F9, new Pixar, and a third Conjuring bring blockbusters back this June

In the London of the early ’80s, a high-strung censor (Niamh Algar) finds her grasp on reality slipping after watching a grimy exploitation movie with unexpected parallels to her own traumatic childhood. A buzzed-about selection of January’s chiefly digital Sundance Film Festival, this first feature from writer-director Algar meticulously recreates the look, vibe, and atmosphere of moral hysteria that characterized its time period, the so-called Video Nasties era, when British authorities were cracking down hard on genre movies believed to be a poisonous influence on the public imagination. Our praised the unsettling mood, while also suggesting that mood is pretty much entirely what the film has going for it.

A forgotten corner of an economically depressed region in a misunderstood part of the country, Jackson, Ohio is an ideal location for a coming-of-age drama about scrappy nobodies just trying to get by. In this case, the nobody in question is Ruth (British actress Jessica Barden, best known for her role on the buzzy Netflix YA series ), a high-schooler who finds she may have to bend the law to escape the fate of opiate addiction and jail time that’s swallowed the life of her mother (Pamela Adlon). Holler, which premiered in Toronto last fall, recalls the hard-boiled authenticity of films like and , even if (per our ) it’s not nearly as memorable or involving as either.

As a nation slowly considers returning to movie theaters after a long pandemic break, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard will be there to inspire grateful cries of, “Wait, is this a sequel to something that I saw?” The answer is maybe: was a chart-topping action-comedy sometime in the past 10 years, starring Ryan Reynolds as the bodyguard and Samuel L. Jackson as the hitman. Sounds like a movie, right? For the follow-up the public asked for and swiftly forgot about, the efficient and orderly Reynolds must again protect the foulmouthed Jackson, as well as Jackson’s wife (Salma Hayek) who was—trivia alert!—actually introduced in the first movie that you have only a hazy recollection of watching, possibly on a plane.

If this month’s Sony-by-way-of-Netflix cartoon is plainly a spin on Aladdin, there’s an apparent touch of a different Disney Renaissance classic in rival animation house Pixar’s competing release: It’s a Little Mermaid variation about two plucky kids (’s Jacob Tremblay and s Jack Dylan Grazer) who are really sea monsters in disguise, taking their own “Part Of Your World” tour of dry land on the scenic Italian Riviera. Director Enrico Casarosa has cited everyone from Fellini to Miyazaki to Wes Anderson as influences on the production, though something tells us those disparate touchstones (along with the accidental or intentional echoes of caught by Twitter jokesters) will coalesce into the usual, identifiable Pixar house style.

There comes a time in every comedian’s life where he must participate in a gooey paean to the life-changing sorrows and joys of having children. If they’re lucky, it’s something funny and observant, like Steve Martin’s Parenthood; if they’re not, it’s desperate and sappy, like Steve Martin’s . Kevin Hart seems to be aiming closer to the former with the dramedy Fatherhood, in which he plays a widower attempting to raise his young daughter. Hart has often struggled to find vehicles that reward his comic energy; maybe this movie’s basis in a memoir by Matthew Logelin, or the presence of director and co-writer Paul Weitz, will offer an opportunity to play in a different key.

Sibling art-pop duo Ron and Russell Mael, a.k.a. Sparks, have a passionately loyal fanbase, which includes Edgar Wright. The director’s love for the group is reflected in every aspect of his new documentary, which packs gushing celebrity testimonials from “Weird Al” Yankovic, Patton Oswalt, and Flea into a very fan-friendly 140 minutes of running time. Chronicling the history of “your favorite band’s favorite band,” as Sparks are described early and often, it’s a film as whimsical and eclectic as the music it celebrates.

You never know quite what you’re going to get with a new film from François Ozon, whose work runs the gamut from to to . The French director’s latest, an adaptation of the young adult novel Dance On My Grave, is a swoony puppy-love romance between two young men off the coast of Normandy. Reviews from the fall festival circuit referenced Eric Rohmer—a name any filmmaker might hope to evoke when capturing stolen kisses against a balmy, idyllic seaside.

