If you’re into box office handicapping, it’s the most competitive of the summer so far. (Just wait until Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer square off on July 21st!) For you, the film consumer, that’s good news.
DC enters the multiverse with their speediest character, The Flash. Star Ezra Miller, whose offscreen insanity and ensuing legal entanglements are bigger news than the film, plays multiple versions of Barry Allen, who uses his super-speed to travel back in time in an attempt to prevent his mother’s death. Is it a bad sign that Miller is being upstaged in his own solo movie by the return of Michael Keaton as Batman? To be fair, Keaton does that to everybody.
Pixar storms back into theaters with Elemental, a parable about earth, wind, fire, and water. Ember (Leah Lewis) is a no-nonsense fire elemental who falls in love with Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a “go-with-the-flow” water elemental. Can the two opposites make it work? Are little steam babies on the horizon? The Good Dinosaur’s Peter Sohn directs, and listen for a voice cameo from Adult Swim’s calmest Yooper Joe Pera.
If you’ve watched a lot of horror movies, you know that the Black guy usually dies first. With The Blackening, director Tim Scott asks, what if it’s ALL Black people trapped in a cabin in the woods? Checkmate, knife-weilding maniac! Not so fast, says the killer, who attempts to rank his prey by degrees of Blackness, so he’ll know where to start. The Prisoner’s Dilemma meets Get Out in this horror parody.
Indie Memphis presents Looking for Langston on Wednesday, June 21st at Studio on the Square. Video artist Issac Julien made this experimental feature in 1989, which uses a surrealist vision of Harlem as a backdrop for readings from Langston Hughes. Tickets are available at the Indie Memphis website.