Summer movie blockbuster season is upon us and yes, there is plenty to be seen on the big screen this week. But there is plenty more to see on the small screen this week including Netflix’s Spiderhead starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller and directed by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. Netflix also has the third season The Umbrella Academy, which sees the Hargreeves siblings at battle yet again. Sundance 2022 favorites Cha Cha Real Smooth and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande are available on Apple TV Plus and Hulu respectively. Hulu also has the long awaited The Old Man starring Jeff Bridges. In the nonfiction arena HBO Max has Mind Over Murder.and Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes while Netflix is offering up Civil about civil rights lawyer Ben Crump.
Father of the Bride (HBO Max, June 16)
It’s Father’s Day weekend so why wouldn’t HBO Max capitalize on the Hallmark holiday? The film stars Andy Garcia as a father who isn’t ready for his only daughter to get married. If it sounds like a familiar plot line -- it is. The HBO Max film marks the second remake of the original movie, which was released in 1950 and starred Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. In 1991, Steve Martin played the father of the bride in the successful remake of the film. Why reboot a classic comedy that has been a hit twice before? Because it’s Hollywood and remakes are supposedly safe bets. The most notable alteration in Gary Alazraki's adaptation of the 1950 movie is that the family is Cuban-American and live in Miami. “Like 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, Alazraki's take combines glossy escapism with storytelling that centers a demographic long relegated to the sidelines in mainstream American movies. Two-plus decades into the new millennium, that shouldn't be news, though Father is surely important for all those reasons; mostly, it's just fun,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt.
The Old Man (Hulu, June 17)
It's been a long road for The Old Man. The drama starring Jeff Bridges was originally scheduled to premiere in 2020, but COVID stopped that from happening. Then in the fall of 2020, Bridges was diagnosed with leukemia, underwent treatment, and nearly died of COVID himself, further delaying production. An adaptation of Thomas Perry’s eponymous 2017 thriller, the seven-episode series stars Bridges as Dan Chase, a former CIA operative who has spent years living off the grid in hiding. But when someone tries to assassinate him, Chase is forced to come out of hiding and run from FBI agent Harold Harper (John Lithgow). While on the run Chase confronts his shady past. The first two episodes of The Old Man will debut on June 16 on FX and be available to stream the next day on Hulu.
Spiderhead (Netflix, June 17)
Based on George Saunders' short story Escape From Spiderhead for The New Yorker, this sci-fi thriller is directed by Joseph Kosinski -- the same guy who directed Top Gun: Maverick. (Apparently, he doesn’t require sleep.) The film is about visionary inventor Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth) who runs a prison that offers inmates the chance to shorten their sentences by participating in a drug trial that consists of taking mind-altering drugs. Miles Teller (who starred in both TG: Maverick and Only the Brave for Kosinski) plays one of the inmates. Zombieland and Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick penned Spiderhead, which makes this film a promising watch. “It’s a thriller at times, but also a wickedly funny dark comedy,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck.
The Summer I Turned Pretty – Season 1 (Amazon Prime Video, June 17)
An adaptation of Jenny Han's 2009 best-selling, eponymously titled coming-of-age novel, The Summer I Turned Pretty focuses on Belly, an Asian American girl who has a complicated relationship with Jeremiah and Conrad, two brothers she’s known since childhood. Interestingly, Amazon let Han serve as creator and co-showrunner on the series, even though she had never written for television before. (For some reason Hollywood isn’t keen on letting authors adapt their work for the screen.) It will be interesting to see what aspects of her novel Han incorporated into the screenplay and what words she left out. Amazon has already renewed the series for a second season.
Cha Cha Real Smooth (Apple TV Plus, June 17)
This Sundance 2022 comedy breakout hit stars Dakota Johnson, Cooper Raiff, Leslie Mann and Brad Garrett. Apple was quite taken with the film about a bar mitzvah party host (Raiff) who forms a bond with a single mother (Johnson) and her autistic daughter (Vanessa Burghardt). The tech company paid a reported $15 million for the rights. The film scored an aggregated 91% on Rotten Tomatoes “A smart film that ends up also being surprisingly moving,” wrote RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tallerico.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hulu, June 17)
Oscar winner Emma Thompson stars as Nancy Stokes, a 55-year-old widow yearning for some good sex after a nice but stale marriage. So she does what any 50-something widow would do and hires a 20-something handsome sex worker, Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack). Drama of the best sort ensues. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and critics took a liking to it. “A movie starring the peerless Emma Thompson as a go-getting widow looking for good sex? You have to show up for Sophie Hyde's earnestly sex-positive dramedy based on this premise alone,” wrote Harper’s Bazaar Tomris Laffly.
Civil (Netflix, June, 19)
This Netflix documentary follows civil rights lawyer Ben Crump as he goes to trial to seek justice for the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, whose murders sparked protests across the country around race and police brutality. Nadia Hallgren (Becoming: Michelle Obama) directed the film, which premiered earlier this month at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a counter-narrative of sorts to the many Fox News segments branding (Crump) “the most dangerous man in America” (segments that appear throughout the documentary), but it’s also an excavation of the ways Crump himself is tirelessly dedicated to writing the counter-narratives of Black people slain by police,” wrote IndieWire’s Siddhant Adlakha.
Mind Over Murder (HBO Max, June 20)
This six-part documentary is the latest true crime nonfiction series to hit streaming services. This one involves a 68- year-old grandmother, Helen Wilson who was killed in her Nebraska apartment in 1985. Five individuals confessed to the crime but were eventually exonerated by DNA evidence in 2009. Director Nanfu Wang (In the Same Breath) explores the murder of Wilson but also tackles other interesting issues like town politics and how trustworthy one’s own memory really is. The docuseries includes archival footage, original interrogation videos and interviews with Wilson’s family members as well as the individuals who confessed to her murder.
The Umbrella Academy - Season 3 (Netflix, June 22)
Even though they saved the world by putting a stop to 1963’s doomsday, the Hargreeves siblings aren’t allowed to celebrate when they return to the present day. Instead, they have a new rival to fight called the Sparrow Academy. Of course, they do! Otherwise this group of gifted, time traveling siblings who were born all around the world at the same time wouldn’t be doing what they are on the planet to do -- stop evil forces. Based on Gerard Way’s eponymously titled comic book, the first two seasons of The Umbrella Academy were hits with the critics. “The Umbrella Academy is what you get when you mix Wes Anderson with Matthew Vaughn, stuff them full of Red Bull and Adderall, and give them a Spotify Premium subscription. Yes, that's a compliment,” wrote The Observer’s Brandon Katz. Season three will feature 10 one-hour episodes.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes (HBO Max, June 22)
This 92-minute documentary tells the story of what really happened on April 26, 1986 when a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Uncovered archival footage and recorded interviews with those who were present paint a grave picture of the disaster and the lengths to which the Soviet government went to cover up the incident. This isn’t the first time HBO has explored the Chernobyl explosion and its aftermath. In 2019, the distributor released a five-part narrative miniseries titled Chernobyl, which was a hit with critics and the winner of 10 Emmys. A nonfiction recounting of the worst man-made accident in history does not make for an upbeat watch, but knowing what actually happened does make this doc definitely worthy of a watch.
