn’t be an M. Night Shyamalan film if the premise weren’t shrouded in mystery, but judging from the Super Bowl trailer, it stars Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) as parents vacationing with their family on a beach that magically turns their children … old.
SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS (in theaters) Based on the line of action figures, this franchise adds to its collection by giving an origin story to Snake Eyes, played by Ray Park in earlier movies and now embodied — during his ninja-training phase — by Henry Golding.
July 29
RESORT TO LOVE (on Netflix). Christina Milian plays a singer who aspires to superstardom but is reduced to performing at her ex’s wedding.
July 30
ENEMIES OF THE STATE (in theaters and on demand) Executive produced by Errol Morris, this documentary, directed by Sonia Kennebeck, unravels the case of Matt DeHart, a hacktivist who sought refuge in Canada and claimed the F.B.I. had tortured him.
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Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander in “The Green Knight,” directed by David Lowery.Credit...Eric Zachanowich/A24
THE GREEN KNIGHT (in theaters) Dev Patel has a seat at the round table as Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, in the director David Lowery’s quest to revive the Arthurian legend onscreen. Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton and Sarita Choudhury also star.
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Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson find adventure in “Jungle Cruise.”Credit...Disney
JUNGLE CRUISE (in theaters and on Disney+) In 1916, a British researcher (Emily Blunt) travels to South America and hires a roguish, Bogartian skipper (Dwayne Johnson) as her guide through the Amazon. It’s based on a ride at Disneyland, and indirectly on a long lineage of Hollywood adventure films. Edgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti co-star. Jaume Collet-Serra directed.
THE LAST MERCENARY (on Netflix) French authorities falsely allege that a young man has been trafficking arms and drugs. Unfortunately for them, his father is played by Jean-Claude Van Damme.
NINE DAYS (in theaters) Winston Duke plays an interrogator at a way station of sorts, where he interviews people — actually unborn souls — some of whom will earn the right to be born as humans. Zazie Beetz plays an interviewee who confounds him. Edson Oda wrote and directed.
SABAYA (in theaters and on demand) This documentary trails intrepid volunteer workers in Syria who extract women and girls held captive as sex slaves by the Islamic State.
STILLWATER Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) directed Matt Damon as an American oil-rig worker whose daughter (Abigail Breslin) is imprisoned for murder in Marseille, France. She says she is innocent; he scrambles to help her.
Aug. 6
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Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard in a scene from “Annette.”Credit...Amazon Studios
ANNETTE (in theaters) While Edgar Wright’s documentary about the band Sparks (June 18) covers the cinephile musicians’ history of movie projects that never came to fruition, this feature film gives them their chance: They wrote the screenplay, the songs and the score for this love story, and Leos Carax (“Holy Motors”) directed. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star.
EMA (in theaters) The Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín directs this story of a dancer (Mariana Di Girolamo) and a choreographer (Gael García Bernal) whose lives are thrown out of whack after they return the boy they adopted.
JOHN AND THE HOLE (in theaters and on demand) At the age of 13, John (Charlie Shotwell) gains a measure of adult independence by drugging his immediate family (Jennifer Ehle, Michael C. Hall and Taissa Farmiga) and imprisoning them in a bunker. Pascual Sisto directed this detached, chilly open-ended allegory.
THE MACALUSO SISTERS (in theaters) The Italian playwright and theater director Emma Dante directed this story of five orphan sisters in living in Palermo. She adapted it from her play.
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From left, Daniela Melchior, Peter Capaldi, Idris Elba and David Dastmalchian in “The Suicide Squad.”Credit...Jessica Miglio/DC Comics
THE SUICIDE SQUAD (in theaters and on HBO Max) If it doesn’t work the first time, add a definite article. Poised somewhere between a reboot of and a sequel to “Suicide Squad” (2016), the movie sets several DC characters, including Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, loose on a jungle island. James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) wrote and directed. With Idris Elba, John Cena, Sylvester Stallone and Viola Davis.
Aug. 11
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Joey King, left, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney and Meganne Young in the third “Kissing Booth.”Credit...Netflix
THE KISSING BOOTH 3 (on Netflix) This entry in the series finds Elle (Joey King) getting ready for college.
Aug. 13
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Emilia Jones as the child of deaf adults in “CODA.”Credit...Sundance Institute
CODA (in theaters and on Apple TV+) A crowd-pleaser (and awards-grabber, with four prizes) at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie tells the story of a child of deaf adults (Emilia Jones) in a working-class Massachusetts fishing family. She wants to sing, a passion that is alien to her non-hearing parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant). Sian Heder directed this remake of a French film.
DAYS (in theaters) A highlight of last year’s New York Film Festival, the director Tsai Ming-liang’s feature follows two men — one in Taipei, then Hong Kong (the Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng); the other in Bangkok (Anong Houngheuangsy) — who in the second half meet, and for a little while are not alone.
DON’T BREATHE 2 (in theaters) In the first “Don’t Breathe” (2016), Stephen Lang played a blind veteran whose dark secrets were among that home-invasion tale’s surprises. There’s more on those in this sequel. Rodo Sayagues directed, co-writing with Fede Alvarez, who directed the original.
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Jodie Comer and Ryan Reynolds are caught up in a video game in “Free Guy.”Credit...20th Century Studios
FREE GUY (in theaters) Ryan Reynolds plays a bank teller who finds out, “Truman Show”-like, that he is actually a background character in a video game. Shawn Levy directed. Jodie Comer and Lil Rel Howery also star.
THE MEANING OF HITLER (in theaters and on demand) The documentarians Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker examine the rise of Nazi Germany and draw parallels with the rumblings of authoritarianism across the globe today.
THE LOST LEONARDO (in theaters) Andreas Koefoed’s documentary investigates the dealings that surround “Salvator Mundi,” the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, when in 2017 it was billed as a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees.
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Jennifer Hudson, at the piano, plays Aretha Franklin in “Respect,” a coming film from MGM that has awards buzz.Credit...Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM
RESPECT (in theaters) Find out what it means to her: Jennifer Hudson plays Aretha Franklin in this biopic of the Queen of Soul, directed by the theater vet Liesl Tommy. With Mary J. Blige as Dinah Washington, Audra McDonald as Franklin’s mother and Forest Whitaker as Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin.
Aug. 20
CRYPTOZOO (in theaters and on demand) It’s really more of a cryptid zoo, a cryptid being an animal that is the subject of lore but does not actually exist, like the dream-eating creature that everyone is after in this movie. It’s an animated film, from the graphic novelist Dash Shaw. Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Louisa Krause and Thomas Jay Ryan provided some of the voices.
THE NIGHT HOUSE (in theaters) Rebecca Hall plays a widow who discovers that her husband had a … thing for women who looked quite a bit like her, one of whom is played by Stacy Martin. What was he up to? David Bruckner directed, with an appetite for jump scares.
PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE (in theaters) The techno-fitted animated canines of the children’s TV series make the leap to the big screen.
THE PROTÉGÉ (in theaters) This is the second movie of the summer in which Samuel L. Jackson plays a hit man (after “The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife”) — except that this one concerns the hit man’s daughter (Maggie Q), or at least the woman he raised like a daughter, a hit woman herself, who seeks revenge after he is murdered. Michael Keaton co-stars, also playing a killer. Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”) directed.
REMINISCENCE (in theaters and on HBO Max) Lisa Joy, a creator of “Westworld,” wrote and directed this thriller, which casts Hugh Jackman as a sleuth who digs up lost memories. Rebecca Ferguson plays his latest customer.
