June movie preview: What you need to know about Indiana Jones, The Flash, Transformers, and more

In Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is once again trying to stop a potentially world-ending threat. It’s a situation he’s found himself in before, in 2018’s Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. This time, he’s facing off against the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a supervillain who can travel to different universes via the inter-dimensional portals that appear as “spots” on his body. And while Morales has backup from some familiar faces, including Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), there are plenty of new Spider-beings from alternate universes, too. New faces include Oscar Isaac as Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099, Daniel Kaluuya as Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, and Issa Rae as Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman.

Across The Spider-Verse is one of surprisingly few films aimed at younger audiences to get a theatrical release this summer, so it’s sure to be a hit with families. But Into The Spider-Verse built up some serious goodwill with general audiences, too, so this could be one of the biggest hits of the summer. [Jen Lennon]

Based on a 1973 short story by Stephen King, The Boogeyman is about a high school student named Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister, Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), who are trying to adjust after the death of their mother. When the girls’ father, a therapist (Chris Messina), gets an unexpected house visit from a troubled patient, a terrifying entity that preys on others’ suffering hitches along for the ride.

The Boogeyman was originally planned to debut on Hulu sometime in 2023, but after a favorable test screening in December 2022, the decision was made to release the horror movie in theaters to scare up some summer box office dollars. Summer is not the best season for scary movies, but maybe The Boogeyman can offer counterprogramming for those feeling superhero fatigue and acute sequelitis. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Oh Christ ... literally. Padre Pio is a biographical drama directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Shia LaBeouf as the titular Franciscan Capuchin friar, who is known as Saint Pio of Pietrelcina in the Catholic Church. If you’re still reading and OK with this curious casting choice, you may be interested to know that the movie is set in Italy after World War I when soldiers were returning home to an impoverished village ruled over by wealthy landowners. Bad Lieutenant director Ferrara is known for embracing controversial content in his movies, but his choice of notorious trouble-magnet LaBeouf as a future saint might be a problem for audiences—or prove a canning piece of casting. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Simulant is a Canadian sci-fi movie starring Robbie Amell, Jordana Brewster, Simu Liu, and Sam Worthington. The movie is about a woman (Brewster) who tries to replace her dearly departed husband (Amell) with an android “simulant.” Since everyone today is talking about ChatGPT and whether or not A.I. is going to make us all slaves to machines, Simulant seems pretty timely and relevant. The April Mullen-directed indie has the potential to be a sleeper hit, especially for fans of Upload, the Amazon Prime Video series on which Amell stars as a dead man whose consciousness has been uploaded to a virtual reality simulation. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

The documentary Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story tells the story of the classically trained actor who played Freddy Krueger in many A Nightmare On Elm Street movies. This intimate portrait features interviews with Englund’s friends and colleagues, including Candyman star Tony Todd, actor-director Eli Roth, Insidious actress Lin Shaye, and A Nightmare On Elm Street costar Heather Langenkamp. Englund never set out to become a horror icon, so it’s interesting to learn more about the whip-smart actor behind the dirty red-and-green sweater, fedora, and razor glove. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts is the seventh installment in the Transformers franchise and a stand-alone sequel to 2018’s Bumblebee. Set in 1994, Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts is about a pair of Brooklyn-based archaeologists who get tangled up in an ancient Autobots conflict involving Transformers such as Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons.

