Labor Day concludes the summer season so before we transition into fall and winter, here’s a look back at the movies released from May through August. The summer is traditionally the time of year for populist entertainment and while Hollywood provided that it was an unusual season in a number of ways.
Disney’s Dominance
Disney’s tentpole releases dominated the summer box office to the exclusion of almost anything else. The top five grossing movies of the summer were all Disney-owned releases: Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and Aladdin. The studio has done well for itself, setting a new box office record with over $7.6 billion earned so far this year and with more to come with the anticipated releases of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But these films were plagued with a feeling déjà vu and most of Disney’s summer blockbusters were just average in their quality. The Spider-Man sequel was good but nothing we haven’t seen before while The Lion King and Aladdin were exactly what we’d seen before. Even Toy Story 4, which was quite good, had trouble justifying its existence. As David Erhlich said of The Lion King, Disney’s output in summer 2019 was “a well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating its own tail.”
The Shrinking Theatrical Market
Disney’s success appeared to come at the expense of nearly everyone else. The entertainment press regularly turned out pearl clutching analysis pieces that juxtaposed Disney’s market share largess against the failure of other studio franchise releases like Dark Phoenix, MiB: International, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It’s worth noting that most of these movies just weren’t very good. The dominance of a single studio can and should worry anyone who cares about cinema and the long term health of the industry. But we also have to acknowledge that Disney’s success was at least assisted by the fact that their competition was pathetic.
More concerning was the box office underperformance of smaller movies. Many good midlevel budgeted movies ($40 – $70 million production budgets) just didn’t attract an audience. Booksmart suffered from a bad marketing scheme and a lousy release date. Long Shot was a good and smart movie with a bland title and its political themes might have been of little interest to an audience that is inundated with politics in every other medium. The remake of Child’s Play was released around the same time as Annabelle Comes Home and it might have been one killer doll too many. We can speculate why Late Night and Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Midsommar and The Angry Birds Movie 2 failed but whatever the cause, this trend points to an audience that is only interested in attending the theater for the biggest releases of familiar titles and brands. The theatrical marketplace cannot survive on tentpoles alone.
Musical Films
2019 has seen the release of a lot of musical movies and several titles debuted this summer. A few of these were documentaries including the Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace. Also released this summer were Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, about the relationship between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, and Pavarotti, Ron Howard’s documentary about the legendary opera singer. Summer 2019 also featured several musical dramas. Rocketman was an impressive biopic of Elton John. Yesterday was high concept piece that paid tribute to the music of The Beatles while Born to Run dramatized the true story of a Pakistani immigrant living in the UK who was inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen.
An Impressive August
In a typical summer, Hollywood studios release their flagship titles in May through July, with the Memorial Day and Independence Day holidays being the peak periods. August has traditionally been designated as a dumping ground for low quality titles that studios don’t have faith in and the Labor Day holiday is typically a low turnout weekend. Summer 2019 played out a little differently. Several high profile May through July releases were underwhelming while August saw the release of Good Boys, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Blinded by the Light, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, The Peanut Butter Falcon, and Ready or Not and even Angel Has Fallen was better than expected. Not all of these films drew crowds but this was a better quality August crop than we usually get at the end of the summer.
Highlights of the Summer
Here are a few of the better movies released this summer:
The Art of Self Defense: An offbeat and terrifically crafted black comedy that both tapped into this particular moment but also transcended it with a story that is worthy of comparison to Fight Club and American Psycho.
Blinded By the Light: A surprisingly layered and complex jukebox musical that was a lot of fun. Blinded By the Light was a tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen with a genuine appreciation for what The Boss had to say but it transcended mere fandom.
Booksmart: Every generation gets at least one last-crazy-night-in-high-school movie and Booksmart reimagined that story for the 2019 audience and populated it with likable and interesting characters.
Child’s Play: The remake of the 1980s slasher classic was much better than expected. It revisited the material and provided a fresh take while remaining germane to the original idea.
Crawl: This killer alligator movie was one of 2019’s most satisfying popcorn entertainments and one of Alexandre Aja’s most accessible films.
The Farewell: A nearly perfect movie. The filmmaking, the performances, and the storytelling coalesce in an extraordinarily satisfying story.
Good Boys: One of the best comedies of recent years and certainly the best comedy of summer 2019.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum: The John Wick series keeps topping itself and the third installment was an extraordinary action picture.
Long Shot: This movie got missed in its theatrical release but Long Shot was rare bird: a politically adept romantic comedy.
Midsommar: Continuing the present wave of impressive horror pictures, Midsommar might be too cerebral for the Conjuring crowd but it was a smart and expertly made film. A director’s cut was given a limited release at the end of the summer.
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood: Quentin Tarantino’s ninth movie was his most self-indulgent (and that is really saying something) but it was a fun nostalgia trip to a bygone era.
The Peanut Butter Falcon: The feel-good movie of the summer, The Peanut Butter Falcon was a really likable film with notable performances by Zack Gottsagen and Shia LaBeouf.
Ready or Not: A shrewd mix of horror and comedy, Ready or Not was smart and well produced and had a wicked sense of humor.
Rocketman: This dramatization of the life and music of Elton John had extraordinary set pieces and a terrific cast including Taron Egerton in the lead role.