10 movies you absolutely, positively must see this summer
We know it's hard to see everything. So here are the 10 films you absolutely, positively must see this summer, from cosmic misfits to a sublime haunted-house tale.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2
(In theaters now)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista
Director: James Gunn
The skinny: Roguish Peter Quill (Pratt) meets his long-lost father Ego (Kurt Russell) in the sequel, though part of his journey includes coming to terms with his adoptive dad, the space outlaw Yondu (Michael Rooker). "In the first one, he was a guy chasing us. And in this movie, it becomes a little more than that," Pratt says of Yondu, who gets a sizable role in Vol. 2. He gets booted from the Ravagers in a mutiny and ends up teaming with scene-stealing duo Rocket and Baby Groot (voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, respectively), as well as with the Guardians as a whole. "Yondu has made peace with this kid that he’s raised and we’re having a good time," says Rooker, adding that his character doesn't think much of Ego, the guy who hired Yondu to scoop Peter from Earth as a boy.
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BAYWATCH
(In theaters now)
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra
Director: Seth Gordon
The skinny: “We took something cherished by the world and leveled it up in a big way,” Efron says of the over-the-top reboot of the late 1990s TV action drama. And crazy it is: Jet skis, explosions, guns and hand-to-hand combat are on the table for cocky new recruit Matt Brody (Efron), an Olympic gold medalist whose hiring is a PR move for the ace Baywatch lifeguard team led by Mitch Buchannon (Johnson). Brody is the outsider who rubs his new crime-fighting crew the wrong way just as a mysterious mastermind (Chopra) emerges as a threat to the bay. “It seems pretty clear to him that this job is preventing people from drowning, making sure people don’t get sunburned and hanging out with hot chicks on the beach all day,” Efron says. “And then when it turns out to be more than that, it’s just baffling and things go sideways. Brody’s lament is very fun.”
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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES
(In theaters now)
Stars: Johnny Depp, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario
Directors: Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg
The skinny: The fifth Pirates film introduces the next generation of buccaneers, notably Henry Turner. Brenton Thwaites’ youngster, the son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), is jailed by his own pirate crew for warning about oncoming doom — in the form of ghostly Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) — and is broken out to help astronomer Carina Smyth (Scodelario) and the infamous Jack Sparrow (Depp) find the mythic Trident of Poseidon. “He’s a guy who wants to do good and help people,” Thwaites says. While Henry’s belief in the supernatural and mythologies gets him in trouble, his top priority is an honorable one: free his dad from his servitude aboard the Flying Dutchman, much like Will’s mission in earlier movies to save his own father. “Us young men are always trying to break the curse of our fathers,” Thwaites says. “It will never end.”
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WONDER WOMAN
(In theaters now)
Stars: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen
Director: Patty Jenkins
The skinny: Not only is Wonder Woman noteworthy for giving DC Comics’ female icon her first solo film but also for putting its superhero in a real-world setting: World War I. Princess Diana (Gadot) of Themyscira is introduced to the world of men during “the first mechanized war, where mankind is really pushing the boundaries of what they’re willing to do to each other,” says Jenkins. “If you tried to do it in a more literal event that we all know the details of, it would bog it down. (It would be) an alternate reality where you’re like, ‘That’s not how Watergate went.’ It could be more complicated.” Jenkins also used the era as a way to reflect social issues of more modern times: “She’s never met men before, so she has zero understanding of sexism in kind of a hilarious way. It just seems totally absurd to her.”
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THE MUMMY
(In theaters now)
Stars: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe
Director: Alex Kurtzman
The skinny: Kurtzman fell in love with Universal monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein as a kid because of “the deep humanity I felt like these monsters were actually reflecting,” the filmmaker says. “They say something about who we are.” And that’s what he wants to bring to this kickoff of a new cinematic universe: In the film, Cruise’s antihero Nick Morton accidentally unearths the Mummy (Boutella) and gets entangled in a dramatic situation 5,000 years old. Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll (and alter ego Mr. Hyde) is an entry point for Nick to “a much larger world of gods and monsters he wasn’t aware of,” and the Mummy herself is inspired by Boris Karloff's original 1932 take, with abilities “organized around the ideas of romance and entrancement,” Kurtzman says. “She has control over and power to get into your mind, and creepy crawlies tend to like her when she’s around.”
