David Sims

Summer blockbusters have started to look the same in recent years: iterations from the same franchises, with comic-book superheroes leading the pack again and again. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 summer-movie season never really began. With Hollywood’s biggest films delayed for months, or indefinitely, I’ve assembled a list of unconventional and underrated movies with a much more eclectic range of heroes to cheer for or be thrilled by.

Only during a global pandemic would the biggest film in the U.S. be not a superhero blockbuster or a Fast and the Furious sequel, but a low-budget horror movie about a teenage boy in the suburbs doing battle with a witch living next door. Thanks to the coronavirus disrupting the usual summer release schedule, The Wretched now belongs to a tiny group of films that have topped the U.S. box office for five weekends in a row, including Titanic and Avatar.

Palm Springs is set during a never-ending day. Sorry to give away the big plot point, which comes some 15 minutes into Max Barbakow’s wonderful new comedy, but that premise feels pertinent today in a way that it didn’t when the movie premiered at Sundance six months ago. The film belongs to the growing canon of time-loop stories, which ensnare their characters in a repeating cycle from which there’s no discernible escape.

In an ideal world, I’d expect a Disney+ edition of Hamilton to have some real Broadway flavor. Perhaps there’d be a filmed rendering of waiting in line to have your ticket ripped at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, or a re-creation of buying an overpriced drink before taking your seat. But the stage recording of the hit musical, which starts streaming today, offers no such thing.

Sincerity is the key to every great Will Ferrell comedy. His classics, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, are surreal satires of American arrogance. But they work because the title characters are earnest creations—buffoons invested with the genuine belief that what they’re doing is special.

Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is a vital work on an overlooked subject in American film: the experience of black veterans in the Vietnam War, a perspective largely lacking from Hollywood’s 50 years of output on that conflict. The movie follows a group of 60-something retirees, still mourning their leader Stormin’ Norman (played by Chadwick Boseman), who died in battle, as they return to Vietnam to recover his body and a cache of gold bars he was buried alongside.

Many of Judd Apatow’s protagonists have had the mindset of someone who lives in their parents’ basement. Steve Carell’s 40-year-old virgin, Seth Rogen’s many affable stoners, and Amy Schumer’s titular train wreck were all lovable heroes who had plenty of growing up left to do.

“War is about money. Money is about war. Every time I walk out my front door, I see cops patrolling my neighborhood like it’s some kind of police state. I can feel just how much I ain’t worth.” So says Stormin’ Norman (played by Chadwick Boseman), the mythic figure at the center of Spike Lee’s bombastic war epic Da 5 Bloods (out on Netflix today).

The heroes of Judd Apatow’s movies always have some growing up to do. The director’s early television work on comedies such as Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared dealt with the growing pains of adolescence. His filmmaking debut, 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, focused on a grown man (played by Steve Carell) whose life was frozen in place because of his sexual inexperience.

“A clean house is evidence of mental inferiority,” Shirley Jackson (played by Elisabeth Moss) grumbles at her husband as he stumbles around her messy bedroom. By that yardstick, Shirley might be the smartest person alive; her North Bennington abode is so full of dirty dishes and random junk that it feels almost haunted. But that’s the mood the director Josephine Decker wants to conjure in Shirley—one where even a mundane home has a distinct air of spookiness.

America continues to battle the coronavirus, demonstrators fill the streets to decry police brutality and racism, and former members of President Donald Trump’s own Cabinet are denouncing his leadership. There’s undeniable surrealism to the moment at hand, with police killings captured on camera running parallel to the bizarre image of the president strolling to a church to hold up a Bible, after the police used violent force to clear his path of peaceful protesters.

America continues to battle the coronavirus, demonstrators fill the streets to decry police brutality and racism, and former members of President Donald Trump’s own Cabinet are denouncing his leadership. There’s undeniable surrealism to the moment at hand, with police killings captured on camera running parallel to the bizarre image of the president strolling to a church to hold up a Bible, after the police used violent force to clear his path of peaceful protesters.