Summer Film News
Welcome to our Summer Film News Edition! In years past, the summer film season featured a countdown of blockbuster film releases. Time will tell what the future of major Hollywood films will be in the coming months. Meanwhile, here’s some of the featured films from our Summer Film News.
A Quiet Place Part II and Cruella are kicking off the holidays in this summer movie season. And Hollywood has high hopes that it will get back in gear this year.
There are several lists that we perused to come up with just a few recommended films in the list we provide for the summer movie season. Here’s hoping that they include some undiscovered indies and foreign flicks to round out the summer. We have often lamented at 6 Degrees about the at times too predictable nature of the films that are usually green-lighted for each new movie season. We have our own high hopes for finding the ‘films that matter’ that we spoke of last month. Let’s hope they are going to start popping up soon in this post-pandemic era!
Here’s our Summer Movie Preview from 6 Degrees
Summer Film News
June
In the Heights: The much anticipated musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda is described as a ‘love letter to the Latino community of New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood.” So far it’s received good word-of-mouth and favorable reviews and ‘buzz’ for this adaptation. June 11Luca:Pixar presents a coming-of-age tale that is set on the Italian Riviera about a pair of young friends who have a summer of fun….and they are also just happen to be sea monsters! June 18
July
Black Widow: The stand-alone Marvel origin movie is the much anticipated solo film for Scarlett Johansson’s character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story has Natasha Romanoff traveling back to Russia to reunite with some of the figures of a dark past. July 9Space Jam: A New Legacy finds LeBron James also (Like Michael Jordan!), trapped in the world of Looney Tunes along with the larger cast found in the Warner Brothers Universe of characters and movie classics. July 16Old is from director (The Sixth Sense) M Night Shymalan, the new master of suspense. In this horror fantasy, a family on vacation suddenly find that the beach they have stumbled upon is causing them to age so fast they must live out their entire lives in one day! July 23The Green Knight has Dev Patel starring as Sir Gawain in this creative imagining of the classic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. July 30AugustRespect features actress/singer Jennifer Hudson playing the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin in this bio pic. August 13Candyman is a sequel to the 1992 horror classic where an artist moves to the Chicago area, now renovated, to find out more and create new work about the legendary Candyman. The move unleashes the dark history along with a new wave of violence. August 27The Beatles: Get Back from Peter Jackson, is a new documentary with unseen footage that gives a more feel-good aura to the last days of recording with the musical legends-the Beatles. August 27
Recommended for On Demand:
High Anxiety: If you have never seen this, you may appreciate the very deliberate spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous films. Mel Brooks gives it his usual spin, and one of the highlights features Mel and the late great Madeline Kahn in a piano bar as he sings his original song that also lampoons Frank Sinatra’s lounge act that’s fittingly titled: High Anxiety!Spectre: Is a good film to preview for those of us who are waiting for the last Bond film starring Daniel Craig in the title role.
Clint Eastwood Film Fest: Westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are featured for a round-up of the good, old shoot-em-up Spaghetti Westerns that made Eastwood famous. Although these Westerns are not his best work, they give us more than a glimpse of what the Clint Eastwood Western was all about.
Eastwood admitted that one of the tricks that launched his career was just slashing pages and pages of needless dialogue. Instead, he used his famous squint to his advantage, along with a cigar and a stand-off in the street while the music dramatically played in the background. It became the stuff of legends in the Western pantheon.
Summer Film News
Hollywood is ‘abuzz’ with the news of Amazon buying the MGM catalog. What that means for the likes of the James Bond series is explored by film critic Scott Mendelson of Forbes.
Also in our “Friday Flix” 6 Degrees features a piece from Film Comment in 2006 by the late Charles Grodin on the theory of Film Directing. Cinevue.com features five films that will put you in the mood for travel. And Film School Rejects has this great titled post: “For the love of B-Movies: In Praise of Hong Kong’s Cinematic Sleaze.” Check it out in this week’s 6 Degrees of Film magazine at the movies!
