Opening this Weekend

Men in Black:  International

Shaft (2019)

The Dead Don’t Die

High Life

The Tomorrow Man

Halston

Before Stonewall

Box Office Predictions

  1. Men in Black: International
  2. The Secret Life of Pets 2
  3. Aladdin
  4. Shaft (2019)
  5. X-Men: Dark Phoenix

What You Should See

When they look back at the summer of 2019 at the movies, I think this will be the week they’ll identify as the true turning point away from the shockingly impressive Avengers:  Endgame to the true awfulness that will define this year’s summer season.  While it’s true that the last two weeks have featured critical and financial disappointments at the top of the box office, it’s the June 14th weekend that contains the largest quantities of sheer disappointment.

There is not a single major new movie I would recommend seeing this weekend, not Men in Black:  International, not Shaft (2019), not even the Jim Jarmusch, too-sardonic-and-deadpan-for-its-own-good The Dead Don’t Die that I had been personally looking forward to but now may never see at all given the reviews.

Things pick up a little bit on the smaller side of the silver screen with the truly bizarre-looking High Life, starring Robert Pattinson, and the gay rights documentary Before Stonewall, both playing at Metro Cinema.  Halston, on the ‘70s fashion designer, looks interesting if that’s your thing, and, unfortunately, the later-in-life John Lithgow-Blythe Danner romance The Tomorrow Man should maybe stay in the future rather than ever meeting your present.  Both open at the Princess.  And if you’re looking for something actually good but not that great, the Mindy Kaling-Emma Thompson joint Late Night opens wide this week and is now playing at most theatres in the city.

Then again, who’s ever really going to look back at this summer anyway.