WILDLAND (in theaters) This dark Danish feature concerns a teenager (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) who, after her mother’s death, goes to live with an aunt (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and an extended clan filled with criminality and addiction.
Aug. 27
THE BEATLES: GET BACK (in theaters) Peter Jackson, who used archival footage to bring World War I back to life in “They Shall Not Grow Old,” uses tens of hours of restored footage and audio — billed as previously unseen and unheard — to showcase the Beatles as they were in 1969.
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Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars in a remake of “Candyman.”Credit...Universal Pictures and MGM
CANDYMAN (in theaters) Even without anyone saying Candyman’s name to a mirror, a haunting teaser trailer with only shadow puppets, from last year, set the bar high for this remake, directed by Nia DaCosta (“Little Woods”) and co-written by, among others, Jordan Peele. Interestingly, it appears to retain the milieu of Chicago’s mostly defunct Cabrini-Green housing project, where much of the 1992 original took place. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris star. Colman Domingo also appears.
HE’S ALL THAT (on Netflix) Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) directed this gender-swapped remake of “She’s All That.” Addison Rae plays an influencer who gives a dork (Tanner Buchanan) an image makeover.
VACATION FRIENDS (on Hulu) A couple (Yvonne Orji and Lil Rel Howery) is mortified when some casual friends from a vacation (Meredith Hagner and John Cena) crash their wedding.
Sept. 3
THE BIG SCARY “S” WORD (in theaters) Spoiler alert: The word is “socialism,” and Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among the interviewees in this documentary about its history in the United States.
FAYA DAYI (in theaters) When the director Jessica Beshir’s experimental documentary, shot in Harar, Ethiopia, played at New Directors/New Films in the spring, Beatrice Loayza, writing in The Times, called it “dreamy and visually dazzling.” The film, she wrote, considers the toll that the economics of khat — a plant that is used as a drug — takes “on a rural community across generations.”
MOGUL MOWGLI (in theaters) Riz Ahmed plays a rapper whose body begins to fail him, but it’s not “Sound of Metal” redux. Rather, it’s a story of British-Pakistani identity, and the character’s denial of his heritage may even be responsible for his autoimmune condition. Bassam Tariq (the well-regarded documentary “These Birds Walk”) directed.
From an urban musical to a demonic possession to a hectic first date, here’s everything you need to know about this season in film.
A scene from “In the Heights,” Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes.Credit...Warner Bros.
By Ben Kenigsberg
May 28, 2021
Here is a list of noteworthy films scheduled this summer. Release dates and platform are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.
June 1
CHANGING THE GAME (on Hulu) This documentary profiles three transgender athletes and their high school sports careers, with a particular focus on Mack Beggs, a transgender man who as a teenager wanted to compete in boys’ wrestling but, because of a rule in Texas, could only wrestle against girls.
June 4
ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE (in theaters) The biases of surveillance — by the eye, by police body cameras and in the composite photography of the eugenics proponent Francis Galton, for example — are the subject of this haunting, wide-ranging essay film from the Baltimore experimental director Theo Anthony (“Rat Film”). It won a special jury prize at Sundance.
THE ANCIENT WOODS (in theaters) The biologist and filmmaker Mindaugas Survila investigates the floral and faunal mysteries of a mostly untouched forest in Lithuania. Film Forum says the movie, poised between nature documentary and folklore, is suitable for children “whose attention spans have not been destroyed by technology.”
BAD TALES (in virtual cinemas) This Italian feature, winner of best screenplay at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, pulls back the facade of family life in a seemingly idyllic Rome suburb.
THE CARNIVORES (in theaters and on demand) The illness of a dog triggers the unraveling of a couple (Lindsay Burdge and Tallie Medel). The trailer promises ample servings of the dark and the grotesque.
CITY OF ALI (in virtual cinemas) Other documentaries have captured the highlights of Muhammad Ali’s career, but “City of Ali” deals specifically with his life in Louisville, Ky., where he was born and raised.
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Patrick Wilson, left, Julian Hilliard and Vera Farmiga in the latest “Conjuring” movie.Credit...Warner Bros.
THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (in theaters and on HBO Max) Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) return for what’s either the third or the eighth “Conjuring” movie. (Spinoffs like “Annabelle” and “The Nun” only sort of count.) This one involves the case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor), who was convicted of manslaughter but who some believe was possessed. Michael Chaves (who directed another spinoff, “The Curse of La Llorona”) assumes the helm from the “Conjuring” director James Wan.
THE REAL THING (in virtual cinemas) Koji Fukada (the Cannes prizewinner “Harmonium”) directed this four-hour feature, based on a manga and condensed from a 10-episode series, about a toy seller who rescues a woman from being hit by a train and gets a whirlwind of adventure as his reward.
SLOW MACHINE (in virtual cinemas) In a fractured narrative, Stephanie Hayes plays an actress who has a series of bizarre encounters with a man who identifies himself as a New York City police intelligence specialist. The movie was shown in an experimental section of last year’s New York Film Festival.
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Riders voiced by, from left, Mckenna Grace, Isabela Merced and Marsai Martin in “Spirit Untamed.”Credit...Dreamworks Pictures
SPIRIT UNTAMED (in theaters) The daughter (voiced by Isabela Merced) of a legendary horse rider (voiced by Eiza González) hops into her mother’s saddle in this computer-animated feature. Julianne Moore, Jake Gyllenhaal and Andre Braugher round out the vocal cast.
UNDINE (in theaters and on demand) Interweaving mythology and the history of modern Berlin, the German director Christian Petzold reunites the stars of his acclaimed “Transit” for a love story of sorts between a recently spurned tour guide (Paula Beer) and a diver (Franz Rogowski) who repairs bridges. What the film means is as slippery as the protagonists, who get soaked when a fish tank explodes during their meet-cute and are continually drawn to water.
June 8
THE AMUSEMENT PARK (on Shudder) In one of the stranger collaborations in cinema history, George A. Romero, just a few years removed from “Night of the Living Dead,” accepted an assignment from the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania to make a film about the mistreatment of the elderly. True to form, he turned it into a horror movie. Made in the early 1970s and rarely shown until the recent arrival of a restored version in 2020, it will be widely available for the first time.
June 9
AWAKE (on Netflix) A cataclysm knocks out Earth’s power grids and gives the world’s population insomnia; the collective exhaustion leads to “Purge”-like conditions. Gina Rodriguez plays a former soldier whose daughter is somehow immune to the sleeplessness, but harnessing the cure isn’t as simple as giving everyone valerian tea. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Frances Fisher co-star.
TRAGIC JUNGLE (on Netflix) Yulene Olaizola directed this 1920s-set magical-realist feature, shown at the Venice and New York film festivals last year. It centers on a fleeing woman (Indira Andrewin) who finds herself in the company of gum workers in the Mayan rainforest.
THE WOMAN WHO RAN (in theaters) In the latest film from the prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, a character played by Hong’s frequent star Kim Min-hee visits with three friends. There is also an argument with a neighbor about whether it’s all right to feed stray cats.
June 11
ASIA (in theaters) Shira Haas of “Unorthodox” plays a Russian immigrant in Israel who faces challenges both with her health and her mother (Alena Yiv). Ruthy Pribar directed, and it won the top prize from the body that gives out Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
CENSOR (in theaters) Shown at Sundance, this stylized British horror film is set in the 1980s, when what became known as “video nasties” — violent, cheaply made movies available on cassette — were all the rage. Niamh Algar plays a censor who does her utmost to protect the public (but maybe wasn’t so great at protecting her sister years earlier). Prano Bailey-Bond directed.
