Robert Hamer
Summer! Oh god it is getting hotter. So, so much hotter. All over the world. And the best part is, this is the coolest summer of the rest of our lives! Yay, accelerating climate catastrophe! So what can we turn to as we seek refuge in cool, air-conditioned theaters from the blistering heat over the next seventy days? A surprising diversity of interesting indie dramas and IP-driven franchise fare, as it turns out. Let’s take a look at some of them below…
KINDS OF KINDNESS – In Theaters June 21
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring Emma Stone, with Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe
What is it about? A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
How am I feelin’ about this one? No rest for “poor things,” huh? Right in the middle of that movie’s ultimately very successful awards campaign, its director and star went ahead and filmed another feature-length movie in time for a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where Jesse Plemons collected his own Prix d’interprétation award to place right next to his wife’s on the family trophy shelf. So already, we’re getting a steady stream of predictions that the man who already surprised a lot of awards watchers two years ago will once again be a dark horse this season. Right now, Joey is predicting him getting a second Best Supporting Actor nomination, but I’m going to bet on him being vaulted to lead consideration due to the promotional materials strongly suggesting his presence as a major character in all three vignettes, and the myriad characters he had to portray will probably impress a lot of people in an industry already inclined to embrace him. It also doesn’t hurt that he delivers arguably the strongest performance in one of the only scenes in Civil War that didn’t strike me as thoroughly craven and dishonest (oh, side note: I hated Civil War), to add to his profile this year.
As for the movie itself… well, a part of me is a little relieved that this particular filmmaker is returning to something more grounded and straightforwardly nasty, which seems to be the mode of his that I personally prefer. I have to confess that I was at a loss to understand the gushing praise leveled at Poor Things, and rivals only Alps as the Yorgos Lanthimos film provoking the most outright apathy from me. Yes, that includes Emma Stone, who I certainly admire for diving headfirst into such an aggressively weird project, but that admiration is tempered by how much she hedges when it came to actually embodying the kind of unhinged woman-child presented in first act, or how unconvincingly she tracked Bella’s transformation into a hyperarticulate autodidact through the span of only a few brief scenes. Ah well, I’ve accepted that I’m in very much the minority, and I can only hope I won’t find myself in the same lonely boat on their latest collab. Joey seemed very fond of the film, judging by his review here.
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1 – In Theaters June 28
Directed by …
And starring Kevin Costner, with Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington
What is it about? An epic chronicle of the pre– and post–American Civil War expansion of the American West.
How am I feelin’ about this one? I wonder how many in the Awards Radar community are aware of the most popular and expansive multimedia franchise among their Boomer dads. For the past five years, Kevin Costner has been the star of a hugely popular TV show called Yellowstone, about a family of Montana ranchers and the various territorial feuds they get into with the government, Native American reservations, and rival corporate developers. It’s a massive hit, arguably the most popular TV franchise in America. I say “franchise” deliberately, because while the mainline show is a ratings bonanza, showrunner and head writer Taylor Sheridan has spun off multiple different shows from the same continuity, Law & Order-style. The upcoming fifth season of Yellowstone will be its last, but it will immediately be followed by a sequel series apparently starring Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey. Then you have the prequel spinoff series 1883, the sequel to that prequel series 1923 starring Helen-freakin’-Mirren and Harrison Ford, a sequel to that prequel-sequel called 1944, and another spinoff in development called 6666.
I bring up this series because… well, one reason is because I genuinely find it fascinating that there’s an entire cultural phenomenon for one generation that my own is almost completely out of touch with. For this preview article, it’s worth bringing up because, while Horizon: An American Saga is an upcoming tetralogy directed, written, produced by, and starring Kevin Costner that doesn’t directly tie into that hit show… it’s hard to argue that its success didn’t grease the gears considerably for Costner to finally get out of Director Jail and finance this ambitious epic film series about the exploration and settlement of the American West before and after the American Civil War. Dances with Wolves has the rather unfortunate reputation of being a “Mightey Whitey” movie despite the film’s narrative not actually reflecting that accusation, so I’m not necessarily worried that the films will be racist rah-rah-murica rendition of a rather brutal period of American history. Costner isn’t some stalwart progressive herald but he isn’t a reactionary maniac, either. I am, however, concerned that his habit of indulging in unearned melodrama, bloated runtimes, and wonky pacing will come back to bite him again in this passion project… and unfortunately, early reviews haven’t assuaged those worries.
TWISTERS – In Theaters July 19
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, with Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos
What is it about? Tornadoes be tornadoin’!
