Movie Preview: August 2022

There’s only one month left of the 2022 summer season. And so far it’s been a refreshingly healthy summer season, seeing a total of five different movies cross the $300 million mark at the domestic box office, with “Top Gun: Maverick” being the clear winner at $650 million and counting, good enough for one of the top 10 domestic performances of all time. A pair of Marvel behemoths, a Minions movie, and the theoretical conclusion of the Jurassic franchise filling out the rest of those five, with “Doctor Strange” being the lone of the final four to cross the $400 million mark at this point.

Not everything was a massive success. “Lightyear” and “DC League of Super Pets” failed to take flight, but “Elvis,” “The Black Phone” and “Nope” were among a decent crop of moderate successes to help stabilize things. Do we have at least one more success story waiting in the wings for August? Well, it’s a possibility. But the forecast seems to lean on the side of it being a quieter, cool down month, which is often par for the course when it comes to August. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at which movies will be vying for your time before fall season hits.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide theatrical release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

August 5 – 7

Sony Pictures' "Bullet Train"

The biggest attempt at a late summer hit comes right in the first weekend with David Leitch’s Bullet Train. This is a movie that is officially based on the 2010 Japanese novel “MariaBeetle,” translated in English to “Bullet Train,” although it’s possible most seeing this won’t be aware they’re watching an adaptation. The movie will probably play out like an original action film starring Brad Pitt as an assassin fighting enemies while riding a Japanese bullet train. The movie has been fairly buzzy in the weeks and months since the trailer has been released and definitely has the potential of being a crowd-pleasing late summer action flick. Director David Leitch was one half of the directing duo of the original John Wick, who has gone on to direct the likes of “Atomic Blonde,” “Hobbs & Shaw,” and “Deadpool 2,” while his partner in crime, Chad Stahelski, has continued to direct the remaining John Wick movies.

Financially this is tracking to open around $30 million, which is about where I would’ve expected. That’s actually right about in line with last August’s “Free Guy,” which opened to $28.4 million, on its way to a very leggy $121.6 million. An easy comparison that I would’ve pointed to is Leitch’s last non-franchise film, “Atomic Blonde,” which opened to $18.3 million, finishing with $51.6 million domestically in summer 2017. Later that same summer, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” opened to a similar $21.4 million, but was a bit more leggier, finishing with $75.5 million. If “Bullet Train” does hit the expected $30 million this week and has a similar multiplier as “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” it has a chance to sneak past the $100 million mark, especially with almost no competition from the rest of the month. A mixed reaction from critics is a bit concerning (54% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the audiences seem to be a lot more forgiving (81 percent), which was also the exact case with “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.”

There is a movie competing in wide release with “Bullet Train” this weekend, although the early weekend numbers suggest it isn’t a very competitive competition. That movie is Easter Sunday. The movie is a comedy starring comedian Jo Koy and is described as a movie that’s based around a family gathering to celebrate Easter Sunday, based on Jo Koy’s life experiences and stand-up comedy. Jo Koy is a Filipino American, so in theory that might be able to attract a bit more of an international audience, especially with the movie’s Filipino supporting cast, but early tracking on the weekend suggest awareness just isn’t that high and it might struggle to land a spot in the top 10 with an opening of $5 million or less.  

August 12 – 14

Gravitas Ventures' "Mack & Rita"

The second weekend of August is about where things start to slow down. Although in terms of quantity, there’s a trio of movies throwing themselves in the market, hoping for a spot in the top 10. Whether or not any of them have breakout potential is a different story, but they’ll at least be options. The first of these is Mack & Rita, which is a body swap drama of sorts. Except instead of swapping bodies with someone else, a 30-year-old writer named Mack goes on a trip to Palm Springs and magically wakes up as her 70-year-old self. In the niche film community, this movie has a bit of a stacked cast. Outside four time Oscar nominee (and winner for “Annie Hall”) Diane Keaton, the movie also stars Taylour Paige from “Zola” and Simon Rex from “Red Rocket,” two highly praised movies from last year. Elizabeth Lail from Netflix’s “You” also plays as the younger version of Mack. So the movie has enough going for it on paper. The battle will be getting noticed by general audiences. Reviews will also be critical here.

Movie No. 2 of the weekend will go from the comedy side to the thriller side with Lionsgate’s Fall. Perhaps a bit of a basic and generic title, it’s fairly descriptive, too, as it’s about two friends who climb up the top of a 2,000 foot radio tower, but get stuck up there when the ladder down falls and leaves them stranded. The rather plot-detailed trailer depicts one of the friends having gone through heavy trauma when her partner fell to his death when they were on a climb. This climb up the radio tower has her friend finally convincing her to go climbing again. And of course this is what the result is. The challenge here is that both the director and the cast are fairly lesser known, comparatively, so it’s the premise itself that will be the draw. And again, awareness be the key there. The trailer does reference it being from the studio that did “47 Meters Down.” While connected by studio alone, that movie opened to $11 million in August 2017 and was leggy enough to warrant a sequel, which opened to $8 million. Matching either of those numbers might satisfy Lionsgate here, but that might not be a guarantee.

On the expansion from, perhaps the buzziest film of this weekend is the A24 horror Bodies Bodies Bodies. This is currently experiencing a limited run in theaters, opening on August 5. It also played at the South by Southwest Film Festival back in March, so it has buzz from there. A24 has it as a planned expansion on this weekend, although exactly how wide is a question. It might be more of a moderate wide release in 1,000 or so theaters. Or it could be like “Men,” A24’s latest horror from this May, which opened in 2,212 theaters, making $3.2 million. Either way, A24 is the brand here and they are a studio that has a history of releasing more unconventional indie horror films that hit well with critics and movie buffs, but confuse general horror audiences. With a 91 percent critics score, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” seems well poised to follow in that trend. The movie is actually more of a horror comedy, meant as a satire or a social commentary, surrounding a group of people in their 20s at a party at a remote family mansion that goes horribly wrong. Critics describe it as a smart and uncommonly well-written whodunit. What audiences say is to be determined, but at the very least this should attract those who are fans of the more unconventional, A24-style horror film.

And finally, the last movie hitting theaters is one of the most well-known and successful movies of all-time, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Fun fact, “E.T.” has accumulated a domestic total of $435.1 million, $359 million of that coming in its initial run, which ran from June 1982 to June 1983. Yes, it last a whole year in theaters, opening to just $11.9 million. While that was still solid for 1982 dollars, its story was how long it lasted at the time. In that initial run, it was No. 1 at the box office for 16 non-consecutive weeks and was in the top 5 for its first 27 weeks. It was released again in 1985 and 2002, which added to its $435.1 million total. Because of that, adjusted for ticket price inflation, it is the fourth-highest grossing movie of all-time, according to Box Office Mojo’s tracking, behind only “Gone with the Wind,” “Star Wars” and “The Sound of Music.” Unadjusted it’s still the 25th highest grossing movie at the domestic box office. At some point in 1983, it became the highest grossing movie of all time, surpassing “Star Wars.” It held that record for 14 years… when “Star Wars” took it back after they released the Special Edition in 1997. “Star Wars” held that record for another year or so until “Titanic” passed it. Anyways, the 2022 release of “E.T.” will be in IMAX theaters, something that might become a bit of a trend as “Jaws” gets an IMAX release around Labor Day.

August 19 – 21

Universal's "Beast"

After a somewhat busy second weekend of August, at least in terms of the number of releases, the third weekend adds two new titles. And if nothing hits, it shouldn’t be too terribly hard for one of these two to actually hit No. 1. Unless “Bullet Train” does just well enough to cruise at the top for the whole month, which is a realistic possibility.

