Summer Movies 2020

Pandemic Standard Time, I can do without all kinds of amenities, but closed movie theaters has been rough.

The Route 34 Drive-In was open for its usual season. However, after Disney/Pixar’s “Onward” (2020) came out in March (and that was a pretty fun movie) the subsequent movies were classics or just old, non-classics. I’m sure cinema culture has been similar everywhere else in America. Nicole and I went in the spring to see “Back to the Future” (1985) at the drive-in, which was fun, as usual.

The local theaters closed in March. The Roxy (Ottawa, Illinois) re-opened at the end of June. It was such a blessing to be inside a movie theater. Even just being at the concessions counter was magical. The Roxy concessions counter had a display on the counter for a new flavor of Orange Crush soda, Watermelon Crush. It’s just a bit nasty, but it is the perfect flavor for the mid-seventies that didn’t exist in the mid-seventies.

Dave Franco’s (no, not James Franco, that’s his brother, I thought it was James Franco too), that is Dave Franco’s horror thriller “The Rental” (2020) came to The Roxy at the end of June. I probably didn’t go out to see it until sometime in July. It’s true that I was not crazy about it, but I will always have a soft spot for “The Rental”. I was so pleased to be sitting in a theater again that I probably would have bonded with anything featuring live action and music. Didn’t even recognize Allison Brie with light brown hair. Wasn’t familiar any of the other actors.

 

Thursday,  August 20, 7:00 p.m.:

“Jaws” (1975). I watched this one in an empty theater and I made certain to have a Watermelon Crush. I didn’t remember (when the screen is still black before the credits start) hearing underwater beeps and whale sounds at the very beginning of the film. And I forgot how short the ending credits were. I expected “Jaws” would be a slight let-down as I had seen it a couple of years ago at an amazing IMAX screening. But no, it was fantastic seeing it even on a standard size multiplex screen. And as usual I closed my eyes during the scene when the head pops out of the boat. Forty-five years of closing my eyes.  

Friday, August 28:

“The New Mutants” (2020). Eh, the less said about this one the better. There were actually two other people in the theater. I wanted to like it (especially the Russian girl who is the sister of Colossus from X-Men) but there wasn’t much there. Chances are we won’t see these actors or this version of the characters again. All the X-Men characters are owned by Disney now and they’ll certainly have a complete reboot if they use the New Mutants again.

The last 2020 summer movie I saw (for the first time) was “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977). Actually it was a double feature with “E.T.” (1982). I didn’t like “E.T.” in 1982 and I didn’t like it in 2020, but it was the second feature, so I was trapped. “Smokey and the Bandit” was huge in the seventies and into the eighties. I thought I was going to see something worthy of the national enthusiasm it generated. I was surprised at how tame it was. Lots of broad humor. I still don’t understand the plot even though it’s simple enough to be laid out in the featured Jerry Reed song “East Bound and Down”. Jerry Reed’s additional song “Bandit” explains the overall ethos of Burt Reynold’s character but I still don’t understand what he is trying to accomplish (besides, obviously, distracting the police). All these years I never realized that a truck (driven by Jerry Reed) transporting beer was the focus of the film's plot and I’m not going to watch it again to figure out why.