It’s time for summer movies! That means reboots, sequels, lots of Pedro Pascal, land even a few surprises.

SERIES and REMAKES

“Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” (May 23) Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, with some surprises from his past and some mind-blowing stunts.

“Karate Kid: Legends” (May 30) Jackie Chan, Ben Wang, and Ralph Macchio are back to wax on, wax off, and kick.

“Ballerina” (June 6) From the world of John Wick, pulls a bit of a “Tokyo Drift” on us, taking place not after the most recent film but in between Wicks 4 and 5, so expect some Keanu in this spin-off with Ana de Armas as a ballerina/assassin, co-starring Gabriel Byrne and Anjelica Huston.

“How to Train Your Dragon” (June 13) The popular animated movie series/television series inspired by Cressida Cowell’s bestselling books reboots as live action. Gerard Butler reprises his role in the animated films.

“28 Years Later” (June 20) Almost three decades after the setting of the “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later” films, it turns out those speedy zombies are still around. The healthy (for now) humans they are trying to attack include  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Ralph Fiennes.

“M3gan: 2.0” (June 27) The killer doll is back.

“Jurassic World: Rebirth” (July 2)

The killer dinosaurs are back.

“The Old Guard 2” (July 2)

The immortal mercenaries are back. Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthias Schoenaerts, Luca Marinelli, return; Uma Thurman, and Henry Fielding join the cast.

“Smurfs” (July 18) Rhianna produced and provides the voice in the latest story of the little blue people.

“Happy Gilmore 2” (July 25) Adam Sandler is back as the hockey player-turned golfer, now an established champion. Yes, Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) is back, too. Expect some cool cameos.

“The Naked Gun” (August 1) Liam Neeson(!) takes over for Leslie Nielsen in this reboot of the deliriously silly series about the fumbling police officer, directed by Lonely Island ‘s Akiva Schaffer.

“The Bad Guys 2” (August 1) That glimpse of the Bad Guys before “Dog-Man” this year made us even more eager for this long-awaited sequel. Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina and Anthony Ramos return, this time joined by Bad Girls (voiced by Danielle Brooks, Maria Bakalova and Natasha Lyonne).

“Freakier Friday” (August 8) Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are back for another body switch, this time with the next generation. I hope “Pink Slip” is back with another banger.

“The Roses” (August 29) For those who don’t remember, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas made a movie about a feuding couple called “The War of the Roses” in 1989. This reboot stars UK powerhouse stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. Andy Sandburg and Kate McKinnon play their friends

“The Toxic Avenger” (August 29) The 1984 film of the same name inspired three film sequels, a stage musical, a comic book series from Marvel Comics, a video game, and an animated television series. And now there is another version of the story about a downtrodden janitor who is exposed to a catastrophic toxic accident and becomes a crime-fighting superhero. The cast includes Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Taylour Paige, Jacob Tremblay, and Jane Levy.

SUPERHEROES

“Superman” (July 11) David Corenswet plays the superhero from Krypton, Nicholas Hoult is his archenemy Lex Luthor, and “Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan is reporter/girlfriend Lois Lane. Plus: Krypto the super-dog!

“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (July 25) Fingers crossed that they get it right this time. The casting is promising: The very busy Pedro Pascal as stretchy Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as invisible Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as fiery Johnny Storm, and inside the scaly orange suit is “The Bear’s” Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm. Julia Garner is Silver Surfer. Note: it’s set in the 1960s, but in the teaser at the end of present-day “Thunderbolts*” they’re still going strong.

BOOKS TO MOVIES

“The Life of Chuck” (June 6) A Stephen King story about an ordinary man with a terminal illness who becomes suddenly famous as the world may be ending stars Tom Hiddleston, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hamill, and Karen Gillan.

“Highest to Lowest” (August 22)  Ed McBain’s crime novel King’s Ransom is adapted for the screen by Spike Lee, with Denzel Washington as a wealthy music producer, Jeffrey Wright as his chauffeur and father of a kidnapped son. Music stars A$AP Rocky and Ice Spice are also in the cast. While you wait, check out an earlier film based on this book, Akira Kurosawa’s thriller “High and Low.”