Anyways, of the two new titles, Beast seems most likely to perform the best. This is a lion-centric horror movie where a father played Idris Elba takes his family on a vacation to a game reserve, where they start getting hunted by a very angry, man-eating lion. Based on the trailers, I’m not sure if this is a demonically-possessed lion or if it’s even an extra-large male lion, but either way it’s not a very happy creature and Idris Elba and his family are in a lot of trouble. Outside the obvious comparison to the 10,000 killer shark movies out there, the 2019 film “Crawl” comes to mind. That was a movie about a man and his daughter getting hunted by alligators in their house during a hurricane. That opened to $12 million in July 2019. As referenced above, “47 Meters Down” opened to $11 million in August 2017. That’s about the predicted range for “Beast.” Based on the fact that the trailer has 30 million views and Universal seems to be pushing it pretty hard, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one over-perform, but $10-15 million seems to be at least where it’ll hit.  

If there’s a competitor for the top spot, I definitely wouldn’t count out Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. Anime like this has actually had a growing audience of late and there’s been several instances where an anime film from a popular anime franchise comes almost out of nowhere to vastly over-perform at the domestic box office, not to mention many doing incredibly well overseas. And “Dragon Ball” is an anime franchise that’s been extremely popular dating way back to the 80s. The original manga was published in 1984 and has spawned several different anime series over the years, from “Dragon Ball” from 1986 to 1989, to “Dragon Ball Z” from 1989 to 1996, to “Dragon Ball GT” from 1996 to 1997, to “Dragon Ball Super” from 2015 to 2018. And maybe more that I’m missing. Anyways, after “Dragon Ball Super” ended, a sequel movie came out, “Dragon Ball Super: Broly,” which opened to $9.8 million domestically in January 2019 from just 1,247 theaters. It would make sense for “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” to match that and possibly exceed, which puts it right in the range of where “Beast” is expected to open. And like “Beast,” I wouldn’t be surprised if this over-performs.

August 26 – 28

Sony Pictures' "The Invitation"

The final weekend of August almost always seems to be a black hole. That and Labor Day weekend have historically been very bad that Hollywood usually avoids. That trend was broken by “Shang-Chi” last year, which proved that this time of year can be lucrative, if some studio at Hollywood decides to take a rise. This Labor Day will be interesting as it sees the re-release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” specifically the extended “More Fun Stuff” version, but we’ll get to that next month.

This final weekend of August does not have any sort of superhero movie getting released, but rather one final late-August horror film, this one titled The Invitation. If you watch the trailer for this movie, it’ll seem like you’ve watched the whole movie. In which case you’ll learn that it’s about a girl who gets invited by some mysterious family she didn’t know of to a fancy wedding in England. And, because this is a horror film, this goes from Jane Austin feel to some sort of supernatural presence or cult of sorts where this whole mysterious new family is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs - and potentially all vampires - and our main girl has to fight them all off. This does give off a vibe of a “Ready or Not” from August 2019, which was a late August surprise in terms of audience reception. If “The Invitation” ends up with similar reception, it wouldn’t be too hard to match the $8 million of “Ready or Not” or even exceed that. On the flip side, if it’s a poor received horror, it might end up dead on arrival. That said, at this point it’ll probably only take $10 million to win the weekend, so that’s a pretty low bar that could be met.

That’s it for this weekend. Only one new wide release. Of note, the newest George Miller movie, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a movie about a woman who falls in love with a Genie she finds, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, does get released in August. The very final day – August 31, which is a Wednesday. But its official opening weekend will be a part of Labor Day weekend, so I’ll cover it more there, in next month’s preview.

An exploration of the musical biopic genre + Elvis Review

Warner Bros.' "Elvis"

One of the current popular trends in Hollywood is that of the musical biopic. It seems like everyone who has been influential in the music industry is getting their turn in the spotlight and so naturally it only makes sense that the king himself is the next in line. One might wonder why this hasn’t been done before. Well, it has. Kinda. Movies with Elvis Presley as a character in them do exist, but perhaps not to this scale where he is the focal point of his own musical biopic. Like most human beings who exist on Earth, I would certainly consider myself an Elvis fan. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t at least like a song or two from him, I would think. So this seems like a winning formula, right?

Well, not so fast. Not for me, anyways. Sure, it’s Elvis Presley. I love his music. He certainly had a life and a career that’s worth diving into and learning about. And it’s directed by Baz Luhrmann, who often only does a feature length movie once every five years or so. His entire feature length filmography (so not counting short films, TV, music videos, or anything like that) is “Strictly Ballroom” (1992), “Romeo + Juliet” (1996), “Moulin Rouge!” (2001), “Australia” (2008), “The Great Gatsby” (2013), and now “Elvis” (2022). 30 years. 6 movies. An average of 5.8 years in between each. So when he shows up, I think it’s worth paying attention to at the very least, especially considering some of those on the list.

So what’s the hesitation on my part?

Well… it’s the genre.

Honestly, I wasn’t planning on doing any sort of deep dive into this. I’ve been a tad bit behind on some of the films I’ve seen recently. And as you may have noticed, I’ve been selective of which movies get their own review on this blog. For the most part I’ve been doing shorter “mini reviews” on Facebook and other social media. I have reasons for this that are not worth diving into at this current time. But when I finally caught up with “Elvis” this past week and gave myself time to ponder over it, I realized this required more than just a quick Facebook post. Especially considering the response. Certified fresh from critics at 78 percent, a 94 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score, and a 7.8 on IMDb. Clearly there is plenty of enjoyment of this film going on. And I’ll be straight up right up front here and say that I was not one of them. Yet the reasons for that go slightly beyond the individual points of this one film. As I’ve said, the musical biopic genre as a whole is one that I’ve been growing more and more frustrated with and I think my dislike of “Elvis” requires a tad bit of context in that regard.

I say that this is a popular trend in Hollywood right now. But it’s certainly not a new one. Musical biopics have been around for quite some time. There’s just been a heavy uptick of late that probably has everything to do with “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 2018 earning $886.9 million worldwide and scoring 5 Oscar nominations, which included best picture. It won four of those, all but the best picture. Since Hollywood is a copycat business, many filmmakers have desperately been trying to cash in on that trend. And it seems to me that quantity is the theme here rather than quality. Filmmakers taking big names in the music world and throwing together a biopic of them without taking much time to figure out what makes a good musical biopic. And I feel that there’s also a bit of a backwards train of thought in determining who gets the next one. Instead of finding a musician with a good story to tell that would fit nicely into a Hollywood movie, it feels like they’re going down the checklist of popular bands or artists based solely on popularity and starting production on their biopic without thinking twice about what the focus is going to be about or what story they’re planning to tell.

20th Century Fox's "Bohemian Rhapsody"

The result of this is a long string of musical biopics that I honestly haven’t cared for. And a handful I haven’t even bothered to see. In fact, I came close to just not watching “Elvis,” but did so because my options at the moment weren’t very plentiful as I’d seen all the major blockbusters dominating the screens right now.

