The ten summer blockbusters you need to watch now

There’s a longstanding tradition in Hollywood that if you put an uber-macho beefcake in a situation where they have to care for a child, it’s a recipe for hilarity. A man? Looking after a child? What next! Admittedly it can work (‘Kindergarten Cop’) but more often than not, it doesn’t (‘Race to Witch Mountain’ and ‘The Tooth Fairy’). And that’s certainly the case with ‘Witch Mountain’ director Andy Fickman’s latest dead-eyed family film. In this slapdash, slapstick comedy, real life action man John Cena stars as a ‘Smoke Jumper’ – a firefighter who parachutes into to tackle wildfires in California. He’s a duty-bound tough-guy type, living in the shadow of his fire-chief father’s legend. He’s shacked up in the firehouse with three other devoted, and loveable meatheads (Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo, and Tyler Mane), and his pet mastiff, Masher – yes even the dog has to be hyper-masculine. While applying for a promotion, Cena and his hapless crew end up rescuing three siblings from a burning log cabin, and chaos ensues. It’s all nappy and fart jokes, accompanied by Cena inexplicably removing his t-shirt every five minutes to show off his rippling physique. The firehouse is trashed in a series of set pieces by the overly curious tykes, but, lo and behold, their antics teach these emotionally pent-up men that opening your heart is the path to true happiness. Judy Greer also makes an appearance as Dr Amy Hicks, Cena’s token love interest and budding herpetologist. She’s the

The headline on this latest addition to the ‘Terminator’ franchise – a Hollywood series that’s creaking like an aging T-800 with stiff joints – is that it reunites the people who made it great in the first place: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and James Cameron (though not original co-producer Gale Anne Hurd). They’re back for ‘Dark Fate’, promising to straighten all those crooked timelines and deliver some honest-to-goodness shock and awe. On paper at least, that’s a tantalising prospect. In reality, however, the involvement of James Cameron is limited to a story and producer credit – and it’s hard to imagine the story took him longer than an ‘Avatar 2’ lunch break to whip together. The set-up and structure are so similar to 1991’s landmark ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’, ‘Dark Fate’ could almost be called a remake. It’s a watery facsimile of that movie, full of nods and winks to iconic moments long past. ‘Deadpool’ director Tim Miller is the latest filmmaker to try to bring freshness to these reheated beats, and there are some promising flashes early on. That iconic shot of terminators skull-crunching their way across an apocalyptic landscape transforms into a tranquil beachside scene in one smooth edit. The tension at the heart of these ‘Terminator’ movies was always between the clutch of terrified, clued-up survivors and the oblivious masses, and the moment captures it neatly. The setting, 27 years after ‘Judgment Day’, then shifts south of the U.S. border where a

Director Elizabeth Banks takes the helm as the next generation of fearless Charlie's Angels take flight. In Banks' bold vision, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska are working for the mysterious Charles Townsend, whose security and investigative agency has expanded internationally. With the world's smartest, bravest, and most highly trained women all over the globe, there are now teams of Angels guided by multiple Bosleys taking on the toughest jobs everywhere. The screenplay is by Elizabeth Banks from a story by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Auburn.

An overstuffed follow-up to 2014’s skilful Sleeping Beauty’ spin-off ‘Maleficent’, Joachim Rønning’s (‘Kon-Tiki’) sequel finds one worthy reason to exist in Michelle Pfeiffer’s wicked Queen Ingrith. As the nemesis to Angelina Jolie’s red-lipped siren, Pfeiffer gives us exactly what we want: the venomous Catwoman attitude she brought to ‘Mother!’. Intimidating in costume designer Ellen Mirojnick’s pearl-encrusted threads, Pfeiffer strides into character – her Ingrith plots to overtake the realm, poisoning the familial bond between its young queen, Aurora (a graceful Elle Fanning), and her misunderstood godmother, Maleficent (Jolie, glamorous and imposing). Will Ingrith’s villainy destroy the duo’s love, which the first film so thoughtfully built?Even if you have an idea how that question gets answered, Pfeiffer’s deceitful empress (with flower allergies) keeps things entertaining enough. The rest of the package isn’t as inspired, despite Patrick Tatopoulos’s fanciful production design that recalls a lesser ‘Avatar’, and all the cute, flickering things hovering around. A smitten Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson), engaged to Aurora, sometimes downgrades the otherwise central Maleficent from feared potentate to anxious empty-nester. There’s also an underground clan of creatures that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor’s horned Conall, living in hiding from human threat. It all leads to a noisy finale that wears out its welcome. (You’ll crave more of the quieter battle from an earlier dinn