“The Thursday Murder Club” (August 28) Take an international best-seller about retired crime solvers, add a dream cast (Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie) and the director of “Harry Potter” movies and “The Help.” I can’t wait.

NEW CHARACTERS, NEW STORIES

“Bad Shabbos” (May 23) Things go poorly when a man brings his girlfriend to meet his family.

“I Don’t Understand You” (June 6) In a darkly wicked comedy, Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells play a couple on vacation in Italy.

“The Phoenician Scheme” (May 30) The latest from Wes Anderson is sure to have exquisitely intricate settings, an all-star cast, and some weird twists and cryptic comments that fans will have a lot of fun trying to explain. The cast includes Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

“Deep Cover” (June 12) I love this idea — improv actors hired to go undercover. And I love the cast — Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed (“Ted Lasso”), Paddy Considine. The trailer is a hoot.

“Materialists” (June 13) Dakota Johnson plays a matchmaker to the rich and famous who has to decide between a man who is rich and famous (Pedro Pascal) and her not-rich, not-famous ex (Chris Evans). Hmmm, how’s that going to go?

“Elio” (June 20) The latest from Pixar and it looks like one of their best — a story about two kids who feel alone, one from planet Earth and one from outer space who happens to be the son of the alien who plans to attack us.

“Everything’s Going to be Great” (June 20) Allison Janney and Bryan Cranston are theater people. One of their sons is, too. The other one, not so much.

“Bride Hard” (June 20) Yes, it’s supposed to remind you of “Die Hard.” Rebel Wilson plays a bridesmaid who is also….a spy, the kind who does MMA-style fighting. The bride is played by her “Pitch Perfect” co-star Anna Camp.

“F1” (June 27) Brad Pitt and check-out-his-Met-Gala-look Damson Idris play drivers in a story set in the world of Formula One, directed by “Top Gun: Maverick’s” Joseph Kosinski. 

“Sorry, Baby” (June 27) This festival favorite is an impressive debut written and directed by its star, Eva Victor and produced by “Moonlight’s” Barry Jenkins. Victor plays a graduate student who experiences a traumatic sexual assault. But the story is told with humor and resilience and with wonderful moments with the character’s best friend, played by Naomi Ackie, a sandwich shop owner, played by John Carroll Lynch, and with an actual baby.

“Eddington” (July 18) Always-provocative director Ari Aster takes on the sensitive subject of COVID-19, with stars Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix, Austin Butler, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, and Micheal Ward.

“Oh, Hi” (July 25) This festival favorite as a first-rate cast of up-and-coming stars, including Molly Gordon (who co-wrote), Logan Lerman, and Geraldine Viswanathan, with the always-welcome Polly Draper and David Cross.

“My Mother’s Wedding” (August 8) Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham play the daughters who have some feelings about attending their mother’s third wedding. Mom is played by director Kristin Scott Thomas.

“Honey Don’t” (August 22) Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers brings back Margaret Qualley for the second in the lesbian trilogy. It does not count as a series because these are all new characters. Qualley plays a detective investigating a murder that could involve a local preacher, played by Chris Evans.

May 9, 1961, my dad, the 35-year-old Chairman of the FCC, Newton Minow, made three significant appearances. In Washington, he gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, telling them that while “when television is good, nothing is better,” he expected them to do more to uphold their statutory obligation to serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity.” Then he went back to the FCC office, where he met with Elizabeth Campbell to sign the original license for WETA, the first educational television station in the nation’s capital, now the producer of the Ken Burns documentaries and the nightly Newshour. And then he flew to Chicago to attend the father-daughter dinner for my Brownie troop.

I often thought about how those three events defined his character: inspiring those around him to do better, supporting the visions of people making enriching cultural content and reliable news sources widely available, and always putting his family first. Over the next decades this was reflected in his efforts as a founder and board chair of PBS, a director of CBS, helping to create the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), where he served as vice chair until this year, working to require the V-chip and closed captioning, helping to get the start-up funding for “Sesame Street,” and arguing for the rescission of the radio license of a station that broadcast virulently racist and anti-Semitic programming. His countless awards include more than a dozen honorary doctorates, a Peabody, and the highest honor for American civilians, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Barack Obama (who met Michelle when they were both working in my father’s law office). Our family’s favorite “honor” might be the sinking ship on “Gilligan’s Island,” named as an insult to my father for his criticism of television by producer Sherwood Schwartz. They later had a very cordial correspondence.