DOMINO: BATTLE OF THE BONES (in theaters) No, it’s not a sequel to Tony Scott’s 2005 movie “Domino,” in which Keira Knightley played a bounty hunter, or one to Brian De Palma’s recent film of the same title. Rather, it’s the story of how a man and his stepgrandson compete in a domino tournament. Baron Davis, the former N.B.A. star, directed and co-wrote.
HOLLER (in theaters and on demand) Jessica Barden plays a promising Ohio student who begins working in scrap-metal yards to keep her family together. Nicole Riegel directed; Pamela Adlon and Gus Halper co-star.
IN THE HEIGHTS (in theaters and on HBO Max) Expected to have been a huge hit in the summer of 2020, now destined to be a return-to-the-movies toe-tapper in 2021, this film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s best-musical Tony winner — the one before “Hamilton,” that is — stars Anthony Ramos (a.k.a. Philip Hamilton) as Usnavi, the bodega owner Miranda played on Broadway. Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) and Miranda also appear. Jon M. Chu, who showed his skill with screen musicals in two of the better “Step Up” movies, directed from a screenplay by the musical’s book writer, Quiara Alegría Hudes.
THE MISFITS (in theaters) Pierce Brosnan, two decades from his turn in the “Thomas Crown Affair” remake, plays another thief who joins forces with a group to steal gold bars that a businessman (Tim Roth) uses to finance terrorists. Renny Harlin directed.
PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY (in theaters) James Corden returns as the voice of Beatrix Potter’s famous hare, although Glenn Kenny of The Times wrote that the first film, from 2018, dispensed “with the sweetness and light and lyricism of the books.” Here, Peter ventures out of the garden to make trouble.
SKATER GIRL (on Netflix) Rachel Saanchita Gupta plays a teenager in northwestern India who discovers skateboarding and begins to dream of competing at a championship level.
SUBLET (in theaters) John Benjamin Hickey plays a grieving travel journalist (for The New York Times, no less) who rediscovers his zest for life in Tel Aviv. Eytan Fox directed.
WISH DRAGON (on Netflix) Jimmy Wong provides the voice of a college student and John Cho the voice of a wish-granting dragon in this animated feature, which is set in Shanghai and counts Jackie Chan among its producers.
June 15
REVOLUTION RENT (on HBO Max) How does “La Bohème” transplanted to Alphabet City play when it’s transplanted to Cuba? This documentary follows Andy Señor Jr., the son of Cuban exiles, as he works to put on an American-produced staging of “Rent” in that country. Señor directed with Victor Patrick Alvarez.
AN UNKNOWN COMPELLING FORCE (on demand) This documentary delves into the murky matter of what killed nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959. (A study published earlier this year said it was quite possibly an avalanche.)
June 16
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Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds in “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.”Credit...David Appleby/Lionsgate
THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD (in theaters) “Samuel L. Jackson is the hit man. Ryan Reynolds is the bodyguard. What more do you want me to say?” A.O. Scott wrote of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” in 2017. Well, Salma Hayek played the hit man’s wife in that movie, too, and now they’re all back for a sequel. Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman also star.
June 18
A CRIME ON THE BAYOU (in theaters) Nancy Buirski (“The Rape of Recy Taylor”) directs this documentary about Gary Duncan, who was convicted of simple battery in Louisiana after trying to stop a skirmish near an integrated school. The Supreme Court ultimately found that he had a right to a jury trial.
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Kevin Hart’s single parent shows up at a support group in “Fatherhood.”Credit...Philippe Bosse/Netflix
FATHERHOOD (on Netflix) Kevin Hart plays a widower adjusting to life as a single father in this drama directed by Paul Weitz. It’s adapted from a book by Matthew Logelin.
LUCA (on Disney+) In Pixar’s latest, two sea monsters disguise themselves as boys to experience the wonders of the Italian Riviera on land. Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer voice the two main characters; Enrico Casarosa (the Pixar short “La Luna”) directed.
RISE AGAIN: TULSA AND THE RED SUMMER (on National Geographic and Hulu) This documentary from Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) looks at the 1921 massacre in Tulsa when white residents destroyed what was known as “Black Wall Street.”
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Rita Moreno, an Oscar winner for “West Side Story,” gets the documentary treatment.Credit...MGM, via Sundance Institute
RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT (in theaters) The EGOT-winning actress revisits her career, recounting her experiences with discrimination in Hollywood, her breakthrough role in “West Side Story” and more. Mariem Pérez Riera directed.
SIBERIA (in theaters and on demand) The idea of Abel Ferrara directing Willem Dafoe as a bartender in Siberia will be irresistible to fans of a certain brand of uncompromising cinema. In an interview, Ferrara described it as “an odyssey movie.”
THE SPARKS BROTHERS (in theaters) Edgar Wright directed what feels like the definitive portrait of the band Sparks, a.k.a. the brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who straddle an almost imperceptibly thin line between the comic and the earnest and whose most consistent trait over 50 years has been their interest in reinventing their sound. Their first movie musical, “Annette” (Aug. 6), also comes out this summer.
SUMMER OF 85 (in theaters) François Ozon directed this tale of young summer romance, which was selected for the canceled Cannes Film Festival last year. A boy (Félix Lefebvre) is saved from a boating accident and then taught worldly ways by his rescuer (Benjamin Voisin).
SWEAT (in theaters) Another selection from the Cannes-that-wasn’t, this Polish feature from Magnus von Horn stars Magdalena Kolesnik as a “fitness influencer” who faces the burdens of being extremely online.
SWEET THING (in theaters) Alexandre Rockwell, a mainstay of American independent filmmaking in the 1990s with films like “In the Soup,” directs his children in a coming-of-age film about a long and fantastical day.
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The documentarian Lisa Immordino Vreeland puts Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams in an artistic dialogue with each other. Jim Parsons reads Capote’s words in voice-over and Zachary Quinto reads Williams’s.
12 MIGHTY ORPHANS (in theaters) Luke Wilson, Vinessa Shaw and Martin Sheen star in this true story of a how an orphanage’s football team went to compete for championships in Texas during the Great Depression.
June 24
SISTERS ON TRACK (on Netflix) Three sisters — Tai, Rainn and Brooke Sheppard — raised in tough circumstances in Brooklyn won medals in the Junior Olympics and were declared “SportsKids of the Year” for 2016 by the children’s edition of Sports Illustrated. This documentary tells their story, on the track and off.
June 25
AGAINST THE CURRENT (in theaters) No, it’s not a “Great Gatsby” spinoff. It’s a documentary about Veiga Gretarsdottir, a transgender kayaker who sets out to circumnavigate Iceland in the more difficult counterclockwise direction.
F9 (in theaters) Just when Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) thought they had settled into a quiet family life, Dom’s brother (John Cena) — who is every bit the driver Dom is, and also an assassin — turns up to settle scores. Justin Lin directed.
FALSE POSITIVE (on Hulu) Ilana Glazer and Justin Theroux play a couple trying to get pregnant who discover that their doctor (Pierce Brosnan) has a dark side.
I CARRY YOU WITH ME (in theaters) The documentarian Heidi Ewing (“Detropia”) turns to dramatized filmmaking, though not entirely (to say more would be a spoiler), with this story of the love between two Mexican men (Armando Espitia and Christian Vázquez) and how their bond endures after one, with his eye on working as a chef, crosses into the United States.
