Day 7: Cousin Summer Movie Night (or Afternoon)

Each time I’ve done one of these May daily posting marathons, I’ve always included some form of a summer movie preview. I love summer movies. There are few simple pleasures that can measure up to hiding out in a too air-conditioned theater on a hot weekday when all of the other grown-ups are either at work or taking care of their kids. The bigger, the more bombastic, the more disbelief that needs to be suspended, the better. 

Today I found out my cousin Paul will be temporarily vacating the desert wilds of Arizona to visit us up here in the Northland for a spell this July, and soon the idea of seeing a movie came up. With that in mind, here are the movies that, based on the list I found in my Entertainment Weekly summer movie preview issue that I’m looking forward to seeing (and yes, I still actually have magazines delivered through the mail and to my house). 

Paul, I’ve put double asterisks next to the ones that are either going to be released in July or have the best chance of still being in the theaters by July. 

**“Captain America: Civil War” — I saw this today. It was astonishingly great. There’s a chance it will still be around by July. 

“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” — I enjoyed the first “Neighbors” movie. Seth Rogen relies too heavily on drug humor and obviously crude jokes, so it was funny to see him as a suburban schlub. Hopefully this will follow the same formula.

**“X-Men: Apocalypse” — Most X-Men movies have been good, even if they don’t quite match the others in the MCU. This one looks to be pretty impressive.

**“Central Intelligence” — I don’t know anything about this other than it stars Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Those two along with their charisma, coming timing, and refusal to take themselves too seriously seems promising. 

**“Independence Day 2: Resurgence” — The first Independence Day movie was a welcome retreat for me when it came out since I was waist-deep in summertime master’s degree work. It was a big out-of-nowhere surprise. This one looks twenty times bigger.

**“Ghostbusters” — If this works it could be the movie of the summer. Melissa McCarthy is funny even if she plays variations of the same character in every movie, and every time Leslie Jones is on screen during SNL she makes me laugh.

“Star Trek Beyond” — What’s summer without an outer space adventure? The first two since the reboot have been at least pretty good.

“Jason Bourne” — The grown-up adventure of the summer, hopefully without an overdose of shaky-cam.

“Suicide Squad” — Kind of a superhero movie, but since it’s a DC property instead of Marvel and DC hasn’t really been knocking it out of the park since Christian Bale walked away from Batman, I guess I’ll be surprised if it’s really good. But it comes out in August, and a lot of the other movies will have run their courses by then.

“Ben Hur” — I didn’t even know this remake existed. It’ll be overly-CGI for sure, but it kind of feels like a must-see.

Now we just have to pick one out. Any jump out at you, P? And maybe we’ll collect some more cousins from the area, and head to the Riverdale Acapulco for some tacos after? You’re welcome to crash on my futon if you’d like….