The Summer in Cinema
With films like Jurassic World and Straight Outta Compton hitting the big screen, the domestic box office has had a profitable summer. According to the New York Times, Jurassic World wins the gold with about 639 million in gross revenue. Inside Out falls in second place with 342 million and Minions, which grossed 320 million, falls in third place. Trailing them is Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation which has 157 million under its belt and Straight Outta Compton with 111 million earned so far.
Jurassic World, the highest grossing film of the summer, was such a box office success that a sequel has already been scheduled for 2018. A new take on an old classic, Jurassic World explores the monstrous consequences of running a fully functioning dinosaur exhibit packed with tourists and not enough good sense. The real problem begins when a genetically modified dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, escapes from it’s enclosure and terrorizes the resort island, leaving it up to dinosaur specialist Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to stop the beast.
Inside Out, a Pixar film, chronicles the life of Riley, a young girl who moves away from her home and the manifestations of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear living in her head. A popular movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, calls the film “inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving.”
Another high grossing animated movie, Minions, a spin-off of Despicable Me, follows the lives of three short, yellow and sparsely haired minions, Stuart, Bob and Kevin, and their search for the ultimate evil master. Because the main characters speak in incoherent gibberish, the most recognizable voice is that of Sandra Bullock, who plays evil mastermind, Scarlett Overkill.
In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise reprises his role as Ethan Hunt in the fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise. The movie follows Hunt as he and his partners in the Impossible Mission Force attempt to find and destroy the Syndicate, the IMF’s evil counterpart. The International Movie Database gives the film a 7.7 out of 10 stars.
Straight Outta Compton, which premiered August 11, is currently leading the weekly box office, though it still lags far behind Jurassic World in total domestic grossings. The movie chronicles the rise of hip hop group NWA from the violent and poverty stricken ghettos of Compton. Despite Compton’s good start, the film has recently received some box office competition from the Christian drama, War Room.
Though the curtain has closed on this year’s summer, you can still try to make its memory last by watching these top grossing films before they disappear from the big screen. These movies will be available for digital download, purchase and rent later in the year.