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Liam Neeson shifts into action gear again as a trucker in “The Ice Road.”Credit...Netflix
THE ICE ROAD (on Netflix) Liam Neeson plays a badass big-rig driver trying to rescue entombed miners in the frozen reaches of Canada.
KENNY SCHARF: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (in theaters and on demand) Malia Scharf, with Max Basch, directed this look at her father, who emerged from the East Village art world of the 1980s.
WEREWOLVES WITHIN (in theaters) Holed up in a snowstorm, the residents of a small town must contend with lycanthropy. Josh Ruben directed; Milana Vayntrub and Sam Richardson star.
WOLFGANG (on Disney+) Not Amadeus Mozart, but Puck. David Gelb (“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”) directed this portrait of the celebrity chef’s career.
June 30
AMERICA: THE MOTION PICTURE (on Netflix) With the voice of Channing Tatum as a “chainsaw-wielding” George Washington, this irreverent animated feature makes a travesty of key figures of the American Revolution. Jason Mantzoukas and Olivia Munn also supply voices. Matt Thompson directed.
LYDIA LUNCH — THE WAR IS NEVER OVER (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The New York underground filmmaker Beth B directed this portrait of another figure from the scene, the No Wave singer Lydia Lunch.
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Riley Keough, left, and Taylour Paige in the strippers-on-a-road-trip adventure “Zola.”Credit...Anna Kooris/A24
ZOLA (in theaters) A tale originally told in a viral 148-tweet thread (and then in a Rolling Stone article about the thread) is now a major motion picture, directed by Janicza Bravo (“Lemon”) and written by Bravo and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”). Taylour Paige stars as a waitress and occasional stripper who is taken on a wild trip to Florida by another stripper (Riley Keough). Colman Domingo also stars.
July 1
NO SUDDEN MOVE (on HBO Max) The pandemic hasn’t slowed down Steven Soderbergh. His latest feature is a crime thriller starring Don Cheadle as an ex-con who plots a convoluted scheme that goes awry. Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm and Amy Seimetz are among the many familiar faces populating Detroit in 1954, when the film is set.
July 2
BEING A HUMAN PERSON (in theaters) The Swedish commercial director turned deadpan filmmaker Roy Andersson is the subject of this documentary, which follows the making of his latest movie, “About Endlessness,” which opened in April.
FEAR STREET (on Netflix) R.L. Stine’s “Fear Street” books have become three feature films — set in 1994, 1978 and 1666, respectively — that will be released on a weekly basis starting July 2. Stine has said that the content won’t be toned down for children. Leigh Janiak directed all three movies, and cast members recur throughout.
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Tyson Brown is a teenager who just needs a car to take his dream girl out in “First Date.”Credit...Manuel Crosby/Sundance Institute
FIRST DATE (in theaters and on demand) Tyson Brown plays a teenager who takes his dream girl (Shelby Duclos) on a misadventure-filled outing in a dilapidated Chrysler.
THE FOREVER PURGE (in theaters) In the “Purge” franchise, murder is made legal for one day a year. This fifth film in the series dares to ask, what if it were more than one day? Judging from the trailer, you should also count on commentary on United States-Mexico border politics.
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B.B. King was among the many stars of what became known as the Black Woodstock, concerts chronicled in “Summer of Soul.”Credit...Searchlight Pictures
SUMMER OF SOUL (… OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) (in theaters and on Hulu) In his first feature documentary as director, Questlove assembles joyous archival footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts that developed a reputation as the Black Woodstock. The film features electrifying performances from Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Ray Barretto and more.
TILL DEATH (in theaters and on demand) The “Jennifer’s Body” star Megan Fox plays a woman who wakes up handcuffed to her husband’s corpse in this thriller.
THE TOMORROW WAR (on Amazon). Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski and J.K. Simmons are all tapped for a war effort against aliens that won’t happen until 30 years in the future. Time travel makes this possible.
July 9
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Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow,” part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Credit...Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios/Disney, via Associated Press
BLACK WIDOW (in theaters and on Disney+) The Marvel universe continues to swallow promising actors by casting “Midsommar” and “Little Women” standout Florence Pugh as Yelena, who is brought together as a family with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. The Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (“Berlin Syndrome”) directed.
SUMMERTIME (in theaters) Carlos López Estrada (“Blindspotting”) directed this vibrant panorama of life in Los Angeles. It’s like a musical, but instead of bursting into song, the characters share their emotions in poetry, written by the cast members, who are poets.
THE WITCHES OF THE ORIENT (in theaters) Julien Faraut, an archivist whose documentary “John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” posed intriguing parallels between tennis and cinema, recounts how textile workers in Japan became an internationally celebrated volleyball team.
July 16
CAN YOU BRING IT: BILL T. JONES AND D-MAN IN THE WATERS (in theaters and virtual cinemas) The dancer Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz direct a portrait of the choreographer as LeBlanc oversees a production of his 1989 work “D-Man in the Waters,” which addressed the AIDS epidemic in dance.
ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (in theaters) Taylor Russell and Logan Miller, who played escapees in the first “Escape Room” (2019), find themselves ensnared again.
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (in theaters) Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor”) directed this portrait of the “Kitchen Confidential” chef, who died in 2018.
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LeBron James, center, stars in “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”Credit...via Warner Bros. Pictures
SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (in theaters and on HBO Max) In 1996, Michael Jordan joined the Looney Tunes on the basketball court. This time it’s LeBron James who assembles Bugs and the gang for a hybrid live-action/animated round of hoops, with a lot of other Warner Bros. intellectual property filling out the sidelines. Malcolm D. Lee directed.
July 23
AILEY (in theaters and on demand) Using archival footage and its subject’s words, the director Jamila Wignot’s documentary recounts the career of the dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-89).
EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE) (in theaters) The siblings Arie and Chuko Esiri directed this film set in Lagos, Nigeria, about two people separately trying to leave for Europe.
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA (in theaters) The transformation in this fourth feature of the animated franchise happens when a “monsterfication ray” turns humans into monsters and monsters into humans. But there’s a behind-the-scenes transformation, too: Dracula’s vocal cords aren’t supplied by Adam Sandler this time, but by Brian Hull.
THE LAST LETTER FROM YOUR LOVER (on Netflix). In this summer’s addition to the tear-jerker sweepstakes, Felicity Jones plays a journalist who uncovers an affair from the 1960s between another journalist (Callum Turner) and a married woman (Shailene Woodley).
MANDIBLES (in theaters and on demand) The French absurdist and electronic musician Quentin Dupieux (“Deerskin”) serves up another deadpan oddity, about two friends trying to train a giant fly.
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From left, Vicky Krieps, Thomasin McKenzie, Gael García Bernal and Luca Faustino Rodriguez in “Old.”Credit...NBCUniversal
OLD (in theaters) It wouldn’t be an M. Night Shyamalan film if the premise weren’t shrouded in mystery, but judging from the Super Bowl trailer, it stars Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) as parents vacationing with their family on a beach that magically turns their children … old.
SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS (in theaters) Based on the line of action figures, this franchise adds to its collection by giving an origin story to Snake Eyes, played by Ray Park in earlier movies and now embodied — during his ninja-training phase — by Henry Golding.
July 29
RESORT TO LOVE (on Netflix). Christina Milian plays a singer who aspires to superstardom but is reduced to performing at her ex’s wedding.
