The summer blockbuster movie season tends to be a revolving showcase of wide-appeal action-adventure fare, chock full of thrills, laughs, and often overbearing computer-generated effects.
And that means it’s also a time to shine for the kind of filmmakers that revel in that type of boisterous, barnstorming cinema.
Box office-dominating names like James Gunn, Gareth Edwards, and Joseph Kosinski are all playing in that sandbox again this season with “Superman,” “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” and “F1” respectively, and they’ve each already proven that they can make massively high-grossing films with broad audience appeal.
But this summer’s counterprogramming options are coming from a crop of filmmakers that have all helped to fundamentally change the face and character of critical acclaim and what we think of as “prestige cinema.”
So while the dinosaurs are rampaging and the superheroes are throwing punches, these auteurs and critical darlings are instead offering audiences some quiet romance, unexpected horror, and nerve-shredding satire.
‘Materialists’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – July 18th through July 27th
Korean-born Canadian filmmaker and playwright Celine Song has already demonstrated how well she can capture the quiet emotional turmoil of romance and the internal crisis of adulthood with 2023’s remarkable Oscar-nominated “Past Lives.”
But while that film was all about characters struggling to find their identities within their own encroaching adulthoods and receding cultural connections, Song’s brand new follow-up “Materialists” is instead about adults struggling against the commitments and identities that they’ve firmly chosen.
Following a successful matchmaker (Dakota Johnson) at a high-end NYC firm, we see her life as a perpetually single, committed bachelorette thrown into confusion by the presence of a creatively ambitious former boyfriend (Chris Evans) and a wealthy, self-assured potential suitor (Pedro Pascal in one of three high-profile summer roles.)
While it’s not exactly the kind of high-octane offering that you might expect from summertime cinema, Song has proven that she can imbue this kind of romantic drama with a quiet honesty and social depth that few often attempt.
‘Eddington’ – Opens wide July 18th
Ari Aster has been one of the most acclaimed, discussed, and sometimes polarizing filmmakers in modern American cinema over the past decade, stretching back to his 2018 horror breakthrough “Hereditary” and continuing through megapopular “Midsommar” and 2023’s anxiety epic “Beau is Afraid.”
But he’s never made anything as widely divisive or as wildly contentious as “Eddington,” his newest entry examining the political divisions, avalanching anxieties, and unraveling social safeties of 2020’s compounding COVID pandemic, anti-police protests, and anti-science conspiracy movements.
Aster mixes each and every one of those elements into one small New Mexico town in the midst of 2020, centering the tension between a well-meaning, naively conservative sheriff (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and an ambitious and vaguely liberal mayor (played, once again, by Pedro Pascal.)
Throw in some collapsing American dreams, some inflating conspiracy theories, some apocalypse-stirring internet preachers, and some firearms, and the town of Eddington spirals into all-out satirical horror.
It’s actually tough to think of another film in recent years that’s been quite so openly and gleefully polarizing, with premiere screenings at Cannes prompting angry walkouts and seething reviews – sparked as much by political ranklings as by lingering 2020 traumas – before receiving one of the fest’s biggest standing ovations.
Will nationwide audiences be so simultaneously offended and enchanted? Will theaters across America see walkouts, applause, and outright arguments as they re-litigate the still-open wounds of 2020? Will general audiences even “get” it?
Time will tell. But Aster will defend his title as one of the most talk-about filmmakers. That’s a guarantee.
’28 Years Later’ – Now playing
There are few other filmmakers that can be said to have so completely opened the door to more esoteric and hyper-modern filmmaking in the realms of acclaim and awards than England’s great Danny Boyle.
The guy is a true auteur, bringing an immediately unmistakable personal style to every conceivable different genre of filmmaking, from street-level drama to fantasy romance to family-friendly fare and even to outright, ultra-graphic horror.
But he also broke over into the American mainstream – and even snagged Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture – with the smash “Slumdog Millionaire,” propelling him to the ranks of acclaim that normally mean more prestige pictures and less wacky, experimental genre-hopping.
But no, Boyle has only continued to blur the lines between art film, prestige cinema, and B-movie insanity, and all of those elements may never have collided more fully than with “28 Years Later,” the brand new follow-up to his own “28 Days Later” from 2002.
Never content to play by expectations or rules, Boyle revisits the world of “28 Days Later” – a UK mainland overrun with rampaging, murderous hordes bent on biting and eating people to spread a rage-inducing virus – but does so with an entirely left-field approach.
Rather than rehashing the zombie movie-like paranoias and cat-and-mouse horror of “Days,” the new “Years” instead focuses much differently on the dynamics of a struggling family living on an island in the still-quarantined zone of the UK.
Instead of using the virus and the horror to consider social and psychological breakdown, “Years” uses its setup to explore a child’s first confrontation of the true weight and potential beauty of death in a world so saturated and populated by meaningless death at every turn.
It’s a very different film from Boyle’s own earlier entry, and its absolutely unexpected and unhinged final moments already set the stage for at least two more upcoming installments.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