Last month, I wrote an article for The Atlantic about the time Dad said “no” to President Kennedy.

Mike Leonard’s documentary about my dad has some wonderful stories.

I talked to my dad about some of his formative experiences, including the words from Bobby Kennedy that inspired him to focus on telecommunications, what he will advise the new FCC Chair, and why he told President Kennedy the first telecommunications satellite was more important than putting a man on the moon.

He was the world’s best dad and grandpa. We are so lucky.

In honor of Mother’s Day, my book, 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers will be free from May 9-14, 2025.

No relationship is more primal, more fraught, more influential, more worried over, more nourishing when good and more devastating when bad that our connection to our mothers. The first eyes to look at us with love, the first arms to hold us, Mom is the one who first keeps us fed and warm, who applauds our first steps and kisses our scrapes and takes our temperature by kissing our forehead.  She’s also the one who keeps people in endless years of psychoanalysis for failing to make her children feel loved and safe.  Mom inspires a lot of movies in every possible category, from comedy to romance to drama to crime to animation to horror, from the lowest-budget indie to the biggest-budget prestige film.  A lot of women have been nominated for Oscars for playing mothers and just about every actress over age 20 has appeared as a mother in at least one movie.

There are innumerable ways of mothering and all of them show up in the movies.  There are cookie-baking, apron-wearing mothers who always know just the right comforting thing to say.  There are stylish, sophisticated, wealthy mothers and mothers who do not have enough money to feed their children.  There are mothers with PhDs and mothers who cannot read.  There are mothers of every race and religion and many species on earth and in outer space (remember “Alien”). 

There are terrifying mothers who abuse or abandon their children or coldly deploy them like weapons of mass destruction. There are mothers who give good advice and endless support and mothers who try to push their children to take the wrong jobs and marry the wrong people.  There are super-strict mothers and super-lax mothers, mothers who want to know every detail of their children’s lives even when they are grown up and mothers who barely remember that they have any children at all even when they are young.  There are mothers of children with special needs who fight fiercely to make sure they have the fullest and most independent lives they can.  There are children who love and support their mothers and children who break their mothers’ hearts with their selfishness and cruelty.

And there are those very special souls who remind us that motherhood does not require a biological connection.  Stepmothers and adoptive mothers are as vitally important on screen as they are in the lives of those lucky enough to be mothered by them.

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” says a character whose mother is central to the story even though she never appears in the film.  (Spoiler alert: the quote comes from Norman Bates in “Psycho.”)  In “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot,” tough guy Sylvester Stallone plays a cop who mother comes along on his investigation whether he wants her to or not.  In “Oedipus Wrecks,” one of three short films that make up the compilation “New York Stories,” Woody Allen plays a lawyer whose mother finds the ultimate way to embarrass him.  And don’t get me started on Jason’s mother in the “Friday the 13^th” movies.  

I have selected 50 of my favorite movie mothers, including classic films like “The Sound of Music” and “Little Women” along with forgotten or overlooked films like “Stella Dallas,” “Claudia and David,” and “Dear Frankie.”  Actresses like Anne Revere and Spring Byington made careers out of wonderful performances as mothers and I have included some of their best.  I have a special affection for those based on real-life mothers, especially those based on the mothers of the writers who told their stories, like Sally Field’s Oscar-winning performance in “Places in the Heart.”  But it is clear that in some way each of the mothers in these movies is inspired by the unique joys and frustrations of the woman we love first.

I’m glad to say this is not yet another re-working of one of Jane Austen’s books, with a modern-day heroine being too quick to judge a moody but honorable Darcy and too slow to judge a superficially charming but immoral Wickham. Instead, it is not Elizabeth Bennett Agathe (Camille Rutherford) despairs of becoming; it is Austen herself.

Agathe works at the legendary Shakespeare and Co, the English-language bookstore in Paris, but she dreams of being a writer. Okay, there is some initial hostility leading to attraction here, though none of Austen’s heroines accidentally walked stark naked into the bedroom of a man she’d just met. But as people in Paris might say, “Autres temps, autres mœurs.”

