It's a blockbuster movie summer with 'Toy Story 5,' 'The Odyssey' and more. Here's what to expect

It’s summer — and that means it’s blockbuster season for Hollywood. And it looks like this year they’re bringing in the heavyweights. We’ve got a new Christopher Nolan film, the fifth edition of "Toy Story" and even a new Spielberg flick to feast your eyes on.

M.V. Moorhead, film critic for Phoenix Magazine, joined The Show to talk more.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. Thanks for coming in.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Thank you. Always great to see you, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. So, we got to start with "The Odyssey," right? Like, this is the big film, it's like breaking movie ticketing platforms. We've got Matt Damon as Odysseus. Let's just take a quick listen.

[MOVIE CLIP PLAYS]

MATT DAMON: No one can stand between me and home. Not even the gods.

CHORUS: Keep us straight!

CHARACTER 1: I think it's asleep.

LAUREN GILGER: So, you can just hear there how how intense and big this film is. Are you excited to see this?

M.V. MOORHEAD: I'm tremendously excited to see this. This ... is the essential platform of the Western narrative tradition, you know, and I mean, you said we're calling in the heavyweights like Christopher Nolan. How about Homer? ... You know, we got Homer in the summer. And I think it, it sounds like it's, you know, Nolan is always interesting and sometimes stuff works better than others.

But, you know, you kind of also can't go wrong with this story. It is, it's that basic, you know, archetypical story of just wanting to go home and of everything that happens while you're trying to go home. And I don't think there's been an American version of the — I think there was maybe a TV movie version. I don't think there's been a big feature version of "The Odyssey."

There was an Italian one that I loved when I was a kid with Kirk Douglas as Ulysses, as they called him there. ... It's just one of the all-time great stories and one of the great storytellers that we have, so it'll be very interesting to see what he does with it.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, even, I don't get to the movies much, but even I want to go see this one on the on the big screen. ... All right, let's take a hard turn here and talk about "Toy Story 5," which, I mean, it's a lot of Toy Stories, but this tackles the a very important issue today, right? Technology for kids versus, you know, toys for kids.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Yeah, I mean, you got to, the thing about those movies is that they're — I can confess there's a couple of them, I think 3 and 4, that I have not yet I have yet to see. ... But the first and second were both great, and they were both very focused on the importance of play, but a play of a specific kind, of play in the real three-dimensional world, I guess kind of ironically for a computer-generated animated movie, but play with toys and like physical toys and doing stuff with them.

And that second one had to do with the idea that toys are to be played with, they're not to be collected and left in the package. And those, I think, are, you know, kind of good, healthy themes at a time when we really need them. And that's, from the look of this fifth one, and again, haven't seen it, but from the look of this fifth one, it has to do with playing on a screen.

You know, not nobody's saying there's no place for that. It's just that that really is it's like the Dutch elm disease of kids' play. It muscles everything else out, you know.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, and it kind of hits on another theme we're seeing among the big summer blockbusters this summer, which is like this kind of hint of nostalgia, lots of remakes.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Very much so. Summer movies have really become about that, I think, in the last few years. And you see it this year with "Star Wars" and "The Masters of the Universe," which I was too old for Masters of the Universe, theoretically at least. I was in college when the toys came out. Both of my nephews were fanatics for it, so I got some kind of second-hand exposure to them, and I knew a little something about them.

And this movie is for you to take your kids to, sure, but it's really also for you to go to, as a person in your 40s or 50s who fondly remembers those toys and the the Filmation cartoon from the '80s and '90s. It's hard to overstate how huge those toys were and what a big deal they were.

And there was an earlier movie that was kind of funny with Frank Langella as Skeletor, but this movie is played heavily for laughs. And I think it's a little bit of fun, actually.

LAUREN GILGER: That's awesome. OK, we even have a new Steven Spielberg movie this summer. This is in an alien movie at that. Talk about "Disclosure Day."

M.V. MOORHEAD: Well, I saw this movie, I just saw this movie and I'm still trying to sort my thoughts on it. It's clearly the work of just an American master. It's classic Spielberg doing kind of Spielberg-y things, the kind of things he loves to do. You know, the stormy Midwestern skies and the fleets of scary-looking black vehicles hurtling down the street together in almost choreographically. He loves that stuff and he's really good at it.

And so, it's a very, it's a very absorbing, very entertaining movie, and also, there's some very good acting in it. Emily Blunt is terrific as TV weather lady who suddenly finds that she can empathize perfectly with people and starts spewing alien language in front of the weather map.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh! [LAUGHS]

M.V. MOORHEAD: And, yeah, it's a little bit of a problem. And, so there there is, you know, Colin Firth is this satanic military-industrial complex guy. So, there's a lot of interesting things in this movie, but it's also a very, it's a movie of very old-fashioned thinking, befitting a guy like Spielberg. And for a guy like me, you know, old guys, old people.

It has to do with the desire that this — the good guys are struggling to release all this video information detailing the government's long-suppressed history of and abuse of extraterrestrial aliens. And it's really well done, but it's in the tradition of that journalistic thriller of the idea that if we can just get the information out, the public will see.

And I remember thinking like, yeah, they'll think it's all a bunch of deepfakes. And even if they don't, it'll take about 10 minutes, even if they believe it, it'll be about 10 minutes before everybody decides whether this is bad for the Republicans or bad for the Democrats or, you know, they're squabbling over what it means and who owns who and all this sort of thing.

LAUREN GILGER: A true film critic take there, OK. [LAUGHS]

M.V. MOORHEAD: I mean, it's just it's just like it's an old-fashioned, it's not a — it's a magnificently made film, but it's an old-fashioned way of thinking about how we process information anymore.

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. All right, last minute here. Let's talk about a horror film that's been really big right now, "Obsession," and it's from, you know, interestingly, a very young director, first-time filmmaker. And it's one of a couple of films like this that are kind of hitting big.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Yes. "Obsession" is this kind of classic dramatization of the old saw: "Be careful what you wish for." It's the guy who's in love with his best friend's girlfriend, kind of a Jessie's Girl kind of situation, and he gets to make a wish that she would fall in love with him, and of course, this turns out to be not exactly what he was hoping for, in the least.

LAUREN GILGER: Careful what you wish for, exactly.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Yeah, and and the young actress who plays the role, it's a juicy, juicy part. She's, her name is escaping me, she's very beautiful, she is very, very committed to the role and so it's something kind of eerie.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, all right, we'll leave it there. Lots to watch for. M.V. Moorhead, film critic for Phoenix Magazine, thank you so much.

M.V. MOORHEAD: Thank you.