2020 Summer Movies Preview

s soft-spoken Jahkor (Ashton Sanders, Moonlight) struggles to keep his dream of rapping alive amidst a gang war in Oakland, his ill-fated life and real-world responsibilities drive him further and further across the line of right and wrong with tragic consequences. Landing in prison beside his father, J.D. (Jeffrey Wright, Westworld) whom he never wanted to be like, Jahkor embarks on an unlikely journey of self-discovery, exploring the events that unite them, in hopes of helping his newborn son break a cycle that feels unavoidable.

In Clark Duke’s directorial debut, Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) and Swin (Clark Duke) live by the orders of an Arkansas-based drug kingpin named Frog (Vince Vaughn), whom they’ve never met. Posing as junior park rangers by day, they operate as low-level drug couriers by night under the watchful eye of Frog’s proxies (John Malkovich and Vivica A. Fox). Swin then settles into his day job by taking up a relationship with Johnna (Eden Brolin) against orders to blend in while Kyle continues to question his night job by trying to figure out who Frog really is. Their world is then upended after one too many inept decisions, and Kyle, Swin, and Johnna find themselves directly in Frog’s crosshairs, who mistakenly sees them as a threat to his empire.

The film tells the true story of Jan Vokes (Academy Award® nominee Toni Colette), a Welsh cleaner and bartender, who decides to breed and rear a race horse. She persuades her neighbors and friends to contribute financially to the scheme. The group’s unlikely investment plan pays off as the horse rises through the ranks and puts them in a race for the national championship.

In present day Los Angeles, Daphne (Woodley), a thirty something woman, navigates love and heartbreak over the course of one year. Daphne becomes intertwined with friends Jack (Dornan) and Frank (Stan) after meeting them at a party. During that time, she will unlock the secrets to her life in a sudden turn of events and in the most surprising of places.

When a small-town widow is grieving in isolation, she receives a deadly ultimatum from the privileged sons of a local land developer to sell her beloved property. With 24 hours to decide and her pleas to the town's corrupt sheriff falling on deaf ears, she realizes she must take matters into her own hands. Her quest for justice turns into an all-out battle and grisly confrontation.

Documentary about Herb Alpert’s personal and creative journey with interviews with Questlove, Sting and Bill Moyers. Alpert has sold over 72 million records and co-founded A&M Records.

Set in the dazzling world of the LA music scene comes the story of Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), a superstar whose talent, and ego, have reached unbelievable heights. Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is Grace’s overworked personal assistant who’s stuck running errands, but still aspires to her childhood dream of becoming a music producer. When Grace’s manager (Ice Cube) presents her with a choice that could alter the course of her career, Maggie and Grace come up with a plan that could change their lives forever.

From birth to infancy, from adolescence to adulthood, the good-hearted David Copperfield is surrounded by kindness, wickedness, poverty and wealth, as he meets an array of remarkable characters in Victorian England. As David sets out to be a writer, in his quest for family, friendship, romance and status, the story of his life is the most seductive tale of all.

Legendary outlaw Ned Kelly (George MacKay) leads a band of rebel warriors to wreak havoc on their oppressors in this gritty and veracious western thriller.

On a weekend trip, a group of friends are forced to seek shelter inside an abandoned prison where a nun named Sister Monday had once been assigned. During her time at the prison, Sister Monday was suspected of killing prisoners who were serving out their sentences but before she could be questioned, she disappeared. Once inside the prison, they will learn the terrifying truth.

A young boy finds a mystical toymaker with stories to tell. The first is of a leprechaun seeking revenge on a defenseless family. The second is of a doll who works evil on her fragile owner. The toymaker gives the boy a clown named Giggles. Clowns are supposed to be the guardians of happiness, right?

Anna Fox lives alone in the New York City brownstone that once housed her happy family. She suffers from agoraphobia and is separated from her husband and daughter. She spends her days chatting online with strangers, watching old movies, drinking to excess and spying on her neighbors. This gets interesting when the Russell clan moves in next door. Watching the bond between the parents and their teen son makes her long for her own reunion with her own family, but that changes when she observes what seems to be a shocking act of violence. The housebound woman must confront what she saw, or whether she has become unhinged.

