The sun is trying to kill us. Like, actively. The northern hemisphere is currently experiencing what feels like a climate apocalypse. It’s too hot to breathe. Stay inside. Hide under a blanket. Watch a movie.
Your streaming libraries are actually full of decent options. The sci-fi crowd can grab Project Hail Mary on Prime Video. It won theaters over thanks to an alien made of pebbles. Want more fire? There’s Avatar: Fire and Ash on Disney+. The Na’vi tribe wants to burn the moon down. Sounds familiar? Or maybe you prefer Satanic panic. Two movies this month—Ready or Not 2 and They Will Kill You —feature estranged sisters fighting murderous cults. Coincidence? Sure. Weird that it happened twice. Maybe not. If your brain wants to stay engaged, try the cerebral Archive or the crushing The Long Walk.
Here is what is actually worth your time.
Project Hail Mary
Ryan Gosling plays a science teacher with amnesia. He wakes up alone in space. Badly. Earth is freezing because the sun is dying. He has to save everyone. How? He makes friends with a rock spider. His name is Rocky.
The alien communicates in song. It is charming. Unbearably so. Adapted from Andy Weir’s novel (same guy as The Martian ), the movie balances hard sci-fi survival drama with heart. You will care about the rock thing. You really will. Prepare to fist-bump a stone creature.
It’s impossible not to love the friendship at the core.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Jake Sully’s family is broken. Their son Neteyam died in the last film. Neytiri is dark now. Very dark. Meanwhile, the human colonialists led by Miles Quaritch have teamed up with a new Na’vi tribe. These guys worship fire and hate God. Specifically Eywa. They want everything gone.
James Cameron goes big. Again. Pandora looks lush. Violent. New. Don’t bother catching up unless you’re willing to binge three films. The fourth and fifth are already on the table. Just a heads up.
Ready or Not 2
The 2019 original was a sleeper. A fun, gory joke about marriage. Now Grace reunites with her estranged sister Faith. They team up against billionaire aristocrats. Classic revenge. Campy. Not high art. But Sarah Michelle Gellar is there doing something vaguely anti-heroic and it is great. Fun is underrated. This delivers.
They Will Kill You
If you want actual action, skip the comedy. Watch They Will Kill You. Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reaves. She infiltrates a luxury building in New York. She looks like a maid. She isn’t. She is hunting her missing sister. The building? A Satanic temple. The residents? Immortals.
The film mashes up Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead energy with The Raid. Brutal. Fast. Borderline gonzo. Asia destroys everyone in her path. The practical effects are smart. There is a sentient eyeball. Do I need to say more? No. Just watch it.
Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die
Sam Rockwell bursts into a diner. He has a bomb. He wants the customers to save the world from a super-AI. He’s a time traveler. This is his 117th try. He keeps the same four people. Mostly. Except Ingrid, a young runaway who he reluctantly drags along.
Director Gore Verbinski paints a weird future. Teens become literal zombies from smartphones. Victims of school shootings are cloned to sell ads. People upload their brains to the cloud. Cynical? Yes. Hopeful? Weirdly so. It is a satire of our current obsession with tech and convenience. Or maybe just a trip.
Archive
A car crash kills a wife. The husband, George, uploads her consciousness to a cloud service. Archive. He gets 200 hours of her voice. Not enough. He builds a robot. A physical body. The previous prototypes get jealous. The corporation gets mad. Intellectual property is a funny thing when applied to souls.
This British sci-fi gem from 2020 isn’t about robots. It’s about loss. Visuals are clean. Beautiful, even. Gavin Rothery previously worked on Moon, so the starkness works. It hurts, but gently.
Hoppers
A woman uploads her mind into a robot beaver. This sounds ridiculous. It is. Piper Curda voices Mabel. She meets the beaver king. The local humans, led by Jon Hamm as the mayor, want to pave over their habitat.
Writer Daniel Chong directed the We Bare Bears show before this. Same charm. Less bears, more animatronics. The animation from Pixar is top-tier. It has actual emotion buried under the silliness. Good for kids. Tolerable for adults. A solid summer pick if you have low expectations.
The Long Walk
Stephen King wrote this. Well, Richard Bachman did. Same thing. It’s grim. In an authoritarian America, fifty teenage boys are forced to walk. Non-stop. If they slow down. Warning. Three warnings? Bullet in the head. Broadcast live to the populace.
The Hunger Games owes a debt to this story. But there is no romance here. Just fatigue and terror. Francis Lawrence directs it tightly. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson play two walkers who rely on each other. Mark Hamill is the Major. He loves talking. And killing. It’s oppressive. Searing. You won’t look away, even if you should.
Is the dystopian genre just a cycle of trauma porn now? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the only thing that makes sense when the weather is this bad. Keep walking. Or stay put. Either way. Something’s watching.