The other thing that has bothered me is that a lot of these movies seem to have learned the wrong lessons from “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which to me is a textbook example of how to NOT make a musical biopic. Yet because it became so popular, filmmakers have started to read and copy from this erroneous textbook, which has seemingly caused things to spiral out of control in regards to degrading quality in a genre that I’m not so sure Hollywood ever figured out how to properly do in the first place. The good ones seem to be more of an accidental success than anything else. In fact, to this point of Hollywood never really figuring this out, there was a movie in 2007 called “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” which is a fictional parody of the musical biopic genre. While it wasn’t a resounding success upon initial release, some film circles have really gone back to this movie to the point where they feel this movie should’ve ended the musical biopic genre. Or at least caused Hollywood to learn from it. But instead of paying attention to the things that “Walk Hard” directly made fun of and attempting to change and be different, many musical biopics that followed have continued to do the exact same things, which is a bit bewildering in my mind.

So what exactly makes a good musical biopic?

Well, the correct answer is that there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. And if certain movies like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Elvis” are extremely well-liked and very successful, then who am I to say that they’re doing things the wrong way. Movies are an art form and like all art, it’s 100 percent subjective. Different people can like different things and that’s OK.

But if you want my opinion on what I think makes a good musical biopic, then I suppose that’s why you clicked on this and are continuing to read. So let’s carry on.

This might sound a bit vague, but in my opinion the best musical biopics are the ones that latch onto a specific theme. There is a specific lesson to be learned that drives the narrative. And this leads to a story that feels very natural in movie form where the character arcs and plot are the strengths. These are typically films where the filmmakers saw a story from a person’s life that they wanted to tell rather than picking a popular character and figuring out how to make a movie about their life.

These are, of course, generalities in what I prefer. Things have to be taken on a case by case situation and sometimes there’s a movie that breaks the mold to what I expect that causes me enjoyment despite it not following what I want it to follow. But for the most part these are what I go in hoping or expecting out of a musical biopic and if it doesn’t feel like it is focusing on the right angles of the biopic, then it becomes easy for me to get frustrated.

One other thing that is also important to me in regards to biopics as a whole, musical or not, is accuracy. I get that most movies based on true stories often have to take certain creative liberties in order to make the movie work, but I prefer a biopic to be educational. If you’re going to make a movie about someone, I enjoy the experience of learning about that person. Some will give me pushback to that and argue that a movie’s purpose is to entertain, not to educate. Because of that, they don’t mind if the movie is completely fictional as long as the story told was one that they enjoyed. To each their own, I suppose, but it personally drives me bonkers when I put my educational hat on only to learn later on that the history lesson that was taught to me came from the figments of someone’s imagination rather than the actual historical facts. If a person’s life doesn’t follow the story that you want to tell, then find a story that does fit your narrative. Or simply create a fictional movie that tells your story. Don’t fictionalize someone’s real life in order to create your own story that you wanted to tell.

Again, I get the idea of taking certain creative liberties in order to make things work. And sometimes you have to combine events or do other things like that, but at the very least you should have the spirit of things correct in a way that accurate honors a person’s life.

Columbia Pictures' "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"

What not to do in a musical biopic?

If you take these thoughts and connect the dots here to what I’m getting at, I honestly don’t care for musical biopics that have no real focus or theme to them. Biopics that feel like generic highlight reels of someone’s life without an interesting story to follow are often movies that I get bored with. Granted, I love myself a good slice of life type of movie. But even those - often fictional - slice of life movies have a specific purpose to them or wrap things up in a way that ties things together. If you go from Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D in an aimless fashion and nothing really ties together in an interesting way, most of the time you’ll have successfully lost me back around Point B. If I’m wondering where this is going and I never get an answer to that question, then I’ll leave confused and unsatisfied at the experience.

If you have no theme or no point to your movie, then most of the time I’ll leave wondering what the purpose of the whole thing was. Give me a reason to care or give me a take home thought for me to ponder on. Don’t just blindly guide me through a random series of events. Tie it all together in some way.

And in a very specific critique towards the musical biopic, I really don’t care too much for what I call random concert films. That being a movie about a band or an artist and the whole thing is just going from song to song to song without any connective tissue between the songs. Yes, if I like the band or the singer, I’m going to enjoy it when I hear it performed, assuming the actor does a good job performing the piece, but the songs should be there to enhance the experience, not be the sole attraction. I can open my Apple Music app and listen to songs from my favorite singers. If I want to go to a concert, I can purchase those tickets when the band is in town or search for a previously recorded concert online if it exists. But if I’m going to a musical biopic, I want it to be more than just the movie aimlessly bouncing from song to song that an actor is singing and performing.

And for crying out loud, don’t tell a fictional version of a real person’s life. If I come home and realize that the movie was completely off in left field when it comes to telling a person’s story, that might be the one thing that drives me up the wall.

And finally, if your movie hits every point that the aforementioned “Walk Hard” movie hits, then I personally don’t think you made your movie in a very good, especially if there’s no sense of genuine emotion. I get that you can take a familiar premise and turn it into a solid movie if you show that you really care about the subject matter and the execution is done well, but if every musical biopic is the same movie with different central characters, can you maybe understand why that can be tiresome in 2022? And if you combined those last two points, meaning you fictionalized someone’s life in order to fit them into a generic biopic film that hits all the cliché beats, that’s obviously a whole lot worse.

Tom Hanks in "Elvis"

If you came here for the “Elvis” review, I hope you don’t mind that you walked into an essay about what makes a good musical biopic in my eyes. If you made it this far into the review, I hope you at least found all of this informative and can use it to understand my vantage point when it comes to this.

Because “Elvis” did just about none of these things in the way that I wanted. I’m not saying it hit every egregious point that I just brought up, but it ran right through most of them.

That’s the short review. A complete swing and a miss on almost every bullet point. Use that as your pull quote from this review if you want.

The longer version of the review?

Well, first and foremost I think it’s important to point out what this movie actually did a good job at. And that’s Austin Butler as Elvis. This is a guy that’s been around a bit. His most notable role of late was that of Tex Watson in “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.” But this will absolutely be known as his major breakout role that should launch him into stardom. And this is a perfect example as to why casting directors should cast actors who fit the part rather than going for the big name just to get attention that way. Because you can find people like Austin Butler that can nail the part to perfection. He looks like Elvis. He sounds like Elvis. And he gets Elvis’s mannerisms down to perfection, including his classic hip movements that all the girls back in the day swooned over. And I don’t know exactly how the singing went down in this movie, but the individual Elvis performances where quite electric and absolutely on point. I don’t know if it was Butler doing the singing or if he was just expertly lip-synching, but whatever was done the movie pulled that off quite well.

But the No. 1 rule here that should be the most obvious point ever is that if you’re going to make an Elvis movie that is even called “Elvis,” then for crying out loud make the movie about Elvis. I was rather shocked to realize that Elvis felt almost like a side character in his own movie. Just about the entire focus of the movie was on a character they called “The Colonel.” Colonel Tom Parker is his full name, but I don’t know if they used Tom Parker much. This guy was Elvis’s manager. He’s narrating the film for most of it. He’s the focus. It’s about him finding Elvis and him dealing with Elvis’s unprecedented stardom and him trying to take full control of his musical career and him apparently being super shady in many ways, most notably keeping a large portion of the money for himself.

And I honestly did not care for any of that. The Colonel is played by Tom Hanks. And man alive, I have no idea what Baz was telling Tom Hanks to do, but it was just absolutely not working for me in any way, shape, or form. Tom Hanks is one of the best actors working today and I don’t know if I’ve seen a film where I thought he was bad in the movie. Not every movie of his has been perfect, but usually I can at least say that he did a good job in the movie, even if the movie around him was bad. And occasionally you might say that he is miscast in a certain role, but I honestly think that this might be my least favorite performance of his career. And I get that he was supposed to be ridiculous and annoying. He was portraying a character who is almost the antagonist of the movie in many ways. But every time he showed up on the screen, I wanted him gone. And it became increasingly frustrating that he refused to go away and pretty much had the movie to himself instead of letting Austin Butler do the heavy lifting.

