Victoria has no shortage of standout destinations to explore throughout the year — natural, beautiful and sometimes downright surprising. The state is one of Australia's smallest yet boasts a diverse array of stunning landscapes, from tumbling waterfalls in the middle of dense forest to ancient volcanic craters now teeming with wildlife. Here, we've rounded up eight unexpected natural sights just waiting to be explored. Start plotting adventures around this lineup of must-see Victorian landmarks. Recommended reads: The Best Natural Hot Springs in Victoria The Best Walks in and Around Melbourne The Best Beaches in Melbourne The Best Places to Go Glamping in Victoria [caption id="attachment_785503" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Darren Seiler for Visit Victoria[/caption] Pink Lakes, Murray-Sunset National Park As far as bodies of water go, these ones are what you'd call true show-stoppers. Up in the wilds of northwestern Victoria, the Murray-Sunset National Park is best known for its four eye-catching Pink Lakes, which feature solid salt beds and a vibrant blush tinge thanks to the red algae growing in their waters. With the lakes shifting in colour throughout the day, the vast, flat territory makes for some pretty magical photo ops, especially during sunset and at dusk. You can soak up the untouched surrounds while trekking one of the area's many walking trails and even spend a night onsite at the campgrounds, taking advantage of the open starry skies and lake views. [caption id="attachment_785511" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Robert Blackburn for Visit Victoria[/caption] The Pinnacle Lookout, Halls Gap Rising up above Halls Gap like the bow of a Titanic made of rocks, The Pinnacle lookout is The Grampians' crowning glory, in more ways than one. It clocks in at an impressive 720 metres above sea level and boasts some unimaginably good panoramic views to match. The spectacular summit is accessed by a bunch of different hiking trails (starting from a medium-grade 45-minute trek), which'll take you winding through a rugged region of leafy bushland and rocky outcrops. Make your way up to the top, take in those dramatic vistas over the National Park's peaks and valleys, and you'll feel like you're standing atop Victoria's own version of the Grand Canyon. [caption id="attachment_785496" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Garry Moore for Visit Victoria[/caption] Buchan Caves, Buchan Some of you might find it hard to get excited about a cave. But this huge subterranean network filled with majestic limestone formations really is some exceptional stuff. Carved out by underground rivers almost 400 million years ago, Gippsland's Buchan Caves are the largest of their kind in Victoria, also holding huge Aboriginal cultural significance. You can take guided tours of the two main lit sections, known as Royal Cave and Fairy Cave, winding your way amongst the stalactites, stalagmites and calcite-rimmed pools. What's more, the adjoining Buchan Caves Reserve boasts loads of native wildlife, bushland walks and idyllic picnic spots. You can even make a mini-getaway of it and spend the night at one of the campsites. it's one of our favourite Victorian caves to explore. [caption id="attachment_845835" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Great Ocean Road Tourism[/caption] Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, Tower Hill If you ever want to see what life's like within a dormant volcano, simply venture a few hours west to the site of Tower Hill, near Port Fairy. Here, a 30,000-year-old volcanic crater houses the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, featuring a striking backdrop of cone-shaped hills, wetlands and lake. And as well as boasting gorgeous scenery and bushwalks aplenty this one's steeped in history. A significant Indigenous Australian landmark and Victoria's first national park, the site was driven to ruin by early settlers, before volunteers restored it to the natural beauty it is today. The crater is also home to scores of native wildlife species — keep an eye out for the likes of koalas, kangaroos and spoonbills kicking around in this unique habitat. [caption id="attachment_785501" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mark Watson for Visit Victoria[/caption] Californian Redwood Forest, Beech Forest Take a trip out to The Otways' famed Californian Redwood Forest and you'll find yourself quickly enveloped in an otherworldly haven of peace and tranquility. Created over 85 years ago, this plantation of towering Californian Redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) makes for quite the nature spectacular, what with its uniform rows of tree trunks, hushed forest floor and shards of sunlight filtering through the upper branches. Nothing offers a bit of perspective quite like a stroll through the 1400-strong forest, taking in the full stature of these arboreal giants. Some of them reach a whopping 55-metres tall. Enjoy a picnic lunch, hug a few trees and revel in a much-welcomed dose of Mother Nature. [caption id="attachment_785504" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pennicott Wilderness Journeys[/caption] Skull Rock, Tidal River Victoria lays claim to plenty of famous rock formations, but this skull-shaped number emerging from the waters off Wilsons Prom might just be the coolest. Cleft Island — also known as Skull Rock for obvious reasons — is a giant granite formation hanging out by the very southern tip of the state. It's been gradually shaped and smoothed by waves over the centuries, and features a giant grassy cave hollowing out one side. For a close-up view, you can (normally) jump on a 2.5-hour cruise, departing daily from Tidal River. And if you're visiting during migration season, you could even spy a few of the area's less eerie residents, including sea birds, dolphins and fur seals. [caption id="attachment_785502" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Robert Blackburn for Visit Victoria[/caption] Trentham Falls, Trentham As one of the state's longest single-drop waterfalls, Trentham Falls are always a majestic sight to feast your eyes on. And, at a soaring height of 32 metres, we reckon they'd certainly get the tick of approval from TLC. Located within the lush forest of Coliban River Scenic Reserve — about 90 minutes northwest of Melbourne — this impressive natural water feature looms large against ancient basalt rock, the whole scene framed by leafy native vegetation. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to get too close, but you'll find the best vantage point from atop the dedicated viewing area, just a short trek from the car park. Take a moment admiring the dancing water, surrounded by shady manna gum and messmate trees, and we promise you'll feel worlds away from the big smoke. [caption id="attachment_785540" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Gillian via Flickr[/caption] The Organ Pipes, Keilor North It's not too hard to see where this unique rock formation gets its name from, with its row of towering cylindrical columns that look like they could just about start pumping out tunes. Gracing the side of a big basalt cliff, the distinctive design was naturally created back in ancient times by cooling lava. Now, it serves as a constant reminder that this region is on the edge of one of the world's largest ancient volcanic lava flows. You'll find the geological gem located within the Organ Pipes National Park, just 30 minutes out of the CBD. While you're there, be sure to catch some of the park's other quirky resident rock formations, including the mosaic-like Tessellated Pavement and another that looks like the spokes of a giant wheel. Top Image: Californian Redwood Forest, Beech Forest.
There are 8222 islands within Australia's watery borders. You could spend your entire life hopping from one Aussie island to another and never quite make them all (well, unless you're very, very quick). So, we thought we'd save you some time and handpick 12 of the best islands in Australia. They should at least get you started. Next time you start imagining yourself on a white-sanded beach with quokkas close by, sea lions in the distance and your desk a few hundred kilometres away, these are the spots to catch a boat, plane, or ferry to. Remember: when you leave the mainland, you leave all your worries there, too. Right? Recommended reads: The Best Glamping Sites in Australia The Best Beaches in Australia The Best Dog-Friendly Hotels in Australia [caption id="attachment_688591" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Coral Coast Tourism[/caption] Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia The Houtman Abrolhos isn't just an island, it's an archipelago. 122 isles make up the marvel, more or less clustered in three groups across 100 kilometres. They lie 60 kilometres off the Coral Coast, west of Geraldton, which is four hours north of Perth. Lose yourself snorkelling or diving among colourful coral, spotting Australian sea lions and looking out for more than 90 species of seabirds, including majestic white-breasted sea eagles. For mind-blowing views, jump aboard a scenic flight and see the best Australian island from a bird's eye view. [caption id="attachment_688571" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Paul Ewart for Tourism and Events Queensland[/caption] North Stradbroke Island, Queensland Located 25 minutes by ferry off the Queensland coast, Stradbroke Island is an easy day trip from Brisbane. It's the second biggest sand island in the world after K'gari (more on that Australian island later). For swimming in gentle waves, head to idyllic Cylinder Beach; for wilder surf, make your destination the 38-kilometre-long Main Beach. Overnight stays include beach camping, as well as an array of cottages, hotels and B&Bs. Just north of Straddie is Moreton Island, a wonderland of long beaches, clear lakes and a national park. Consider sleeping over at Tangalooma, an eco-friendly resort where you can hand-feed wild dolphins and swim around a shipwreck. [caption id="attachment_773788" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tom Archer, Destination NSW[/caption] Lord Howe Island, New South Wales Just 11 kilometres long and two kilometres wide, Lord Howe, a two-hour flight east of Sydney, is explorable within a few days. Whenever you travel on this top Australian island, you won't have to fear tourist crowds: only 400 visitors are permitted at any one time and the population is just 382. Prepare to have pretty beaches, spectacular diving sites and rugged terrain all to yourself. Among the