As summer winds down, so does the summer movie season. But don’t despair, there are some still some movies worth checking out in July, though it would seem that some of the good stuff is going to be on streaming platforms.
As always, we highlight other movies worth checking out, even if they didn’t manage to make the list. This month that movie would be animated film The Sea Beast, which currently has a rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Helmed by Moana director Chris Williams, the movie is a journey through the seas, focusing on sea monsters and the heroes who slay them. With actors like Karl Urban and Dan Stevens onboard, you know you’re in for a treat.
Here are the biggest new movies of July 2022.
New Movies of July 2022
1. Minions: The Rise of Gru | July 1st, 2022
Minions: The Rise of Gru is the 5th movie in the Minions franchise, so obviously there’s a demand there, and parents will certainly be bringing their young ones to the cinema to enjoy this latest film. For this particular installment, we’re in the 70s and in the suburbs where a young Gru is growing up. Being an avid fan of the supervillain group called the Vicious 6 – seems like a rip-off of the Sinister Six – he hatches a plan to become evil enough to join them. There to back him up are his loyal followers: the Minions.
When legendary fighter Wild Knuckles gets kicked out of the Vicious 6, Gru interviews to become their newest member. Things don’t go well, as expected when it comes to Gru, and only gets worse after Gru outsmarts them and suddenly finds himself their mortal enemy. He will now need to turn to Wild Knuckles for help.
2. Thor: Love and Thunder | July 8th, 2022
In this fourth Thor movie, Thor embarks on a journey to find his inner peace. After a lifetime of leading wars and fighting in many, he’s looking to see who he is outside the space of war and strife. However, his retirement gets interrupted by Gorr the God Butcher, a galactic killer who seeks the extinction of the gods.
Early social media reactions on Thor: Love and Thunder have been generally effusive. Variety’s Courtney Howard called it “totally rad” and that it had “great story, stakes & character-building”. The general consensus is that it’s funny but also surprisingly emotional, and many praised the performances of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as well. However, there are some lukewarm responses, like Discussing Film’s Andrew J. Salazar felt that “most of the humour didn’t land as well as it did the first time” with Ragnarok.
Still, MCU fans will partake nonetheless.
3. Where the Crawdads Sing | July 15th, 2022
Adapted from a novel by Delia Owens, the movie tells the story of Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a girl who was abandoned and raised herself in the marshlands of North Carolina. Because of all the rumours surrounding her, Kya has always felt isolated from her community. When she becomes drawn to two men in town, she starts to open herself up and become more social. However, when one of them is found dead, she is immediately cast as a suspect.
The book has definitely been well-regarded for it’s nature descriptions and prose, but there’s also very little plot and story, which doesn’t really mesh well when adapted for film. Hopefully the film writers add more plot and create a more serviceable plot, otherwise we’re going to be spending quite a bit of the movie watching Kya cook grits.
4. The Gray Man | July 15th, 2022
The Russo brothers are back with their latest action movie The Gray Man, starring Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thorton, Dhanush and so many more.
The Gray Man is a title given to CIA operative Court Gentry (Gosling), aka, Sierra Six. Recruited by his handler, Donald Fitzroy (Thornton), Gentry was once a highly-skilled agent. But now the tables have turned and he’s the target, hunted across the globe by Lloyd Hansen (Evans), a former CIA agent, who will stop at nothing to take him out. Who will win this deadly game?
The Russo brothers, while tremendously successful in the MCU, didn’t really take the world by storm outside of the MCU, given the poor critical reception to their movie Cherry last year. Will The Gray Man be a different kettle of fish? Hopefully, it does look like a lot of fun. You can also catch the movie on Netflix a week later on July 22nd, 2022.
5. Persuasion | July 15th, 2022
Adapted from Jane Austen’s novel of the same name, the movie follows Anne Elliot (played by Dakota Johnson), who finds herself in a complicated situation when the man she was persuaded to reject comes back into her life again. After the release of the official trailer, the reactions were not great. Austenites felt that this version of Anne Elliot doesn’t really embody how she is in the books. It’s also trying to be too humorous, which to fans felt more Emma than Persuasion.
In response to the backlash, director Carrie Cracknell encourages people to watch the movie before arriving at a conclusion. In an interview with AV Club, she said: “It’s really important to me that the film holds the grown-up longing and heartache and complexity of Anne’s journey, and I’ve tried to calibrate that really carefully, as well as finding this slightly more anarchic, comic energy.”
It remains to be seen if this adaptation will end up satiating book fans. Persuasion will be released on Netflix.
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