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A-LIST: Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' features an all-star cast, led by Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.

One rejoices to note that among this summer's cascade of moving images, there's one fun coincidence: a reboot of Child's Play (Jun. 21) opening the same weekend as Pixar's Toy Story 4. At least one distracted dad will goof at the ticket booth and end up wondering why Cowboy Woody turned into a knife-wielding bad-bastard who talks like Mark Hamill. (The longtime voice of The Joker, Hamill is the larynx for Chucky the devil doll.) In the actual Pixar feature, the gang hits the road, and Woody (Tom Hanks) gets uncomfortable in that familiar cowboy-around-a-school-marm manner with Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts).

Disney, which just snapped up Hulu, is cashing in with a live-action Aladdin (May 24)—with the spectacle built in and the Tex Avery-ness removed. It's followed by the live-action The Lion King (Jul. 19), about which the most hopeful thing to be said is that Billy Eichler of Difficult People dubs the talking meerkat.

Both will coin big money. But given the box-office triumph of Bohemian Rhapsody, there are hopes the biopic Rocketman (May 31) will be a hit; it promises not to be as covert about Elton John's sexuality as Bohemian Rhapsody was about Freddie Mercury's nightlife.

Nostalgia is in the air, like tear gas. While it's still unclear if the 50th anniversary reboot of the Woodstock music festival will happen, there is a forthcoming PBS documentary on the impact those "three days of peace and music" had on the world. And there are a couple more upcoming films inspired by the radicals that were hatched during that dangerous year, 1969. Patty Hearst's crimewave is reimagined in American Woman (Jun. 14). And ol' spiral eyes is back: Charlie Manson (Damon Herriman) and his gang are but one group of drifting Angelenos in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Jul. 26).

Speaking of comebacks, there is a certain organ-like majesty to the title Godzilla, King of Monsters (May 31), no matter how the CG Kaiju plays out. Considering current events, King Ghidorah, triple-headed reptile of the apocalypse, is quite overdue.

Also on May 31: Ma, some straightforward Blumhouse horror, directed by Tate Taylor (The Help). Octavia Spencer is a maternal neighborhood lady, giving good old-fashioned discipline to a bunch of naughty teens, using whatever weapons are at hand.

Directed by Olivia Wilde, the SXSW hit Booksmart (May 24) is being flaunted as the girl version of Superbad; Beanie Feldstein (Jonah Hill's sister and the bff in Lady Bird) and Kaitlyn Dever are a pair of grinds about to graduate from high school with honors, when it suddenly occurs to them they missed out on three years of partying.

Sprung from high school, and saved from Thanos' snap, the webslinger continues his journey from municipal hero to being a world-saver. In Spiderman: Far From Home (Jul. 2); in London, he (Tom Holland) meets an interdimensional illusionists called Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal).

A word about Samuel L. Jackson, who guest stars in the above as Nick Fury: There's an essay to be written about why Jackson is the highest paid and hardest working actor in America. He is capable of deep sincerity, eloquent obscenity and rich theatrical effect (no one loves limps, canes, eye patches and scars as much as Jackson does). He returns as black private dick Shaft (Jun. 14)—a safer bet for geriatric fun than Rambo: Last Blood (Sep. 20) where the old soldier (age 72) crosses the border to go shoot drug warlords. And as far as Rambo's concerned, everyone between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego is a drug lord.

Palo Alto-raised Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn spent a short time in movie jail because of a dodgy tweet (avoid Twitter, you'll live longer). His Brightburn (May 24) is a pastiche of the Superman nativity legend, told as a catastrophe—the superpowered baby bestowed on us by a loving universe grows up to be a laser beam-eyed flying psycho. (Time for a bit of thumbsuckery for our critics about whether or not this heretical version of the American Jesus story is evidence of the US's new-found xenophobia.) Those who once had their hearts wrung by the Chris Claremont-written 1980s arc in X-Men comics can see the return of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) from the apparent dead as an omnipotent villainess Dark Phoenix (Jun. 7).

Fed up with costumed goliaths punching each other? Some alternatives: The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Jun. 6). Joe Talbot won the directing prize at this year's Sundance for a story of how gentrification is bleaching that coral reef of a city. Blinded by the Light (August) is about a Pakistani immigrant's son in Luton, UK finding freedom from tradition via the songs of Bruce Springsteen; The Dead Don't Die (Jun. 14) has Jim Jarmusch following up his appealing vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive with a star-studded saga of zombies.

Black Mirror returns Jun. 5 on Netflix to show the recently rebooted Twilight Zone how it's done. Scripted by former Metro staffer Zack Stentz, McG's Rim of the World (May 25, Netflix) has a group of four reject kids fighting off an alien invasion, the idea being to be stranger than Stranger Things.

On Hulu, the incredibly far-fetched, it couldn't possibly happen here Handmaid's Tale starts season 3 (Jun. 5). Fun fact, Margaret Atwood wrote the source novel while she was a writer in residence in Talibama. On Amazon, Good Omens (May 31) derived from Neil Gaiman, has a charming premise—a domesticated demon (David Tennant) and angel (Michael Sheen) have their cozy assignment disrupted by the arrival of the prepubescent male antichrist.

Simultaneous with the Pacific Film Archives Abbas Kiarostami retrospective, Criterion will be unrolling some of the late Iranian director's masterpieces including the Koker Trilogy: Where is the Friend's House, And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees (available Aug. 27)

The Stanford Theatre starts the summer with a Jimmy Stewart retrospective. Stewart's reputation has grown tremendously. In the '30s he was a fondly viewed nice guy's nice guy, the Tom Hanks of his day. Then he went to Europe with the Army Air Corps and came back with a new harshness and fascinating shadows. There'll be five of his adult Westerns from the 1950s, as well as Destry Rides Again, a romp that's a key source for Blazing Saddles (Jun. 14-16). You could call that movie more fun than guns, but, like Cowboy Woody, Stewart's Destry doesn't like shooting irons.