July 30
ENEMIES OF THE STATE (in theaters and on demand) Executive produced by Errol Morris, this documentary, directed by Sonia Kennebeck, unravels the case of Matt DeHart, a hacktivist who sought refuge in Canada and claimed the F.B.I. had tortured him.
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Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander in “The Green Knight,” directed by David Lowery.Credit...Eric Zachanowich/A24
THE GREEN KNIGHT (in theaters) Dev Patel has a seat at the round table as Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, in the director David Lowery’s quest to revive the Arthurian legend onscreen. Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton and Sarita Choudhury also star.
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Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson find adventure in “Jungle Cruise.”Credit...Disney
JUNGLE CRUISE (in theaters and on Disney+) In 1916, a British researcher (Emily Blunt) travels to South America and hires a roguish, Bogartian skipper (Dwayne Johnson) as her guide through the Amazon. It’s based on a ride at Disneyland, and indirectly on a long lineage of Hollywood adventure films. Edgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti co-star. Jaume Collet-Serra directed.
THE LAST MERCENARY (on Netflix) French authorities falsely allege that a young man has been trafficking arms and drugs. Unfortunately for them, his father is played by Jean-Claude Van Damme.
NINE DAYS (in theaters) Winston Duke plays an interrogator at a way station of sorts, where he interviews people — actually unborn souls — some of whom will earn the right to be born as humans. Zazie Beetz plays an interviewee who confounds him. Edson Oda wrote and directed.
SABAYA (in theaters and on demand) This documentary trails intrepid volunteer workers in Syria who extract women and girls held captive as sex slaves by the Islamic State.
STILLWATER Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) directed Matt Damon as an American oil-rig worker whose daughter (Abigail Breslin) is imprisoned for murder in Marseille, France. She says she is innocent; he scrambles to help her.
Aug. 6
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Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard in a scene from “Annette.”Credit...Amazon Studios
ANNETTE (in theaters) While Edgar Wright’s documentary about the band Sparks (June 18) covers the cinephile musicians’ history of movie projects that never came to fruition, this feature film gives them their chance: They wrote the screenplay, the songs and the score for this love story, and Leos Carax (“Holy Motors”) directed. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star.
EMA (in theaters) The Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín directs this story of a dancer (Mariana Di Girolamo) and a choreographer (Gael García Bernal) whose lives are thrown out of whack after they return the boy they adopted.
JOHN AND THE HOLE (in theaters and on demand) At the age of 13, John (Charlie Shotwell) gains a measure of adult independence by drugging his immediate family (Jennifer Ehle, Michael C. Hall and Taissa Farmiga) and imprisoning them in a bunker. Pascual Sisto directed this detached, chilly open-ended allegory.
THE MACALUSO SISTERS (in theaters) The Italian playwright and theater director Emma Dante directed this story of five orphan sisters in living in Palermo. She adapted it from her play.
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From left, Daniela Melchior, Peter Capaldi, Idris Elba and David Dastmalchian in “The Suicide Squad.”Credit...Jessica Miglio/DC Comics
THE SUICIDE SQUAD (in theaters and on HBO Max) If it doesn’t work the first time, add a definite article. Poised somewhere between a reboot of and a sequel to “Suicide Squad” (2016), the movie sets several DC characters, including Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, loose on a jungle island. James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) wrote and directed. With Idris Elba, John Cena, Sylvester Stallone and Viola Davis.
Aug. 11
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Joey King, left, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney and Meganne Young in the third “Kissing Booth.”Credit...Netflix
THE KISSING BOOTH 3 (on Netflix) This entry in the series finds Elle (Joey King) getting ready for college.
Aug. 13
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Emilia Jones as the child of deaf adults in “CODA.”Credit...Sundance Institute
CODA (in theaters and on Apple TV+) A crowd-pleaser (and awards-grabber, with four prizes) at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie tells the story of a child of deaf adults (Emilia Jones) in a working-class Massachusetts fishing family. She wants to sing, a passion that is alien to her non-hearing parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant). Sian Heder directed this remake of a French film.
DAYS (in theaters) A highlight of last year’s New York Film Festival, the director Tsai Ming-liang’s feature follows two men — one in Taipei, then Hong Kong (the Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng); the other in Bangkok (Anong Houngheuangsy) — who in the second half meet, and for a little while are not alone.
DON’T BREATHE 2 (in theaters) In the first “Don’t Breathe” (2016), Stephen Lang played a blind veteran whose dark secrets were among that home-invasion tale’s surprises. There’s more on those in this sequel. Rodo Sayagues directed, co-writing with Fede Alvarez, who directed the original.
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Jodie Comer and Ryan Reynolds are caught up in a video game in “Free Guy.”Credit...20th Century Studios
FREE GUY (in theaters) Ryan Reynolds plays a bank teller who finds out, “Truman Show”-like, that he is actually a background character in a video game. Shawn Levy directed. Jodie Comer and Lil Rel Howery also star.
THE MEANING OF HITLER (in theaters and on demand) The documentarians Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker examine the rise of Nazi Germany and draw parallels with the rumblings of authoritarianism across the globe today.
THE LOST LEONARDO (in theaters) Andreas Koefoed’s documentary investigates the dealings that surround “Salvator Mundi,” the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, when in 2017 it was billed as a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees.
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Jennifer Hudson, at the piano, plays Aretha Franklin in “Respect,” a coming film from MGM that has awards buzz.Credit...Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM
RESPECT (in theaters) Find out what it means to her: Jennifer Hudson plays Aretha Franklin in this biopic of the Queen of Soul, directed by the theater vet Liesl Tommy. With Mary J. Blige as Dinah Washington, Audra McDonald as Franklin’s mother and Forest Whitaker as Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin.
Aug. 20
CRYPTOZOO (in theaters and on demand) It’s really more of a cryptid zoo, a cryptid being an animal that is the subject of lore but does not actually exist, like the dream-eating creature that everyone is after in this movie. It’s an animated film, from the graphic novelist Dash Shaw. Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Louisa Krause and Thomas Jay Ryan provided some of the voices.
THE NIGHT HOUSE (in theaters) Rebecca Hall plays a widow who discovers that her husband had a … thing for women who looked quite a bit like her, one of whom is played by Stacy Martin. What was he up to? David Bruckner directed, with an appetite for jump scares.
PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE (in theaters) The techno-fitted animated canines of the children’s TV series make the leap to the big screen.
THE PROTÉGÉ (in theaters) This is the second movie of the summer in which Samuel L. Jackson plays a hit man (after “The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife”) — except that this one concerns the hit man’s daughter (Maggie Q), or at least the woman he raised like a daughter, a hit woman herself, who seeks revenge after he is murdered. Michael Keaton co-stars, also playing a killer. Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”) directed.
REMINISCENCE (in theaters and on HBO Max) Lisa Joy, a creator of “Westworld,” wrote and directed this thriller, which casts Hugh Jackman as a sleuth who digs up lost memories. Rebecca Ferguson plays his latest customer.
WILDLAND (in theaters) This dark Danish feature concerns a teenager (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) who, after her mother’s death, goes to live with an aunt (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and an extended clan filled with criminality and addiction.
Aug. 27
THE BEATLES: GET BACK (in theaters) Peter Jackson, who used archival footage to bring World War I back to life in “They Shall Not Grow Old,” uses tens of hours of restored footage and audio — billed as previously unseen and unheard — to showcase the Beatles as they were in 1969.
