July Movie Preview

I think it’s fair to say in the grander scheme of the human experiment that 2016 has been a particularly rough year so far. The past few weeks here in the UK especially have left the nation fractured, divided and left to clean up a veritable hurricane of piss following a series of recent political and social meltdowns. What we need right now is something to unite and momentarily distract us in massive dark rooms all over the country, if not the world. We need reassurance, we need a sense of familiarity, and we need a forgetful blue fish who sounds like Ellen DeGeneres. That’s right, Dory’s back! Not just that, but Eddy and Patsy are back! Jason Bourne is back! The Star Trek gang are back! The goddamn Ghostbusters are back! If July doesn’t find a way to cinematically lift your spirits, then it’s little wonder you don’t get invited to many parties.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie – July 1^st

Of all the TV shows to make the precarious leap into cinema, I never thought Absolutely Fabulous would be one of them. I must admit I never really watched it when it was on, but the episodes I have seen are a testament to the show’s quality. So what about the film? Well Eddy (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) are as they ever were, boozing, schmoozing, and occasionally ruining the day of Eddy’s daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha). After an incident at a fashionable party and one dead Kate Moss later, the two flee to the south of France, hoping to start again. Or at least continue in the manner to which they are accustomed.

Now You See Me 2 – July 4^th

Infuriatingly not called Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the sequel to Louis Leterrier’s 2013 Jesse-Eisenberg-starring magician-heist-caper arrives with a mixed amount of fanfare. On the one hand, Leterrier has vanished before our very eyes in favour of… er… Jon Chu, the director of Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never and Step Up 2: The Streets, but on the other we still have the industrial chemistry of Eisenberg and Zombieland co-star, Woody Harrelson. After disappearing in a showy cloud of magic at the end of the last film, troublesome magical quartet the Four Horsemen (Eisenberg, Harrelson, Dave Franco and Lizzy Caplan) are brought back by tech genius Daniel Radcliffe for that old chestnut, the one last heist.

The Legend of Tarzan – July 6^th

Much like Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules last year, here we have another attempt at trying to reclaim a famous name from the cultural consciousness created by Disney, this time by distracting people with Alexander Skarsgård’s upper torso and telling everyone, yes, he is Tarzan. Instead of being the all-expected origin story that the term ‘Legend’ implies, this time we see Tarzan return to the jungle from his life in London along with Margot Robbie’s Jane to investigate a series of incidents relating to a nearby mining colony. At some point Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou all appear, so to say this film will have someone sporting incredible facial hair and employ some kind of typecasting would be, well…

The Neon Demon – July 8^th

Nicolas Winding Refn, the man what made those two Ryan Gosling films, you know, that good one and that one nobody could make their minds up about, is back with a film that has absolutely nothing to do with Ryan, the littlest goose. The Neon Demon trains Winding Refn’s powerful sense of shot composition, aesthetic and increasingly-unhinged sense of vocational exploration on the modelling scene in Los Angeles. Elle Fanning is the up-and-coming model with the potential of making it as big as the next proverbial big thing, but of course in an industry as literally cut-throat and surreal as that of professional modelling, there ain’t no way her story is going to be remotely straight-forward. Refn regular Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves (I know!) also star.

Ghostbusters – July 11^th

Potentially the most divisive film to come out this year, the all-female Ghostbusters reboot has been argued as the tipping point for a lot of what makes Hollywood work/not work and can be seen as the example of how it is that major studios perceive the legacy of once-lauded intellectual properties. That or Ghostbusters fanboys are just trying to piss all over anything that uses the license. It’s hard to tell in 2016. Whilst I might not be a fan of director Paul Feigs’ previous work, he does have at his disposal four of the best comedic actresses in the business (Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones) and with endorsements galore from the original cast, surely there’s nothing to worry about? That trailer though…

Star Trek Beyond – July 21^st

It would be impudent of me not to mention the tragic loss of Star Trek Beyond‘s Anton Yelchin last month, who incidentally was one of my favourite things in the recent slate of Star Trek films (he was just so goddamn earnest. And Russian!), so we can expect a lot of heartfelt feelings around this particular release. Whilst such awful news hangs heavy, we can’t let it derail the threequel as it stands, which sees the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise stuck at the furthest fringes of known space, with Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho) and Yelchin’s Chekov slap-bang against the unknown. Seriously though, the insurance on the Enterprise must be ridiculous the amount of times it gets banged up and shot down.

The BFG – July 22^nd

There have been rumblings in the cinema-verse about Steven Spielberg’s plans to adapt The BFG for approximately 200 years, but now, armed with the Oscar-touting Mark Rylance, we finally have it. Based on the Roald Dahl novel that everyone in the UK has read/had read to them at least once, The BFG is about a lonely orphan girl called Sophie (newcomer Ruby Barnhill) who upon accidentally seeing a giant out her window is whisked away to a far-away land in the custody the titular, vegetarian Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance). However, the BFG isn’t the only giant around, and these even-bigger, monstrous, brusque fellas are only after one thing: human meat. Bringing a child to the home of man-eating monsters? Well I never said he was a smart giant, now did I?

Chevalier – July 22^nd

Our token “I’ve never heard of that” film for July is one that showcases the worst in arbitrary numerical systems, the concept of elitism and, naturally, the idea of manliness and men in general. Chevalier sees a group of six men on a yacht in the Aegean Sea, and despite how you might think that sentence ends, they decide to play a game of rankings to see which of them the is best. Every action gives or removes points, every aspect of every man compared against one another. Why they thought this would be a good idea is beyond me, but as an idea in making for a piece of cinema that deconstructs the idea of alpha males and competition? Go for it.

Jason Bourne – July 26^th

No disrespect to Jeremy Renner (and especially not to Rachel Weisz, that said, Tony Gilroy can directorially sod off), but we haven’t had a real piece of Jason-Bourne-esque action for 9 years now. We left Jason in a good place, with the world thinking he was dead and gone and his memories finally patched up (mostly), there was no need for our favourite amnesiac assassin to ever show up again. Trust Julia Stiles’ Nicky to get into some kind of hot water, resulting in the reluctant return of the Matt-Damon-shaped super-spy we all know and love, or at least enjoyed the movies of. We also see the return of Paul Greengrass to the director’s chair after an absence since 2013’s Captain Phillips and the inclusion of brand-new Oscar darling and possible-Oscar-Isaac-built-robot Alicia Vikander.

Finding Dory – July 29^th

I couldn’t tell you why Pixar is making us wait until the end of July to finally get our eye-peepers on the most hyped Pixar sequel since Toy Story 3 (given it’s been out in America for, like, forever), but if you’ve waited patiently these past 13 years for Finding Dory I think you have the constitution to wait just a little bit more. Following the events of Finding Nemo, everyone’s favourite forgetful fish Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) suddenly recalls details on the whereabouts of her family and sets off to find them, getting herself tangled up in a marine biology institute in the process. Whilst Marlin (Al Brooks) sets off to find her, this time with son Nemo (Hayden Rolance) in tow, Dory will find out what family really means. Given how important Finding Nemo is to a lot of Pixar fans, there is no room for misfiring here, and based on those early American reports, I think it’s safe to say Pixar have, once again, done it.