You don’t go to Roland Emmerich for subtlety. The director behind such shuddering behemoths as ‘Independence Day’, ‘2012’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is most comfortable with explosions – he mainly exists to make Michael Bay seem slightly more interesting. ‘Midway’, his cacophonous, often rousing reconstruction of the four-day 1942 naval battle that turned the tide of World War II’s Pacific theatre, is right up Emmerich’s alley. The film pays hypnotic, nearly educational attention to dive-bomber runs, plunging us earthward behind planes as their pilots dip low enough to drop their lethal payloads. Battleship grey and cascading fire are the film’s primary colours; the movie flaunts its hugeness at every turn. You’d never mistake it for the real thing, but Emmerich’s eye for historical detail is impressive. Still, in our current moment of ‘Dunkirk’ and war films with an arty pulse, ‘Midway’ plays like a Hollywood relic: a two-hour videogame in which all the action goes down without a hint of wind against the actors’ foreheads. (And don’t think too hard about the gaucheness of Emmerich’s opening act, a bloodless reconstruction of the attack on Pearl Harbor.) The movie briefly becomes a superior entertainment whenever it shifts focus to the military strategists behind the hardware: Patrick Wilson’s Japanese-speaking intelligence officer Edwin Layton, guilt-ridden and determined to make good, could have commanded his own plot. But elsewhere, we hear flyboys shout lines like ‘Knoc

Emma Stone, still with her post-‘La La Land’ and ‘The Favourite’ glow yet palpably bored to be in a zombie sequel, isn’t the only thing that’s tired about this belated follow-up to 2009’s ‘Zombieland’. The redneck-liberal alliance of the first movie – embodied by Woody Harrelson’s strutting Tallahassee and Jesse Eisenberg’s neurotic Columbus (people assume the names of their hometowns in this post-apocalyptic universe) – once felt edgy. But in today’s political landscape, it’s less believable than reanimated corpses. Meanwhile, screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have honed their R-rated snarksmanship in two ‘Deadpool’ movies. What was left to be said here? Very little, and the film seems to realise as much. (Eisenberg even thanks the audience in a cringingly clever voiceover: ‘Everyone has choices when it comes to zombie entertainment.’) It’s extra infuriating that the new plotline does so little to justify its own existence. The gang now lives in a gone-to-seed White House – the front façade, overgrown with weeds and stray lumbering flesh-eaters, is a dreamy piece of CGI – but the new residents bicker just like they did the last time, and only Little Rock (a grown-up Abigail Breslin, underused) fantasizes about straying off the grounds. She does, triggering a rescue effort. Heroically, ‘Double Tap’s new actors, rare though they are, save it from being completely brain-dead. Zoey Deutch (soulful and spunky in Richard Linklater’s ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’) does what s

Nobody wanted this one: a reboot of a series that now feels redundant with every galaxy-guarding wisecrack coming from the theater next door. But how fun was it back in 1997, when CGI-heavy sci-fi first collided with salt-and-pepper buddy comedy? After three films, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are now AWOL – probably wisely on their part – leaving the dark suits and memory-wiping neuralysers to Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, who may bring to mind their superior ‘Thor: Ragnarok’. They have little to do in a film that’s both whirlingly busy and stubbornly listless and uninspired. It won’t exactly make you hate movies, full stop, but ‘Men in Black: International’ imposes such a generic dullness, it will have you seriously examining your entertainment choices. For a character that’s meant to be born and raised in Brooklyn, Thompson’s Molly, an often naive trainee agent, represents a missed opportunity for toughness – or at least the endearing street smarts this series used to supply on the regular. Meanwhile, if you ever wondered when Hemsworth surfer-bro charm would curdle into swagger, it’s now: As Molly’s new partner, Agent K, Hemsworth is almost surprisingly unfunny. When, only 15 minutes in, you’re hearing boss Emma Thompson complain about their secret organisation’s gendered name (‘I’ve had the conversation,’ she fumes), you have no idea you’re experiencing the film’s only funny line. She dispatches the duo to find some wayward aliens while a mystery mole undermines

