Moving Pictures: Early Summer Roundup
by Mo Burford
Summer has a habit of getting away from us. Each time the temperature creeps—or leaps, as it is wont to do around here—past 80° I think to myself, wait, is it summer? Why yes it is.
In keeping with the lazy, hazy days of summer, I have been less than scrupulous in keeping up with my Moving Pictures column.
So to make it up to you, my constant readers, I’m going to do a quick rundown of the movies I’ve watched so far this season, including some oldies that are worth the rewatch. You can still catch some of them in theaters now, like Thor: Love and Thunder. Others, like Jurassic World: Dominion, are now extinct and will have to be caught when they hit the streams.
But first, some context.
Summer blockbusters are still a relatively new concept in the history of film, beginning in 1975 with the first summer blockbuster, Jaws, which heralded a huge shift in how movies were made: bigger and flashier films, massively advertised and heavy on special effects. Those lines of people around the block translated to dollar signs in the eyes of movie executives of the era. And in many ways we are still living in the wake of Jaws.
Which, funnily enough, now seems like a quaint little film in comparison to some of the movies I’ve seen this summer…
In watching summer blockbusters this year, it seems that executives and directors alike often take the wrong lessons from Jaws; instead of constantly seeking a bigger boat and a bigger shark and a bigger protagonist, I’d love to see them looking at their characters more closely, exploring how humans connect to their surroundings, drawing out their emotional lives and the existential peril they consistently find themselves in.
Some of the reviews below may seem a bit harsh, so I wanted to provide context for my strong stances.
A lot of the movies I review are huge properties owned by some of the world’s largest companies; they often cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and star some the biggest actors in the world. And yet most of them are, in the end, pretty mediocre. With all this in mind, I don’t think I owe them too much leeway. If these were smaller or even independent films that simply didn’t quite come together in the end, I wouldn't throw mud on them the way I do (spoiler alert!) on Thor: Love and Thunder.
To be clear, I love blockbusters; I was raised on them. But their current state leaves much to be desired, and I plan on calling these movies out when I see them lacking something. And if I’m a little snarky along the way, I hope you can excuse this reviewer’s eccentricities.
Jurassic World: Dominion (★★1/2)
Who are these people? I mean it. The stars of this film are so soulless and devoid of personality it feels like a prank on the audience. Did you actually pay eleven dollars to see this? Hilarious. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard appear to have no inner life in the film and absolutely zero chemistry. Even veteran actors Lara Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill can’t manage to lift up the film.
As a result, this movie feels character-less in plot, style, and, well, actual character. What could have been a fun end to an admittedly mediocre new trilogy of Jurassic Park films was instead a complete nothing-burger. There are a couple scenes where characters run from dinosaurs that are interestingly shot and exciting, but these are few and far between.
There is a section in the middle of the film, the plot of which is so cruelly overwrought and devoid of meaning that I won’t even bother to add the full context, where a couple of our main characters are in an underground black market for dinosaurs. Here’s my pitch for the better movie: focus on the black market dinosaur trafficking, have our characters out rescuing dinosaurs, and follow the action and chaos that ensues. Keep it simple and concentrated on the action, something the modern blockbuster really struggles to do. (For a good exception, see my review of Top Gun: Maverick.)
That being said, the amount of practical, animatronic dinosaurs we see in the film is remarkable. It really made me smile, and added some real weight and gravity to the dinosaurs. Truly, it was the highlight of the film for me.
While I’m feeling particularly harsh as I write this, I didn’t hate Jurassic World: Dominion. Rather, I was let down by it. Like so many other fans, I love the original Jurassic Park, and I can’t help but compare that which I love to that which is created in its name. Sadly, in this case, it left me wanting. Wanting for concision, wanting for character, wanting for a different era of filmmaking.
Elvis (★★★★)
Baz Luhrmann makes ecstatic, gaudy and frantic movies, building gauzy, fantastical versions of reality that spin, zoom and fade in and out on the screen. From his early films like Romeo & Juliet to Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann has been a genre unto himself. Love or hate his films, they are interesting. And Elvis is no exception.