How am I feelin’ about this one? I’ve always had a bit of a weakness for Twister, Jan de Bont’s silly-as-hell, effects-driven disaster thriller about tornado chasers that ended up being a, for the time, huge box office hit the year before Titanic exploded into theaters as the last word on the entire disaster movie genre in the United States. Is it stupid? God, yes. Does it portray the profession of tornado observation or just the general behavior of tornadoes with anything approaching fidelity to the real world? Absolutely not. But man, there’s something so admirable about a movie that knows exactly what we’re all here for, and delivers with scene after scene of pretty well-aged tornado effects and comprehensible action that results in a refreshingly… “pure” spectacle. No convoluted franchise worldbuilding nonsense. No pretensions of offering anything other than what the title and the tagline promise. And I just love that so much. Also, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt had surprisingly really good onscreen chemistry.
Most of you are probably expecting me to react with disgust at Hollywood pillaging yet another decades-old IP to cynically leverage my aging generation’s increasingly calcified nostalgia. But to be honest, I’m actually kind of excited for this movie and will almost certainly pay to see it in theaters on opening day. Unlike another film we’ll be getting to shortly, Twisters doesn’t require any familiarity with the canon of the original movie. There’s no convoluted story threads or plot coupons here. In fact, it looks like this is a borderline remake and not the rumored direct “legacyquel” that Hunt herself had pitched a few years ago. Instead, they decided on Lee Isaac Chung for the director’s chair. Some might find tapping the director of the small-scale family drama Minari for this project to be an odd decision, but others who have seen the episode of The Mandalorian he directed cite it as one of the best of the entire series. I’d say that’s enough to give him a shot at a theatrical spectacle. Filling in the shoes of the scrappy protagonist tornado-chasers this time are Daisy Edgar-Jones, who has been in… some movies, and Hollywood’s “It” Man of the moment Glen Powell, currently basking in some of the best reviews of his career for his starring role in Hit Man. Whether they can hit the same “spark” that Hunt and the late great Paxton did in the original film remains to be seen.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE – In Theaters July 26
Directed by Shawn Levy
Starring Ryan Reynolds, with Hugh Jackman and Emma Corrin
What is it about? Marvel once again cynically mashes together recognizable IPs for the sake of leveraging our nostalgia, and by extension, our wallets, jettisoning any pretense of artistic integrity.
How am I feelin’ about this one? And now we come to the movie that brings out Angry Robert. Because good lord, this movie seems tailor-made to piss me all the way off. I was never that big a fan of the Deadpool movies to begin with. The first one is perfectly fine. Not terrible, not amazing, just a decent-ish snarky action comedy written and directed by men whose senses of humor were shaped by South Park and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, starring a someone whose smarmy affectations as a comedic leading man had been shrewdly deployed here to a character perfect for it. The sequel, on the other hand, was insufferable, and but for serving as the breakout role for the very interesting-but-frustratingly-underutilized actress Zazie Beetz, is otherwise worthless as cinema. Even by the whacked narrative logic of superhero movies where death is well-established as a temporary malady, the justification for Deadpool’s time-travel resurrection in climax is the most insultingly stupid plot logic I have ever seen in a superhero movie.
Now it appears that the “comedic” mid-credits sequence where he fixes the time travel doohickey even further to allow him to save his girlfriend from death and retcon himself out of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was actually played as a key plot thread leading into Deadpool & Wolverine. With Hugh Jackman as Wolverine! Cool! Remember when he died in Logan, that movie that audiences and critics praised for, among other things, being such a poignant sendoff for a character played consistently by the same actor since before 9/11? Remember how powerful it was to see him heroically sacrifice himself for the sake of his clone daughter, meaningfully wrapping up the film’s themes of setting aside one’s own desires for the sake of the next generation? Welp, looks like all that was total bullshit and we get to see grumpy Wolverine played off against goofball Deadpool! Woo hoo! Oh, and he’s wearing the classic yellow spandex outfit. Remember the yellow costume? Now he’s wearing that iconic costume as a man in his mid-fifties! That sad death scene was actually meaningless and we were all stupid for thinking that was going to be his last appearance as that character!
God, I hate this so much. It’s so infantilizing and frivolous and destroys the power of these stories and characters. They’re not even characters, anymore. They’re just mascots, no different than the Trix Rabbit or Mickey Mouse, meant to show up and instigate a Pavlovian fanboy response from us. At this rate, I’m positive that anyone who felt anything when Tony Stark sacrificed himself at the end of Avengers: Endgame is going to feel like an idiot when Robert Downey, Jr. wants to buy a new vacation home and Disney comes a-knocking.