best adventures are the Mount Gower Trail, a steep, eight-hour trek that carries you 875 metres above sea level, and Erscott's Hole, a natural wonder where you can snorkel among staghorn coral, bluefish and double-headed wrasse. With all this natural beauty, it's easy to see why it made our list of the best islands in Australia and best overall places to visit in Australia. [caption id="attachment_770035" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tourism Australia[/caption] Bruny Island, Tasmania Bruny feels completely remote, yet it's just a 20-minute ferry ride from the coast and, with driving time added, 50 minutes from Hobart. The beauty of this proximity to the city is that, despite all the wilderness, you can find some top nosh: for fish and chips head to Jetty Cafe; for pub grub swing by Hotel Bruny; for cheese visit Bruny Island Cheese Company; and for a tipple, there's the Bruny Island House of Whisky. Meanwhile, nature lovers will find white wallabies at Inala Nature Reserve, windswept headlands at Cape Bruny Lighthouse and head-clearing watery views at Cloudy Bay. [caption id="attachment_688568" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Khy Orchard for Tourism and Events Queensland[/caption] Magnetic Island, Queensland There are hundreds of islands in the Great Barrier Reef area, offering everything from secluded campsites to five-star luxury resorts. But, for convenience, outdoor adventures and, most importantly, koala spotting, Magnetic Island is hard to go past — found just 20 minutes from Townsville. Get active with sea kayaking tours and yoga classes, get artsy at beachside markets and galleries or relax at stunning beaches like Horseshoe Bay. If you're keen to venture further, jump aboard a Great Barrier Reef snorkelling, diving or sightseeing tour. [caption id="attachment_688400" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Isaac Forman for SA Tourism Commission[/caption] Kangaroo Island, South Australia With a whopping 509 kilometres of coastline, Kangaroo Island could have you exploring for weeks. To get there, take a 45-minute ferry ride from Cape Jervis, on the Fleurieu Peninsula — around 100 kilometres south of Adelaide. Then gear up to share your holiday with sea lions, fur seals, little penguins, echidnas, koalas and, you guessed it, kangaroos. The Australian island is a haven for creatures who've struggled to survive elsewhere, especially local sea lions, who were hunted to the brink of extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are numerous national parks and conservation areas, and the over 4000-strong population is big on food and wine. You also can't talk about this Aussie island without mentioning the spectacular beaches — our favourite being the one and only Stoke's Bay. [caption id="attachment_874908" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Guillaume Marques (Unsplash)[/caption] The Whitsundays, Queensland In total, The Whitsundays is made up of 74 islands. It's hard to choose the best, especially as each depends on what kind of holiday you're after. You can go camping on the famous Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, live it up at The InterContinental Resort on Hayman Island or even escape to an adult's-only oasis like Elysian Retreat on Long Island — one of the best adults-only accommodations in The Whitsundays. From any of these small islands in Australia, you can easily get to the Great Barrier Reef and countless other stunning natural landscapes. This region is also one of Australia's national parks, so it will continue to be preserved for many years to come — even if the reef itself does die off. [caption id="attachment_683983" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tourism Western Australia[/caption] Rottnest Island, Western Australia Rottnest Island is a 90-minute ferry ride from Barrack Street Jetty, Perth, or 25 minutes from Fremantle. Like Kangaroo Island, Rottnest has given a big dose of much-needed love to Australia's wild creatures, particularly quokkas, which now number 12,000 or so. Dedicate some time to spotting them (though please don't go touching, patting or feeding), before visiting pristine beaches, such as The Basin, where you'll find an underwater playground, and Little Parakeet Bay, backdropped by striking rock formations. The best way to explore the Aussie island is by bike, but we are also big fans of getting on a sea kayak for the arvo as well. Prefer to stay here longer than a day? We recommend spending a few nights in Discovery Rottnest Island's luxe glamping tents by the beach. Phillip Island, Victoria Phillip Island's biggest drawcard is its penguin parade. Every night, at sunset, the island's resident little penguins return to their terrestrial homes, having spent the day out and about fishing. Beyond wildlife watching, go wine and craft beer tasting, bliss out with a massage or spa treatment or conquer a trail on foot, such as the Cape Woolamai Walk, which traverses dramatic clifftops along Phillip's southernmost point. Follow the links for suggestions on where to eat and drink and the best outdoor activities on Phillip Island. Unlike most of the other Australian islands on this list, you can reach this one by road: it's around 90 minutes' drive south of Melbourne, making it one of the most accessible islands in Australia. [caption id="attachment_911608" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Courtesy of Kingfisher Bay Resort[/caption] K'gari (Fraser Island), Queensland World Heritage-listed K'gari (Fraser Island) is the biggest sand island in the world. There are 184,000 hectares of the stuff, made up of 72 colours and mostly in the form of magnificent dunes, much of which are covered in rainforest. If you've time on your hands, take on the Great Walk, an eight-day epic that visits many of K'gari's 100 freshwater lakes. If not, jump aboard a 4WD and cruise along 75 Mile Beach (one of our favourite adventure experiences in Australia), take a dip at Champagne Pools along the way and pay a visit to awe-inspiring Boorangoora(Lake McKenzie), a perched lake made up of rainwater and soft silica sand. [caption id="attachment_688583" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Andrew Wilson for Tourism Tasmania[/caption] King Island, Tasmania You might have no idea where King Island is, but may have seen its cheese at the supermarket. King Island Dairy's decadent triple cream brie is an Aussie gourmet staple. But it's far from the only treat you'll be sampling in this lush place, which lies in the Bass Strait, halfway between Victoria and Tassie. Count, too, on super-fresh seafood, flavourful beef and a cornucopia of produce from local growers. When you're finished feasting, stroll along the white sands of Disappointment Bay, visit a 7000-year-old calcified forest and go horse riding by the sea. This under-the-radar travel destination is undoubtedly one of the best islands in Australia. [caption id="attachment_856441" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tourism and Events Queensland[/caption] Bribie Island, Queensland Bribie Island isn't that far from Brisbane (a little over one and a half hours) but is a haven for local wildlife. That's because this Australian island is home to the Pumicestone Passage, a protected marine park where you'll find dugongs, turtles, dolphins and a diverse range of birdlife. All the classic Aussie land animals will be found all over the island, too. And, of course, the beaches are just stupidly beautiful. Whether you're a local or tourist, this island offers all the quintessential Australian sites you must see. Feeling inspired to book a getaway? You can now book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips with deals on flights, stays and experiences at destinations all around the world. Top images: K'gari Island, courtesy of Kingfisher Bay Resort.
For the second time in 2024, Hollywood's TV talents have spent a night celebrating the best and brightest shows to hit the small screen, plus the folks that make our television and streaming favourites happen. If you love awards ceremonies, or just the reminder about what to watch that they always offer, this is a busier year than usual — because there's been not just one round of Emmys, but two. Back in January, the Emmys first took place for 2024 after the 2023 event was postponed from its usual September timing during Hollywood's writers' and actors' strikes. So, now that September is here for 2024, there's another Emmys — the ones that were always due to happen at this part of the calendar. Already worked your way through the winning shows from earlier in the year? Get ready for your next batch. Here's nine shows that've just received shiny trophies that you should watch, be it for the first or the fifth time. (We've also run through the full list of nominees and winners, too.) The Bear The more time that anyone spends in the kitchen, the easier that whipping up their chosen dish gets. The Bear season two is that concept in TV form, even if the team at The Original Beef of Chicagoland don't always live it as they leap from running a beloved neighbourhood sandwich joint to opening a fine-diner, and fast. The hospitality crew that was first introduced in the best new show of 2022 isn't lacking in culinary skills or passion. But when bedlam surrounds you constantly, as bubbled and boiled through The Bear's Golden Globe-winning, Emmy-nominated season-one frames, not everything always goes to plan. That was only accurate on-screen for Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White, Fingernails) and his colleagues — aka sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms), baker-turned-pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce, Hap and Leonard), veteran line cooks Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas, In Treatment) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson, Fargo), resident Mr Fixit Neil Fak (IRL chef Matty Matheson), and family pal Richie aka Cousin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, No Hard Feelings). For viewers, the series' debut run was as perfect a piece of television as anyone can hope for. Excellent news: season two is better. The Bear serves up another sublime course of comedy, drama and "yes chef!"