Image
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars in a remake of “Candyman.”Credit...Universal Pictures and MGM
CANDYMAN (in theaters) Even without anyone saying Candyman’s name to a mirror, a haunting teaser trailer with only shadow puppets, from last year, set the bar high for this remake, directed by Nia DaCosta (“Little Woods”) and co-written by, among others, Jordan Peele. Interestingly, it appears to retain the milieu of Chicago’s mostly defunct Cabrini-Green housing project, where much of the 1992 original took place. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris star. Colman Domingo also appears.
HE’S ALL THAT (on Netflix) Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) directed this gender-swapped remake of “She’s All That.” Addison Rae plays an influencer who gives a dork (Tanner Buchanan) an image makeover.
VACATION FRIENDS (on Hulu) A couple (Yvonne Orji and Lil Rel Howery) is mortified when some casual friends from a vacation (Meredith Hagner and John Cena) crash their wedding.
Sept. 3
THE BIG SCARY “S” WORD (in theaters) Spoiler alert: The word is “socialism,” and Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among the interviewees in this documentary about its history in the United States.
FAYA DAYI (in theaters) When the director Jessica Beshir’s experimental documentary, shot in Harar, Ethiopia, played at New Directors/New Films in the spring, Beatrice Loayza, writing in The Times, called it “dreamy and visually dazzling.” The film, she wrote, considers the toll that the economics of khat — a plant that is used as a drug — takes “on a rural community across generations.”
MOGUL MOWGLI (in theaters) Riz Ahmed plays a rapper whose body begins to fail him, but it’s not “Sound of Metal” redux. Rather, it’s a story of British-Pakistani identity, and the character’s denial of his heritage may even be responsible for his autoimmune condition. Bassam Tariq (the well-regarded documentary “These Birds Walk”) directed.
The Zombie-Mall Weirdness of Going to the Motion pictures Once more
By
-
May 30, 2021
0
9
I’m finally back in the Film Forum and watching porn. Not really. But I could just as well be: linguistic, perfectly toned bodies squirm in “La Piscine”, the French erotic thriller from 1969 that mocks us from the screen. The stars Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin are incredibly beautiful and shirtless. Party goers mingle and spread their path to bad decisions. Flirting is criminal.
Outside in the audience we sit quietly and at appropriately safe intervals. We’re 25, tops. One participant lowers her face a few inches as if to catch a whiff of tanning lotion and Michel Legrand’s sultry music. The audience around her is tense. An usher is called and discreetly asks for compliance. She lifts her mask, but the clerk pauses for a moment and makes sure that it sticks. (This is much better than a midday screening of Federico Fellini’s “La Strada”, when a flare-up over snacks that were smuggled in threatened to infuriate the expectant mood.)
As always, the films show us a reality that is unattainable. That loophole feels especially big right now as New York’s art houses and multiplexes are reopening wobbly and the CDC is easing security guidelines, a development that has only added to the friction. The experience of being back isn’t quite what it used to be, at least not yet. The bathrooms are pristine to a creepy extent. The subtle smell of popcorn butter – the oddly soothing aroma of Hollywood itself – has not yet returned. In many theaters no concessions are available. Abandoned lobbies and empty escalators add to the overwhelming craziness of the zombie mall.
What was I hoping to find? Can you feel Phantom FOMO for something that doesn’t even happen? Before the pandemic, I went to the movies to make a living without realizing how important it was. During the lockdown, the movies tracked me down (considerately) via streaming links when that was the only option. Sometimes it felt like pretending. For more than a year now, desperate to return the favor, I’ve embarked on an informational mission across town like Martin Sheen who travels upriver in Apocalypse Now. Hopefully you forget how this ends.
Only the fully vaccinated should testify to this. That is certainly not the case. After waiting the suggested two weeks after my second Moderna shot in late March (a sluggish day that felt like restarting the system), I rejoined the movie-goer society. It vaguely felt like getting away with something you knew you shouldn’t.
No excuses. The excitement of being back cannot be downplayed, even if it is characterized by free-floating nervousness. In Andrei Tarkovsky’s elliptical art film “Mirror” from 1975, I drank like so many vodka flights that every mysterious windswept field and fluid interlude hissed my synapses. Amazingly, my small audience at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center greeted the end credits with a robust chorus of commercials (possibly a first for Tarkovsky). Maybe we cheered the very idea of surviving a movie together. A theater worker fired us row by row; We obeyed like good little schoolchildren.
There is something performative about going back to the cinema now. The laughter is louder. Maybe it’s compensation for all the taped rows, all of the dead space. We have become a film ourselves and telegraph our emotions in a way that only 14 months of masking can stimulate. Case in point: Orson Welles’ chatty 1973 documentary “F for Fake” is purring, intellectual amusing, but it’s not the turmoil some superfans clearly had in the Parisian theater in Midtown.
It helps bring your own enthusiasm. Otherwise, a ghost can wander to the roaring air conditioners, freshly fitted with the required MERV 13 filters and somehow louder than the memory serves. Is the ceiling too low? Was that a cough or a giggle? Don’t get too distracted or you will be demoted from paying customer to cop.
Updated
May 29, 2021 at 10:26 p.m. ET
In Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse, House of Wax, the morbid cocktail bar slash museum, was sealed off and dormant on the night it reopened, a shame. The lobby, which was carpeted orange to look like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, was unusually quiet.
Even so, a temperature meter greeted me as if the party was in full swing. When I shoved Guy Ritchie’s pounding Wrath of Man into my booth, the sheer volume haunted me for the first time in months. (We can have stupid things again.) A burger with a toothpick spear wafted past on a tray. (Are you crazy?) Feeling invulnerable, I decided to check out the kitchen and order off menu. My shake – half chocolate, half strawberry – came with a straw that I knew I could slip under my mask. Jason Statham bros to my left and right tucked popcorn kernels under hers.
As nice as the time I have – it’s like home but louder and bigger – the community experience is far too polite to keep up a decent buzz of action. That will change over time as the amount increases in the coming weeks along with the fear factor.
But what is the alternative? It’s almost too scary to consider. Regal UA Court Street in Brooklyn Heights has long been my cozy eatery: a favorite destination for a Thursday night horror movie. “Spiral,” the new reboot of “Saw” starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, should have fit the bill perfectly, even in its sloppy, imperfect form. But on the opening night, a total of six people grumpily staked their places in the otherwise empty house. (One of them was my wife, who discovered that masks can be a handy eye-blocker if you ever want to avoid the sight of Gore.) So listless was our engagement that no one complained when someone in the back stood for hours Quarrel about them had phone. Some forms of torture are more fun than others I think.
For the saddest glimpse of current purgatory of multiplex movie going, a visit to the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square reveals a post-apocalyptic setting where characters are needed. Virtually no one is in the lobby. Two teenage girls – are they the last two people alive? – Take selfies in a vacant upper mezzanine. I go even higher. Godzilla is rumbling somewhere, or it could be King Kong. It’s empty in the theater. Daniel Craig’s voice, barking from a trailer for the October James Bond film “No Time to Die”, which has already been delayed three times, echoes in the antiseptic room: “If we don’t do that, there is nothing left to save.”
Maybe 007 is too late. None of this is going to change until we’re through with social distancing, a threshold about as conceivable as licking a subway rod at rush hour like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. Better to find the theater that takes your safety as seriously as you do. At the IFC Center in Greenwich Village, several tickets were still available on a Friday evening for a never-released film by zombie maestro George A. Romero. “The Amusement Park” was filmed in 1973 and is less than an hour. It’s more of a walking, speaking metaphor than a fully successful piece of drama. But it has the meat-and-potato solidity of the director’s low-budget productions in Pittsburgh and will remind you of “Night of the Living Dead” or “Dawn of the Dead” – that is, if a year of being nailed up like that Doctors argue on TV, has not cemented you there yet.