I’m certainly not the Elvis expert here, but I don’t know if I even learned anything about Elvis. And I know that he had enough of a complex life for a really good educational story about him to be told, but none of that was really told. We just watched Elvis the whole time through the eyes of this really annoying manager character called the Colonel. To the point where I think they could’ve called the movie “The Colonel” instead of “Elvis.”

Covering the next major issue here, outside the “Elvis had a bad manager” angle of the movie, this is another musical biopic that seemed to just jump from song to song and from one moment of Elvis’s career to the next. But it didn’t really dive too deeply into his backstory, his upbringing, or explore his personal life too heavily. It just felt like we were going from one Elvis song to the next Elvis song while shoving down our throat that he had a bad manager in between songs. We ultimately cover 20 years of time, but rarely did I feel the transitions to each portion of his life had much of a purpose to it outside a mere obligation that the movie felt like touching on everything that he did in those 20 years before his death in 1977. And even then, we covered so much ground that most of the historical points felt like they were just lightly brushed on rather than focusing on a few key points. And again, outside “Elvis had a bad manager,” I don’t know what points I was supposed to take away from this movie. I could probably come up with some things that one could focus around in an Elvis biopic, but I don’t really feel that any of that stood out to me.

Austin Butler in "Elvis"

And if you got more out of this than I did, then I will be honest and say it’s probably because the movie is so freaking long that my attention span wandered out the door around halfway through. I will confess that my brain power was minimal going into the movie and I mistakenly went into a 10:20 p.m. without looking at the run time. But I’ve had movie experiences with low brain power where the movie captivated me so much that it energized me and I haven’t cared or noticed that it was super late. I went into this particular movie thinking I would probably get done not too long after midnight. When it finally ended, I was partially convinced that it would be dawn outside and I could immediately drive to work. Turns out it was just 1:30 a.m., but that wasn’t that much more comforting. That included your typical commercials and trailers, but the official runtime was 2 hours 39 minutes, or 159 minutes. And that is absolutely ridiculous. There’s no reason an Elvis biopic needed to be much longer than 100 or 120 minutes. Getting to 159 minutes feels inexcusable, especially with a movie that had so little to say.

I’d say that Baz Luhrmann forgot how to edit in his eight years since his last movie, but a more accurate statement would be that he forgot how to properly shorten a movie down to the length that it needed to be. Because there’s definitely a lot of editing going on. This is extremely flashy, upbeat, and a bit chaotic. Baz was definitely not interested in making this feel like a traditional biopic on a visual spectrum. Transitions from scene to scene are also this way. In many ways this is a compliment to the film. It gave it a unique flare to it that very much made it feel like a Baz Luhrmann film. But I’ll be honest and say that after a bit of this I was begging Baz to slow the thing down a bit. Give me some time to breathe a bit.

Maybe this is a movie that I need to revisit at some point. It was loud and chaotic. It was extremely long. And very little of the movie did anything to interest me. Given that I was already tired going it, and it was a late showing, this was all an extremely bad combination of events. There’s just nothing here that incentivizes me to return to this, especially when there’s always a whole lot of other things to catch up on.

And you know what, given that it’s taken me a few days to even get this post out into the world after seeing the movie, I can already feel this movie simply disappearing from my brain. Unless I get some sort of major backlash from people who loved the movie, which I honestly don’t anticipate happening, this might be a thing that I completely forget about in record time. And that’s almost the worst type of movie.

If you loved this movie, then that’s fantastic. If you’re curious enough about it, then check it out. It’s not a movie whose existence offends me. And if what you like from musical biopics goes completely the opposite way of what I’ve outlined in this post, that’s cool, too. I just hope you can understand where I’m coming from and accept that this was not the movie for me. The only thing that’ll make me mad is if you say that, “Well, you’re just not a fan of Elvis so you didn’t appreciate the movie like I did.” That’ll earn you a virtual slap in the face. People said that to me about Queen when I hated the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” and it couldn’t be further from the truth. I love Queen. I love Elvis Presley. Hated “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Didn’t care for “Elvis.” That’s all. I hope we can still be friends.

Grade: 5/10

Movie Preview: July 2022

We’re halfway through summer of 2022 and the box office has been absolutely on fire. Sure, the landscape of the whole world will be changed forever and some things will never go back to being the quite the same again, but numbers and attendance so far have been on par with pre-COVID levels of summer fury. Already we’ve had two movies in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Top Gun: Maverick” top $400 million domestically, with “Jurassic World: Dominion” inching its way towards that mark. Having three $400 million films would be impressive for any summer movie season, pandemic or not. Can we add more to that list? Again, summer is only halfway done and this July suggests that we’re not slowing down quite yet. How many massive event films can be stuffed into one summer? A lot, apparently. Let’s dive in and look at the options that July has in store.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are subject to change.

July 1 – 4

Universal's "Minions: The Rise of Gru"

Starting us off with a bang this month is the return of the crazy, little yellow guys that parents hate and children love. That’s Minions: The Rise of Gru. This is a movie that effectively serves both as a sequel to 2015’s “Minions” and a prequel to 2010’s “Despicable Me” as it connects the dots between the two in bringing in a young Gru, with Steve Carell returning to voice Gru. Now if you’re rolling your eyes and wondering why we’re getting a sequel to “Minions,” this one is an absolute no-brainer. Sure, in some circles that “Minions” movie was burned to a crisp and called one of the worst movies to ever exist. But guess what? Your 5-year-old doesn’t care about opinions of the grumpy critics and film Twitter members who’ve become keyboard warriors in trashing the little yellow guys. Point in case, did you know that “Minions,” when it came out, became the second highest grossing animated movie ever at the worldwide box office behind only “Frozen”? Currently it still stands at No. 4 on that list as only “Frozen 2” and “Incredibles 2” have passed it. Again, your 5-year-old doesn’t care about internet opinions.

The honest question going into the weekend was the state of the economy. As mentioned, the theatrical business is doing great. But most of the movies doing well have been mostly targeted at adult males, who have been the quickest audience to rush back to theaters. Is it possible that the family audiences are the ones that are less likely to rush back because parents are paying tickets for the entire family instead of a ticket just for themselves? And could that be one of the reasons why “Lightyear” failed in June despite everything around it succeeding? While that is certainly still a potential factor, coming out of the weekend the answer seems to be that “Lightyear” problems are specific to that movie alone and not the entire target audience. “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” as of me typing this, has an estimated weekend 3-day opening of $108 million and a 4-day opening of nearly $130 million, making it the fourth $100 million opener of the summer. Potential questions of franchise fatigue or the fact that it’s been five years since the last entry in the franchise and seven years since the previous “Minions” movie also seemed to have not been as big of an issue as potentially thought.

Sneaking into a moderately wide release this weekend was Bleeker Street’s Mr. Malcolm’s List. Its theater count was 1,384 theaters and the weekend estimates have it down in seventh place with $851,853. The math on that is $616 per theater, which is not particularly good. Despite not getting a whole lot of attention, the story behind this is fascinating. In 2009, author Suzanne Allain self-published her novel, “Mr. Malcom’s List,” and adapted it into a screenplay. It was discovered by filmmaker Emma Holly James in 2015 and a short film was made first. Following the success of the short film, the green light was officially given for this feature-length film and the novel was published in 2020 by Berkley Press. The book and movie itself is a PG-rated period piece about a young woman in 1800s England helping a friend get revenge on a suitor who rejected her. Given the soft opening for the movie, it’s conceivable that this hits streaming or VOD of some sort before too terribly long.