-exclaiming antics across its sizzling second season. Actually make that ten more courses, one per episode, with each new instalment its own more-ish meal. A menu, a loan, desperately needed additional help, oh-so-much restaurant mayhem: that's how this second visit begins, as Carmy and Sydney endeavour to make their dreams for their own patch of Chicago's food scene come true. So far, so familiar, but The Bear isn't just plating up the same dishes this time around. At every moment, this new feast feels richer, deeper and more seasoned, including when it's as intense as ever, when it's filling the screen with tastebud-tempting food shots that relish culinary artistry, and also when it gets meditative. Episodes that send Marcus to a Noma-esque venue in Copenhagen under the tutelage of Luca (Will Poulter, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3), get Richie spending a week learning the upscale ropes at one of Chicago's best restaurants and jump back to the past, demonstrating how chaos would've been in Carmy's blood regardless of if he became a chef, are particularly stunning. Emmys Won: Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Jeremy Allen White), Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Supporting Actress in a Actor in a Comedy Series (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Directing for a Comedy Series (Christopher Storer, The Bear). Where to watch it: The Bear streams via Disney+. Read our full review of The Bear season two. Hacks Sometimes you need to wait for the things you love. In Hacks, that's true off- and on-screen. It's been two years since the HBO comedy last dropped new episodes, after its first season was one of the best new shows of 2021 and its second one of the best returning series of 2022 — a delay first sparked by star Jean Smart (Babylon) requiring heart surgery, and then by 2023's Hollywood strikes. But this Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner returns better than ever in season three as it charts Smart's Deborah Vance finally getting a shot at a job that she's been waiting her entire career for. After scoring a huge hit with her recent comedy special, which was a product of hiring twentysomething writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, Julia), the Las Vegas mainstay has a new chance at nabbing a late-night hosting gig. (Yes, fictional takes on after-dark talk shows are having a moment, thanks to Late Night with the Devil and now this.) At times, some in Deborah's orbit might be tempted to borrow the Australian horror movie's title to describe to assisting her pitch for a post-primetime chair. That'd be a harsh comment, but savage humour has always been part of this showbiz comedy about people who tell jokes for a living. While Deborah gets roasted in this season, spikiness is Hacks' long-established baseline — and also the armour with which its behind-the-mic lead protects herself from life's and the industry's pain, disappointments and unfairness. Barbs can also be Deborah's love language, as seen in her banter with Ava. When season two ended, their tumultuous professional relationship had come to an end again via Deborah, who let her writer go to find bigger opportunities. A year has now passed when season three kicks off. Ava is a staff writer on a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-type series in Los Angeles and thriving, but she's also not over being fired. Back in Vanceland , everything is gleaming — but Deborah isn't prepared for being a phenomenon. She wants it. She's worked for years for it. It's taken until her 70s to get it. But her presence alone being cause for frenzy, rather than the scrapping she's done to stay in the spotlight, isn't an easy adjustment. Emmys Won: Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Jean Smart) and Writing for a Comedy Series (Lucia Aniello, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky). Where to watch it: Hacks streams via Stan. Read our full review of Hacks season three. Baby Reindeer A person walking into a bar. The words "sent from my iPhone". A comedian pouring their experiences into a one-performer play. A twisty true-crime tale making the leap to the screen. All four either feature in, inspired or describe Baby Reindeer. All four are inescapably familiar, too, but the same can't be said about this seven-part Netflix series. Written by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, and also based on his real-life experiences, this is a bleak, brave, revelatory, devastating and unforgettable psychological thriller. It does indeed begin with someone stepping inside a pub — and while Gadd plays a comedian on-screen as well, don't go waiting for a punchline. When Martha (Jessica Gunning, The Outlaws) enters The Heart in Camden, London in 2015, Donny Dunn (Gadd, Wedding Season) is behind the counter. "I felt sorry for her. That's the first feeling I felt," the latter explains via voiceover. Perched awkwardly on a stool at the bar, Martha is whimpering to herself. She says that she can't afford to buy a drink, even a cup of tea. Donny takes pity, offering her one for free — and her face instantly lights up. That's the fateful moment, one of sorrow met with kindness, that ignites Baby Reindeer's narrative and changes Donny's life. After that warm beverage, The Heart instantly has a new regular. Sipping Diet Cokes from then on (still on the house), Martha is full of stories about all of the high-profile people that she knows and her high-flying lawyer job. But despite insisting that she's constantly busy, she's also always at the bar when Donny is at work, sticking around for his whole shifts. She chats incessantly about herself, folks that he doesn't know and while directing compliments Donny's way. He's in his twenties, she's in her early forties — and he can see that she's smitten, letting her flirt. He notices her laugh. He likes the attention, not to mention getting his ego stroked. While he doesn't reciprocate her feelings, he's friendly. She isn't just an infatuated fantasist, however; she's chillingly obsessed to an unstable degree. She finds his email address, then starts messaging him non-stop when she's not nattering at his workplace. (IRL, Gadd received more than 40,000 emails.) Emmys Won: Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Richard Gadd), Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Jessica Gunning) and Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Richard Gadd). Where to watch it: Baby Reindeer streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Ripley Boasting The Night Of's Steven Zaillian as its sole writer and director — joining a list of credits that includes penning Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Irishman, and also winning an Oscar for Schindler's List — the latest exquisite jump into the Ripley realm doesn't splash around black-and-white hues as a mere stylistic preference. In this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book, the setting is still coastal Italy at its most picturesque, and therefore a place that most would want to revel in visually; Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr Ripley's director a quarter-century back, did so with an intoxicating glow. For Zaillian, however, stripping away the warm rays and beaches and hair, blue seas and skies, and tanned skin as well, ensures that all that glitters is never gold or even just golden in tone as he spends time with Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers). There's never even a glint of a hint of a travelogue aesthetic, with viewers confronted with the starkness of Tom's choices and actions — he is a conman and worse, after all — plus the shadows that he persists in lurking in and the impossibility of ever grasping everything that he desires in full colour. On the page and on the screen both before and now, the overarching story remains the same, though, in this new definitive take on the character. It's the early 60s rather than the late 50s in Ripley, but Tom is in New York, running fake debt-collection schemes and clinging to the edges of high-society circles, when he's made a proposal that he was never going to refuse. Herbert Greenleaf (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, who has also acted in his own three features You Can Count on Me, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea) enlists him to sail to Europe to reunite with a friend, the shipping magnate's son Dickie (Johnny Flynn, One Life). As a paid gig, Tom is to convince the business heir to finally return home. But Dickie has no intention of giving up his Mediterranean leisure as he lackadaisically pursues painting — and more passionately spends his time with girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning, The Perfect Couple) — to join the family business. Emmys Won: Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Steven Zaillian). Where to watch it: Ripley streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Fargo This is a true story: in 2014, Hollywood decided to take on a task that was destined to either go as smoothly as sliding on ice or prove as misguided as having a woodchipper sitting around. Revisiting Fargo was a bold move even in pop culture's remake-, reboot- and reimagining-worshipping times, because why say "you betcha" to trying to make crime-comedy perfection twice? The Coen brothers' 1996 film isn't just any movie. It's a two-time Oscar-winner, BAFTA and Cannes' Best Director pick of its year, and one of the most beloved and original examples of its genre in the last three decades. But in-between credits on Bones, The Unusuals and My Generation, then creating the comic book-inspired Legion, writer, director and producer Noah Hawley started a project he's now synonymous with, and that's still going strong five seasons in. What keeps springing is always a twisty tale set in America's midwest, as filled with everyday folks in knotty binds, complicated family ties, crooks both bumbling and determined trying to cash in, and intrepid cops investigating leads that others wouldn't. Hawley's stroke of genius: driving back into Fargo terrain by making an anthology series built upon similar pieces, but always finding new tales about greed, power, murder and snowy landscapes to tell. Hawley's Fargo adores the Coenverse overall, enthusiastically scouring it for riches like it's the TV-making embodiment of Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter's namesake. That film hailed from Damsel's David Zellner instead, and took cues from the urban legend surrounding the purported Fargo ties to the IRL death of Japanese office worker Takako Konishi; however, wanting the contents of the Coen brothers' brains to become your reality is clearly a common thread. Of course, for most of the fictional figures who've walked through the small-screen Fargo's frames, they'd like anything but caper chaos. Scandia, Minnesota housewife Dot Lyon (Juno Temple, Ted Lasso) is one of them in season