The 20 movies you shouldn't sleep on this summer

The co-creator of the “Saw” and “Insidious” franchises has conjured up a gory body horror/action hybrid that had critics at last March’s SXSW Film Festival comparing it to classics like “Robocop” and “The Matrix.” Logan Marshall-Green stars as a paraplegic who undergoes an experimental procedure that that turns him into an unstoppable killing machine – which is helpful given that he’s out for revenge against the jerks who murdered his wife.

Moviepass gets into the film distribution racket with this based-on-a-true-story heist drama about four young men who plot to steal valuable art and rare books from Transylvania University in Kentucky. The twist here is that the students’ criminal endeavor is inspired by all the heist movies they’ve consumed over the years.

An audience favorite at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this feel good dramedy stars Nick Offerman as a record store owner who sneakily posts to Spotify a song he recorded with his gay, college-bound teenage daughter (Kiersey Clemons). When the song becomes a viral sensation, Offerman comes to realize that his dreams of late-breaking pop stardom are not shared by Clemons, who’s itching to leave home. It’s a small movie with loads of charm thanks to its two leads, as well as some fun supporting turns from Ted Danson, Sasha Lane, Blythe Danner and Toni Collette.

Was Fred Rogers, the host of PBS’ iconic children’s program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”, really as kind and gentle as the cardigan-clad gentleman he played on television? This wonderful documentary from the Academy Award-winning director of “20 Feet from Stardom” delivers answers that question with an emphatic “Yes.” Warning: bring a full box of tissues to the theater with you because you are going to weep.

Eugene Jarecki, the brilliant documentarian behind “The House I Live In” and “Why We Fight”, returns with an ambitious take on the life, music and enduring cultural significance of Elvis Presley. Jarecki travels the country in The King’s Rolls Royce, and hangs out with a wildly diverse assortment of celebrities (including Emmylou Harris, Dan Rather and Chuck D) to get their take on what Presley means to them, and how his rise and fall might serve as an eerie parallel to America’s current predicament. 

The third feature from writer-director David Robert Mitchell (“The Myth of the American Sleepover” and “It Follows”) stars Andrew Garfield as an aimless Angeleno who spends a magical night in his building’s swimming pool with a beautiful girl (Riley Keough), then becomes obsessed with her when she disappears without a trace the following day. The Los Angeles-set film divided critics at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, though most agree that it’s nothing if not indelible (ala David Lynch’s Hollywood nightmare, “Mulholland Dr.”).  

Debra Granik’s superb “Winter’s Bone” put Jennifer Lawrence on the map, and it’s entirely possible that her follow-up, “Leave No Trace,” will do the same for young Thomasin McKenzie. This low-key Pacific Northwest drama follows a PTSD-suffering veteran (Ben Foster) and his daughter (McKenzie) as they attempt to live off the grid on their own terms. It’s another triumph for Granik, and will likely be a major contender come awards season.  

This documentary about three young men who discover they were born triplets and separated at birth sure sounds like a heartwarming tale on the surface, but the story is just getting started with the reunion, and it’s about to get a heck of a lot darker. The less you know about this one going in, the better (and more shocking) it plays. This was one of the standouts at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. 

The awful tragedy of Whitney Houston’s cut-far-too-short life is examined in this Kevin Macdonald-directed documentary, which recently caused a stir due to its revelation that the R&B star was molested as a child by her cousin Dee Dee Warwick. It’s another devastating discovery about the Whitney we never knew, a woman who, if she’d been allowed to openly be herself, might still be dazzling us with her one-of-a-kind voice today.

Hip-hop artist Boots Riley’s debut feature is a visually inventive and deeply absurd satire about a black telemarketer (Lakeith Stanfield) who transforms himself into a wildly successful salesman by using his white voice (courtesy of David Cross). Riley tackles race relations, economic inequality and political corruption with a revolutionary bravado not seen since 1960s counterculture cult classics “Wild in the Streets” and “Putney Swope.” It’s sure to be one of the most talked about films of the summer, if not the year.

Joaquin Phoenix reunites with director Gus Van Sant for the first time since “To Die For” in this biopic about quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan. The film received mostly positive reviews at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and is worth a look if only for its eclectic supporting cast that includes Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black, Beth Ditto, Udo Kier and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon.

This ten-years-in-the-making labor of love from Daveed Diggs (Tony Winner for his dual performance of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton”) and Rafael Casal is a formally audacious tale about friendship and race in Oakland. The characters’ penchant to break into spoken-word verse could’ve been jarring in the wrong hands, but Diggs, Casal and music video director Carlos López Estrada make it all sing with a searing immediacy and authenticity.

While Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary “The Queen of Versailles” offered a sharply focused portrait of American wealth, her latest is a broader, far more ambitious examination of this subject that spares no one, not even herself. It’s nowhere near as cohesive as “Versailles,” but the sprawling nature of the narrative and the wretched garishness of her moneyed subjects in never less than invigorating. 

The talented and tortured fashion designer Alexander McQueen is the subject of this documentary from Ian Bonhôte. Glowing reviews out of the Tribeca Film Festival suggest this is a must-see for fashionistas, a thorough, respectful but far from hagiographic study of a brash artist who left an indelible imprint on the industry before taking his own life in 2010.

Chloë Grace Moretz stars as a teenager who’s thrown in gay conversion therapy after she gets caught fooling around with her school’s prom queen. The sensitively directed and beautifully performed LGBTQ coming-of-age drama won the 2018 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Drama, and it could build on the YA-skewing success of “Love, Simon.” It certainly deserves to.

Augustine Frizzell’s debut film is a great hang with some hilariously irresponsible young women who seem to hold the entire world in contempt. They’ve certainly zero affection for their suburban Dallas town, which they tear up in search of money and, most importantly, a goddamn good time. It’s a loose, unrepentantly nasty comedy with a pair of star-making performances from Maia Mitchell and Camilla Morrone.

Josephine Decker’s exhilarating drama centers on a precociously talented teenage girl (Helena Howard) who can’t seem to differentiate between the real world and her role in an experimental theater piece – and since we’re viewing the world from her addled perspective, we can’t either. It’s a thoroughly disorienting experience that touches on issues of abuse, mental illness and cultural appropriation. It may not come close to adding up on the first viewing, but if you give yourself over to Decker’s singular style, you’ll walk out of the theater in a giddy daze.

Spike Lee’s history-based comedy about the daring infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan by an African-American detective (John David Washington) and his Jewish partner (Adam Driver) earned mostly raves at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with many calling it the director’s most purely entertaining film since “Inside Man.” It’s always a thrill to see one of our greatest living filmmakers swinging for the fences, and exciting to hear that he’s put some serious lumber on the ball this time out.

An escapist rom-com in the mold of “Notting Hill,” “Juliet, Naked” stars Rose Byrne as an unlucky-in-love curator who strikes up an online romance with the reclusive indie rocker (Ethan Hawke) worshiped by her ex-boyfriend (Chris Dowd). Based on the book by Nick Hornby, it’s an older, wiser and far gentler “High Fidelity” with a little “About a Boy” pixie dust sprinkled over it for good-hearted measure. You won’t find a better date movie this summer.

A French art film about the bad boy of American tennis? You can’t be serious!!! But writer-director Julien Faraut is very serious about his tennis, and this visual essay on the art of McEnroe’s game, built around the hard charger’s 1984 French Open showdown with Ivan Lendl, might just be the sports aesthete’s “Rocky.”