She has written some chapters — a romance, of course — but the trauma of losing her parents in a car accident and her own insecurity keep her from making any progress. She also cannot ride in a car, move out of her sister’s apartment, or begin a romantic relationship of her own. When her co-worker and best friend Felix (Pablo Pauly) submits an application in her name to a “Jane Austen” writer’s retreat, she begins to take the steps to move forward with her work and with her life. Rutherford makes Agathe very appealing and the screenplay by director Laura Piani, has warmth and charm. There is even a discussion about the value of stories that connected to Austen’s defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey.

The retreat is run by a warm-hearted but slightly eccentric couple, Beth (Liz Crowther) and Todd (Alan Fairbairn). We do not spend much time with the other writers at the retreat except to see that they are all writing while Agnethe is not.

Like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, Catherine in Northanger Abbey, and Anne in Persuasion, Emma in Emma, and Fanny in Mansfield Park, Agathe has to decide between two archetypical romantic possibilities. Will it be the friends-to-lovers Felix, who kisses her when he drops her off at the retreat? Agathe worries that he will “breadcrumb” her, alternating leading her on and ignoring her. Or will it be the enemies-to-lovers Oliver (Charlie Anson), the son of the couple who run the retreat who is a professor of contemporary literature and clashes with her immediately and then accidentally sees her naked?

Rutherford is an appealing heroine and the story is gently told, respectful of Agathe’s difficulty in recovering from trauma. While the romantic resolution is satisfying, it is not the solution, but rather a reflection of the courage and determination Agathe has relied on in addressing the issues that keeping her stuck. Miss Austen would approve.

Parents should know that this movie has nudity, non-explicit sexual situations, and sexual references. Characters drink, smoke, and use strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Agathe and her sister react so differently to the loss of their parents? Which man did you think Agathe would end up with and why?

If you like this, try: “Austenland” with Keri Russell, and of course Jane Austen’s books and the many movie adaptations

As he did with “Spinning Gold,” based on his father’s career in music, writer/director Timothy Scott Bogart has Temu-ed a great story and it is barely watchable. This time, it is Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which he has renamed “Juliet & Romeo,” made some changes to the characters and storyline, reworked the dialogue so instead of exquisite poetry in iambic pentameter it’s more like college kids exchanging texts.

However, the fabulous production design by the brilliant Dante Ferretti and beautiful cinematography by Byron Werner are top-notch and the sword fights are ably staged. Oh, and this is a musical, with pop torch songs by Evan Kidd Bogart, who is a producer of the film, the composer of Beyonce’s hit, “Halo,” and Timothy Scott Bogart’s brother.

It isn’t as though we don’t already have a straightforward but artistic version in Franco Zeffirellis version with teenagers playing the young lovers and a sublime version with 20th century flair but Shakespeare’s language, in Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo + Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

This version begins a scene-setting intro that lets us know immediately what’s in store. Not just because we see the tragic couple dead before the story flashes back to three days earlier, but because Shakespeare’s

Two households, both alike in dignity
 (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
 A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
 Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
 Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

becomes an “in the last episode”-style update somewhere between Shakespeare and the crawl at the beginning of “The Phantom Menace.”

We get a few Shakespearean crumbs just to remind us of what we’re missing. There are a couple of references to “what’s in a name,” and one to “all’s well that ends well.” But most of the dialogue is at the level of “I’m okay,” “You’re a great kisser,” and the repeated song lyric, “I knew that my heart would never be the same.” At one point Romeo sort of proposes by telling Juliet he wants to “turn our prose into poetry.” This screenplay has done the reverse.

Parents should know that this movie, like the play that inspired it, has fight scenes including sword fights, with characters injured and killed, and an apparent suicide. There are sexual references.

Family discussion: If you were going to update this story, what would you do? Why has this story continued to enthrall audiences for more than 500 years?

If you like this, try: “Rosaline,” a sharp, witty re-telling of the Romeo and Juliet story from the perspective of the young woman Romeo was in love with before he met Juliet, the Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love,” and the Baz Luhrmann and Franco Zeffirelli versions of Shakespeare’s play and