five. North Dakota sheriff, preacher and rancher Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm, Good Omens) isn't as averse to a commotion if he's the one causing it. Minnesota deputy Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani, Never Have I Ever) and North Dakota state trooper Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris, Woke) just want to get to the bottom of the series' new stint of sometimes-madcap and sometimes-violent mayhem. Emmys Won: Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Lamorne Morris). Where to watch it: Fargo streams via SBS On Demand. Read our full review of Fargo season five. Shōgun Casting Hiroyuki Sanada (John Wick: Chapter 4), Cosmo Jarvis (Persuasion) and Anna Sawai (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) as its three leads is one of Shōgun's masterstrokes. The new ten-part adaptation of James Clavell's 1975 novel — following a first version in 1980 that featured Japanese icon and frequent Akira Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune — makes plenty of other excellent moves, but this is still pivotal. Disney+'s richly detailed samurai series knows how to thrust its viewers into a deeply textured world from the outset, making having three complex performances at its centre an essential anchoring tactic. Sanada plays Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who is among the political candidates vying to take control of the country. Jarvis is John Blackthorne, a British sailor on a Dutch ship that has run aground in a place that its crew isn't sure is real until they get there. And Sawai is Toda Mariko, a Japanese noblewoman who is also tasked with translating. Each character's tale encompasses much more than those descriptions, of course, and the portrayals that bring them to the screen make that plain from the moment they're each first seen. As Game of Thrones and Succession both were, famously so, Shōgun is another drama that's all about fighting for supremacy. Like just the former, too, it's another sweeping epic series as well. Although it's impossible not to see those links, knowing that both battling over who'll seize power and stepping into sprawling worlds are among pop culture's favourite things right now (and for some time) doesn't make Shōgun any less impressive. The scale is grand, and yet it doesn't skimp on intimacy, either. The minutiae is meticulous, demanding that attention is paid to everything at all times. Gore is no stranger from the get-go. Opening in the 17th century, the series finds Japan in crisis mode, Toranaga facing enemies and Blackthorne among the first Englishmen that've made it to the nation — much to the alarm of Japan's sole European inhabitants from Portugal. Getting drawn in, including by the performances, is instantaneous. Shōgun proves powerful and engrossing immediately, and lavish and precisely made as well, with creators Justin Marks (Top Gun: Maverick) and Rachel Kondo (on her first TV credit) doing a spectacular job of bringing it to streaming queues. Emmys Won: Outstanding Drama Series, Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Hiroyuki Sanada), Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Anna Sawai) and Directing for a Drama Series (Frederick EO Toye). Where to watch it: Shōgun streams via Disney+. Read our full review. True Detective: Night Country Even when True Detective had only reached its second season, the HBO series had chiselled its template into stone: obsessive chalk-and-cheese cops with messy personal lives investigating horrifying killings, on cases with ties to power's corruption, in places where location mattered and with the otherworldly drifting in. A decade after the anthology mystery show's debut in 2014, True Detective has returned as Night Country, a six-part miniseries that builds its own snowman out of all of the franchise's familiar parts. The main similarity from there: like the Matthew McConaughey (The Gentlemen)- and Woody Harrelson (White House Plumbers)-led initial season, True Detective: Night Country is phenomenal. This is a return to form and a revitalisation. Making it happen after two passable intervening cases is a new guiding hand off-screen. Tigers Are Not Afraid filmmaker Issa López directs and writes or co-writes every episode, boasting Moonlight's Barry Jenkins as an executive producer. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto remains in the latter role, too, as do McConaughey, Harrelson and season-one director Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die); however, from its female focus and weighty tussling with the dead to its switch to a cool, blue colour scheme befitting its Alaskan setting, there's no doubting that López is reinventing her season rather than ticking boxes. In handing over the reins, Pizzolatto's police procedural never-standard police procedural is a powerhouse again, and lives up to the potential of its concept. The commitment and cost of delving into humanity's depths and advocating for those lost in its abyss has swapped key cops, victims and locations with each spin, including enlisting the masterful double act of Jodie Foster (Nyad) and boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis (Catch the Fair One) to do the sleuthing, but seeing each go-around with fresh eyes feels like the missing puzzle piece. López spies the toll on the show's first women duo, as well as the splinters in a remote community when its fragile sense of certainty is forever shattered. She spots the fractures that pre-date the investigation in the new season, a cold case tied to it, plus the gashes that've carved hurt and pain into the earth ever since people stepped foot on it. She observes the pursuit of profit above all else, and the lack of concern for whatever — whoever, the region's Indigenous inhabitants included — get in the way. She sees that the eternal winter night of 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle come mid-December isn't the only thing impairing everyone's sight. And, she knows that not everything has answers, with life sometimes plunging into heartbreak, or inhospitable climes, or one's own private hell, without rhyme or reason. Emmys Won: Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie (Jodie Foster). Where to watch it: True Detective: Night Country streams via Binge. Read our full review. Slow Horses In gleaming news for streaming viewers, Mick Herron's Slough House novel series boasts 12 entries so far. In an also ace development, several more of the British author's books have links to the world of veteran espionage agent Jackson Lamb. That thankfully means that Slow Horses, the small-screen spy thriller based on Herron's work, has plenty more stories to draw upon in its future. It's now up to its third season as a TV series, and long may its forward path continue. Apple TV+ has clearly felt the same way since the program debuted in April 2022. In June the same year, the platform renewed Slow Horses for a third and fourth season before its second had even aired. That next chapter arrived that December and didn't disappoint. Neither does the latest batch of six episodes, this time taking its cues from Herron's Real Tigers — after season one used the novel Slow Horses as its basis, and season two did the same with Dead Lions — in charting the ins and outs of MI5's least-favourite department. Slough House is where the service rejects who can't be fired but aren't trusted to be proper operatives are sent, with Lamb (Gary Oldman, Oppenheimer) its happily cantankerous, slovenly, seedy and shambolic head honcho. Each season, Lamb and his team of losers, misfits and boozers — Mick Jagger's slinky ear worm of a theme tune's words — find themselves immersed in another messy case that everyone above them wishes they weren't. That said, Slow Horses isn't a formulaic procedural. Sharply written, directed and acted, and also immensely wryly funny, it's instead one of the best spy series to grace television, including in a new go-around that starts with two intelligence officers (Babylon's Katherine Waterston and Gangs of London's Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) in Istanbul. When the fallout from this season's opening events touches Lamb and his spooks, they're soon thrust into a game of cat-and-mouse that revolves around secret documents and sees one of their own, the forever-loyal Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves, Creation Stories), get abducted. The talented River Cartwright (Jack Lowden, The Gold) again endeavours to show why being banished to Slough House for a training mistake was MI5's error, while his boss' boss Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas, Rebecca) reliably has her own agenda. Emmys Won: Writing for a Drama Series (Will Smith, Slow Horses). Where to watch it: Slow Horses streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Crown It's the season that originally wasn't going to happen, telling the story that's still ongoing IRL, and wrapping up a seven-year run for a star-studded regal drama that's proven a royal hit. But, thankfully, it did — with The Crown coming to an end with a sixth go-around split into two parts. The focus for the Peter Morgan (The Queen)-created show's final episodes: the relationship between Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki, MaXXXine) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla, Moon Knight), including the tragic events of their trip to Paris; the changing attitudes towards the British monarchy, and Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton, Downton Abbey: A New Era) entering her ninth decade; what his mother's advancing years meant for Prince Charles (Dominic West, The Pursuit of Love); Princess Margaret's (Lesley Manville, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) stroke and lifestyle changes; and Prince William (Ed McVey) going back to Eton, then attending St Andrew's University and forming a crush on Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy). When The Crown began, it kicked off with Queen Elizabeth II's life from her marriage to Prince Philip back in 1947. The first season made its way to the mid-50s, the second season leapt into the 60s, and season three spanned all the way up to the late 70s. In season four, the royal family hit the 80s, while season five hopped to the 90s. News around the show's fifth and sixth seasons changed a few times, including Netflix announcing that it would end the royal drama after its fifth season, only to have a change of heart and proceed for a sixth season after all. While there was always going to come a time to say goodbye, especially given that this is a IRL tale without an end, it's hard to see how the show would've fit in everything it needed if it hadn't delivered its sixth batch of episodes — and, among everything else viewers can be glad for Debicki's excellent performance. Emmys Won: Supporting Actress in a Actor in a Drama Series (Elizabeth Debicki). Where to watch it: The Crown streams via Netflix.
