Moana
As part of Disney’s ongoing simulacrum project — live-action remakes of its beloved animated classics, usually with minimal changes — comes the live-action adaptation of Moana, a little less than a decade after the animated film on which it is based. And what do you know? Judging at least by the trailer, it looks as though the fewest possible changes were made to the source material, which, as you may recall, follows the journey of self-discovery of a beautiful and brave Polynesian princess, in the hope of bringing to theaters not only the youngsters who consume films of this kind but also those who watched the original Moana and want to recapture the magic.
But will there be magic this time? Well, that depends on your ability to watch the film without saying every three seconds, "Oh, OK, this is literally exactly like the original Moana." Hell, even Dwayne Johnson, who voiced the demigod Maui in the original film and its sequel, will play him again — this time in all his physical glory. Moana will be played this time by newcomer Catherine Laga‘aia, replacing Auli‘i Cravalho, who has voiced the character until now. Opens July 9.
The Invite
After the relative disaster of Don’t Worry Darling — the film did make some money, but was savaged by critics and generated buzz mainly because of Harry Styles’ casting and a flurry of rumors about tensions and feuds on set — Olivia Wilde’s new film has arrived. And this time, the critics are on board. Very much so.
For this comedy — an adaptation of a 2020 Spanish film by Cesc Gay, written by actors and screenwriters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones — Wilde assembled a rather impressive cast that includes, in addition to herself, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. Broadly speaking, the story unfolds at a dinner in which a couple with relationship problems, played by Rogen and Wilde, host their upstairs neighbors, played by Cruz and Norton. Naturally, it does not take long before everything starts to go wrong.
At the most recent Sundance Film Festival, the film earned a wave of praise, and its Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at an impressive 93%. Does that mean the disgrace of Don’t Worry Darling — OK, some people liked it — will be erased? There is certainly a reasonable chance. The cast is very strong, no question; Jones has already impressed as the writer of one of the better Black Mirror episodes of recent years, "Nosedive," starring Bryce Dallas Howard from the third season. What can we say? We are keeping our fingers crossed. Opens July 9.
Jackass: Best and Last
Four years have passed since the last time the Jackass crew — armed with some new additions — abused themselves for our laughs. Now Johnny Knoxville and company, minus Bam Margera, who fell out with them, are returning for what they call their final film. No promises, because it is probably safe to assume that even in a nursing home they will choose to lick jellyfish, jump into a ring with raging bulls and electrocute their own testicles.
And it is no wonder they are coming back: So far, the four films in the series have grossed more than half a billion dollars at the box office. Judging by this lively, nostalgia-packed trailer — and the enduring affection for the band of lunatics who broke through on MTV at the start of the millennium — the new film should also bring in the cash. This time, alongside the new cast members who are still with us and plenty of re-creations of legendary past bits, there is also a robot that will undoubtedly, and according to the filmed evidence, hurt the crew more than they hurt it. At one point, it even performs a prostate exam on Steve-O. Good Lord, why? Opens July 9.
Mama
Mila (Evgenia Dodina), a Polish immigrant who has worked for years in Israel as a housekeeper in a luxury villa in Caesarea, decides to return to her hometown in Poland to finally see her daughter, whom she has mainly seen for years through a phone screen. But the homecoming is nothing like what she imagined: Her family has learned to get by without her, her daughter has grown distant from her and life has moved on. Mila tries to repair the bonds that were lost and reclaim her place in the family, but she is forced to confront the emotional cost of the years she chose to work far from home.
That is the premise of Or Sinai’s film, based on her short film Anna, which also starred the wonderful Dodina. Like Anna, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and won the Ophir Award for best short film, the full-length feature also screened at Cannes, where it competed for the Caméra d’Or for first films. Critics, for the most part, liked it, and offered special praise for Dodina’s performance, as expected. Now it is your turn to be impressed. Opens July 9.
Evil Dead Burn
For horror fans, the Evil Dead franchise is nothing less than legendary. First came The Evil Dead in 1981, the film that launched Sam Raimi, who would later become an excellent blockbuster director with Spider-Man and, more recently, delivered another thoroughly enjoyable film, Send Help. Raimi then essentially made the same film again, only with a bit more money and far more bloody insanity, giving us Evil Dead II in 1987, which blended nauseating horror with wicked slapstick and became a true genre classic. Later, Raimi directed Army of Darkness, the third film in the trilogy, which retained only some of the horror elements and moved into comic fantasy territory.
Then Raimi, who by then had become a blockbuster director, abandoned the franchise, at least as a director, making room for a series of other filmmakers. The result? A regression into pure horror, one that abandoned Raimi’s deranged humor and comic cruelty in favor of a suffocating atmosphere and much more body horror. Not necessarily to the franchise’s benefit, if you ask this writer.
In any case, after Evil Dead in 2013 and Evil Dead Rise, the fourth and fifth installments in the series, comes Evil Dead Burn, directed by French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček, who has made only one full-length horror film so far, the nasty Infested, which is absolutely not recommended for arachnophobes.
