Best summer movies, 2023: Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig fill the summer schedule
From Sydney Sweeney portraying Reality Winner in Reality to Margot Robbie stepping into Barbie's shoes via Greta Gerwig, here are the 10 films we're excited to see this summer
Reality, dir. Tina Satter
Much of Sydney Sweeney's recent roster consists of television teenagers like those in Euphoria, The White Lotus and Everything Sucks! But Reality – playwright Tina Satter's debut film – shows a different side to the actor.
The title is more than a thematic suggestion: it’s the character’s name. Sweeney plays Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who, in 2017, leaked a document suggesting Russian interference in the US election of Donald Trump. The film examines the day when Reality’s home was searched by the FBI, followed by an intense interrogation – recreated verbatim from the real audio transcript of their exchange. A claustrophobic political thriller.
Photo: Vertigo
Pretty Red Dress, dir. Dionne Edwards
It’s always fascinating when stars of variety shows reinvent themselves. Former X-Factor contestants Rylan Clark and Stacey Solomon moved on to presenting gigs on This Morning and Loose Women, becoming staples in daytime television as well as comedy panel shows. Alexandra Burke, who won The X-Factor in 2008 (when JLS came second), branched into acting on stage in 2014. In 2023, Dionne Edwards’ London-based family drama Pretty Red Dress marks the musician’s first film role.
Burke plays Candice, an aspiring singer auditioning for a Tina Turner musical. Candice's partner, Travis (Natey Jones), is released from prison and something has changed in him. After buying her a sparkling dress for the audition, he becomes incensed by it – his masculinity challenged by the need to try it on himself.
Photo: Protagonist Pictures
Asteroid City, dir. Wes Anderson
The king of colourful kookiness and symmetrical cinematography returns for another assault on the senses. Wes Anderson’s latest project travels back to the 50s for a Space Cadet/Junior Stargazer competition in a fictional American desert town. This scholarly occasion is meant to bring all kinds of students and parents together, but world-shifting events throw the competition into chaos.
Asteroid City is populated with Anderson alumni like Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Scarlett Johansson, Jeff Goldblum and Edward Norton – as well as famous newbies like Tom Hanks and Margot Robbie.
Photo: Focus Features
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, dir. James Mangold
After the derided disaster of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – the fourth Indy movie, which fans don’t like talking about – nobody wanted a sequel. If Steven Spielberg couldn’t reboot an 80s franchise, then who could? Well, the stupidly titled Dial of Destiny has something up its mud-stained sleeve: Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The writer/actor has come a long way since her lauded BBC Three comedy Fleabag: ascending with Killing Eve before co-writing Daniel Craig’s last Bond movie No Time to Die. Now, she’s performing on screen for Hollywood as Indiana Jones’s sidekick and goddaughter Helena. And considering this is Ford’s final outing as the whip-cracking archaeologist, it’s possible Waller-Bridge will spawn her own spin-off franchise. This 1969-set adventure also stars Mads Mikkelsen, Toby Jones and Antonio Banderas.
Photo: Disney/Lucasfilm
Small, Slow But Steady, dir. Shô Miyake
When it comes to disability on-screen, cinema tends to pick and choose which impairments to care about. But that doesn’t relegate the importance of their representation. Thanks to lauded films like CODA, Creed III and Sound of Metal, the deaf community has been thrown into the mainstream.
Director Shô Miyake’s new film Small, Slow but Steady follows deaf boxer Keiko (Yukino Kishii), which is based in part on the true story of Keiko Ogasawara. She trains in a Tokyo gym that’s facing an existential future due to a competitive, post-Covid world. As it's the only place where she feels at home, she struggles mentally with its potential closure.
Photo: Blue Finch
Elemental, dir. Peter Sohn
Lately, it’s like Pixar is in an existential mood and re-evaluating humanity. Inside Out summarised the human unconscious. Soul and Coco explored life and death. Toy Story 4 endured the identity crisis of a recycled spork. Now, Elemental looks to anthropomorphise (and, admittedly, simplify) the building blocks of the universe – plunging into a city bustling with fire, water, air and land communities.
This is a personal project for director Peter Sohn, drawn from his experiences as a Korean-American man in New York. The story follows the 20-something Ember (Leah Lewis), a fire element who struggles to navigate a city built from water. She starts a relationship with the go-with-the-flow water element Wade (Mamoudou Athie), but will her fiery parents approve?
Photo: Disney/Pixar
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, dir. Christopher McQuarrie
A well-worn genre in Hollywood is the action drama, which often follows the same formula over and over and over again. It comes to the point where these blockbuster spectaculars have become contrarily mundane.
But the Mission: Impossible franchise feels different from the rest. Yes, it’s Tom Cruise committing to his regular insanities, but stupendous efforts are made with each film to craft a completely new cinematic experience. In this case, it’s the balletic thrills that make you buy a ticket – especially with the ludicrous stunts involved. In the seventh film in the franchise, Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise commits to a motorcycle stunt that – according to Empire – is ‘the single most dangerous thing he’d ever done’.
Photo: Paramount
Barbie, dir. Greta Gerwig
It’s a film that has confused, amused and absorbed many: chiefly because of the talent involved. The upcoming live-action Barbie movie is helmed by Lady Bird and Little Women director Greta Gerwig, who recently described her involvement in the project as being laced with terror and excitement – a potential ‘career-ender’ (via The Hollywood Reporter).
As well as co-writing the script with her partner Noah Baumbach (White Noise), the film is aflood with stars. Margot Robbie plays Barbie, with Ryan Gosling as Ken. Robbie’s doppelganger Emma Mackey is also there with her Sex Education co-stars Ncuti Gatwa and Connor Swindells. And let’s not forget Will Ferrell, Emerald Fennell, Nicola Coughlan, Issa Rae and Michael Cera. With all these magnificent people involved, Barbie will either ascend to one of 2023’s best movies or plop to one of its worst.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Oppenheimer, dir. Christopher Nolan
Despite sometimes wavering in overall quality, Christopher Nolan movies are always events. Few mainstream directors challenge the medium as much as Nolan does. And even though his last film Tenet is an over-complicated headache of a sci-fi experience, his $200 million originality is undeniably fascinating.
While maintaining familiar themes, Oppenheimer sees the filmmaker turning in a different direction: the biopic. Based on the Pulitzer-winning book by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, the film traces the life of Manhattan Project scientist J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), a key figure in the invention of the atom bomb. Also stars Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Gary Oldman and Kenneth Branagh.
Photo: Universal
Joy Ride, dir. Adele Lim
Studio comedies had been the locked realms of straight white men for so long, but more diverse examples are breaking the mould. Following the popularity of Asian- and Asian-American-led films like Parasite and Everything Everywhere All at Once, Adele Lim's directorial debut Joy Ride is a rude, raunchy, explorative comedy driven by struggles of racial identity.
Emily in Paris’ Ashley Park stars as Audrey, a US lawyer whose recent business trip to Asia has gone awry. She enlists her childhood friend Lolo (Sherry Cola), her college mate Kat (Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Stephanie Hsu), and Lolo’s eccentric cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) to help her out. The resulting trip grows into an epic adventure with plenty of debauchery and self-discovery.
Photo: Lionsgate