The best glamping sites in New Zealand are made for travellers who want to explore and stay amid the country's spectacular natural landscapes without having to rough it. Either hit a few of these as you road trip through the North and South Islands or find a location you love then stock up and stay for a good few days. Whether you're after seaside glamping or a mountain escape, with fantastic lodgings scattered across the countryside, Aotearoa's best assets are on full display at these glamping destinations that get you closer to nature than any hotel (although there's no shortage of great hotels in New Zealand). Recommended reads: The Best Places to Go Glamping in Australia The Most Romantic Places to Stay in Bali The Best Spas in Auckland The Best Spas in Wellington Glam Camping, Queenstown At Glam Camping, you'll find a collection of geometric dome tents perched along a hillside looking down on the green valley and lake just a 20-minute drive from Queenstown. During the day, take the 90-minute walk around Moke Lake or go horse riding. You can even join a morning yoga class or organise a wine tasting tour around one or many of Queenstown's famous vineyards. But we are particularly excited about the Glam Camping's food and drink offerings. You can opt to cook your own food (with all the produce provided by the hosts) or let a private chef treat you and your travel buddies to a three-course feast on the property. [caption id="attachment_880413" align="alignnone" width="1920"] SJL Photography[/caption] Kawakawa Station, South Wairapa This sprawling farming property spans across rolling grassy hills by the South Wairarapa coastline. And until the end of April 2023, the Kawakawa Station team invites guests to stay in a series of large tents hidden within the pastures. But, unlike other bell tents, these have clear ceilings so guests can stargaze from the comfort of their own bed. It also has a fully equipped kitchen on the property, so you can prep your meals without needing to bring a heap of gear. You can easily spend a few days at this New Zealand glamping site, hanging out among the sheep and strolling around the property. But, if you're after a proper adventure, Kawakawa Station also offers an epic hiking experience. The three-day hike along the Station Walk takes you through forests, along creeks and right down to the coast. The team will put you up in a bunch of different accommodations along the way, too. Coromandel Luxury Escapes, Coromandel It's in the name but still deserves being repeated — Coromandel Luxury Escapes is a truly luxurious glamping site in New Zealand. It is all powered and comes with a mini fridge, oil heater, large king bed as well as a private free-standing outdoor bath. A massive deck with a BBQ is also there for you when you want to cook up some locally caught fish. Apart from the site, one of the biggest selling points is the location. It's close to some of New Zealand's best beaches, including the picturesque New Chums Beach. And, if you're up for a 50-minute drive, you've got to visit Hot Water Beach. Here, you can dig a hole in the sand to find naturally hot water bubbling up to the surface — just be careful when digging, as this water can reach temperatures beyond 100 degrees Celsius. Use Coromandel Luxury Escapes as your base when exploring the Coromandel region which is just a two-hour ferry ride from Auckland. Lavericks Bay, Christchurch The Lavericks Bay glamping spot has two tents making up this wonderfully bucolic site. Seclusion is almost totally guaranteed. Apart from the property's wandering sheep. You'll feel as if you have the entire bay and rolling countryside to yourselves — for exploring or just sitting back and taking in the views. During the day, head to the beach for some leisurely swimming at the property's private beach to check out the resident dolphins and seals that tend to float past. And, at night, you can't say no to a dip in the large wooden hot tub in which you can do some proper stargazing. There's no light pollution here, so you'll be guaranteed a stunning night sky. Waitomo Hilltop, Waitomo The Waitomo Hilltop glamping site feels like it's pulled from a fairytale. Atop a hill, in the green Waitomo countryside lies this luxury tent that's been kitted out with everything you could need. Cook up fresh pizzas in its woodfired oven, rug up by the fire pit watching movies via projector or take a dip in one of the outdoor baths overlooking the countryside. There used to be just one glamping tent available, but Waitomo recently finished creating another equally luxurious site. The new campsite has two tents joined together with a glass walkway — including three separate bedrooms, a lounge area and a massive kitchen and dining room. It is technically a tent, but looks far more like a bricks and mortar home. The Black Yurt, Oakura This one is for the keen surfers out there. You're a short walk away from Oakura's surfing beach which is known for having some fairly reliable swell. The Black Yurt is also close to town — walking distance from plenty of boutique stores, restaurants and bars. It may be one of the least remote New Zealand glamping spots on this list but it still feels miles away from crowds. The large yurt is surrounded by palms and native bushland, offering up some well-needed privacy. The interiors of the yurt are also extra cushy. There's a king bed, a queen futon mattress as well as some schmick bathroom facilities. And, if the weather is good, you can open the dome and windows to let the outside in. [caption id="attachment_879080" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Lisa Sun Photography[/caption] Tawanui Farm, Cheviot It doesn't take long to find jaw-dropping vistas outside of New Zealand's main cities. Just an hour-long drive from Christchurch lies Tawanui Farm, a working sheep, cow and deer farm. Here, the Loughnan family have set up two geodesic domes, a central camp kitchen (with couches and cooking gear all provided) and a large hot tub looking out over the pastures. It's easily one of the best New Zealand glamping sites out there. Each dome sleeps up to four people, and no matter how many guests you book for, you'll get the entire site — that makes Tawanui Farm great for larger groups. Either laze around playing boardgames and drinking in the hot tub or use it as a base to explore the rest of the region. You can fish at the local Hurunui River, swim and surf at Gore Bay or take an ATV farm tour to learn a little more about Tawanui Farm. Dealer's choice. Kanuka, Rotorua This is just about as remote as it gets. A single Kanuka glamping tent is hidden up in the bush, right next to Lake Tarawera, and can only be reached by a boat ride or hike. The campsite comes with a large tent and queen-sized bed, a bush kitchen with everything you need to cook up some grub, a dining area as well as a separate bathroom. The essentials are sorted. And, once you're all settled in, what you choose to do around here is totally up to you. The Kanuka team can provide a kayak for exploring the lake, there's a sandy beach less than 50 metres away and you can hike along a number of trails (with one leading to a natural hot pool in the bush). Ah, you've got to love New Zealand and all its thermal hot springs. [caption id="attachment_880412" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Dan Kerins[/caption] Camp Kekerengu, Kaikoura Coast If you're travelling with a bunch of mates or a big family, Camp Kekerengu is perfect. Here, you will find three large tents, a group kitchen and a covered lounge area — all with uninterrupted sea views. But, be prepared for living it a little rougher than you might like. The entire glamping site is off grid. This will force you to fully unplug and enjoy nature. You're a short walk from the beach, close to several walking trails and simply surrounded by wide open plains and rolling mountains. It's stunning. And is the perfect example of why people love to go glamping in New Zealand. Here, you get the best bits of Aotearoa's natural landscape all in one location. Feeling inspired to book a getaway unlike anything else out there? Only through Concrete Playground Trips, our new travel booking platform, can you now purchase holidays specially curated by our writers and editors. We've teamed up with all the best providers of flights, stays and experiences to bring you a series of unforgettable trips at destinations all over the world. Top images: Waitomo Hilltop
Bali is bursting with all kinds of romantic accommodations, be they hidden up in the jungle surrounded by rice terraces or an oceanfront spot down on one of the region's countless beaches. It offers an embarrassment of riches for those looking to honeymoon, pop the big question or just run away with their special someone. Stay in a treehouse overlooking the Indian Ocean, take part in a small wellness retreat, find your own patch of paradise in luxury bamboo homes or go all out and really spoil yourselves at the most luxurious of resorts. The options are endless — and stupid-beautiful. Camaya Bali, Sideman Romance is built into every part of Camaya Bali. They have a series of private villas dotted throughout the property, each with its own unique design (made for taking advantage of the view across open planes and rice fields). They can come with pools of varying sizes and shapes as well as those netted hammocks you see all over Instagram. Thankfully, even if this place is flooded with influencers you won't see them – each villa offers absolute seclusion for guests. You can wander the grounds as much as you'd like, or let their team organise a whole host of activities for you. There are nearby whitewater rafting tours, temples and palaces, yoga centres and small villages to explore. If you're after a Big Moment, you can take a hike up into the jungle and rice fields to find the perfect proposal vista. The Korowai, Uluwatu Each of Korowai's wood-framed rooms are carved into the limestone cliff overlooking Bali's famous Impossible Beach (known for surfing, not partying). Marvel at the ridiculous uninterrupted 180-degree views across the ocean from the privacy of your own little balcony adorned with traditional Balinese décor. It's romantic and unpretentious. The