It seems summer movie season starts earlier every year. But that would depend on when you think summer actually starts. Is it really Summer Solstice (June 20), or is it when school ends? In either case, there are plenty of films coming out between April and September that are sure to keep you occupied if the outdoors isn’t your thing.
Homegrown
Xavier Dolan’s highly anticipated follow-up to Les amours imaginaires is Laurence Anyways, the story of a man who decides to undergo a sex change but maintain his loving relationship with his female companion. The film is written and directed by Dolan and is due out in May.
Quebec television series Omertà is getting the big screen treatment July 11. Luc Dionne, who wrote the successful show that ran in the late ‘90s, will write and direct the film centered around organized crime and Italian mafia in Montreal. Michel Côté, Rachelle Lefevre, Patrick Huard will star, with René Angélil in the role of head mafioso Dominic Fagazi.
The Fantasia Film Festival has become one of the most anticipated film events of the summer in North America. Quentin Tarantino, whose 2009 film Inglourious Basterds made its North American debut at Fantasia, called the festival “the most important and prestigious film festival on this continent.” Fantasia will be celebrating its 16th year in Montreal (with many screenings at or around Concordia’s downtown campus) from July 19 to Aug. 7.
Sarah Polley’s first directorial effort since 2006’s Away From Her, which earned her an Oscar nomination in the adapted screenplay category, will be Take This Waltz, which was shot in Toronto and stars Michelle Williams and Canuck Seth Rogen. The film has played at the Toronto International Film Festival and other film festivals across the country, but it is set to be released in a “theatre near you,” so to speak, in June.
Cosmopolis stars Robert Pattinson, and before you roll your eyes, just know that the film is written and directed by 
Canadian David Cronenberg (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method). A teaser trailer for the film is making its rounds online and it’s totally crazy: 24 hours in the life of a young Manhattan billionaire and all the trouble he can get into during that time. It’s based on the Don DeLillo book of the same name. Cronenberg promises a Rob “as you have not seen him before.” So no sparkly skin, right?
Indie (with star power)
Woody Allen moves his story to Italy this summer with To Rome With Love. Since 1982, Allen has written and directed at least one film every year. With a career that started in the mid ’60s, 
his 2012 effort reunites him with Penelope Cruz (whose work on Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona earned the actress her first Oscar), and also stars Jesse Eisenberg, Alec Baldwin, Canadians Ellen Page and Alison Pill, and Allen himself. Rome will be in limited release as of April 20, and will likely be released in Montreal by June.
A young girl and boy fall in love and run away together in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, causing their town to
search for them. This will be Anderson’s first live-action feature since 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited and his first effort since the stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox. Moonrise stars Anderson veterans Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, as well as Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and Frances McDormand, and is due out in May.
In Safety Not Guaranteed, three journalists (New Girl’s Jake M. Johnson, Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza, and Karan Soni) find the subject of their next feature in a classified ad, the buyer of which is looking for someone to time travel with. The film is scheduled to hit theatres in June.
For the kid in you
There will be yet another entry in the Madagascar and Ice Age franchises (June 8 and July 13, respectively), but the animated film to catch this summer will be Disney Pixar’s Brave, which by the looks of the teaser trailers released in the last few months, will be a return to form for the studio that suffered with the seriously terrible Cars 2 last summer. Brave is centered around Princess Merida, whose archery skills and bravery will be put to the test when she has to save her 
kingdom.
Tim Burton collaborated with Johnny Depp again for a big screen adaptation of Dark Shadows, the television cult classic from the ‘60s. Depp plays Barnabas Collins, a vampire who was imprisoned for 200 years and who, upon his release in 1972, seeks out his lava lamp-owning, Chevy-driving ancestors. Dark Shadows will be out May 11.
Date night
Rare is the romantic comedy that can please both male and female moviegoers, but on April 27, The Five-Year Engagement will do just that. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt star in the Nicholas Stoller film about a couple that keeps putting off their wedding date. Stoller and Segel wrote the screenplay; the duo collaborated on Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek.
Musical Rock of Ages features ‘80s rock anthems by Poison and Twisted Sister and a cast that is too long to list in its entirety (though it includes Alec Baldwin, Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mary J. Blige). The Adam Shankman (Hairspray) film is scheduled to be released June 15.
Fellas, you will be dragged to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, out May 18. It’ll be awful, but then she’ll owe you one, at which point you use your free pass to see The Avengers (May 4), Men in Black III (May 25), The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3), Christopher Nolan’s last hurrah directing a Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises (July 20), Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (June 8 or The Bourne Legacy Aug. 3, which will feature Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) in the title role.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
…or the guy whose face you’ll see a lot of on the big screen this year. The actor’s come a long way from his day on 3rd Rock From the Sun, with career-making turns in Brick and The Lookout, and more recently, 500 Days of Summer, Inception and 50/50. He will be in five films this year, including The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush (Aug. 24), Looper (Sept. 28) and Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, both due out in December.