July 8 – 10

Marvel’s "Thor: Love and Thunder"

Two movies in two weekends both opening above $100 million start July off, after the busy May and June we’ve already had? Almost certainly. Because this weekend has the second MCU opening of the year with Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. Back in 2017, Waititi pulled off an impressive feat with “Thor: Ragnarok,” completely resurrecting the character of Thor and his franchise following the first two entries that are, generally speaking, among the lesser received movies of the MCU. Not as many people cared about Thor in comparison to the likes of Iron Man and Captain America. But “Ragnarok” instantly changed that as the movie is still considered as one of the MCU’s best and made Thor an A-lister hero. Add in two more Avengers movies after “Ragnarok,” that of course being “Infinity War” and “Endgame,” and in an interesting turn of events Thor has now outlasted most of the OG Avengers in the MCU, becoming the first sub-franchise in the MCU to get a fourth film. Thor’s journey in “Love and Thunder” sees him relaxing and enjoying his “retirement” from being a superhero after we last left off in “Endgame” with him going off with the Guardians of the Galaxy, who will make an appearance here in at least the first act of the movie. But his conflict here will see him face Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale, while teaming up with ex-girlfriend Jane Foster who is now the “Female Thor” counterpart, with Natalie Portman returning to her role.

Financially speaking, after the first two Thor movies opened to $65.7 million and $85.7 million, “Ragnarok” was given a huge boost to a $122.7 million opening following the insane hype from the trailers that led to very positive word of mouth, a surprise that many didn’t see coming. It finished with $315 million domestically and $850 million worldwide, all numbers that “Love and Thunder” should be able to comfortable hit. MCU fatigue and a slew of huge movies already this summer could theoretically hinder the movie a bit. But the idea that people are getting tired of the MCU has yet to reflect in the actual box office totals. “Love and Thunder” isn’t expected to hit the numbers of the previous two MCU films, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” both of which had event level hype behind them, but it’ll probably hit somewhere between the opening of “Ragnarok” and the $187.4 million opening of “Multiverse of Madness.” Box Office Pro has it projected between $140-160 million currently, which would put it slightly ahead of March’s “The Batman,” which opened with $134 million.  

July 15 – 17

Sony Pictures' "Where the Crawdads Sing"

After two straight weekends in July with huge openings, the third weekend of July will be a bit of a cool-down weekend, which is par for the course following a big MCU release. However, there are three movies this weekend that will be throwing themselves into the race, hoping to land somewhere in the top 10 or top 5. Current tracking has Where the Crawdads Sing leading the pack. This is based on a book that has become a bit of a phenomenon in the last few years. It was published in 2018 and has already sold 12 million copies by January 2022. It was written by Delia Owens and is a mystery/thriller novel following two timelines, the first being a young girl named Kya growing up in the marshes of North Carolina and the second being a murder investigation of a local celebrity. The setting is that of the 1950s and 60s. The movie is being directed by Olivia Newman and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones in the lead role as the Marsh Girl. The current long-range forecast from Box Office Pro pegs it at $17-26 million for its opening, which would put it in line with June’s “The Black Phone,” which opened to a healthy $23.6 million.

The next movie of the weekend is another animated film, although this one being a smaller animated film called Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank. This is a cat and dog movie universe with a premise surrounding beagle named Hank who is being trained to be a samurai by a cat mentor named Jimbo so that he can beat the evil giant cat, Ika Chu, who is trying to destroy their village. If it feels like a low budget version of something like “Kung Fu Panda,” that might be accurate, although the initial idea was for it to be loosely based on Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” from 1974. It was even called “Blazing Samurai” at one point. This is an animated movie that has actually been stuck in Production Hell for quite some time, potentially as early as 2010. It’s passed through several hands and has had quite the evolution. Its initial release date was April 2017 by Open Roads and its long journey has landed it with Paramount Animation, stuck between two major animated movies on the July schedule where it will probably get mostly ignored. An opening around $10 million is the expectation.

The third movie of the weekend is Focus Features’ Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. Although scheduled as a wide release, this might be closer to a moderate release like “Mr. Malcom’s List.” Also like that movie, this is a historical drama following a British woman. The setting is a century later in the 1950s, so perhaps not a period piece for this one, but it does have a comedic undertone as a widowed cleaning lady embarks on a journey to Paris after becoming obsessed with a Dior dress. This is based on a novel from 1958 called “Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris” that had three subsequent sequels with Mrs. Harris going to New York, Parliament, and Moscow. In the U.K., it was published as “Flowers for Mrs. Harris.”

July 22 – 24

Universal's "Nope"

Not many filmmakers in today’s market can sell a movie simply by their name alone. But Jordan Peele has quickly become one of them following “Get Out” and “Us.” Really, though, he did that after his first movie, “Get Out,” became a phenomenal sensation in 2017. And now he has his next movie, Nope, coming out this weekend, getting the entire weekend to itself in regards to new releases. The premise of “Nope” has even been mostly shrouded in mystery. It’s quite simply been advertised as “Jordan Peele’s next movie” and has gotten serious hype with that alone. That said, this is a horror film, of course, and the general theory is that it has something to do with aliens and thus might dive into the sci-fi horror realm. Even with that basic knowledge, the trailers themselves have been also extremely vague and the idea is that there’s a lot that Jordan Peele has up his sleeve with this one that audiences are excited to figure out. After “Get Out” was a sensation, “Us” fed off of that to an opening of $71.1 million, the highest opening weekend ever for a horror film not based off any IP. “Nope” is expected to at least come close to that with an opening in the range of $50-70 million.

July 29 – 31

Warner Bros.' "DC League of Super Pets"

The month of July will close with another big animated movie, DC League of Super Pets. While maybe not expected to open nearly as big as “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” this one definitely has breakout potential with a lot of crossover audience as this is not just a fun family film targeted at kids, but this is also a DC film that will at least have comic book fans curious. The stars of the show are the pets of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern, who themselves also have super powers. And yes, these pets are canonical to the DC comics. In addition to the comic book realm, these pets are voiced by the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Kate McKinnon. The movie also has John Krasinski as the voice of Superman and Keanu Reeves as the voice of Batman in limited roles. So yeah, there’s a lot of ammunition here, especially given that Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart have led quite the number of surprise hits. In regards to an animated movie about pets having a… secret life, I am reminded of the huge breakout hit that was “The Secret Life of Pets.” So don’t underestimate the potential of an animated movie about pets, even if it doesn’t hit as high as that one.

While there are a lot of pros here, there are also plenty of potential cons. While this summer has been very consistent in delivering big hits, even in pre-COVID times it was very common for some movies to fail because there are too many of them. While there will be four weeks in between “Minions” and “Super Pets,” it’s possible that “Minions” is simply the movie choice for family audiences this summer. Even though these characters are based off of comics, this is the beginning of a new attempted franchise. Especially in the realm of animation, animated sequels often play much better than original animated films. And we also have the fact that Warner Animation Group, which this is from, doesn’t have as successful of a history as the likes of Pixar, Disney, and Illumination. Not counting their COVID releases, their previous six animated movies have averaged an opening of $36.8 million. This should beat the average, but a $40-60 million opening might be a better expectation rather than matching “Minions” or “The Secret Life of Pets” in opening above $100 million.