I have to be honest, I went into this movie with pretty low expectations. I had heard it was long (159 minutes to be exact), that it wasn’t very good, and that it was more about Colonel Tom Parker than Elvis. On top of that, I’ve historically never really “got” Elvis: I couldn’t get my head around his cultural significance and, for lack of a better word, I found his songs and his persona corny. So I didn’t really know what this movie would have for me.
But I’m happy to report I was wrong! From the opening shots of the film, the pace of the movie is frantic and fast and it never lets up. What could easily have been a slog breezes by on the back of amazing music. Elvis is certainly over the top, but by all accounts so was the man; here Luhrmann finds a subject that beautifully pairs with the his directorial style.
The performances in the film are, thankfully, memorable. It would have been easy to cast the wrong person as Elvis, and even someone quite talented could, in this context, be the wrong fit. But Austin Butler does an incredible job as Elvis. Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker is certainly something—it’s a big swing, and while I’m not sure it always connects, it is consistently entertaining to behold.
Do yourself a favor this summer: seek out Elvis and settle in for a wild ride.
Thor: Love and Thunder (★1/2)
Wow. I really didn’t like this movie. What a milquetoast outing from Taika Waititi after the very enjoyable Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and his Oscar winning excellent film Jojo Rabbit (2019).
There was so little to like here. Besides one action sequence where you could at least see Waititi trying something, the rest of the film is both overstuffed and remarkably flat: neither the melodrama nor the comedy ever really landed for me, and the shift between those tones felt awkward and rushed. (A rumor has sprung up online that there is a four and a half hour cut of the film, which both does not surprise me and doesn’t appeal to me at all.)
Even though I am a CGI skeptic, this movie looked unarguably bad. Every creature in the film is an amorphous dark shape with no real weight to it; as a result, the action too felt weightless and boring. Strangely, all the human actors in the film seem visibly altered, but to what end I have no idea. To wit, there is a scene where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) meets The Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman), and both are wearing CGI helmets painted on their heads.They look wild. When the trailer was released, lots of folks commented online that this effect looked horrific, so I thought surely they would change this before the movie came out—but no, it stayed in the picture.
So much of this movie felt rushed, which is the only explanation for why the movie feels so half-assed. There are moments in the film that attempt to ground the story in ways that could have made Thor: Love and Thunder a really interesting installment in the MCU, but unfortunately this movie couldn’t deliver. Despite the movie being just shy of two hours, you feel every minute of the movie as a slog through the machinations of a meaningless plot, alongside an emotional journey that is underdeveloped while at the same time overwrought and manipulative.
Okay, moving on.
Rewatching Jaws, as I do every summer, I’m reminded of the power and necessity of quiet moments, intentional pacing, and well-rounded characters in even the biggest films. In Jaws, a movie that is essentially about killing a murderous shark, there are real stakes and tangible emotional weight to our characters. Quint, Hooper and Brody all feel distinct and whole, and we see a depth in their eyes lacking from the likes of Hemsworth and Pratt.
But we did get Elvis and Top Gun: Maverick this summer (the latter is miraculously still in theaters!), so it hasn’t been a total bust. I’m also looking forward to Jordan Peele’s Nope later this month and, frankly, David Leitch’s Bullet Train looks cool as hell.
Finally, if like me you find yourself at your wits end with some of this summer’s latest releases, let me recommend to you a few older films I’ve watched recently and which, in the spirit of a good flick, I highly recommend:
Misery - Rob Reiner (1990)
Gremlins 2 - Joe Dante (1990)
The Dead Zone - David Cronenberg (1983)
Sorcerer - William Friedkin (1977)
The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
Paper Moon - Peter Bogdanovich (1973)
Questions, comments, movie suggestions? Email Mo at movingpicturesccc@gmail.com
For more reviews and to see his up-to-date movie log, follow Mo at Letterboxd