BORDERLANDS – In Theaters August 9
Directed by Eli Roth
Starring Cate Blanchett, with Kevin Hart and Jack Black
What is it about? Adapted from the popular video game series, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past reluctantly returns to her home planet to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., forming an alliance with some unconventional heroes along the way.
How am I feelin’ about this one? Is this the future of big-budget theatrical spectacle? The next big Hollywood blockbuster trend? Patrick H. Willems seems to think it’s well within the realm of possibility… but he also identifies some major roadblocks to the possibility of video games dominating the box office the way superheroes have for a quarter-century. At this point, I’m willing to give a chance to anything that can finally dislodge the superhero fad from the top of Hollywood’s greenlight list. Super Mario Bros. aside, I’m also rather piqued by the trend of Hollywood tapping into video game IPs that came about after I moved on from them as the most tantalizing targets for adaptation. I’ve never played Five Nights at Freddy’s or Uncharted, and those were already turned into successful feature films. I also have no fond memories of playing Minecraft, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, or Just Cause, all of which are being developed into feature films right now. And no, I have never played any of the Borderlands games, which were popular enough to warrant a nine-figure budget, a well-known genre director just coming off of his best film yet, and starring two Academy Award-winning actresses for this adaptation. This would have been flat-out unthinkable when the first game was released almost fifteen years ago.
I’m in no position to gauge how accurately the movie adheres to the visual presentation, style, and attitude of the games. It’s certainly more colorful than other looter-shooters with that “used future” aesthetic, so that’s cool. I’m also kind of relieved at how relatively low-stakes the premise is. Way too many sci-fi action movies feel the need to make the whole entire universe under threat, so to see just “hey we’re a bunch of space pirates looking for space treasure” is a refreshing torquing down of that habit. It also has a sense of humor that I… do not get at all. Humor is subjective, of course. If you find the sight of a talking robot seemingly getting, erm, excited over the experience of an audience watching him expel his “excess lead” hilarious, hey, no judgment here. I’m a guy who still loses it over all the nicknames the MST3k guys come up with for the beefcake hero of Space Mutiny. But there’s a… smugness to the way the jokes are presented, at least in the trailer for Borderlands, that just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe this is an all-too-rare instance of “I’m just too old to understand this” pop culture that I’ve been begging Hollywood to embrace so that my generation can finally grow up? If that’s the case, then that’s another point in this movie’s favor. This does not have to be for me in order to be a movie worth rooting for.
KRAVEN THE HUNTER – In Theaters October 6 August 30
Directed by J. C. Chandor
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, with Ariana DeBose and Russell Crowe
What is it about? C-list Spider-Man villain Russian immigrant Sergei Kravinoff is on a mission to prove that he is the greatest hunter in the world.
How am I feelin’ about this one? This is, honestly, just getting sad at this point. Sony is just so desperate to build a superhero cinematic universe from the supporting characters of the Spider-Man mythology because those are the only characters they still have full custody over in their agreement with Disney. But as I’ve already explained before, no one cares about all the little side characters and extra “lore” surrounding Spider-Man. We care about Spider-Man. He’s the young, flawed, struggling, relatable everyman superhero. That he’s also tangentially connected to some psychic spider-themed oracle looking for a man who was in the Amazon with her mom when she was researching spiders right before she died doesn’t… like, guys, no one cares about those side characters and little canonical accoutrements.
But they won’t listen. They still just want to believe so hard in this delusion that they’ll be able to launch the Spider-Side-Character Cinematic Universe that’ll finally rival those bastards at Marvel Studios who keep out-negotiating the rights to Spider-Man out from under them, and so, Kraven the Hunter is now getting his own solo origin movie. In the comics, he’s a safari-themed supervillain with big game hunter-based weapons and traps and he solidly occupies the middle-tier of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery. Here, he’s yet another attempt from Hollywood to make Aaron Taylor-Johnson happen, so he’s a grizzled anti-hero on a quest for vengeance. I was going to make a joke about that prequel miniseries The Penguin, except Oswald Cobblepot is a higher-profile villain in Batman’s rogues gallery than Kraven the Hunter ever was in Spider-Man’s. This would be more like if the Mad Hatter got his own solo origin movie starring Taylor Kitsch. Yeah, Kitsch could pull off that character. I mean, if he could do Hot David Koresh, then anything is on the table for him at this point…
Oh, and also Ariana DeBose is the leading lady of this movie. Remember her? She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress during one of the most ridiculously stacked years for outstanding supporting performances from women of the 21st century so far? This is arguably her biggest post-Oscar role, and I want to weep.
What say you, readers? Can a fan of the games weigh in on how Borderlands looks as an adaptation? Is there any hope for the Spider-Side-Character cinematic universe? Let us know in the comments.
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