Officially finishing off this post is another Focus Features release called Vengeance. Like Focus’s other release from this month, “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” this is likely a moderate release. That’s generally their strategy. Judging based off of the trailer, this is appears to be a blend of genres as a comedic western of sorts set in modern Texas where a podcaster and a journalist goes to Texas to investigate a murder of a girl that he once hooked up with. This is written and directed by B.J. Novak, who played Ryan Howard in “The Office,” in his feature-length directorial debut. He’s directed a handful of TV episodes, including five episodes of “The Office,” but this will be his first movie. Novak also stars as the lead role and is joined by the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Dove Cameron, Boyd Holbrook, and Issa Rae. As an alternative option to some of the bigger blockbuster affair, this could gain some traction if word of mouth ends up being solid, but it’s not likely to have a huge opening.

Jurassic World: Dominion Review

The Jurassic franchise has come to an end this past weekend. At least that’s what Universal has been claiming in their advertising of “Jurassic World: Dominion.” If you believe them in this statement, which I most certainly do not, then you can perhaps accurately say that it both went out with a bang and with a pathetic thud, depending on your point of view. Obviously opinions are a personal thing, but on the more objective financial side, it opened to a massive $145 million, only slightly down from the $148 million of “Fallen Kingdom.” It makes sense that neither sequel was quite as high as the $208 million opening of the franchise revival “Jurassic World,” but it’s still very impressive that all three movies were massive financial hits… despite the less than stellar reaction. That leads to the “pathetic thud” side of the coin. “Dominion” scored a franchise low 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, claiming that title of worst reviewed in the franchise by a large margin, below the 47 percent margin of “Fallen Kingdom.” Exiting on that level of toxicity is probably not what Universal was hoping for, but their bank accounts might not care about what the critics or audiences have said.

If you read my June movie preview, you’ll note that I thought “Dominion” was going to fall in between “Jurassic World” and “Fallen Kingdom” in regards to opening weekend, not below both. I think the best explanation is that the heavy negative buzz leading up to release, combined with the continued dominance of “Top Gun: Maverick,” contributed to a certain number of people deciding to pass on the finale, especially if they weren’t a fan of “Fallen Kingdom.” Perhaps they chose to go see “Maverick” again instead. I myself was close to not seeing this movie and only did so out of obligation rather than excitement. I’ve seen and reviewed the others. Might as well complete the set.

That said, fans of the Jurassic World movies might not really take this review seriously, claiming that I was going to hate this no matter what, perhaps accusing me of going in looking for bad things to criticize rather than trying to give it an objective look. To that potential accusation, I say… fair. I’m not going to argue that vehemently. I grudgingly went into a movie that I expected to hate and maybe that affected my experience to a degree. Although perhaps a slightly more accurate way to phrase that was that the movie had a very large hill to climb in order to win me over. I was very mixed to disappointed in “Jurassic World” and I left fuming after “Fallen Kingdom.” I put that as my worst movie of that year. And given that Collin Trevorrow, director of “Jurassic World” and “Dominion,” and writer for all three, was again on board, having been given the keys to the car by Universal to do whatever he pleased, my confidence level in him listening to the complaints of his movies and winning me over with a third one was incredibly low. Sometimes you can predict that a movie will be bad based on the filmography of the director and be right. It’s like going into a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me… five times, shame on me if I thought the result was going to be any different.

And thus we get Collin Trevorrow. A man who does not know how to direct a movie. And I’m supposed to believe he can turn things around and match Spielberg’s epic “Jurassic Park” in this third and final movie in the Jurassic World series? I feel this was less of me being a grumpy pessimist and more of me knowing what this was going to be and not allowing myself to get disappointed once again. I’d rather be surprised that he proved me wrong rather than get my hopes up only to have my heart ripped out again.

As such, it’s been quite interesting trying to digest and analyze my specific thoughts about “Dominion” after walking out of it. When you’ve successfully not let yourself get excited for a movie over the course of the past four years and it turns out that you successfully predicted it would be an awful movie, you can’t exactly experience that feeling of disappointment. Being disappointed comes with the connotation that something did not meet your expectations or hopes. When one did not have hopes, one cannot be disappointed. Thus this movie did not disappoint me. It also did not surprise me. It was, simply, par for the course. A bad movie that I fully expected to be bad. One could say I was numb to the experience.

And thus in a strange and somewhat contradicting turn of events, my approach to this undoubtedly bad movie allowed me to have a certain degree of entertainment that I did not have with the previous two movies in this Jurassic World trilogy. I was highly amused during most of the movie and laughed quite a bit. But it was most definitely not a degree of entertainment that was intentional from the vantage point of the filmmakers. I was laughing at the movie, not with the movie. And thus I honestly think this dives into the realm of being “so bad that it’s hilarious.” A movie where you can put on with a group of friends and laugh at how atrocious the whole thing is in a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” sort of way.

And I can promise you that this was not the movie’s intentions. I genuinely got the feel that they were trying to make a good Jurassic World movie. I just found entertainment at the wrong parts.

Case in point, there is a sequence in the movie where Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard got caught in some sort of ring of scandalous dinosaur trafficking mischief. Again. And there’s a point where the generically evil people are using the laser-trained dinosaurs that “Fallen Kingdom” set up to try to kill Chris and Bryce. And thus there is a long sequence where our two heroes are running from these raptors that are trying to eat them for dinner. The theory behind this sequence is that the audience would feel a degree of tension as they worried for the lives of their beloved main characters. For me, though, when the raptors started chasing them, I was, like, “Get them!” I was definitely on Team Dino. And I found a degree of entertainment from the movie as I was hoping that these dinos would kill and eat our main characters.

There was another moment where Bryce Dallas Howard nearly plunged to her death after evacuating an airplane, only to find herself alone in the jungle with a giant bird dinosaur thing that was chasing her. She hid in the water and the dino was inches away from getting her. At this point, I found a level of morbid amusement because, instead of feeling tension similar to the original “Jurassic Park,” I gained excitement at the idea of this dino reaching down a few feet further and biting her head off.

Again, this was not the intention of the filmmakers. They were trying to make intense sequences where the audiences feared for the lives of the main characters. Instead of feeling that emotion, I gained a level of adrenaline at the idea of wanting our main characters to get eaten alive. They did such a horrible job at writing these characters over these three movies that the only level of satisfaction I would get is if their arcs ended with them becoming dinner. And you know you’ve failed miserably as a screenwriter when I’m cheering for the main characters to die. Yet their failures provided me with entertainment that I most certainly did not have after leaving the other two movies. So in a weird way this is kinda the best of the three even though it is also easily the worst of the three?

The only slight glimmer of hope that I had for this movie that I most certainly suppressed is the idea that Collin Trevorrow openly admitted that he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs ran freely across the world and essentially treated the two movies leading up to this as a bridge movie to get to his final destination. In which case, I suppose there’s a chance that the two previous movies were bad because the writer/director literally didn’t care about them and only used them as a means to get to his desired destination. And maybe that would lead the final movie to being a good movie because it’s the movie that the Trevorrow actually cared about?

The result of this particular glimmer of hope lead to… confusion. Again, not disappointment. This movie was not eligible to disappoint me. But Trevorrow spent years of his life teasing this particular premise for this movie only to not take advantage of the premise?