Audiences enjoyed the flashback to the 1980s that Bumblebee provided, so we’re hoping that Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts will do the same for those feeling nostalgic about the 1990s. Transformers director Michael Bay is back as one of the producers, with Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. at the helm. The biggest stars of this sequel are not the human actors but the voices behind the Transformers: Ron Perlman is Optimus Primal, Peter Dinklage is Scourge, Pete Davidson is Mirage, and recent Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh is Airazor. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Flamin’ Hot is a biographical comedy-drama directed by Eva Longoria and starring Jesse Garcia as Richard Montañez, the man—and cult hero—who invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (or didn’t, depending on who you ask). The movie is based on the memoir A Boy, A Burrito And A Cookie: From Janitor To Executive by Montañez. Flamin’ Hot debuted at South by Southwest in 2023 and has received mostly favorable reviews, so it might be a tasty movie snack to stream on Hulu if you need a little break from the superheroes and giant robots in theaters. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

American Psycho director Mary Harron is at the helm of Dalíland, a biographical drama about the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The movie is mostly set during the 1970s when the artist was having an expectedly strange relationship with wife and muse, Gala. Ben Kingsley plays Dalí, while The Flash star Ezra Miller plays young Dalí. The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and has received mixed reviews so far, but fans of the iconic painter will want to see how well Kingsley embodies Dalí. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

The days when every Pixar film is a home run are definitely over but the studio’s batting average remains impressive. So we’re burning up to see their new animated achievement, Elemental. The bad news is the film is directed by Peter Sohn, who gave us the not-good Good Dinosaur. The great news is that it sounds like Sohn and company are pushing visual and storytelling boundaries with the film and we’re here for it. The movie is set in Element City, which is populated by anthropomorphized elements of earth, air, water, and fire and who reside in neighborhoods like Fire Town. In Elemental City lives a fire element named Ember and a water element named Wade who must learn to connect despite their differences.

Look for Pixar to fully explore the visual possibilities of living in a city comprised of elements which, it’s fair to say, will probably be dazzling. That should be plenty exciting to distract us as Pixar carts out its go-to themes of finding yourself, embracing your uniqueness, and the power of love. Sohn, whose parents emigrated from Korea in the ’70s, says that landing in the perpetually spinning whirlpool of New York, where many cultures and languages exist in a relatively small area, inspired the film. Sounds like a great jumping-off point for a story, and with the animation guaranteed to be Pixar-fabulous, it’s elementary that Elemental could be a winner. [Mark Keizer]

You won’t find a more troubled film hitting theaters this summer than The Flash. The DC superhero flick had been in development since at least 2014, with four directors departing the project over creative differences before Andy Muschietti (It) took over in 2020. But even finishing the film didn’t put an end to its problems: throughout 2022, star Ezra Miller had several public mental health crises, which led to some disturbing allegations regarding their personal life.

For now, WB seems to be leaning hard into a “pay no attention to the person behind the curtain” strategy regarding Miller, and the truly shocking thing is that it seems to be working. Early buzz for the multiverse-spanning film has been overwhelmingly (almost suspiciously) effusive, and both fans and the press are leaning hard into the excitement about Michael Keaton’s return as Batman over 30 years after he last donned the cape and cowl in Batman Returns. Less exciting is Ben Affleck’s return as a Batman from a different universe, but living in Keaton’s shadow is really the least of the indignities Affleck has suffered while wearing the Batsuit. [Jen Lennon]

Chris Hemsworth returns as black-ops mercenary Tyler Rakes in Extraction 2, the sequel to the 2020 action-thriller Extraction. Little is known about the plot of Extraction 2 except that Rakes, who barely survived the first movie, returns for a mission to rescue the beaten-down family of a Georgian gangster from the prison where they are being held. Marvel stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave directed both Extraction films and has worked with Hemsworth (aka Thor) on two Avengers movies. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Like many auteur directors, Wes Anderson’s films don’t always make a big impact at the box office, despite their critical acclaim. And even Asteroid City, with its massive ensemble cast full of bankable stars, isn’t going to win the weekend box office when it premieres. That’s because it’s going up against The Flash, which is a much more standard summer blockbuster.