glitz and glam of other Uluwatu resorts doesn't exist here. Instead, you and your partner will feel as if you've found your own hidden oasis. But, when or if you do want to get into town, the hospitable resort staff will rent you a scooter or organise a taxi ride. Plus, there are a few walkable restaurants nearby if you somehow get tired of dining at their restaurant overlooking the beach. Hangin Gardens of Bali, Payangan The Hanging Gardens of Bali sits far away from the crowds, up in the lush rainforest surrounded by local wildlife and charming rice terraces. The luxury resort has also won so many international accommodation awards thanks to the breathtaking views, super luxurious villas and warm service. Staying here, it's obvious to see why the island is at the top of so many people's travel bucket list destinations. Take the private villas for example. This high-end resort has 44 of them, each perched high atop wooden pillars overlooking the private valley below. Wake up and enjoy this view from your extra-large canopy bed before rolling out into your own private plunge pool — it's paradise on stilts. And each villa is full of character. Couples can also lean into the romantic vibes with massages, private dining experiences in the valley and breakfast served on a floating wooden boat in your own plunge pool. Desa Eko, Munduk Sometimes, a romantic getaway doesn't mean spending the entire week alone as a couple. Desa Eko is the place to come and feel a part of something bigger than yourself. It's a wellness retreat made for nature lovers, located in what the owners describe as 'the village above the clouds'. It's set in stunningly serene surrounds. You can book huts up in the trees, tents on stilted platforms or opt for the more conventional studio accommodation. But, as oasis-like as these rooms are, you will be drawn away for yoga by the river, dinners at their bamboo-clad restaurant and group hangs and hikes throughout the rainforest. It's a bit hippie. And we are all for it. Padma Resort Legian, Kuta If you're wanting a romantic place to stay in Bali, but want to be closer to the action, then the five-star Padma Resort Legian is for you. It's located near Kuta, a notorious party town with stacks of bustling beaches and places to shop — but it's far enough away that you can easily escape it all. Like Hannah Montana, you'll get the best of both worlds. Spend the day jumping from pool to pool (there are four here) and sipping on cocktails made at one of the seven bars. It's a huge resort, meaning you can carve out your own patch of tropical calm in countless nooks. You're also right on the beach. Cross the hotel lawns and set up home on this quiet sandy shore. You can do a bit of everything from here. Amarta Pesagi Retreat, Tabanan This is your quintessential romantic remote Bali accommodation. Small multi-level bamboo villas are located amongst within the jungle, surrounded by rice fields and all manners of wildlife. You feel cut off from the rest of the world, in all the best ways. Sit out on your private balcony looking into the wilderness while your partner swims in your own plunge pool below. Slide on some sandals and make your way to the restaurant for lunch or dinner. And, if you dare leave this paradise, you actually aren't that far from the outside world. Taman Ayun Temple and local villages are just a short bike ride away — and the Amarta Pesagi Retreat team will help you get there so there's no chance of getting lost in the jungle Six Senses, Uluwatu This is the place to go if you have a large budget and want a holiday where you can live in total luxury. This impressively sustainable resort is located at the southernmost tip of Bali (where you'll find most of the more high-end resorts), looking out over the ocean. The Six Senses rooms are just about as glam as you could imagine but it's the extras that make this spot even more romantic. The staff will organise floating breakfasts in your private plunge pool, quaint cinema nights under the stars, dinner for two on the beach, couples' massages, cooking classes and private tours to anywhere on the island your heart desires. Expect a superb level of service to match the views and incredible lodgings. Segara Village Hotel, Sanur This luxury hotel is set in the quiet beach town of Sanur. Head to the pool surrounded by palm trees and overgrown gardens for some solitude (or to hit up the swim-up bar. Or walk down to the beach and nab yourself one of the hotel's lounge chairs and spend the day hanging out on the beach with your loved one. The nearby town is also full of things to do — without being overly populated by swarms of tourists. Spend your days wandering along Sanur's restaurant-lined boardwalk, stopping off for a bite to eat and a cocktail (or two) and soaking up the laid-back island atmosphere before returning to Segara Village Hotel. Now you can book your next dream holiday through Concrete Playground Trips, and discover inspiring deals on flights, stays and experiences. Top image credit: Desa Eko
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are nine that you can watch right now at home. Longlegs Faces carve deep impressions in Longlegs, in both their presence and their absence. As Agent Lee Harker, Maika Monroe (God Is a Bullet) does so with a clenched jaw, permanently on-edge eyes and mere bursts of words, aka the guise of a woman who'll never stop being vigilant in every moment but doesn't always know exactly why. As the movie's namesake, as announced in the opening credits, Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario) has audiences straining to catch whatever glimpse they can whenever they can — and when a full look comes, it's scorching and haunting in tandem in the stare alone. Blair Underwood (Origin) gives Harker's boss Carter a weary gaze, but with fully rounded life experience beyond his FBI gig evident behind it. Alicia Witt (Switch Up) plays Ruth Harker, mother to Lee, as distance and struggle personified. As she relays a tale as survivor Carrie Anne Camera, Kiernan Shipka (Twisters) demonstrates how disconnected a grim reality can be from a dream. For his fourth feature following 2015's The Blackcoat's Daughter, 2016's I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and 2020's Gretel & Hansel — the first of which also starred Shipka — writer/director Osgood Perkins has clearly assembled an excellent cast for his unease-dripping, get-under-your-skin, torment-your-nightmares serial-killer thriller. Another face leaves an imprint beyond his actors, however. Bill Clinton's portrait assists with setting the scene as it adorns bureau offices, with the majority of the movie taking place in the 90s. Think the FBI and three decades back, and there's no lack of pop-culture touchstones. The Silence of the Lambs is one. Monroe's portrayal as a newly minted operative tracking a murderer is every bit as layered, complex and unforgettable — and awards-worthy — as Jodie Foster's (True Detective: Night Country) Oscar-winning performance was. Longlegs streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Maika Monroe and Osgood Perkins. MaXXXine As played as an unrelenting force by Mia Goth (Infinity Pool), even when slasher killers have other plans, Maxine Minx was always going to go big and never go home. To wrap up the horror trilogy with the ambitious actor at its centre (when Goth hasn't also been playing Pearl, its other protagonist, as both an elderly and a younger woman), MaXXXine shoots for the stars as well, including in shifting to new surroundings. Gone is the New Zealand-standing-in-for-Texas production base of X and its prequel Pearl. Absent is the claustrophobic feel of mainly making one spot the franchise's location, whether it was taking place in the 70s in its first entry or in the 1910s in its second. This Los Angeles-set leap to 1985 sparkles with the same scorching drive and determination as its titular figure — and Minx, Goth, writer/director Ti West (Them) and MaXXXine alike won't accept a life, or a swansong instalment in one of the best sagas in the genre in the 2020s, that they do not deserve. From its debut with 2022's X, which turned a porn shoot in a remote farmhouse into a bloody stalking ground, West's big-screen series has always understood that sex and violence so often intersect in the arena that it's paying tribute to: moving pictures. X, Pearl and now MaXXXine also see how censors and the pearl-clutching equate one with the other. Equally, these pictures glean how a woman with a libidinous appetite — or simply the craving to succeed and the unwillingness to settle — can be deemed a larger threat to morality than a murderer. They also spy what a battle it too frequently is for women to chart their own path free of society's expectations, no matter their aspirations. West not only continues splattering these ideas through the Elizabeth Debicki (The Crown)- and Kevin Bacon (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F)-co-starring MaXXXine, but layering them, plus stacking his latest unpackings of them with X and Pearl. The true target in his current sights, however: what it just might cost to make it in a realm as ruthless and ravenous as stardom. MaXXXine streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Elizabeth Debicki and Kevin Bacon. The Bikeriders Can a dream ever exist for more than a fleeting moment? That isn't just a question for oneirology, the field of psychology focused on studying the involuntary visions of our slumbers, but also applies whenever tales of motorcycle clubs rev across the screen. Stories of hitting the open road on two wheels, finding camaraderie and community in a group of likeminded outsiders, and perhaps discovering a purpose along the way are stories of chasing dreams — of freedom, of belonging, of mattering, of meaning in a world seemingly so devoid of it if you don't fit in the traditional sense. So it was in TV series Sons of Anarchy and in Australian film 1%, two titles set within the roar and rush of biker gangs in recent years. So it was in The Wild One, 1953's Marlon Brando-starring classic that immortalised the query "what are you rebelling against?" and the reply "whaddaya got?". Now, so it equally proves in The Bikeriders, about a 60s and 70s leather- and denim-wearing, motorbike-riding crew formed after infatuation got motors runnin' when founder Johnny (Tom Hardy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage) saw The Wild One on TV. A family man, Johnny has a dream for the Vandals MC out of America's midwest — and so does Benny (Austin Butler, Dune: Part Two), the closest thing that the club has to a spirit