Because, yeah, outside a few random shots of dinosaurs living and roaming in random places in the world, usually through cliché news footage sequences, this is not that movie. A very strong majority of this movie takes place at the headquarters of an evil massive corporation and the immediate jungle surrounding this movie. A total area that is probably smaller than the area of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. The whole time through this premise, I was, like, “THIS was your end game, Trevorrow?”

Not to mention, the biggest conflict of this dinosaur movie did not even involve dinosaurs. There’s a plague of giant, prehistoric locusts that are starting to swarm the Earth and deplete the planet’s food supply. These locusts are secretly released by this evil corporation, who of course via advertising are making themselves look like the good guys, so that they can gain huge financial increase by being the one source of the world’s food supply when the planet runs out. And because of this conflict, Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are brought back in an attempt to stop this plan and get rid of the giant locusts.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard get roped into this because their adopted clone child from “Fallen Kingdom” gets kidnapped by this evil organization. And somehow the baby of Chris Pratt’s pet raptor also gets taken, so Pratt makes a promise to his pet raptor that he would bring the baby raptor back. Somehow they end up at a detour to this other place where they got chased by laser-trained raptors before getting rescued by DeWanda Wise’s character, meet a half dozen other characters that are brought in to do nothing, and the whole gang is united at the headquarters of the evil organization to fulfill their plans that I just talked about in these paragraphs.

And, oh yeah, they randomly run into some dinosaurs along the way.

That’s it. That’s the movie. The more I think about this specific plot, the more I am extremely confused as to how professional screenwriters wrote these plot points. Screenwriters who have dedicated their lives to the art of filmmaking and most likely spent many years of school studying these things and writing them. And this is what they came up with? Even more confusing is how the drafts of this screenplay wound up on the desks of the humans at Universal and the humans at Universal looked at this screenplay and greenlit the thing.

I’m not saying I could make a better movie. Filmmaking is not something I have ever pursued and I have mad respect for people who have. I’m just saying as one who has spent the last decade plus watching and critiquing movies as a hobby, this is just one of those movies that is extremely confusing as to how it became a thing.

What I will say is that, despite the baffling incompetence of the screenwriters of this movie, there did seem to be a lot of people involved in the technical aspects of the movie that did their job proficiently. The movie looks great. The CGI dinosaurs might not be as magical as the original Jurassic Park, but they look great, nonetheless. The movie has a great score. It’s edited just fine. The cinematography and camera work are great. And for the most part it seems like the actors involved in the movie look like they cared about performing their roles well. Chris Pratt is the one that seems like he’s bored and checked out. And bless her heart, Bryce Dallas Howard is trying. I’m a fan of hers and I think she has a great career ahead of her in both acting and directing. But her character is written atrociously, which is why I wanted her eaten. But the clone girl is great. The original trio of Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, and Laura Dern seemed like they had a lot of fun returning. DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie played great side characters. Even Campbell Scott as random, evil CEO dude seemed like he was having fun, even though his character was the most generic bad guy ever.

What I’m getting at here is that there was a lot of pieces in play from professionals who were doing a great job at what they’ve been paid to do. And it’s really unfortunate that their talents were completely wasted due to the gross incompetence of the man steering the ship. This movie’s failure is 100 percent on the feet of Collin Trevorrow in my opinion. And he should feel all the shame in completely destroying one of cinema’s best franchises.

Another moment of me giving credit where credit is due is that the dinosaur sequences in the final act of the movie are genuinely the best dinosaur sequences in the entire Jurassic World trilogy. It’s again a missed opportunity that the dinosaurs were more of the side obstacles to overcome rather than the main conflict. And the specific instances of dinosaur terror were extremely random rather than being calculated incidents that the movie built towards. But nevertheless, if you isolate the individual moments and ignore the rest, those are good moments that deserve praise.

But it still doesn’t all add up to something that is worthwhile. And it’s still extremely disappointing in general that so much potential was squandered with this trilogy as a whole because Collin Trevorrow seemingly has no idea what made “Jurassic Park” so effective in the first place. It is also disappointing that Universal gratefully and willingly gave him the keys to the car and were perfectly happy with him driving that car off a cliff. This could’ve been special. But instead it’s a big waste of time and money.

My closing recommendation is that you skip this movie in theaters. Wait until it comes to streaming or until it is cheap enough to rent. Then get together with a group of friends and have fun laughing at it. Through that, entertainment can be had. But I don’t give the movie credit for that because, even though I enjoyed this movie in a weird way, the idea that the Jurassic franchise has devolved to the point where it falls into “so bad it’s good” territory is extremely depressing because that’s not what a Jurassic movie is supposed to be.

Grade: 3/10

Movie Preview: June 2022

It’s beginning to feel like normal at the box office. Sure, it’s felt like that for several months now, so this is not necessarily breaking news, but the first month of our first traditional summer movie season since 2019 definitely lived up to the hype and that’s quite refreshing. The month was bookended by two massive $100 million openings as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” started the month off with a $187 million opening weekend, while “Top Gun: Maverick” finished the month off with a $160 million debut over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend. The latter was a new Memorial Day weekend record while the former shows the box office prowess of Marvel as that was only the seventh highest opening for an MCU film. 

June is already here and so technically this is a weekend late, but yours truly got a bit tied up in things and didn’t get this out on time. Although in this instance I don’t feel too bad as there weren’t any new wide releases in the first weekend of June. And that there is a tad bit reflective of how the June box office looks. Not a whole lot in terms of quantity, but two more massive summer blockbusters that most studios are staying clear of. 

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are subject to change.

June 3 – 5

Neon's "Crimes of the Future"

As mentioned, there weren’t any new wide releases this weekend. And by wide in this instance, I mean movies that opened in at least 1,000 theaters. Neon released the new David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future in 773 theaters, while IFC Midnight released the psychological thriller Watcher in 764 theaters. The two movies placed 9th and 10th at the weekend box office, pulling in $1.1 million and $826,775 respectively. Among the fans of indie filmmaking, a new Cronenberg film was definitely the buzz of the weekend. He’s most notable for his body horror films and is often seen as one of the originators of the subgenre. Perhaps his most well-known film is the 1986 remake of “The Fly,” but Cronenberg fans have been raving about his work for six decades now and they haven’t had anything since 2014, which is another reason why “Crimes of the Future” is a bit of a big deal.

The real storyline of this weekend, though, was “Top Gun: Maverick” yet again. After breaking the Memorial Day weekend record, previously held by the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie way back in 2007, it set another record in its second weekend. The smallest drop ever for a movie to open north of $100 million. If I were to post this before the weekend, I would’ve taken an educated guess of about $60-70 million for weekend 2. That would’ve been a very normal and healthy 50 percent drop. But instead it scored $90 million, a drop of just 29 percent from its 3-day opening of $126.7 million. For perspective, there have now been 71 movies to open north of $100 million. Of those 71, prior to “Maverick,” only three had dropped less than 40 percent: 2002’s “Spider-Man” (38 percent), 2004’s “Shrek 2” (33 percent), and 2019’s “Frozen 2” (33 percent). As you can see, “Maverick” is now alone as the only to drop less than 30 percent after opening above $100 million. And that specific stat is a development since the weekend estimates on Sunday, which had it at a 32 percent drop. What this really goes to show is how insanely strong the word of mouth is on this film. It’s more than just a hit. It’s become a global phenomenon and should continue to do well over the whole summer despite some… Jurassic competition in its third weekend coming up.

