Top 5 – Awesome Movies Coming Out in July

Much like June, July is a loaded month for movies.  We get another MCU movie, the end of one of the finest trilogies of all-time, a hypnotic horror movie, and Christopher Nolan’s latest.  Here are my picks for the best movies coming out in July.

5 – A GHOST STORY (David Lowery, July 7)

I saw A Ghost Story in January at the Sundance Film Festival and it is still a movie I think about to this day.  This is one of the weirdest and most original movies I have ever seen.  It is a movie about life after death, as a man (Casey Affleck) dies and his white-sheeted ghost lingers for decades over the place where he once lived.  This is a movie the challenges you in the best ways.  Where summer movies are usually dumb and mindless, this is one that will have you thinking on a universal level.  You can read my full review right here, but make sure to check out this haunting masterfully made movie.

4 – VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (Luc Besson, July 21)

This movie looks insane in every way.  Director Luc Besson goes back to his Fifth Element (1997) days for this wildly ambitious, futuristic sci-fi epic.  The film stars Dane DeHaan, whom I love in everything he does, and Cara Delevigne as special operatives that must race to identify the marauding menace the is threatening Alpha, a vast metropolis and home to species from a thousand planets.  The movie looks visually stunning and will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.  This movie could be a huge flop, but I have a feeling this is going to blow audiences away.

3 – SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (Jon Watts, July 7)

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the sixth Spider-Man movie we have gotten in 15 years, which is a bit excessive.  Will this movie suffer Spider-Man fatigue?  Maybe.  But at the hands of Marvel, I have a lot of hope in this movie.  Tom Holland nearly stole the show in Captain America: Civil War (2016) as our titular web slinger and, to me, seems to be the best casted Spider-Man in terms of age.  Michael Keaton looks awesome as Vulture, and I’m never not excited to see Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.  Marvel has yet to make a bad film, and Spider-Man: Homecoming looks like another winner. [UPDATE] – I just saw this movie and it is everything you want in a Spider-Man movie.  So fun and fresh.  Review will be up shortly, but be psyched for this one!

2 – WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (Matt Reeves, July 14)

These top two films are two of my most anticipated movies of the year.  They rank more like 1A and 1B rather than first and second.  War for the Planet of Apes is the third installment of the Planet of the Apes prequels and it looks like the most epic yet.  The first two films, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) are sensational in every way and feature a landmark motion-capture performance from Andy Serkis.  War looks to be the trilogy’s crowning achievement, as the story of the rise of Caesar comes to a close in a dark, grandiose fashion.  Could this trilogy go down as one of cinema’s best?  We’ll find out July 14th.

1 – DUNKIRK (Christopher Nolan, July 21)

Christopher Nolan is one of the best filmmakers we have in the game today.  Along with Quentin Tarantino, he is a director who’s films are more than films, they are events.  He makes original content and pushes the boundaries of filmmaking and genre with every film.  Dunkirk follows Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, Canada, and France are surrounded by the German army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.  The trailers are nothing short of spectacular and, for being a war epic, have a claustrophobic feeling to it.  The cast is great with the likes of Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and even Harry Styles.  Could this be the first true Oscar contender we have in 2017?  Could Nolan get his first Best Director nomination?  From the looks of it, absolutely.  Dunkirk looks like another Nolan masterpiece, which is why it is my most anticipated movie of July.

What movies coming out in July are you excited for?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.