By Natalie DeCoste
Superhero Blockbuster: Black Widow
Typical for most summers, one of the must-sees of summer 2021 comes from Marvel. This year’s Marvel movie comes in the form of the long-awaited “Black Widow” film. After a year plus delay, “Black Widow” arrived in early July and put up a good fight on streaming services and in the box office.
“Black Widow” follows Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, as she deals with her past. The movie helps bring together the pieces of Romanoff’s history that Marvel fans have gotten over the last decade and showcases the impressive talents of Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova.
The movie is everything you would expect from a Marvel film filled with action-packed, CGI-backed sequences with a twist of the expected classic spy-movie tropes. The movie presents a bittersweet experience for Black Widow fans who have long waited for the character to get a stand-alone film but may find the experience slightly soured by the end of Avengers: Endgame. The movie is a must-see for anyone looking for an action film and anyone starting the journey into phase four of the Marvel universe.
Cartoon: Luca
For a more family-friendly pick, the sure winner from Disney and Pixar this year is “Luca.” The movie combines stellar Pixar animation with a classic Disney fairytale. Stuck inside due to the pandemic, many people long to hop on a plane and fly to Europe for vacation. Short of that, “Luca” offers viewers a heartwarming, albeit predictable, adventure through an Italian coastal town exploring friendship and freedom.
The movie centers around two sea creatures, Luca and Alberto, as they venture out of the water and onto the land. In this literal fish out of water tale, Luca longs for more than his underwater life filled with herding fish and overbearing parents afraid of what lies beyond the waterline. With the help of the overly confident Alberto, Luca escapes to the land above, where he and Alberto team up with a human girl, Giulia, for a classic David and Goliath-type tale.
Sometimes sticking with the classics works best and “Luca” is another case of Disney proving that it can recycle familiar movie elements and still produce a high-quality product. Other classic Pixar-made films like “Ratatouille,” “Coco,” and “Up” are more heartwarming and offer better storylines, but “Luca” is not so far off from the quality of these films that giving it a watch would not be worth your time. In fact, when not compared against some of Pixar’s finest films, “Luca” shines even brighter. Whether you are looking for a movie for the whole family or a movie to warm your heart without making you think too hard, “Luca” is the pick for you.
Love Story: The Last Letter From Your Lover
If you are looking for a story of love that spans decades, then “The Last Letter From Your Lover” is the summer of 2021 movie for you. The movie comes from award-winning romance author Jojo Moyes, the same author that brought us the tear-jerking 2016 film “Me Before You.” Lovers of summer beach reads, period dramas, and forbidden love affairs will fall for Netflix’s latest love story.
“The Last Letter From Your Lover” follows Felicity Jones as Ellie Haworth, a young journalist who stumbles upon letters between two lovers, Shailene Woodley’s Jennifer Stirling and Callum Turner’s Anthony O’Hare, from the 1960s. The movie offers viewers an interwoven love story between the past and the present as Ellie Haworth sets out to solve the mystery of the forbidden affair between Stirling and O’Hare.
The movie is far from award-winning and does not offer viewers the most intricate storyline, but it is sure to do the trick for anyone seeking melodrama or who believes in true loves made to last a lifetime. What the story lacks in-depth, it makes up for in exquisite costumes and immaculate scenery, so much so that it helps distract from how Woodley delivers her lines.
“The Last Letter From Your Lover” steps up and fills the hole that is the summer 2021 romance category, with viewers only other options presenting in the form of “The Kissing Booth 3” or something equally as cringe-worthy. The film may not be a 2005 “Pride and Prejudice” masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it is sure to get the job done for any lover of love.
Movie to Avoid: Cosmic Sin
No summer would be complete without some absolute flops, but “Cosmic Sin” is not an absolute flop. It is far closer to a crime against movie-making than it is just a bad movie. The absolute atrocity that is this movie hurts even more when looking at who leads the film, the one and only Bruce Willis.
The movie is set in 2524 after humans have begun colonizing other planets, which has led to conflicts between the planets. Following an alien attack on another planet, a retired and disgraced general, General James Ford, played by Willis, is brought back into the military to help fight the aliens before it is too late.
The movie’s plot seems simple enough, but somehow writer/director Edward Drake managed to make the film unbearable to watch and impossible to follow. Nothing about the film suggests that it is set 500 years in the future unless 500 years in the future means that everyone will forget how to have a normal conversation and become a human-robot. The shots are dizzying, the dialogue painful, the characters unlikable, and the plot forgettable.
The movie has several decent cast members, which makes the awful final product even more baffling. Beyond the star power of Bruce Willis (although his most recent movie choices suggest he cannot make a good film anymore), the movie also features Frank Grillo and Adelaide Kane. Grillo has managed to produce good quality work in the Captain America/Avengers films, and Kane has had moderate success in “The Purge” and as Mary Queen of Scotland in “Reign,” but neither actor seemed to remember their past successes during filming for “Cosmic Sin.”