June 10 – 12

Universal’s "Jurassic World: Dominion"

Yes, as noted in that purposely bad pun in the end of that last paragraph, while Tom Cruise continues to soar high, dinosaurs will be taking over the world in the third and final entry in the Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion. I don’t need to educate anyone on the history of the Jurassic franchise as a whole. Everyone and their dog is very well aware that “Jurassic Park” is a thing that exists. In fact, that movie is so well-loved that it has now spawned five sequels over the course of the last 25 years and audiences have continued to show up in droves despite each ensuing entry having less than stellar reaction. The Jurassic World movies specifically have proven very critic proof. “Jurassic World” only scored a 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and its sequel, “Fallen Kingdom” fell negative at 47 percent. Yet nostalgia pushed “Jurassic World” in 2015 to a then opening weekend record of $208.8 million, topping 2012’s “The Avengers.” That only lasted a few months until “The Force Awakens” came out, but it’s still notable that it held that prestigious record for a period of time. And despite the aforementioned negative reviews from both critics and audiences, “Fallen Kingdom” still managed an opening of $148 million, with a finish of $417 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide. Not bad for a fairly divisive film.

So what does all of that mean for “Dominion”? One could look at the previous Jurassic Park trilogy and note that each movie had diminishing returns. Mixed reviews held “Lost World” back from topping the original, while “Jurassic Park III” plummeted even more. However, I think it’s quite possible that “Dominion” reverses course and improves upon “Fallen Kingdom.” For one, “Dominion” is advertising itself as the final movie in the franchise. Whether or not that will remain true is up for debate, but that has often been a successful marketing ploy. Fans of a popular franchise will typically show up if they think it could be the last hurrah. Also, director Colin Trevorrow has long since said he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs run free across the whole Earth instead of just it being an isolated incident on one island. And “Dominion” is just that. That premise could be intriguing enough for people to show up, even if they didn’t like one or both of the Jurassic World movies. And finally, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern are all reprising their roles from the original “Jurassic Park,” teaming up with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard from the two Jurassic World movies, which makes this a Jurassic reunion that could also attract any fence sitters. Box Office Pro projected $180 million in their last long range forecast, but this could realistically fall anywhere on the spectrum of $150-200 million. In other words, anywhere in between the previous two.

A Jurassic movie requires a Jurassic analysis, especially with a limited number of releases this month, but there is another movie that is theoretically getting released this weekend and that’s a movie called Block Party. The poster claims that this is the first ever Juneteenth family comedy. I’ll let you decide what exactly that means and whether or not it’s accurate. Juneteenth is, of course, on June 19th, so this is targeted as a family comedy leading up to that now federally recognized holiday (as of last year). But I don’t know if awareness is high. For a movie that’s supposed to come out this week, and actually on Wednesday the 8th, an internet search will lead you to other things and I couldn’t find a trailer that had more than a couple of thousand views. Said trailer did say it’s coming in theaters on June 8th and on BET+ on June 16th, which typically reflects a smaller theatrical release, but the-numbers.com does list this as a wide release. Whether or not that’s a wide release of more than 1,000 theaters or a release in about 500-700 theaters is something that we’ll find out here in a few days. My guess is the latter. At most. But we might find that out even before some of you read this. 

June 17 – 19

Pixar’s "Lightyear"

The second massive blockbuster of the month that I referred to at the beginning of this post is Pixar’s Lightyear. As crazy as it may seem, this is the first Pixar movie to get a theatrical release since before the pandemic. “Onward” was their most recent one to get the theatrical treatment and that had the unfortunate timing of getting its run cut short by the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Since then, Disney has released both “Raya” and “Encanto” in theaters from their own animation studio, but Pixar has gotten the shaft, with “Soul,” “Luca” and this year’s “Turning Red” all going straight to Disney+. One can attribute it to Disney running out of patience and not wanting to continue to postpone their entire release, but whatever the case be, Pixar finally gets to have a traditional release and there’s no better way to get back on track in that manner than to have another movie in the Toy Story realm. In fact, “Toy Story 4” was the last Pixar movie to get released in theaters that wasn’t impacted by the pandemic, that back in Summer 2019, so it’s a bit poetic, you might say.

Now what this movie is has probably been the biggest point of confusion. It’s not a Toy Story sequel and only kinda a spin-off of the franchise. And it’s not really a prequel or Buzz Lightyear origin story, either. It’s the movie inside the Toy Story realm that Buzz Lightyear was based off of. And the easiest way to simplify that is to say it’s the movie that Andy and his Mom could’ve potentially gone to that could’ve resulted in Andy getting his own Buzz Lightyear toy in the original Toy Story, which is why Chris Evans is voicing Buzz instead of Tim Allen. And that’s a bit of an outside-the-box idea for Pixar, but reaction to the trailers has been very positive and people have proven multiple times over that if you say Toy Story, they are showing up. Even if they’re skeptic of the movie being necessary (“Toy Story 4”). To me that says they’re showing up again for “Lightyear,” even if they’re confused about what the movie is. “Toy Story 3” and “Toy Story 4” both opened above $100 million. I think “Lightyear” could do so as well, especially if reviews end up positive. And very early whispers suggest they will be.

June 24 – 26

Warner Bros.' "Elvis"

The final weekend of June has a big chance of being won by “Lightyear,” but there are two movies that will enter into the race, both of which have at least some breakout potential. Either could theoretically be the bigger of the two, but the one with the highest ceiling is Elvis, the latest in a long string of musical biopics. Starring as the King himself will be Austin Butler, who is not a complete newcomer, but this will certainly be his huge breakout role. Early reaction out of Cannes Film Festival gives his performance very high praise, with mixed but positive leaning reaction towards the rest of the movie. The movie also has director Baz Luhrmann coming out of hiding with his first directed film since “The Great Gatsby” in 2013. Luhrmann has a distinct and somewhat divisive style, but also has a very short discography and he’s very selective with his film choices, which always makes a new film from a bit of an event.

There are many potential directions that “Elvis” can take and lots to compare it to. Obviously Mr. Presley was one of the biggest music stars ever, but will that translate into box office success in the way that a “Bohemian Rhapsody” did? That opened to $51.1 million and held incredibly well, finishing with $216.3 million domestically and almost $900 million worldwide. But yet it also played during the holiday season at the end of the year. Perhaps a more comparable film will be “Rocketman,” which came out six months later in May 2019, opening with $25.7 million and finishing with $96.3 million domestically. That also had a summer release, a popular star in Elton John, and mostly positive reviews. Yet there is also the chance of a performance like “RESPECT” from last year, which, despite having Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, only managed an $8.8 million opening and a $24.3 million total. Has fatigue set in with these musical biopics or are audiences ready to rock with Elvis?

The other film coming in is the horror film The Black Phone. Horror films are even harder to predict. They can range from completely dead on arrival to a breakout smash. The premise here is that a 13-year-old boy gets abducted by a child killer and starts receiving phone calls from the killer’s previous victims on a disconnected phone. The elephant in the room is that maybe some might not be interested in such a premise after the recent shooting at an elementary school in Texas. If that’s not an issue, another obstacle is that Jordan Peele’s “Nope” comes out just a few weeks later in July. Some horror fans might simply wait for that one. If neither of those things ends up as an issue, the positive things going for this movie is great response from the trailers as well as positive reviews out of Fantastic Fest last year when the movie premiered. It’s also directed by Scott Derrickson, who directed the first “Doctor Strange” and was set to direct the sequel from last month before dropping out. Before his Marvel turn, Derrickson was known for his horror films such as “Sinister,” “Deliver Us from Evil” and “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” so he’s going back to his roots with this film. Could that lead to an upset finish over “Elvis”? I’m not betting on it right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.