There were less than ten of us in the theater and we were so far apart that I didn’t mind the secret cracking of a can of something. Spike Lee, Miranda July and Aaron Sorkin greeted us, among other things, in a tailor-made trailer made for the IFC Center, emphasizing the need to keep these masks. I felt good supporting a theater that fed me in better times. Everyone there did their best to avoid the deep irony of tracking down a Romero outcast during a pandemic. The silence was eerie.
Do I miss the copywriters, the scrollers, the screen grabbers, the sprawling Q. and A. hijackers who never get to their question? Honestly no. I can enjoy a movie on my own for decades, long before I was paid to do it.
But I don’t want to feel too comfortable without these strangers. Selfishly, I want them to be next to me if there is a chance that we will all be changed for the better by a “parasite” or a “nomad country”.
And if that’s impossible now, so be it. There was that one warm spring evening that I was wrong about jumping in a cab for the hottest performance of the season. It was the opening night of Zack Snyder’s highly entertaining “Army of the Dead,” a film that owes equally to the sinewy nightmares of John Carpenter and the dazzling scherzo inventions of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven”. It also has a zombie tiger.
There was no red carpet in Paris. There was no line. There was no crowd to speak of. There was free popcorn. I dropped into my fifth row seat and shut down the handful of people behind me. When I sat back, I did my best, Robert De Niro on Cape Fear (no cigar), smiling broadly and letting the Class A nonsense wash over me.
The movie is already on Netflix in case you’re interested. But you really had to be there.
By
-
May 30, 2021
0
9
I’m finally back in the Film Forum and watching porn. Not really. But I could just as well be: linguistic, perfectly toned bodies squirm in “La Piscine”, the French erotic thriller from 1969 that mocks us from the screen. The stars Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin are incredibly beautiful and shirtless. Party goers mingle and spread their path to bad decisions. Flirting is criminal.
Outside in the audience we sit quietly and at appropriately safe intervals. We’re 25, tops. One participant lowers her face a few inches as if to catch a whiff of tanning lotion and Michel Legrand’s sultry music. The audience around her is tense. An usher is called and discreetly asks for compliance. She lifts her mask, but the clerk pauses for a moment and makes sure that it sticks. (This is much better than a midday screening of Federico Fellini’s “La Strada”, when a flare-up over snacks that were smuggled in threatened to infuriate the expectant mood.)
As always, the films show us a reality that is unattainable. That loophole feels especially big right now as New York’s art houses and multiplexes are reopening wobbly and the CDC is easing security guidelines, a development that has only added to the friction. The experience of being back isn’t quite what it used to be, at least not yet. The bathrooms are pristine to a creepy extent. The subtle smell of popcorn butter – the oddly soothing aroma of Hollywood itself – has not yet returned. In many theaters no concessions are available. Abandoned lobbies and empty escalators add to the overwhelming craziness of the zombie mall.
What was I hoping to find? Can you feel Phantom FOMO for something that doesn’t even happen? Before the pandemic, I went to the movies to make a living without realizing how important it was. During the lockdown, the movies tracked me down (considerately) via streaming links when that was the only option. Sometimes it felt like pretending. For more than a year now, desperate to return the favor, I’ve embarked on an informational mission across town like Martin Sheen who travels upriver in Apocalypse Now. Hopefully you forget how this ends.
Only the fully vaccinated should testify to this. That is certainly not the case. After waiting the suggested two weeks after my second Moderna shot in late March (a sluggish day that felt like restarting the system), I rejoined the movie-goer society. It vaguely felt like getting away with something you knew you shouldn’t.
No excuses. The excitement of being back cannot be downplayed, even if it is characterized by free-floating nervousness. In Andrei Tarkovsky’s elliptical art film “Mirror” from 1975, I drank like so many vodka flights that every mysterious windswept field and fluid interlude hissed my synapses. Amazingly, my small audience at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center greeted the end credits with a robust chorus of commercials (possibly a first for Tarkovsky). Maybe we cheered the very idea of surviving a movie together. A theater worker fired us row by row; We obeyed like good little schoolchildren.
There is something performative about going back to the cinema now. The laughter is louder. Maybe it’s compensation for all the taped rows, all of the dead space. We have become a film ourselves and telegraph our emotions in a way that only 14 months of masking can stimulate. Case in point: Orson Welles’ chatty 1973 documentary “F for Fake” is purring, intellectual amusing, but it’s not the turmoil some superfans clearly had in the Parisian theater in Midtown.
It helps bring your own enthusiasm. Otherwise, a ghost can wander to the roaring air conditioners, freshly fitted with the required MERV 13 filters and somehow louder than the memory serves. Is the ceiling too low? Was that a cough or a giggle? Don’t get too distracted or you will be demoted from paying customer to cop.
Updated
May 29, 2021 at 10:26 p.m. ET
In Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse, House of Wax, the morbid cocktail bar slash museum, was sealed off and dormant on the night it reopened, a shame. The lobby, which was carpeted orange to look like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, was unusually quiet.
Even so, a temperature meter greeted me as if the party was in full swing. When I shoved Guy Ritchie’s pounding Wrath of Man into my booth, the sheer volume haunted me for the first time in months. (We can have stupid things again.) A burger with a toothpick spear wafted past on a tray. (Are you crazy?) Feeling invulnerable, I decided to check out the kitchen and order off menu. My shake – half chocolate, half strawberry – came with a straw that I knew I could slip under my mask. Jason Statham bros to my left and right tucked popcorn kernels under hers.
As nice as the time I have – it’s like home but louder and bigger – the community experience is far too polite to keep up a decent buzz of action. That will change over time as the amount increases in the coming weeks along with the fear factor.
But what is the alternative? It’s almost too scary to consider. Regal UA Court Street in Brooklyn Heights has long been my cozy eatery: a favorite destination for a Thursday night horror movie. “Spiral,” the new reboot of “Saw” starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, should have fit the bill perfectly, even in its sloppy, imperfect form. But on the opening night, a total of six people grumpily staked their places in the otherwise empty house. (One of them was my wife, who discovered that masks can be a handy eye-blocker if you ever want to avoid the sight of Gore.) So listless was our engagement that no one complained when someone in the back stood for hours Quarrel about them had phone. Some forms of torture are more fun than others I think.
For the saddest glimpse of current purgatory of multiplex movie going, a visit to the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square reveals a post-apocalyptic setting where characters are needed. Virtually no one is in the lobby. Two teenage girls – are they the last two people alive? – Take selfies in a vacant upper mezzanine. I go even higher. Godzilla is rumbling somewhere, or it could be King Kong. It’s empty in the theater. Daniel Craig’s voice, barking from a trailer for the October James Bond film “No Time to Die”, which has already been delayed three times, echoes in the antiseptic room: “If we don’t do that, there is nothing left to save.”
Maybe 007 is too late. None of this is going to change until we’re through with social distancing, a threshold about as conceivable as licking a subway rod at rush hour like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. Better to find the theater that takes your safety as seriously as you do. At the IFC Center in Greenwich Village, several tickets were still available on a Friday evening for a never-released film by zombie maestro George A. Romero. “The Amusement Park” was filmed in 1973 and is less than an hour. It’s more of a walking, speaking metaphor than a fully successful piece of drama. But it has the meat-and-potato solidity of the director’s low-budget productions in Pittsburgh and will remind you of “Night of the Living Dead” or “Dawn of the Dead” – that is, if a year of being nailed up like that Doctors argue on TV, has not cemented you there yet.
