Black Widow
Out In Cinemas 8 July
Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour
Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha Romanoff (Johansson), aka Black Widow, finds herself an outcast from her splintered Avengers family and a fugitive on the run. Encircled in a conspiracy and pursued by a relentless force, Romanoff has to reunite reluctantly with the people she grew up with, including her “father” Alexei Shostakov (Harbour) and her “sister” Yelena Belova (Pugh), and finally confront her past as a covert agent and an assassin.
Scarlett Johansson: More Mature And Marvellous
The two-time Oscar nominee has her own Marvel movie coming up, after some of the best reviews of her career in recent years.
It feels like she’s been around forever, and that she’s forever young.
A former child actress, Scarlett Johansson is a respected and prolific performer who has excelled for more than two decades now – and she’s still only 36.
While she may be known to a wider audience for her part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, namely that of Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as Black Widow, Johansson first started getting noticed in films such as The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Ghost World (2001), years after making her film debut at 10.
As the teenager blossomed into adulthood, she had her breakout role in Sofia Coppola’s awards-darling film Lost in Translation, playing a bored newlywed feeling lost in Tokyo, who befriends an older man played by Bill Murray.
Throughout the mid-noughties, the versatile performer was able to shift gears seamlessly, acting in multiple genres, including action, comedy and drama. For a while, she was a muse for the director Woody Allen, appearing in his films Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Her first Marvel movie was 2010’s Iron Man 2 and the upcoming Black Widow, her character’s first standalone movie, will be her ninth.
A seasoned and more mature actress now, Johansson has been getting some of her best reviews in her career lately, for films such as Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit (both 2019) – garnering two Academy Award nominations in the same year.
She can next be seen, or rather heard, later this year in the animated feature Sing 2, where she reprises her role as Ash the porcupine.
Space Jam: A New Legacy
Out In Cinemas 15 July
Stars: Lebron James, Don Cheadle, Sonequa Martin-Green
The first Space Jam had the one and only Michael Jordan teaming up with a bunch of cartoon characters to defeat an alien basketball team. Twenty-five years later, in a similar premise, “King” James, the pre-eminent player of today’s NBA, has to lead a dream team featuring the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner, to defeat high-powered basketball avatars and save his son from a rogue artificial intelligence (Cheadle).
Old
Out In Cinemas 22 July
Stars: Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Thomasin McKenzie
A couple (Bernal, Krieps) on vacation with their young children seek out a secluded beach for a nice day out. Despite having their tropical idyll disturbed by others who arrive at the cove, the family are enjoying their time in the sun. That is, until they find a dead body floating in the waters. Unsure what to do, they retrieve the body. They then discover, to their horror, the body decomposing right before their eyes, and that each of the holidaymakers is aging rapidly too.
The 8th Night
Out 2 July, Netflix
Stars: Lee Sung-min, Park Hae-joon, Kim Yoo-jung
Two caskets contain an ancient evil. After centuries and millennia, the mysterious beings within stir. A monk who has been watching over one casket realises that one of the beings, a demon, has reawakened and will seek out the other. Should they reunite, they would unleash an unending darkness upon the world. To stop them, the monk turns to a man (Lee) who has been prophesied to stop them. It is a race against time as the demons start to assume their form.
Gossip Girl
Out 8 July, HBO Go
Stars: Emily Alyn Lind, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown
Nine years after the original Gossip Girl website went dark, a new generation of private school teenagers in New York find their lives under the scrutiny of the mysterious blogger. The spoiled rich kids include Audrey (Lind), Obie (Brown), Max and Julien, a group of friends who invite a newcomer into their clique in the form of an awkward but beautiful stranger, Zoya (Peak). Drama ensues as Gossip Girl returns unexpectedly, as an Instagrammer who knows juicy secrets.
Masters Of The Universe: Revelation
Out 23 July, Netflix
Stars: Chris Wood, Mark Hamill, Sarah Michelle Gellar
Nearly 40 years after the first muscle-bound action figure was launched comes this sequel to the 1980s toy-based animated series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Set in a mystical medieval fantasy world, Revelation sees He-Man (Wood) and his loyal allies, such as Teela (Gellar), Man-at-Arms and the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull, fighting evil once again. To keep the universe safe, they must find the Sword of Power before Skeletor (Hamill) does.
