I’ve always loved going to the movie theater with my friends and family. I still remember my mom surprising my sister and I with a trip to see Frozen after school one day, and more recently, giggling with my best friend through Zootopia 2. Although movies are usually a rare thing for me, they won’t be this summer. With a full slate of guaranteed blockbusters on the schedule, you can bet you’ll find me at my local Celebration Cinema from May through August.
Disclosure Day
If there’s one thing I learned from The Crown (2016-23) and Challengers (2024), it’s that I love Josh O’Connor. Him AND Emily Blunt in a Steven Spielberg movie? Well, now I just love him even more! Any Spielberg movie, from ET (1982) to Saving Private Ryan (1998), is guaranteed to be emotional and genre-defining. Coming back with his first sci-fi film since 2018 (and with one of my favorite actors, lest you all forget that I’m a Josh O’Connor fan), Disclosure Day is all but guaranteed to be a frontrunner during the upcoming awards season.
Disclosure Day’s plot is based off of a short story written by Spielberg himself, later adapted into a screenplay by David Koepp. In it, O’Connor tries to expose almost 80 years worth of UFO cover-ups while extraterrestrials reveal themselves across Earth. The film’s tagline, equal parts mysterious and chilling, sums it up perfectly: “If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?”
The Odyssey
Even if The Odyssey wasn’t being directed by Christopher Nolan, I’d probably still be watching it. With an absolutely stacked cast featuring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and more, The Odyssey is sure to be one of the most critically acclaimed films of the summer. As a Classic Civilization 101 survivor at Michigan, and a lifelong fan of the Percy Jackson series, I can’t wait to see how Nolan reimagines one history’s most famous and foundational stories.
The Odyssey is based off of Homer’s epic of the same name, written between 725 and 625 BCE. Taking place after the events of the Trojan War, the story follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his ten year journey to return home. While he battles sea monsters, cyclopes, and the will of the gods, his wife and son fight to protect Ithaca’s throne from usurpers.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
It’s a big summer for Zendaya and Tom Holland. On top of The Odyssey, the married duo is also starring in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth installment of the MCU’s Spider-Man series. Although I’m not totally sure that anything could ever top the craziness of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) bringing together Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Mans, Brand New Day has the potential to be a major boost for the MCU, who haven’t seemed to quite find their footing after concluding an epic era of movies with Avengers: Endgame (2019).
There isn’t much information about the movie’s plot as of the time of writing. However, clips released by the movie’s official Twitter account depict a struggling Peter Parker, who has been completely forgotten by his friends and family following the events of No Way Home. With many fans suspecting a crossover with Yelena Belova, this fourth film is sure to be a fantastic new step for Tom Holland’s most iconic character.
Support artists, actors, directors, and more by seeing these movies in the theater this summer! I hope you enjoy these movies as much as I’m planning to (especially with the TikTok edits that are sure to follow their release).