In the twilight of the 1950s, on one fateful night in New Mexico, a young, winsome switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and charismatic radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever. Dropped phone calls, AM radio signals, secret reels of tape forgotten in a library, switchboards, crossed patchlines and an anonymous phone call lead Fay and Everett on a scavenger hunt toward the unknown.

After SpongeBob’s beloved pet snail Gary is snail-napped, he and Patrick embark on an epic adventure to The Lost City of Atlantic City to bring Gary home. As they navigate the delights and dangers on this perilous and hilarious rescue mission, SpongeBob and his pals prove there’s nothing stronger than the power of friendship.

While Joseph Piller (Bang), a Dutch Jew, was fighting in the Resistance during the Second World War, the witty, debonair aesthete, Han van Meegeren (Pearce) was hosting hedonistic soirées and selling Dutch art treasures to Hermann Goring and other top Nazis. Following the war, Piller becomes an investigator assigned the task of identifying and redistributing stolen art, resulting in the flamboyant van Meegeren being accused of collaboration — a crime punishable by death. But, despite mounting evidence, Piller, with the aid of his assistant (Krieps), becomes increasingly convinced of Han's innocence and finds himself in the unlikely position of fighting to save his life.

Artemis Fowl is about a 12-year-old Artemis who is a millionaire, a genius - and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn’t know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy (Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit) to harness her magic to save his family. These aren't the fairies of the bedtime stories - they're dangerous.

A comedy about what happens when a small Wisconsin town becomes the main attraction of our political circus. After the Democrat’s top strategist Gary (Steve Carell) sees a video of a retired Marine Colonel (Chris Cooper) standing up for the rights of his town’s undocumented workers, Gary believes he has found the key to winning back the Heartland. However, when the Republicans counter him by sending in his brilliant nemesis Faith (Rose Byrne), what started out as a local race quickly becomes an out-of-control and hilarious fight for the soul of America.

An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, THE GREEN KNIGHT tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur's reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table.

In the anarchic town of Seaside, nowhere near the sea, puppeteers Judy and Punch are trying to resurrect their marionette show. The show is a hit due to Judy's superior puppeteering, but Punch's driving ambition and penchant for whisky lead to an inevitable tragedy that Judy must avenge.

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright , move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials. With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

In this suspenseful and provocative psychological thriller, a successful sports agent, Darren (Michael Ealy), watches his perfect life slowly disappear when he becomes entangled in a police investigation led by a discredited, disgraced and determined detective (Hilary Swank), with whom he had a wild one night stand.

Soul introduces Joe Gardner, a middle-school band teacher whose true passion is playing jazz. “I think Joe is having that crisis that all artists have,” says Powers. “He’s increasingly feeling like his lifelong dream of being a jazz musician is not going to pan out and he’s asking himself ‘Why am I here? What am I meant to be doing?’ Joe personifies those questions.”

In the film, just when Joe thinks his dream might be in reach, a single unexpected step sends him to a fantastical place where he’s is forced to think again about what it truly means to have soul. That’s where he meets and ultimately teams up with 22, a soul who doesn’t think life on Earth is all it’s cracked up to be. Jamie Foxx lends his voice to Joe, while Tina Fey voices 22. “The comedy comes naturally,” says Murray. “But the subtle emotion that reveals the truth to the characters is really something special.”

A storyline that mirrors Pete Davidson's own life and upbringing in Staten Island, New York. He lost his firefighter father in the Sept. 11 attack.

It looks like just another day at work for Tobias, a soft-spoken young American co-pilot on a flight from Berlin to Paris, as he runs through the pre-flight checklist with Michael, the pilot, and chats with Gökce, his flight-attendant girlfriend. But shortly after takeoff, terrorists armed with makeshift knives suddenly storm the cockpit, seriously wounding Michael and slashing Tobias’ arm. Temporarily managing to fend off the attackers, a terrified Tobias contacts ground control to plan an emergency landing. But when the hijackers kill a passenger and threaten to murder more innocent people if he doesn’t let them back into the cockpit, this ordinary man faces an excruciating test. As he makes a desperate attempt to save the lives of the passengers and crew, Tobias forges a surprising connection with a panicked young terrorist who he realizes is also a victim in the deadly situation.

