barnesgonzo: The best films for summer 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

The best films for summer 2013

Michael Douglas steps into Liberace's shoes, the Man of Steel returns, and Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright complete their Britcom trilogy

★ CRITIC'S CHOICE Behind the Candelabra

(dir. Steven Soderbergh)

An outrageous, florid study of one of the most over-the-top people in showbusiness history. Michael Douglas plays the preening, pompadoured piano king Liberace, and Matt Damon is Scott Thorson, his chauffeur and lover. The affair curdles and ends in a nightmarish sanity contest. A fascinating study of a dysfunctional relationship and a brilliant black comedy. 7 June

Man of Steel 3D

(dir. Zack Snyder)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it's a journalist of pre-Leveson integrity who also has another vocation. Henry Cavill plays the Man of Steel, who escaped from planet Krypton as a child after calamity hit and now has to embrace his destiny, and his Lycra, when Earth is threatened by a marauding power. Hopes are ionospherically high for this new Superman movie, after the subdued response to Bryan Singer's Superman Returns seven years ago. 14 June

Paradise Love

(dir. Ulrich Seidl)

The Austrian director Ulrich Seidl was not put into the movie business to make anyone feel comfortable or in any way good about themselves. He returns with a typically explicit and difficult film about sex tourism: rich white European women who travel to Kenyan beaches to have sex with young African boys. Some of the extended sex scenes are grisly in the extreme. 14 June

Stories We Tell

(dir. Sarah Polley)

This superb documentary from Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley was a gem at last year's Venice film festival. She tells a tender, touching, painful story — that of her parents' difficult marriage. Her dad is the British-born actor Michael Polley, her late mother the actor and casting director Diane Polley, whose vivacity and joie de vivre masked some inner pain. 28 June

A Field in England

(dir. Ben Wheatley)

For fans of cult Brit cinema, there can't be anything more hotly anticipated than this. Ben Wheatley, who directed Kill List and Sightseers, has now given us a mysterious drama set in the English civil war, starring Reece Shearsmith, Julian Barratt and Michael Smiley. 5 July

The Bling Ring

(dir. Sofia Coppola)

Based on the true story of how celeb-obsessed teens in LA used websites to figure out which stars would be out of town, and then burgled their homes. Emma Watson plays one of the teen robbers, getting away with a rich haul of jewels and shoes. It's cool, stylish work from Coppola, who was near-upstaged at Cannes by an actual million-dollar jewellery heist at a hotel during the festival. 5 July

The World's End

(dir. Edgar Wright)

Edgar Wright is back with a comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, forming what will be the last film in his Britcom trilogy, with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Pegg plays a thirtysomething bloke who rounds up all his mates in an attempt to recreate the epic pub crawl they once had as teenagers in their sleepy hometown. Once they arrive, something very strange starts happening. 19 July