It feels like summer, even though the season hasn’t officially started yet. But what has started is the summer movie season.
The Show sat down with film critic M.V. Moorhead to get a sense of what to expect this summer. His blog is called Less Hat Moorhead, and he began with whether there are any themes emerging in the kinds of movies that’ll be coming out this summer.
Full conversation
M.V. MOORHEAD: I would say that the big theme — and it’s been this way for a few years now — is nostalgia to some extent. People in the big blockbustery type movies, the big high volume movies, people seem to want, or at least the studios think that we want what we know.
And so we’re getting the usual spate of sequels to stuff that has been successful. And we’re also getting franchises that have been real successful in the past. And it was driven home to me really startlingly.
A lot of these movies we’re talking about today are movies that I haven’t seen yet because they hadn’t been screened yet, but I did see one which, is opening in early June, which was, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” This is the fourth “Bad Boys” movie. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. And after that movie, a friend of mine pointed out that the first “Bad Boys” movie was in 1995. The first Bad Boys movie was almost 30 years ago
And there have only been four of them. But I mean, there’s nothing terribly wrong with this movie. It’s just kind of a silly action picture, but that really struck me.
MARK BRODIE: So when you talk about nostalgia, is it a particular era that studios think that we are nostalgic for? You mentioned the “Bad Boys” movies going back to the mid-’90s. Is that generally the time or are we sort of all over the place?
MOORHEAD: I think it’s a little bit all over the place, but yes, I think it is. I think that — and it’s very, very strange for somebody of my age to feel this way — but I think the 90s has become this era that people look back to with nostalgia. And also, to a very great extent,the ’80s.
Another one that’s coming out this summer is — believe it or not — yet another “Beverly Hills Cop” movie with Eddie Murphy is on the slate for this. That movie kind of was the ’80s. That was one for the time capsule from the earlier ’80s when that came out. And the sequels were the same thing.
I think ’80s and ’90s now — and again, when you think about it, when I was a kid in the ’70s, there was a very popular TV show called “Happy Days,” and it was about this long bygone era of the 1950s.
Well, the ’50s was a lot closer in history to the time when I was a kid in the early ’70s than the ’90s or certainly the ’80s are to us now. That was a long time ago. It doesn’t seem like it to people like me, but it was.
So I think the ’80s has become a time. There’s another movie — very, very different movie — called “MaXXXine” … and it’s a horror picture, like a slasher picture with, Mia Goth. And it’s set in the ’80s, and it’s pushing very hard on the idea of the ’80s fashion and the ’80s settings and so forth.
And then actually, there is one coming up called “The Bike Riders” — which again, I haven’t seen it, but a lot of people have, are rating it very highly. And I have seen the trailer for it, and it is an old-school biker picture.
When I say old-school, I don’t even mean like a ’60s biker picture, you know, with Peter Fonda or Jack Nicholson or somebody like that. I mean, like a ’50s biker picture, like “The Wild One,” like with Brando or somebody. It’s got the guy who played Elvis — Austin Butler — and Tom Hardy.
And again, I can’t speak to whether it’s good or not, but I can say it looks great just from the trailer. It has this great kind of ’50s period flavor. Or maybe it’s ’60s, I’m not sure. But I guess it’s based on true events. But it has this look of very old fashioned, kind of golden age of Hollywood biker picture.
BRODIE: So some of the movies you mentioned are sort of what we think of as big summer blockbuster action movies. There are some others you mentioned that are comedies or maybe a little bit deeper. Are we seeing the same kinds of movies in terms of genre this year as we have in years past?
MOORHEAD: I think to a great extent, there’s always going to be a lot of kind of big action “that blowed up real good” kind of stuff. That's just traditional. So yeah, there’s an element of that. Now what isn’t heavy this year? It’s a little bit surprising is there don’t seem to be a lot of comic book movies, the Marvel movies and DC movies and stuff. A lot of times there’s a couple of those that are kind of a big deal that people are looking forward to.
The only one that’s really big on the horizon is Deadpool meets Wolverine, or Wolverine meets Deadpool (“Deadpool & Wolverine”). It's Deadpool and Wolverine together in a movie, and there’s a lot of anticipation of that.
BRODIE: Well, I wonder if we’re seeing, for example, a movie like “Bad Boys.” I would think a lot of people would argue you want to see that in the theater because of the special effects and the sound and everything. You don’t necessarily get that in your living room, but I wonder if we’re seeing more movies that are made to be able to be watched, not in Dolby Surround or with a giant screen, but on your TV set with whatever speakers you have in your living room.
MOORHEAD: Well, first of all, no question about it. With “Bad Boys,” like I said, not a particularly great movie. But seeing it with an audience that was laughing and carrying on, even at really dumb jokes, and seeing the explosions up on a big screen and hearing it nice and loud. I can’t imagine that that isn’t 20 times better than the just bone-numbing feel of sitting on your couch watching that by yourself.
BRODIE: It’s an experience.
MOORHEAD: Exactly. If there’s any reason to go see “Bad Boys” at all — and I’m not saying there is — but if there is, it’s for the spectacle and also for the communal thing of doing it with an audience.
But other movies? Yeah, sure. I mean, first of all, it’s much more economical to have a movie that’s relatively modest in its visual ambitions and stuff. But any movie buff worth their salt will tell you that those smaller, less ambitious, less visually ambitious, often narratively or spiritually or whatever you want to say, much more ambitious movies. Those are the ones that really stay with you and that you go back and visit again and again. At least that’s certainly been true for me.
One of the big movies that I’m looking forward to this year — and I haven’t seen it — it played at the Phoenix Film Festival, and it’s called “Thelma.” The star is the 94 year old actress June Squibb, who you may remember from “About Schmidt.” She was also in, I think, “Nebraska” with Bruce Dern. She’s been around forever, obviously, but she is absolutely the star of this comedy in which she’s gotten scammed by a phone scammer who made her believe that her grandson was in trouble and needed money. And then she and Richard Roundtree — Shaft himself — go to look and see if they can find this money.
It was completed shortly before Richard Roundtree passed on last year. So that one looks like fun. And again, small movie. Probably something I would want to see in a theater anyway, but many people could absolutely enjoy something like that at home.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
