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Top 20 New to LOVEFiLM Instant in July

From Bruce Almighty to Mary Poppins enjoy brand new movies and TV shows on LOVEFiLM Instant. And to get you started here are our top 20 recommendations.

Top 20

4.3.2.1. (30 June)

Four girls’ lives intersect with a cache of stolen diamonds in Noel Clarke’s follow up to Kidulthood and Adulthood. A sharply plotted transatlantic caper with a homegrown Tarantino feel, this brash effort makes up for in energy what it may lack in finesse. Emma Roberts is one of the girlfriends, Eve and Kevin Smith pop up in cameos, and former EastEnder Michelle Ryan plays an assassin.

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (30 June)

Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch... Surely that’s the best British cast in years. But, ah, who’s the traitor? Tense, atmospheric big-screen adap of John Le Carre’s Cold War espionage novel.

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MacGruber (30 June)

This MacGuyver parody also serves to spoof The Expendables and The A-Team, even though it came out in cinemas before they did. Saturday Night Live star Will Forte is the accident-prone Special Forces agent who stands between Val Kilmer and nuclear disaster. Kristen Wiig gets one of her better pre-Bridesmaids roles as Vicki St Elmo.

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Bruce Almighty (1 July)

Jim Carrey has the whole world in his hands when the Man Upstairs decides to take a break. Turns out omnipotence isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, though Jim has a high old time flexing his new found powers. As for the real Almighty, that would be Morgan Freeman of course.

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Mary Poppins (1 July)

Strange but true: Julie Andrews won the Academy Award for her charming portrait of the quintessentially English magic nanny in this perennial family favourite. There were also Oscars for the groundbreaking visual effects and Richard and Robert Sherman’s music. Nuffin’ for Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney chimneysweep though. Altogether now: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1 July)

Moving the integration of live action and animation forward another notch or three, this collaboration between director Robert Zemeckis and animator Richard Williams puts Bob Hoskins in a lunatic Toon Town mystery thriller. Kathleen Turner voices the pneumatic femme fatale Jessica Rabbit: “I’m not bad – I’m just drawn that way.”

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Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1 July)

Mary Norton’s novel about child evacuees from the Blitz who find they’ve been billeted with a (friendly) trainee witch supplied Disney with a natural follow up to Mary Poppins. This time Angela Lansbury is the prim and proper sorceress, Eglantine Price. Highlights include the only musical number ever inspired by Portobello Road, and one of the more memorable football games ever committed to celluloid.

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101 Dalmatians & 102 Dalmatians (1 July)

Glenn Close is barking as arch villainess Cruella De Vil, a fascionista with furtive designs on legions of puppies in these live action versions of one of Disney’s best-loved tales. In the sequel we see if she can change her spots (“Call me Ella, not Cruella”), and Gerard Depardieu pops up as the hair-raising Monsieur Le Pelt.

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24 (1 July)

Seminal twenty first century suspense with Kiefer Sutherland as one-man homeland security shield Jack Bauer, fighting the good fight in real time over the course of what must be the longest day in TV history. Dennis Haysburt played America’s first black President seven years before the election of Barack Obama.

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The Killing (1 July)

Scandi-noir: a young girl is murdered and Copenhagen police detective Sarah Lund (Sophie Grabol) is on the case. Each of the twenty episodes recounts a day in the investigation, and most of them bring a new suspect – and further political chicanery – into the mix. This is what TV does best, and The Killing is on a par with US series like The Wire – and in a different way Sweden’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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The Princess Diaries (1 July)

A scarily young Anne Hathaway made her debut as bespectacled school kid Mia Thermopolis, who is shocked to learn she’s heir to the throne of Genovia (wouldn’t you be?). Julie Andrews is on hand to turn this duckling into a fair lady, courtesy of modern day fairytale specialist Garry Marshall.

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Tyrannosaur (6 July)

Peter Mullan is a pitbull of a man – but far from the worst in this searing drama about working class violence, faith, friendship and redemption. This is a blistering directorial debut from actor Paddy Considine, with an unforgettable performance from Olivia Coleman as the Christian wife who reaches out to help Mullan, and confesses her own suffering..

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Batman Begins (13 July)

Christopher Nolan successfully reboots the Caped Crusader in this intense, brooding, borderline vigilante fantasy. Liam Neeson schools young Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in the dark arts of detection, deception, and destruction. Back home in Gotham City the Scarecrow preys on the fears of a metropolis afraid of its own shadow.

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Dark Knight(13 July)

The second movie in the blockbuster series is a schizophrenic urban epic with a staggering, career-defining performance from Joker Heath Ledger, and some of the biggest, most muscular stunts ever pulled. It’s one of the stand out films of the past decade, and a rare blockbuster with depth and dimension.

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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (20 July)

There are little people lurking in the cellar, but they don’t like you at all. Guy Pearce is the architect dad who doesn’t believe his kid when it counts. Guillermo del Toro produced this effective remake of a spine-tingling 1970s TV movie – a film that had scared him as a child. Talk about paying it forward!

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Clash of the Titans (25 July)

The Kraken is well and truly loosed in this rip-roaring remake of the old stop motion fantasy film. Sam Worthington leads a motley crew through myriad spectacular adventures, encouraged by his old man Zeus (Liam Neeson). The acting (or over-acting) honours go to the baddies: Ralph Fiennes as Hades and Mads Mikkelson as Draco.

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Sleeping Beauty (27 July)

Tread carefully – this isn’t one of the fairytale family films so popular right now, but a creepy, surrealistic sex drama from Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh. Emily Browning – from Sucker Punch – takes a job that starts out as waitressing at a private function but soon morphs into something far more intimate.

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Courageous (27 July)

Written and directed by Baptist pastor Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen, this spiritual drama is a compassionate portrait of four men, police officers, whose lives are rocked by tragedy. Pastor Alex also takes the lead role, a father who has failed to give his kids the love and attention they require.

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The Wild Bunch (27 July)

This landmark Western is an authentic American masterpiece. It’s notorious for its violence – a reputation that director Sam Peckinpah could never live down – but the slo-mo shoot-outs are part and parcel of the film’s eulogy for old times and old timers. Renegades and rogues William Holden, Robert Ryan and Warren Oates come to the tragic realization that they are yesterday’s men.

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American History X (27 July)

Edward Norton is at his best as a neo-Nazi who comes out of jail a smarter, wiser man, but finds his kid brother (Edward Furlong) has followed him into the arms of the white supremacists. The drama is infused with passion and zeal by iconoclastic director Tony Kaye (though Norton recut it– and Kaye tried to have his own credit changed to Humpty Dumpty).

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Tom Charity