Turns out, Pixar’s sentient toys can still make us cry: Nearly 25 years after their cinematic debut, the sweetly selfless plastic pals return in a fourth ‘Toy Story’, one charged by the animated series’ thematic essence of finding purpose in being useful to others. It’s a hopeful, immensely human chapter that echoes and extends the franchise’s complex notions of loyalty, displacement and self-worth, doing so with humour and warmth. Working from a script by Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom (as well as six other story contributors, including the ousted ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter), director Josh Cooley successfully balances all these elements – a noteworthy achievement considering the large cowboy boots he had to fill after the epic yet nuanced ‘Toy Story 3’, one of Pixar’s more perfect achievements. The reliable company of old friends certainly helps. Now happily living with a new kid, Bonnie (voiced by Madeleine McGraw), Tom Hanks’s pull-string pardner Woody, Tim Allen’s devoted Buzz Lightyear, Joan Cusack’s feisty Jesse and the rest of the gang are back. New to the clan is Forky (Tony Hale of ‘Veep’, adding nervy personality and genuine weirdness), an existentially confused spork with low self-esteem that the ever-imaginative Bonnie creates as a kindergarten craft project. Convinced of his status as trash (an unusually raw class dilemma for a Pixar movie), Forky get a crash course on his toyness from Woody, himself thrown by a life crisis resembling that of a retiree. B

‘Prepare for war,’ someone who knows Latin will tell you, if you ask about that subtitle, though it’s hardly necessary intel: In these gloriously dumb – but remarkably well-staged –gun-fu movies, the war is already here and it lasts the entire film. Maybe others like it when Keanu Reeves talks. He’s more effective when he moves. His somber suit-clad NYC assassin has become his signature role, stripping down ‘Speed’ and ‘The Matrix’ into something John Woo sleek. Mob thugs killed his pet pit bull in the first film. Those guys are long gone. Even though the latest John Wick brings on the usual distractions – Ian McShane’s fruity boutique-hotel proprietor, Lawrence Fishburne’s king of the Bowery underworld, Halle Berry as a lady with vicious dogs that leap straight for the crotch – mostly these characters stay out of the way. We’re here for the rigorously conceived, blessedly coherent takedowns, the work of director Chad Stahelski (also Reeves’s longtime stunt double and choreographer). Stahelski is a fight-scene Fosse and Reeves is his Gwen Verdon: ‘Parabellum’ takes the hall-of-mirrors high style of the second film and pushes it into overdrive. The level of hard-R-rated bloodletting is so delirious, you’ll smile at how bad it is for you. A closed Manhattan Bridge is the perfect site for a sword duel on speeding motorcycles. Put Wick on a horse and he’s more of a menace than John Wayne on a grouchy day. In one fight, so many knives are flung, they need to use a corpse for a pi

If you know your Psyduck from your Squirtle, this one may already be on your most-anticipated list for the year. For Pokémon devotees, it ticks all the boxes, from the moment it opens with a grazing Cubone (a pocket monster who wears a skull as a hat – cuter than it sounds) and introduces Ryme City, a place where humans and Pokémon live in harmonious incomprehension. If you aren’t one of those people, imagine watching ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ after a PCP binge and you’ll get the idea. The dense plot involves genetically mutated Pokémon, a Spielberg-y missing dad and a sinister corporation. Into the mix comes loner Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), who discovers he can talk to Pikachu, the ex-partner of his missing cop dad. Ryan Reynolds provides the furry sleuth’s voice and has a ball, chucking around inappropriate one-liners (‘Are you going to make me into a lampshade?’) with giddy abandon. If the final act is a bit dull and the anarchic Reynolds factor ends up muzzled, director Rob Letterman makes sure not to lose that self-aware edge altogether, while providing enough Pokémon Easter eggs to satisfy the most demanding fan. He’s also helped invent a whole new movie genre: cuddly noir.