animal. The latter is introduced alone at a bar wearing his colours, refusing to take them off even when violence springs at the hands of unwelcoming patrons. He won't be tamed, the sixth feature from writer/director Jeff Nichols after Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special and Loving establishes early. He won't be anyone but his smouldering, swaggering, rebel-without-a-cause self, either. Courtesy of the Vandals, he not only has the space to stand firm, but the assurance. He's a lone wolf-type, but knows that he has the devoted backing of the pack anyway. Johnny has fashioned the gang as a tribe and a place to call home for those who can't locate it elsewhere, and is open about how his fellow bikers need Benny — and how he does as well — to look up to. The Bikeriders streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Austin Butler. Twisters A cinema plays a key part in Twisters. Frankenstein flickers across its screen, but mother nature proves not only more of a monster, but also an audience member worse than folks who can't manage to spend two hours in a darkened room without their phones. There's a knowing air to featuring a picture palace in this disaster-flick sequel from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung and The Boys in the Boat screenwriter Mark L Smith, reminding viewers how deeply this genre and this format are linked. Almost three decades ago, as co-penned by Michael Crichton fresh off Jurassic Park's mammoth success, 1996's Twister packed movie theatres worldwide to the tune of nearly half-a-billion dollars, doing so with a spectacle. No matter if its sequel reaches the same heights at the box office globally, it too delivers better-on-the-big-screen sights, chief among them Chung and cinematographer Dan Mindel's (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker) naturalistic imagery. For those unaware going in that the filmmaker behind six-time Oscar contender Minari — a helmer who received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for his gorgeous and heartfelt work, in fact — is also steering Twisters, it isn't hard to guess from its look, including in its opening moments alone. The movie begins with storm chasers doing what they enthusiastically do. It also kicks off with a horror turn of events thanks to a tornado that exceeds their expectations, and with the crew's survivors afterwards struggling with trauma that'll later drive them forward. In these scenes and beyond, this isn't a picture of visual gloss and sheen, as witnessed right down to its lighting. Twisters remains polished, of course. It also can't tell its tale without CGI. But a choice as pivotal as valuing a genuine aesthetic tone over a gleaming one has a massive impact. Twisters streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos and Lee Isaac Chung. Inside Out 2 They're basic: joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger, that is, the five emotions that swirled inside human heads in Pixar's 2015 hit Inside Out. In nine-years-later follow-up Inside Out 2, that quintet of feelings isn't enough to cope with being a teenager, which is where anxiety, envy, ennui and embarrassment come in. The newcomers arrive with the onset of puberty, literally overnight. They have no time for simple happiness; they've levelled up some of the emotions adjacent to sorrow, fright, dismay and fury, too. Although its now 13-year-old protagonist Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman, Summer Camp) isn't actively choosing how to manage her feelings because her feelings themselves are doing that for her, Inside Out was always an all-ages ode to mindfulness, as is its sequel — and discovering how to accept and acknowledge apprehension, unease and nerves is here, like in life, a complicated balancing act. In the Inside Out world, feelings are characters, led in Riley's noggin by the radiant Joy — who, with Amy Poehler (Moxie) shining with Leslie Knope-esque positivity in the voice-acting part, is one of Pixar's best-ever cast figures. In an ideal inner world, they all get along. But workplace comedy-style, getting viewers thinking about Parks and Recreation again, that's never the case. Joy, Sadness (Phyllis Smith, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar), Fear (Tony Hale, Quiz Lady), Disgust (Liza Lapira, The Equalizer) and Anger (Lewis Black, The Last Laugh) have their routine down pat when Inside Out 2 kicks off. They can handle everything from high-stakes hockey games, complete with a stint in the sin bin, through to learning that Riley's best friends Grace (Grace Lu, Fight Krewe) and Bree (debutant Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) will be going to a different high school. Then their status quo is upended by the Inside Out equivalent of new colleagues storming in. Inside Out 2 streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. A Quiet Place: Day One There seems little that could be utopian about an alien invasion film where people are picked off by hulking, spider-limbed, lightning-fast, armour-clad creatures who punish every sound with almost-instant death, but prequel A Quiet Place: Day One makes the opening status quo of horror franchise-starter A Quiet Place look positively idyllic. If you're forced to try to survive an extra-terrestrial attack, where better to be than at your well-appointed farmland home with your family, as the John Krasinski (IF)-helmed and -starring 2018 feature depicted? Most folks, including the third movie in the saga's protagonist Samira (Lupita Nyong'o, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), a terminal cancer patient with just a service cat called Frodo left as kin, can only dream of being that lucky — not that there's much time for fantasising about a better way to be conquered by otherworldly monsters when what looks like meteors start crashing down to earth. Samira is in hospice care as the A Quiet Place big-screen series, which also spans 2021 release A Quiet Place Part II, steps back to the moment that its apocalyptic scenario begins in New York. She hugs her black-and-white feline companion like letting go would untether her from life even before existence as the planet knows it changes forever — when she's sharing surly poems among other patients, being convinced to attend a group excursion to see a marionette show and, when the promise of pizza on the way home is nixed, telling kindly nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff, Oppenheimer) that he's not actually her friend. Written and directed by Pig filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, A Quiet Place: Day One explores the ground-zero experience for someone who feels so alone in this world and connected only to her devoted pet, and also answers a question: how do those on more than two feet react when the worst that humans can imagine occurs? A Quiet Place: Day One streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. In a Violent Nature Again and again, fans of slasher films have seen the one about the unhinged murderer butchering teen victims. They've seen more than one, in fact. It's a horror convention: take a bunch of young adults, then dispense with them person by person as a killer works through childhood trauma. Penning and helming his first feature — his short Z Is for Zygote was included in The ABCs of Death 2, and he did special effects work on Psycho Goreman, too — writer/director Chris Nash knows the basics of his chosen genre as much as any other diehard viewer. He's just as aware of the great, and greatly influential, flicks gone by such as Halloween and Friday the 13th. He's well-versed in their tropes in storytelling and in form alike. Making his full-length debut with a picture called In a Violent Nature, he's also clued up on what happens when someone sinister gets a-stalking in scenic surroundings. Plot-wise, Nash isn't trying to break the mould with his account of Johnny (Ry Barrett, Massacre at Femur Creek) and the folks who are unlucky enough to fall across his path. But the filmmaker asks a question: what if a rampaging slaughterer's terrors came not with a score heralding their every menacing move (even when those tunes can become iconic, as John Carpenter's Halloween music has), but with the ordinary silence of everyday life in nature punctuated only by noises just as commonplace, and then by the sounds of a killer at their insidious worst? In its imagery, In a Violent Nature adds another query: what if the audience wasn't biding its time with those likely to perish, tension dripping from not knowing when and where the murderer would strike, but was stuck at the side of the force causing such gruesome mayhem as the inevitable approaches? There's seldom any escape from a slasher; however, Nash finds a new way to take that idea literally. In a Violent Nature streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Promised Land The transfixing terrain of Mads Mikkelsen's face has been cast against formidably frosty and inhospitable climes before, weathering mirroring weathering. Sporting a piercing and determined glint in his eye, the Danish acting great has previously surveyed the Scandinavian landscape, too, seeing possibility where others spot peril. It was true in Arctic, in Valhalla Rising and now in The Promised Land: there's no stare as mesmerisingly resolute as his. When Ludvig Kahlen, Mikkelsen's latest character, insists that he can do what no one else has done — to begin with: settling the heath on the heather-covered Jutland moorland and building a colony for the king, a feat considered virtually impossible in the mid-18th century — doubting him isn't a possibility for anyone in the movie's audience. The BAFTA-nominated Another Round star has danced in historical drama territory for his countryman director Nikolaj Arcel in the past as well, with the pair reteaming after 2012's Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair. A different king sits on the throne in this film, Frederick V instead of Christian VII; however, the regal shadow remains inescapable. This time, Mikkelsen and Arcel tell not of a doctor influencing a monarch and a country, but of a soldier aligning his quest for a better future with a sovereign's wish, and learning what it means to chase a dream only to realise that you need something less tangible. Kahlen's attempt to farm land considered barren is equally a battle against entitlement and arrogance thanks to his clash with Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg, Borgen), a cruel local magistrate who contends that the king's land is his own — and feels far enough away from