Behind the candelabra

Starring Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Rob Lowe - Dir: Steven Soderbergh

This is the film you won't see in next year's Oscars - and it certainly deserves a few, starting with the three actors mentioned above - because when Soderbergh shopped it round in Hollywood he was, despite his own track record and the cast, turned down by every studio. In a move of jaw-dropping hypocrisy they told him the film was 'too gay”.
Liberace? Gay? Say it isn't so!

Eventually Behind The Candelabra was made by HBO for cable television and it's simply wonderful (if deeply creepy when taken too seriously). Douglas is in career best form as Liberace, Damon is brilliant as his live-in lover Scott Thorson, who slowly gets remodelled in his master's image, Lowe is the plastic surgeon who does the remodelling.

It's all there – the glitz! The glamour! The pianos! The insanely different times, times when women would flock to Liberace shows and everybody said that just because he wears a lot of jewellery and a bit of make-up and loves his mother doesn't mean he's gay, of course he's not he's just a sweet boy, and at the centre of it all a weird but actually tender love story that of course goes wrong in the end. And because this is based on Thorson's book maybe it's not exactly the whole truth... but it's a fascinating ride.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur made his move to Hollywood with the 2012 Mark Wahlberg action thriller Contraband. Obviously the formula was successful (it was certainly fun) so they're back along with Denzel Washington for an even more escapist romp, 2 Guns has the pair playing undercover whatevers caught between the CIA, navy, drug runners, and well, everybody really, when some sort of scheme goes sideways. The ridiculous plot barely matters as the boys banter and bond winningly and lots of things get shot at and blown up. Think 1980's Michael Bay but not as dumb.

I Didn't Come Here to Die immediately plants its stylistic flag on the grindhouse hill with a deliberately degraded and bleached low-budget look so familiar in seventies exploitation. It has six young camp volunteers travelling to rural isolation only to die one by one from self-inflicted misadventure. And a bit of murder. It's a similar central gag to Tucker and Dale vs Evil - if only this were in the same league. What humour there is derives from intentional shoddiness and script naffness, while the gore and convention nods mark this as a film made by genre nerds strictly for genre nerds.

A lot of people are going to be very unhappy with Only God Forgives. Most specifically, I suspect, anyone harbouring romantic thoughts of Ryan Gosling. And, judging by women I know, that'll be quite a few. Be warned, this is not only a nasty brutal film (not necessarily a bad thing) but it's also really weird. It's set in the drugs and prostitution world of a very stylized Bangkok where Gosling's brother is murdered and he, with 'encouragement” from a rampaging Kristin Scott Thomas as his mother, seeks revenge. Very bloody, deeply strange, it will probably also alienate anyone watching because they enjoyed Drive, Gosling's previous collaboration with director Nicolas Winding Refn. I liked it.

Kick-Ass was always going to be a hard act to follow. Its extraordinary balance inleaping over the good taste barrier while still keeping you invested in – incredibly enough – believable characters was a rare and beautiful thing. Kick Ass 2 does about as well as you could hope but doesn't quite pull it off. The shocks aren't as shocking any more, the characters aren't as real. When it gets to the point that things turn a bit serious it doesn't completely gel. That said, there's a lot of good stuff, including a great turn from Jim Carrey. It's just the first one was kinda perfect.