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DESPICABLE ME 3
(In theaters Friday)
Stars: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker
Directors: Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda
The skinny: The first Despicable Me had the supervillain Gru (voiced by Carell) gain a family, the sequel found him falling in love, and the third chapter is all about sibling rivalry with Gru meeting his long-lost twin brother Dru (also Carell). Gru wishes his bro was exactly like him, but there are more differences than just Dru’s flowing head of hair. “Dru is much more lively and earnest and silly, and Gru is much more cynical and serious in his disposition,” Carell says. Plus, Dru “aspires to be a villain but he is not quite there yet. He definitely looks to his brother to guide him.” One new bad guy is ‘80s-loving former child star Balthazar Bratt (Parker), while one of the Minions, Mel, stages an uprising against Gru. Adds Carell: “There’s a lot of upheaval in his world.”
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A GHOST STORY
(July 7)
Stars: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham
Director: David Lowery
The skinny: A bit of summer-movie counterprogramming. The quiet lyrical drama stars Affleck as a Dallas musician who dies in a car accident, haunts his house as a bedsheet-wearing phantom and has to watch as time — and his widow (Mara) — move on around him. “There’s something somewhat perverse about this being a summer movie. It makes me laugh in the same way when I think about the fact that we made a movie with a guy in a sheet,” Lowery says. Instead of using a more detailed character representation, audiences can project their own thoughts on this iconic image of a classic Halloween-costume specter. “There was an opportunity for a lot of humor in it but at the same time a lot of emotion. If we could take this sheet and imbue it with some degree of humanity, we really would achieve something unique.”
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SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
(July 7)
Stars: Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Michael Keaton
Director: John Watts
The skinny: The newest take on teenage Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his web-swinging alter ego gets his share of adventure hanging out with Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) and battling the Vulture (Keaton), but he’s also living the life of a kid attending a high school for the academically gifted. Peter’s best friend, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), is a sweet and genuine uber-nerd who wonders where his pal keeps going at all hours of the day. When Ned accidentally finds out his friend is this masked hero, Batalon says, “he understands Peter’s life and he thinks he’s the one who can help him deal with being a crimefighter and deal with girls.” Ned is an integral part of Peter’s life, Holland adds. “It’s nice to be able to make up excuses of why he has to get out but then share a beat with Ned and be like, ‘I’m gonna go swing through New York’ — the wink-wink scenario.”
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WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
(July 14)
Stars: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn
Director: Matt Reeves
The skinny: Caesar (played via performance capture by Serkis) leads a simian bunch on an epic journey to save apekind in the third film, and what Reeves calls “the most unlikely group you’ve ever seen” includes one human, a little girl named Nova (Amiah Miller) whom they pick up along the way. Caesar is focused on revenge and facing off with the deadly Colonel (Harrelson), but Nova may be the one who keeps the great ape on the right path. “The war has been so brutal and has brought him to places where he has these feelings about humans that he’s never had,” Reeves says of Caesar. “And yet there’s this other part of us that knows that, for the lack of a better word, because it’s really about empathy, there is a humanity to Caesar that is just inescapable. And so the girl represents a part of himself that he has to push away if he’s going to be fierce.”
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DUNKIRK
(July 21)
Stars: Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Director: Christopher Nolan
The skinny: In creating the World War II action thriller, based on the 1940 evacuation of Allied troops trapped by Nazis on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, Nolan focused on the “real” of every aspect: Putting an IMAX camera on the cockpit and wing of an actual Spitfire plane, floating cameramen around in the water with actors, and creating unpredictability and suspense for the audience. “It’s not a sentimental film, but the subject matter itself is very weighted with emotion for people who know the story,” Nolan says. Dunkirk is so far the epitome of his acclaimed career: “It’s very important to me, so I didn’t want to take on this subject until I had a lot of experience with large-scale filmmaking and wouldn’t be too intimidated or daunted.”