The summer movie season is always eagerly anticipated and even more eagerly forgotten, but the shit show known as the summer of 2016 will leave a lasting scar. Ghostbusters; Suicide Squad; Ghostbusters; Independence Day: Resurgence; people Tweeting about Ghostbusters; The Legend of Tarzan; and let’s not forget Ghostbusters. But summer hope springs eternal, and film critic Daniel Barnes managed to find 10 highly anticipated films that might just make for the best … summer … ever.
Wonder Woman (June 2) • Finally! A female superhero movie helmed by a female director … was that really so difficult? Beyond checking off overdue boxes and rubbing Marvel’s nose in it, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman could break out of the comic book bubble of bland mediocrity, if only because the character is more identified with bravery and sincerity than with wisecracking smugness or goth mopey-ness. It helps that the demigoddess warrior princess is played by real-life demigoddess warrior princess Gal Gadot.
It Comes at Night (June 9) • Nobody watched Trey Edward Shults’ brilliant debut film Krisha, but apparently the right nobodies watched it, because it won the 28-year-old director a two-picture deal with highly respected indie outlet A24. This followup is a horror movie, and after seeing Shults turn a Thanksgiving family dinner into hell on earth, it will be fascinating to watch him plant two feet in the genre.
Baby Driver (June 28) • After a number of aborted projects, including a famously failed attempt to make Ant-Man, Edgar Wright finally delivers his first film since 2013’s The World’s End. I’ll take anything I can get from the maniacally creative Wright at this point, even if this romantic action musical looks like the sort of film that talented directors make when they have no idea what to make.
The Beguiled (June 30) • I’m not usually stoked about remakes, especially a remake of a good film like Don Siegel’s kinky 1971 drama The Beguiled, but I’m very curious to see a female take on this somewhat misogynist material. It will also be interesting to see if Sofia Coppola can snap out of her funk and invest the film with some of the old Lost in Translation spark.
A Ghost Story (July 7) • David Lowery provided one of last summer’s pleasant surprises with Pete’s Dragon, a project conceived as a cynical CGI remake, but imbued with love and optimism and old-school Disney magic (no wonder it tanked). His follow-up film, a supernatural love story starring Casey Affleck as a white-sheeted ghost trying to connect with his wife, received wide acclaim at Sundance.
Dunkirk (July 21) • Christopher Nolan is practically the only auteur permitted to make money-is-not-object, off-brand blockbusters anymore. That sucks, if only because Nolan seems inclined to make the sort of movies an important director is supposed to make (pretentious space epics and bloated WWII anything) rather than following his Memento muse. Still, this story of the Allied evacuation is probably our best chance for non-superhero-related IMAX awesomeness this summer.
