Notes on a Summer Movie Season

After a long and cold two semesters in Ithaca, where the closest non-arthouse theater is a semi-abandoned mall Regal that always felt just a couple bus stops too far away, I arrived home ready, more than anything else, for the summer movie season. And from the vantage point of a return to campus life (albeit a non-Ithaca campus due to study abroad), the season and its hits didn’t disappoint. Granted, I skipped the digitally de-aged grotesqueries of the new Indiana Jones and the child-purchasing sting operation grotesqueries of Sound of Freedom, but I still managed to keep a weekly AMC Lincoln Square appointment and enjoy more than my fair share of blockbusters. And so, here goes my flash thoughts on a whole host of summer releases: 

Asteroid City

For many film fans, myself included, Wes Anderson is how we learned about auterism: The man whose visual, narrative and comedic stamp is so distinctive that it’s impossible not to feel his hands on every single frame. Thus, it becomes a bit funny when, as has been happening recently, Anderson turns his eyes to the artifice and the authorship within his films. The Grand Budapest Hotel contained within its nesting doll structure a story of an author with writer’s block hearing a true story, and The French Dispatch framed its sequences around long-form magazine pieces, each written by characters whose relationships to the story became clear as the sequence went on.

The Best, Worst and Most Surprising Movies of the Summer

1) What was the best movie you saw this summer? Lev Akabas: My second viewing of Avengers: Infinity War. Seriously, that movie is still the topic of a good chunk of my film-related conversations nearly three months after its release, and there’s rarely a dull moment in it, even on the rewatch. If I had to pick a favorite from the summer, though, it would be Bo Burnham’s wholesome Eighth Grade, which manages to depict how Generation Z adolescents hide behind their social media personalities without portraying its subjects judgmentally. Ashley Davila: While marketing for many action movies uses the term “epic” to describe every stunt and globe trotting adventure, few movies are deserving of the descriptor.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout Wrapup

I’ve often made what I now consider the mistake of lumping the Mission: Impossible movies in with franchises like Fast & Furious and Transformers — what I might call “guilty pleasures,” though the last couple Transformers haven’t even been pleasures — but that’s not a fair evaluation. I don’t feel guilty at all about loving Mission: Impossible — Fallout. It’s more John Wick than Skyscraper, which is to say it combines its breathtaking action sequences with, let’s say, consistently acceptable and somewhat believable storylines. Yes, MI6 has some issues, but an outstanding cast, iconic score and solid directing from Christopher McQuarrie turn what would have been a just a good stunt movie into a truly gripping action thriller. Fallout is absolutely worth seeing, if only to try and catch a glimpse of Tom Cruise’s humanity in that shot where he broke his ankle.