Con-artists Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) have spent 26 years training their only daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), to swindle, scam, and steal at every opportunity. During a desperate, hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger (Gina Rodriguez) into joining their next scam, only to have their entire world turned upside down.

Ace pilot Maverick aims to show the relevance of good old fashioned pilots in today's high-tech, drone-centric war environment.

A bank teller is stuck in his routine discovers he’s a background character in the open-world action-adventure video game Free City, and he is the only one capable of saving his world.

Bob Belcher (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) runs a hamburger restaurant in a seaside town, with his ever-optimistic wife Linda (John Roberts) and their three children: self-conscious Tina (Dan Mintz), goofball Gene (Eugene Mirman) and precocious Louise (Kristen Schaal).

Director Christopher Nolan's super-duper secret thriller involving time travel, evolution, and international espionage.

Set in the early 20th century and takes place in the Amazon jungle. Dwayne Johnson will play a boat captain who takes his sister (Emily Blunt) and her brother (Jack Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH is a love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city and brings to life a collection of stories published in “The French Dispatch” magazine.

Azhy Robertson stars as Oliver, a lonely young boy who feels different from everyone else. Desperate for a friend, he seeks solace and refuge in his ever-present cell phone and tablet. When a mysterious creature uses Oliver’s devices against him to break into our world, Oliver’s parents (Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jr.) must fight to save their son from the monster beyond the screen.

Follows best friends Barb (Wiig) and Star (Mumolo), who leave their small Midwestern town for the first time to go on vacation in Vista Del Mar, Florida, where they soon find themselves tangled up in a villain’s evil plot to kill everyone in town.

For Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg), skills he has never learned and memories of places he has never visited haunt his daily life. Self-medicated and on the brink of a mental breakdown, a secret group that call themselves “Infinites” come to his rescue, revealing to him that his memories are real – but they are from multiple past lives. The Infinites bring Evan into their extraordinary world, where a gifted few are given the ability to be reborn with their memories and knowledge accumulated over centuries. With critical secrets buried in his past, Evan must work with the Infinites to unlock the answers in his memories in a race against time to save humanity from one of their own (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who seeks to destroy it.

Without a trace, Susie Potter vanished from her home in the quiet town of Skidmore, Missouri. Ten years later two reporters uncover a harrowing new detail, which leads them on an obsessive hunt for the truth.

Hutch Mansell is the guy you don't notice, a suburban dad, an overlooked husband, and a nothing neighbor -- a nobody. When two thieves break into his home one night, the incident ignites Hutch's unknown long-simmering rage, propelling him on a brutal path that will uncover dark secrets he fought to leave behind.

A silverback gorilla named Ivan lives in a cage in a shopping mall along with an elephant named Stella and a stray dog called Bob. Ivan does not remember life before the mall, but when a baby elephant enters and Ivan finds himself taking care of her, he begins to rediscover his previous life and concocts a plan to take the baby elephant away from their abusive owner.

Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman’s next big screen adventure finds her facing two all-new foes: Max Lord and The Cheetah.

In 1917, outside the parish of Fátima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. As secularist government officials and Church leaders try to force the children to recant their story, word of the sighting spreads across the country, inspiring religious pilgrims to flock to the site in hopes of witnessing a miracle.

Following 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the stakes are higher than ever for William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. (Winter) and Theodore “Ted” Logan (Reeves). Yet to fulfill their rock and roll destiny, the now middle-aged best friends set out on a new adventure, when a visitor from the future warns them that only their song can save life as we know it and bring harmony to the universe. Along the way, they will be helped by their families, old friends and a few music legends.

Following the loss of their son, retired sheriff George Blackledge (Costner) and his wife Margaret (Lane) leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas, headed by matriarch Blanche Weboy. When they discover the Weboys have no intention of letting the child go, George and Margaret are left with no choice but to fight for their family.

A young couple wake up with no memory of the first night of their tropical vacation. As they piece together the events of the night before, they discover they were the victims of a sadistic voodoo ritual, spurring a desperate quest for a cure for the horrific illness now afflicting them.

Follows bodyguard Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds), who’s enlisted by two (Samuel L. Jackson, Salma Hayek) to join them on a mission along the Amalfi Coast.