Summer's must-watch movies!

There's no better time than summer to head to the movies with a flurry of blockbusters released to the big screen.

It's also a great way to escape the heat and seek entertainment indoors, catching the flicks that are creating buzz in the January awards season.

Action and adventure are taking over the movie screens in the summer months with epic releases such as Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained and Lincoln.

Get your pen and paper ready to list down the movies you need to watch before summer's out!

Zero Dark Thirty

It took ten long years to find the world's most wanted man and this film from Kathryn Bigelow - the director of the Oscar's Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker - details the search for Osama Bin Laden and his death at the hands of elite intelligence and military operatives.

Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers said that the "knockout punch of the movie season" was delivered by Zero Dark Thirty and that people are in for a "hell of a ride" with this high-voltage thriller.

Django Unchained

If you're a Quentin Tarantino fan, then get ready for his latest offering featuring Hollywood's finest that includes Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L Jackson.

Django takes a step back in history during the antebellum era, but events are changed to suit Tarantino's trademark style, with the movie following a freed slave on a mission to rescue his wife from a cruel plantation owner.

Christoph Waltz - who took home an Oscar for his role in Inglourious Basterds - plays a bounty hunter who accompanies Django on his journey to save his wife.

Lincoln

Legendary director Steven Spielberg's take on one of America's greatest presidents has garnered high praise from a number of top critics, with Oscar buzz around the film and it's lead actor, two-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis.

The movie follows Abraham Lincoln as he struggles with the ongoing Civil War out on the battlefields and problems inside his own cabinet with his decision to end slavery.

The Impossible

This is a tear-jerker so remember to bring along some tissues, as Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star in this film that brings to life the events of the devastating tsunami that hit southeast Asia in 2004.

The Impossible tells the true story of Maria and Henry Belon who planned on spending their Christmas vacation in Thailand only to have their family torn apart by the deadly tsunami that ripped through their resort on Boxing Day.

The film follows the scattered family members and their desperate search for each other on the idyllic paradise struck by disaster.