There were less than ten of us in the theater and we were so far apart that I didn’t mind the secret cracking of a can of something. Spike Lee, Miranda July and Aaron Sorkin greeted us, among other things, in a tailor-made trailer made for the IFC Center, emphasizing the need to keep these masks. I felt good supporting a theater that fed me in better times. Everyone there did their best to avoid the deep irony of tracking down a Romero outcast during a pandemic. The silence was eerie.
Do I miss the copywriters, the scrollers, the screen grabbers, the sprawling Q. and A. hijackers who never get to their question? Honestly no. I can enjoy a movie on my own for decades, long before I was paid to do it.
But I don’t want to feel too comfortable without these strangers. Selfishly, I want them to be next to me if there is a chance that we will all be changed for the better by a “parasite” or a “nomad country”.
And if that’s impossible now, so be it. There was that one warm spring evening that I was wrong about jumping in a cab for the hottest performance of the season. It was the opening night of Zack Snyder’s highly entertaining “Army of the Dead,” a film that owes equally to the sinewy nightmares of John Carpenter and the dazzling scherzo inventions of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven”. It also has a zombie tiger.
There was no red carpet in Paris. There was no line. There was no crowd to speak of. There was free popcorn. I dropped into my fifth row seat and shut down the handful of people behind me. When I sat back, I did my best, Robert De Niro on Cape Fear (no cigar), smiling broadly and letting the Class A nonsense wash over me.
The movie is already on Netflix in case you’re interested. But you really had to be there.
Ya'll enjoy its BGOL cinemas for me, the virus ain't the only issue.
Teen fatally shot, another wounded watching 'The Forever Purge' at California movie theater
One person was killed and another critically wounded in a shooting at a Southern California theater screening 'The Forever Purge.'
One teen fatally shot, another wounded at California movie theater
The shooting reportedly occurred during a screening of The Forever Purge.
By Lauren Huff
July 27, 2021 at 08:56 PM EDT
L
An 18-year-old woman was killed and a 19-year-old man was critically injured in a shooting at a movie theater in Corona, Calif., on Monday night, police said.
According to multiple local news outlets, the victims were found by a theater employee after a screening of The Forever Purge, the fifth installment of the dystopian horror franchise set in a world where all crime is legal for 12 hours ever year.
According to the Corona Police Department, officers found a man and woman suffering from gunshot wounds when they arrived at the the Regal Edwards Corona Crossings RPX theater. The 19-year-old male, from Corona, was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. The 18-year-old female, also from Corona, succumbed to her injuries at the scene. Their identification is being held while their next of kin is notified.
Police are currently referring to the incident as a death investigation, as it is unclear who fired the gunshots at this time.
Corona PD Cpl. Tobias Kouroubacalis told KTLA that six tickets had been sold for that particular showing and asked anyone who may have been in the theater at that time, or may have seen anything suspicious, to come forward by calling the Corona Police Department at 951-736-2330, option 3, or Senior Detective Dan Neagu at 951-739-4916, or by emailing slaven.neagu@coronaca.gov.
A Regal Theaters spokesperson said in a statement to EW, "We have received confirmation of an incident at our Corona Crossings theatre last night. We are currently working with the local authorities regarding the investigation. Our primary concern is for the safety and security of our guests and staff."
The movie theater was closed Tuesday and expected to reopen Wednesday, according to The Press-Enterprise. Tickets were unavailable for purchase online for Tuesday or Wednesday showings when accessed by EW at time of publishing.
EW has also reached out to Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, the studio and production company behind the Purge films, for comment.
AMC Entertainment will have technology to receive bitcoin as payment by year-end - CEO
Cinema operator AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) will have the technology in place to receive payment in bitcoin by the end of the year as payment for movie tickets and concessions, the company's CEO said on a call discussing its results.
Aug 9 (Reuters) - Cinema operator AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) will have the technology in place to receive payment in bitcoin by the end of the year as payment for movie tickets and concessions, the company's CEO said on a call discussing its results.
They way this covid is acting, they might need to figure something else out....AMC Entertainment will have technology to receive bitcoin as payment by year-end - CEO
Cinema operator AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) will have the technology in place to receive payment in bitcoin by the end of the year as payment for movie tickets and concessions, the company's CEO said on a call discussing its results.www.reuters.com
Aug 9 (Reuters) - Cinema operator AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) will have the technology in place to receive payment in bitcoin by the end of the year as payment for movie tickets and concessions, the company's CEO said on a call discussing its results.
We just went back to mask mandatory inside... you know they next step back to social distancing
I never stopped doing either.
if I’m not mistaken they have their earnings call tomorrow for their investors. we’ll see what happens to AMC stock after that call.
I went to Stonecrest Mall this past Saturday, walked by the theatre which is still closed and they still had the exact same movie posters from 2020 before the country went into lockdown. It was like time stood still.
Nah, I won't be going back unless covid is a flu or cold. I'm done with those nasty places
I am eventually going to upgrade to a bigger screen TV and probably never step foot inside a theater ever again.
I’ve gone for the last 2 Marvel movies. Both times the auditoriums were pretty full, but I bought the empty seats on the end of my group row so nobody would have to sit right next to strangers. They are all bucket reclining seats with short barrier walls between each row, so I felt ok.
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Shit was mad empty. I enjoyed it son!
I was thinking about breaking protocol to see the new "Matrix" but we'll see, this new Omicron variant might be the end for real.
I want to see the new spider man. But the variant, has me thinking hell no. It's been 3 plus years since I've been to the movies
I went back when No Time To Die hit theatres. It was packed because they were still doing the one seat apart thing at Alamo Draft House .My only complaint it took them over an hour to serve us our food orders.So they gave us a couple of 10 dollar vouchers .
Saw the new Ghostbusters in an Alamo Drafthouse. Probably less than 20 people in there. Me and my girl were the only ones on our aisle.
I'm trying to think back to the last movie I saw at the theater. Man, my memory ain't shit.
I guess it was John Wick 3 back in mid-2019 or so. Before the world got flipped turned upside down in 2020.
I guess it was John Wick 3 back in mid-2019 or so. Before the world got flipped turned upside down in 2020.
I honestly never cared about going much. A bitch to find parking, tickets over priced along with everything they sell in there. Tv and surround sound works for me lol.
go to the movies 3-5 times a month
I have AMC list going to movies solo or with the fam is one of the few activities that feels relatively normal after Covid.
marvel blockbusters and opening weekend ain't for the faint of heart. I recommend catching earlier shows which amc discounts up to 30%.
We all vaccinated and try to book our seats were there is a space in between. Mostly Dolby theatres which offer natural distancing.
come Dec wouldn't be suprised if I go to the movies up to 5 or 6 times with Spiderman, Matrix, Kingsman, Nightmare Alley and random kids flick.
I have AMC list going to movies solo or with the fam is one of the few activities that feels relatively normal after Covid.
marvel blockbusters and opening weekend ain't for the faint of heart. I recommend catching earlier shows which amc discounts up to 30%.
We all vaccinated and try to book our seats were there is a space in between. Mostly Dolby theatres which offer natural distancing.
come Dec wouldn't be suprised if I go to the movies up to 5 or 6 times with Spiderman, Matrix, Kingsman, Nightmare Alley and random kids flick.
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