And what is the story, you ask? Well, as usual: A group of people — this time a family, specifically a woman who has just lost her husband and travels with his family to mourn — arrive at the isolated cabin where the films in the series took place. Hell awaits them there. There is really no need to know more than that. And even if one’s heart breaks over the serious, menacing direction Raimi’s legendary series has taken, it is still worth seeing what horrific dish they have cooked up for us this time. Opens July 9.
The Odyssey
OK, we have arrived: the most anticipated film of the coming summer, with no real competition. Three years after winning roughly a billion Oscars for his wonderful Oppenheimer — OK, seven statuettes, but that is still a lot — Christopher Nolan returns with his next project, an adaptation of Homer’s epic about the arduous journey of the Greek commander Odysseus back home to Ithaca after fighting in the Trojan War and helping secure victory.
The problem, beyond the trials themselves, is that during Odysseus’ years away, the people of Ithaca began to assume he would never return, and dozens of suitors started competing for the hand of his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). His son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), struggles to protect his father’s household and his status as heir, until the tension leads to a bloody confrontation.
And yes, since the release of the first trailer, the film has actually been surrounded by negative buzz — harsh reactions to the somewhat embarrassing, prosaic dialogue included in it ("My father is coming home!"), to the accents heard in the film, to the casting choices, including Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, Elliot Page, who may be playing Achilles, and rapper Travis Scott, whose role is unclear, but what the hell is he doing here, and much more.
But that is how it goes: There will always be haters, and creators like Nolan will never count them, because that is simply not his style, and because it simply does not matter. In other words, you can be sure that even this negative buzz will translate into absolutely shattered box-office records. The haters will be there too, in the movie theaters. Guaranteed. Opens July 16.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
With the most-watched trailer ever in its first 24 hours, and despite the fact that this is already the fourth installment in Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man series, it hardly needs to be said that expectations for this film are sky-high. And why wouldn’t they be? So far, the other films in the series have delivered smooth, gripping and fairly intelligent entertainment, within the limits of the genre. There is no reason to believe this time will be any different, even if the director has changed: Jon Watts has made way for Destin Daniel Cretton, who previously directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for Marvel.
The story takes place four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The entire world has forgotten Peter Parker (Tom Holland) because of Doctor Strange’s spell at the end of the previous film. Peter lives alone in New York, cut off from MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon) and everyone who knew him, and it is not easy. Over the course of the film, he encounters a powerful new threat, while his body and powers begin to undergo a mysterious and dangerous physical change that could threaten his very existence. At the same time, a series of unusual crimes leads him to investigate a new enemy, who has not yet been revealed to the public. There are guesses, but we will spare you; we like surprises.
What is already known at this stage is that this time, some of Marvel’s television heroes of recent years will also appear in the film: Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox, who already made a brief visit in No Way Home). Oh, and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is here too. For those who are interested. Opens July 30.
Hill 338
This Israeli comedy was written as a tribute to Givat Halfon Eina Ona — perhaps the greatest Israeli cult film of all time — so our level of interest in it has risen significantly.
Unlike the source of inspiration, the film does not take place in the dunes near the Sinai border but somewhere in the Jordan Valley, and follows the efforts to evacuate a neglected army base there because the Chinese government is going to pay a hefty sum for the land. But the officer sent to oversee the evacuation does not know that an old bunker hidden beneath the base is about to disrupt his plans in a very big way.
The creative team includes Erez Ben Harush as director, with Ilan Rosenfeld, Maya Sobol and Eyal After writing the script. Lior Dayan, son of Assi Dayan of Givat Halfon fame, is also involved, so some of the DNA is still here. The cast includes Eli Yatzpan, Shahar Hasson, Yael Poliakov — more DNA — Kim Or Azoulay, Tal Friedman, Uri Gottlieb, Meir Suissa, Anat Atzmon and many others. Is this a new hit in the making? Opens Aug. 6.
The End of Oak Street
This intriguing project, which boasts a very worthy trailer — Billy Joel! — earns the title "intriguing" mainly because of its director: David Robert Mitchell, who broke through in 2014 with his second film, It Follows, a brilliant horror movie that deservedly achieved cult status. Mitchell then directed the strange, loose detective comedy Under the Silver Lake in 2018, starring Andrew Garfield, and that was that. But nothing in his short and interesting filmography suggested that Mitchell might one day be handed a sci-fi project with blockbuster ambitions like The End of Oak Street. Somehow, it happened.
Anne Hathaway — is she everywhere? All at once? The short answer: yes — and Ewan McGregor play a married couple raising their family in a picturesque suburb sometime in the 1970s, and on the whole they are enjoying life. That is, until a mysterious cosmic event apparently transports the entire neighborhood to another dimension, one filled with all kinds of predatory dinosaurs. Now they must try to survive among T. rexes, velociraptors and other monsters from ancient eras.
It will be interesting to see how Mitchell handles this material, which does not look especially typical for him. It will be interesting to see whether the obvious Jurassic Park vibes amount to imitation, or whether Mitchell brings something new to the table. The truth is, we have had our fill of dinosaurs, and all the dreck from Jurassic World in recent years certainly did not help. Could salvation lie with this strange and fascinating director? Opens Aug. 13.