Throughout the summer, the cinema is a beacon of comfort.
On those scorching summer days, sitting in an ice cold theater with a good movie can be better than frying on the beach.
But with all of the garbage films that came out over the past four months, I’d prefer to be on the beach on a sweltering day with a full body sunburn.
Like the sun beaming bright against the crashing waves, most of the summer’s movies burned my eyes (and brain cells too).
Before we clean the trash off the beach, it must be pointed out that we all saw this wave coming.
Last semester, I wrote a quarterly film report detailing the rubbish washing up at theaters.
In April, there was a feeling that this could be the worst year for film in recent memory and this summer solidified that claim.
Of the 43 movies I saw at the cinema, one received a perfect 4 star score, eight received 3 star scores, 12 got 2 star scores, 14 earned a 1 star score, and seven monstrosities were slapped with half star ratings.
If you’re a half glass full of Diet Coke type, you can say that at least more than half were decent.
But on the contrary, most of those 2 star flicks were forgettable.
Now that they’re lumped together with the bad bunch, it shows that this summer was nothing short of a dumpster fire.
Let’s start on the sunny side, shall we?
The only perfect film released was Pavarotti, a documentary on the famous opera singer with the namesake.
Director Ryan Howard’s film beautifully told Pavaortti’s story through friends, family, and experts, along with fitting so much information in an incredible span of two hours.
As for the threes, some highlights include the unique Them That Follow, the heartwarming Farewell, and the shockingly spooky Annabelle Comes Home.
The best out of this bunch was John Wick: Chapter 3, which proved that action films can still be entertaining without CGI and green screens.
These good movies came up once every couple weeks and were a nice break from the gut-wrenching bombs.
In regard to the twos, I had to dig deep to remember these. A Dog’s Journey produced more laughs than awes, Child’s Play was an okay revival of the Chucky series, and Toy Story 4 was an unnecessary sequel to the franchise (I promise I have a heart, somewhere).
This group also included any unoriginal Disney relaunches like The Lion King and Aladdin (yep, still looking for it).
Now get your big garbage bag out because it’s time to take out the trash!
Godzilla managed to turn a fun monster movie into a sappy family drama with barely any action.
How do you mess up a fun movie? Release it in 2019 for a start.
Other films that should’ve been fun but were actually snooze fests included X-Men, Men in Black: International, and Detective Pikachu.
For the smaller budgets: the coming of age Booksmart was more annoying than relatable, Tomorrow Man was incredibly wacky, Yesterday was a mess that I forgot about the next day, and The Curse of La Llorona was a curse on the time I wasted.
You got another garbage bag? Because we still didn’t discuss the halfers.
Stuber was a two hourlong Uber ad, The Dead Don’t Die made me feel like a zombie, The Souvenir was one of the snottiest films ever, Long Shot was another Seth Rogen cringe fest, and The Hustle swindled me out of my time.
The biggest disappointment of the summer was director Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Despite an impressive cast with an incredible “story” of the 1960’s Manson murders and aggressive marketing campaign, it was a total bore that left a man in my theater snoring louder than the film playing.
How did Tarantino mess this up? He released it in 2019!
Aside from the ratings, the box office overall performed poorly compared to last year.
This summer, the box office’s total gross was $3.72 billion. This was 9.7 percent drop compared to 2018’s summer, which was $4.12 billion.
The three flicks that made up most of that $3.72 billion were The Lion King at $512.7 million, Toy Story 4 at $427 million, and Spider-Man: Far from Home at $380 million.
Considering the summer’s hot junk, audiences most likely didn’t come out to theaters. To be optimistic: let’s try to move on and hope that summer gets washed away.
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