With Marvel’s traditional summer kickoff vacating May, Universal has staked out the end of the month as the designated time when everyone should feel safe enough in movie theaters to spend a buttload of money on a massive new blockbuster—specifically, a Fast And Furious sequel. Even without Dwayne Johnson or the late Paul Walker, this is the biggest Fast yet, at least in terms of running time; the saga of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his newly reappeared, apparently nefarious younger brother (John Cena) commands nearly two and a half hours, only some of which is expended on vehicular mayhem and fisticuffs. Returning director Justin Lin allocates the rest of the plus-sized runtime to a swollen ensemble and plenty of turgid family drama. As detailed in our , fans will probably have a good time—provided they’re expecting something closer to than .

Liam Neeson has now starred in enough late-period B-pictures that describing them requires a lot of qualification: No, The Ice Road is not the or the other , but a third movie that pits Neeson’s eternal gravitas against a wintry climate, among other obstacles. The actor plays an ice-road trucker leading a rescue of some trapped Canadian miners, which presumably involves a more teamwork-oriented approach to his particular set of, well, you know. The movie comes from longtime screenwriter and occasional writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh and marks Neeson’s fledgling foray into direct-to-streaming action.

Following the career path paved by fellow Comedy Central alum Jordan Peele, creator/star Ilana Glazer hops from humor to horror with a thriller billed as a “modern Rosemary’s Baby.” Glazer, who co-wrote the screenplay, plays a woman whose excitement about finally getting pregnant after months of trying curdles when she starts to suspect sinister intentions from her new fertility doctor, played by Pierce Brosnan. (Justin Theroux is in the John Cassavetes role of the husband—perfect casting, on paper anyway.) veteran John Lee directs this new addition to the A24 horror stable.

Even compared to other video game properties, Werewolves Within is an unlikely choice for a film adaptation. After all, it’s basically a VR version of the old “social deduction” party game alternately known as Werewolf or Mafia, which means that the source material possesses neither much of a story nor characters much deeper than the archetypal identities (Werewolf, Watcher, Gossip, etc.) assigned to players. All of that aside, director Josh Ruben is giving a non-playable take on the game a go, loosely reconfiguring it into a horror-comedy about a small town beset by both lycanthropes and mistrust. The main draw here is the cast, which is led by ’ Sam Richardson and places established comedy names like Cheyenne Jackson and Harvey Guillén next to up-and-comers like Milana Vayntrub, best known up to this point as the voice of Squirrel Girl in Marvel’s various animated properties.

Documentarian Heidi Ewing (, ) makes her first foray into fiction filmmaking—albeit with some nonfiction elements woven in—with this decade-spanning love story about an aspiring chef (Armando Espitia) and a young teacher (Christian Vázquez) whose burgeoning romance is threatened when one of them makes plans to leave Mexico for new job opportunities in the States. Reactions to the film on last year’s festival circuit skewed positive, though some felt that the aforementioned nonfiction material was much more interesting than what it accompanies.

Channing Tatum voices a chainsaw-wielding George Washington. If that’s somehow not enough to pique interest in this revisionist animated retelling of the American Revolution, take a closer look at the cast list, which also includes Simon Pegg, Judy Greer, Jason Mantzoukas, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Amber Nash, Bobby Moynihan, and Killer Mike. Note, too, that the film’s been directed by an executive producer of and produced by animation pros Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Not much further information is currently available on the plot of Netflix’s adult-courting comedy. But, again: Channing Tatum as George Washington with a chainsaw. That’s about all we need to know.

“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out?” Such are the opening words of a wild tale: the recounted misadventures of Aziah “Zola” King, a Detroit waitress and moonlighting exotic dancer who chronicled a shocking, dangerous, debaucherous couple days in Florida through a series of 148 tweets back in 2015. Writer-director Janicza Bravo () gives King’s first-person anecdote the Tarantino-esque big-screen treatment with this A24 festival fave, with Taylour Paige as the author, Riley Keough as impromptu travel-mate Stefani, and Colman Domingo as the latter’s unpredictable sugar daddy and maybe pimp. The talk of the town at Sundance 2020, Zola arrives in theaters now to open the floodgates of Tweetstorm cinema.