Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Summer Movie Season Has Begun

Once upon a time, June 21 reigned as the first official day of summer. Then, in the American imagination, the date got pushed up to Memorial Day—thanks in no small part to the advent of summer blockbuster season. Now, Richard Lawson and K. Austin Collins contend, summer is beginning sooner than ever—or at least, summer movies are already here. Avengers: Endgamehas blown past the $2 billion mark in just two short weeks, leading V.F.’s film critics to think about which other films they’ll have their eyes on as temperatures climb and days grow longer. Lawson is particularly interested in the buzzy Elton John biopic Rocketman, which seems poised to pick up the same audience that made Bohemian Rhapsody a surprise smash, while Collins is looking toward John Wick 3 with a bit of cautious optimism; the film, he writes, “is already on my good side for the instantly notorious Anjelica Huston interview it produced.” Find all this, and the lowdown on 20 more notable summer films, in their preview of the season.
Elsewhere in HWD, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau explains Jaime Lannister’s fragile mindset to Joanna Robinson;Yohana Desta explains how a rogue coffee cup became the true star of Sunday’s Game of Thrones; the cast and creative team behind Reality Bites reunites at the Tribeca Film Festival; and Laura Bradley mourns the cancelation of Busy Tonight, which leaves Samantha Bee as the only woman in late night, once again.