But, even if it doesn’t make a splash at the box office, Asteroid City is giving kinda perfect summer movie vibes. It centers on a Junior Stargazer convention taking place in a small desert town in 1955, following the exploits of the kids and their parents as they try to relax and enjoy the environment for a few days. It’s dreamy, a little surreal, and gorgeous: if you’re looking for a movie that actually evokes the feeling of a warm summer night, this is it. [Jen Lennon]

Maggie Moore(s) is a black comedy starring Jon Hamm as a small-town sheriff in Arizona who is investigating the murders of two women with the same name. The movie is directed by Hamm’s Mad Men costar John Slattery, who played Roger Sterling on the legendary series. Also on board are Tina Fey and Nick Mohammed, the latter as a wise-cracking police offer. Although we’re pretty sure the movies have nothing else in common, doesn’t the plot about women with the same name getting murdered remind you a wee bit of the Sarah Connor situation in The Terminator? Just saying. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

The jumping-off point for this horror-comedy is the trope that the African-American character was always the first one to die in horror movies of the ’80s and ’90s. In The Blackening, an all-Black group of friends staying at a cabin in the woods is terrorized by a masked killer who demands that they each rank their level of blackness so he knows the correct order in which to kill them.

Directed by Tim Story, the man behind Barbershop and the Ride Along franchise, The Blackening seems to satirize the same horror-movie stereotypes that the first four Scary Movie flicks did ... times 10! [Robert B. DeSalvo]

Step aside, PC police, because the ’90s-era raunchy comedy is back in No Hard Feelings. Jennifer Lawrence stars as a cash-strapped Uber driver about to lose her childhood home when she happens upon an easy-money gig; she’s hired by wealthy parents to seduce their dateless wonder of an introverted, nerdy 19-year-old son before he leaves for college. Turns out her bold promise to “date his brains out” is much harder to fulfill than she thought.

The never-bad Matthew Broderick and the criminally underused Laura Benanti are the parents of the young teen, played by Andrew Barth Feldman. The key ingredient here is Lawrence, who’s never starred in a comedy quite like this, let alone a studio comedy and, we bet, is going to let loose. No Hard Feelings is directed by Gene Stupnitsky who gave us 2019’s pre-teen F-bomb fest Good Boys and started as a writer on NBC’s The Office. We’re getting There’s Something About Mary vibes here or possibly The Hangover, where the shenanigans get increasingly R-rated, frantic, and over-the-top. [Mark Keizer]

The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes is at the helm of God Is A Bullet, an action-thriller led by Game Of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Detective Bob Hightower, whose wife was murdered and daughter kidnapped by a satanic cult. It Follows star Maika Monroe, playing the only survivor of the cult, teams up with Hightower to save his daughter. Also on board are Jamie Foxx as the Ferryman, January Jones, and Andrew Dice Clay. The movie is getting a short theatrical release before a digital rollout on July 11. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

The fifth and final film in the franchise, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is set in 1969 during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Harrison Ford returns as Dr. Indiana Jones, a college professor and archeologist who is none too pleased to find out that the U.S. government has recruited former Nazis to help NASA beat the Russians to the Moon.

Fans who have been following Indiana Jones’ adventures since Raiders Of The Lost Ark are excited to see Ford’s final turn as the character as well as the de-aging effects on the actor seen in the trailer for flashback sequences. When we last saw Indy at the end of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, he had just gotten married to long-time love Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the mother of his son, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf). Since neither Allen nor LaBeouf are listed in the credits for The Dial Of Destiny—the first Indiana Jones movie not directed by Steven Spielberg—we’re curious what kind of ending is in store for several generations’ favorite whip-cracking adventurer. [Robert B. DeSalvo]

The plot description online for the DreamWorks animated film Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is unnecessarily wordy and complex for a PG kids flick. What you need to know is that it’s about a shy girl who learns that she’s the descendant of a royal family of sea krakens and that her destiny lies in the water, even though her overprotective mother (voiced by Toni Collette) has forbidden her from venturing into the ocean. Lana Condor voices the titular character, who is the aforementioned shy 16-year-old kraken. We really want to hear Jane Fonda as Ruby’s grandmother, aka the impressively titled Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas. [Robert B. DeSalvo]