2022 Summer Movies and Series

It is the end of summer in a quiet resort town on the Normandy coast. Fifteen-year-old Pauline (tomboyish brunette Amanda Langlet) and her elder cousin Marion (chic blonde Arielle Dombasle) are spending a few days in the family villa.

John Patton Ford wrote and directed his first short film, Patrol, in 2010. He thought he was off and running but while he’s remained in the industry in other roles, he had to wait twelve years to finally write and direct his first feature film, Emily the Criminal – which was presented as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) on the eve of its U.

When can a disease be life-saving? The answer to that riddle forms the spine of the documentary Syndrome K, narrated by the late Ray Liotta and available across digital platforms on August 16. Directed by Stephen Edwards, the movie tells the fascinating story of a fictitious highly contagious illness concocted by three Roman Catholic doctors during World War II.

Interesting and heavy, consequential questions of art’s relationship to commerce hang all over the terrifically engrossing documentary Claydream, informing its bittersweet portrait of the rise and fall of the man largely considered the father of modern-day clay animation. That its subject’s actual name remains unknown outside of tight-knit industry circles while his rebranded, formerly eponymous studio, wrested away from him two decades ago and given a new moniker, has gone on to garner considerable acclaim with a fanciful origin story speaks to a time-honored Hollywood axiom: when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

Nonfiction films which trade in biography arguably have the ability to avoid a good number of the narrative pitfalls that frequently bedevil fictionalized biopics. They’re less frequently compromised by the active participation of their subjects, for starters.

The much-anticipated TV show adapted from the celebrated comic book series by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, has finally come to life on Netflix. Starring British actor Tom Sturridge, in the titular role who also goes by the name Morpheus, as well as Dream of the Endless, is an otherworldly creature who lives in The Dreaming, a world he created from where he governs dreams and nightmares.

The claustrophobia-inducing Thirteen Lives (Amazon Prime) captures the real life challenges of rescuing 12 boys, aged from 11 to 16, and their soccer coach, who were on a fun jaunt in the inner caverns of a mountain – Doi Nang Non (the Mountain of the Sleeping Lady) – in Thailand, when a sudden monsoon hit, flooding so rapidly the outer-lying caves and their exit, that the thirteen were at risk from the rising waters and from compromised oxygen levels. Some of the children did not know how to swim.

Turning 80 years old this year is everybody’s favorite deer, Bambi. This film marked the 5th animated offering from Walt Disney Animation and has remained a staple of beloved children’s movies for many generations, despite the horrific death of Bambi’s mother.

The ’90s were a complex time for the industry – the dawn of digital, the slow death of physical effects, the transition from VHS to DVD, the rise of higher image and better sound in theaters, and the growth of the multi-screen multiplex. It was a bonanza time for studios, and the audiences were eager to consume the new elements of the end of the century.