Every summer seems to feature more and more huge movies, which is awesome. I’m not one of those uptight cinephiles lamenting the end of cinema because a movie like Iron Man 3 gets a ton of attention. I think there’s room for all of it. It takes all kinds of films to make a good and vibrant cinematic landscape. And sometimes some of the most surprisingly high quality movies are the blockbusters that we expect to be exciting but actually have some brains and heart behind them. There’s nothing that says this can’t be just as respectable as something else produced on a fraction of the budget.
The one downside to having a low budget production is that it’s harder to get the word out about a movie no matter how good it is. Word of mouth may be dependable and have legs, but it often doesn’t have the range of a movie that absolutely pervades every aspect of culture the way Iron Man 3 or The Great Gatsby or Star Trek Into Darkness or Man of Steel have done. I’m as excited as anyone else for those movies, but there are some that don’t quite have the pockets to fund a ubiquitous advertising campaign, and so they require a little bit of special attention.
Here are 6 summer movies that many people are expecting potentially big things from, even though they’re coming to us in relatively small packages.
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