Copenhagen for there not to be any consequences for his claim. The Promised Land streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Taste of Things Cooking is an act of precision. It's also one of feeling. On the movie that nabbed him the Best Director award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Trần Anh Hùng (Éternité, Norwegian Wood) helms with the same care, spirit and emotion that his characters display in the kitchen. The Taste of Things' audience has a front-row seat to both, as this 1885-set French picture begins with dishes upon dishes being whipped up and the feature's gaze, via cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (Final Cut), lenses their creation intimately and sumptuously. The film's extraordinary opening 30 minutes-plus, as the camera is trained on the stove and counter with slight detours around the room to collect or wash ingredients, is meticulously crafted and at the same time instinctual. Think: the sensations of observing the finest of fine-dining chefs and being a child watching your grandmother make culinary magic, as nearly every kid has, all rolled into one appetising introductory sequence. In the home of gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel, The King of Algiers), and in its heart, his personal chef Eugénie (Juliette Binoche, The New Look) is so skilled and fastidious that she'd do small-screen hit The Bear proud; she's clearly a conjurer of the culinary arts, too. Hùng and Ricquebourg — the latter a well-deserving Lumiere Award-winner for his efforts here — are methodical with the choreography of setting the scene, while equally deeply immersed in the flow of the kitchen's tasks. As soundtracked by chirping birds, if this was The Taste of Things for 135 minutes and not just half an hour-ish, it'd remain a mesmerising movie. (A word of warning: eat before viewing, lest hunger pangs not just simmer but boil over.) Adapting 1924 novel The Passionate Epicure: La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet by epicure Marcel Rouff as he scripts and directs, Hùng does more than fashion among the most-handsomely staged and shot imagery of a meal coming to life, but his approach to this entrée establishes the flavour. The Taste of Things streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January, February, March, April, May, June and July 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2024's 15 best films, 15 best new TV shows, 15 best returning TV shows and 15 best straight-to-streaming movies from the first half of the year. Also, here's 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows as well.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from July's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now Fake A drive to the airport in a rideshare is one of life's mundane experiences, whether or not you're en route to a wedding, and also regardless of if you're meant to be collecting your partner and their dry-cleaned suit along the way. In Fake, this routine journey on an average Melbourne day is a masterclass in tension, a portrait of an unravelling and an unwanted realisation unfurling with no escape. With journalist Birdie Bell (Asher Keddie, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) sitting in the backseat as much that she's trusted melts down, it's a stunning episode of television, arriving five instalments into this eight-part Australian thriller that tells a page-to-screen and reality-to-fiction tale. Viewers spend the preceding four episodes of Fake waiting for a moment like this. For those who haven't read Stephanie Wood's memoir of the same name, charting her time dating a former architect-turned-grazier who pairs his grand romantic gestures with erratic behaviour, there's still no doubt that it's coming. It has to, and not just because series creator Anya Beyersdorf (The Twelve) and her co-scribes Jessica Tuckwell (Year Of) and Hyun Lee (Born to Spy) have Birdie's beau Joe Burt (David Wenham, Elvis) note in voiceover that she was onto him from the get-go. While Fake is a love- and lies-fuelled saga, it's also about how someone gets taken in not by the kind of narratives that Joe spins but by the emotions that they prey upon, even when their intuition tingles at the outset — and how deceptions like this, from someone manipulating others and someone fooling themselves alike, always shatter. The words "Joe, 51, grazier" on a dating app introduce the ex-property big shot to Birdie; however, everything that he utters on their first date almost halts their romance there. When the pair meet at a sleek bar, he has a business acquaintance (Yuchen Wang, White Fever) in tow and talks only of himself, grandstanding with the recognisable arrogance of someone who refuses to believe (or simply hasn't stopped once to consider) that they aren't the most-interesting person in the room. She cuts and leaves quickly, despite his insistence to the waitstaff that they'll share more wine. Then she ignores his persistent follow-ups afterwards, until she doesn't — but really should've. Fake streams via Paramount+. Read our full review. The Devil's Bath Suspense and tension, how to cultivate such a strong atmosphere of unease that it feels as if it drips from the screen, the darker side of human nature, sheer existential exasperation: writer/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala know these things. The Austrian filmmakers are just as well-aware of how to make movies that crawl under your skin as much as distress does with their characters. For that sensation at its very best, see: Goodnight Mommy, their Oscar-submitted 2014 debut (which was then remade in America in 2022). The Devil's Bath earns the same description, too. The duo's first feature since 2019's Riley Keough (Under the Bridge)-starring English-language horror flick The Lodge, it needles deep as it follows new bride Agnes (Anja Plaschg, Axolotl Overkill), who is thrilled to be starting her married life to Wolf (David Scheig, Heribet), even if that joy doesn't seem completely reciprocated. Relationship disharmony bubbles at the heart of this 18th century-set film, but that's not the only force bearing down on a woman that no longer has any agency — and, soon, little hope left simmering as well. Franz and Fiala begin The Devil's Bath with a different scene of domestic struggle. They haunt their viewers from the outset, too. First up, a woman throws a baby over a waterfall, then turns herself in for punishment, knowing that she'll meet her end via decapitation. With that scene as a prologue, it hardly appears strange that Agnes is thrilled to receive a severed finger as a wedding gift — a digit that's meant to bring luck for starting a family. But nothing in the way of good fortunes spring when she's soon away from her other loved ones, left alone in a woodland cottage as Wolf works by day, stuck navigating his disinterest in the bedroom each evening and frowned upon constantly by her new mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter, Andrea Gets a Divorce). There's history to Franz and Fiala's screenplay, which draws upon real events, and the mood of despair that seeps from returning Goodnight Mommy cinematographer Martin Gschlacht's grey-toned frames sports a can-only-be-true bite to it. There's little sunshine shed on the imagery, or on the way that people treat each other — and there's even more terror in realising that the lines between this arresting picture's vision of the past, even as set within a deeply superstitious and puritanical community, and today are far from faint. The Devil's Bath streams via Shudder and AMC+. The Imaginary Since Studio Ponoc made its feature debut in 2017 with Mary and the Witch's Flower, a question has remained: when is its next film coming? That query was answered in 2023 in Japan, and has now arrived in 2024 on streaming — and The Imaginary is a delight worth the wait. If you didn't know when sitting down to either of the company's movies that they hailed from an animation house founded by a Studio Ghibli alum, you'd guess while watching. A producer on The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and When Marnie Was There — and also The Boy and the Heron since — Yoshiaki Nishimura scripted Studio Ponoc's second picture, too. His source material is the AF Harrold-penned, Emily Gravett-illustrated British children's book that gives The Imaginary its name, just as Mary and the Witch's Flower found its story on the page as well. Prepare to be enchanted, even as viewers beyond the film's homeland get their third flick this year about imaginary friends. Not just Blumhouse horror movie Imaginary but the John Krasinski (A Quiet Place Part II)-directed IF have nothing on this, though, despite sharing more than a few plot details. This'll sound familiar, then: imaginary friends exist, but can't always be seen as children grow up and forget about their buddies. When they're no longer a kid's best friend, they dwell in their own space, eager to have a flesh-and-blood pal again. So discovers Rudger (Kokoro Terada, Tokyo Poltergeist), companion to Amanda (Rio Suzuki, Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!!). He's been dreamed up, she's human, and they spend every moment of her spare time in the attic above her home — which is itself above her widowed mother's (Sakura Andô, Godzilla Minus One) closing-down bookshop — going everywhere that she can conjure up. Alas, thanks to the sinister Mr Bunting (Issei Ogata, Kotaro Lives Alone), the one exception to spying imaginaries as an adult, they're torn from each other's side. Bringing Nishimura's screenplay to life with vivid and gorgeous hand-drawn visuals, director Yoshiyuki Momose's (Ni no Kuni) feature doesn't just cast aside the other recent pictures that served up spins on a similar situation. He does that as well, of course, but also achieves what Japanese animation manages so splendidly and consistently: dives into the fantastical with a wellspring of genuine emotions. The Imaginary streams via Netflix. Omnivore What does it take to get a world-famous chef out of their kitchen? Every time that a new culinary series reaches the screen, that should be the audience's question. Why has someone so skilled in the art of cooking — a talent that they've meticulously and passionately honed for years, to great success and also to the immense benefit of grateful diners — stepped out of their favourite place and in front of the camera? In plenty of such instances, chefs remain chefs on-screen. They talk. They cook. They give viewers the lowdown on how to prepare their dishes at home. Getting René Redzepi out of Noma and onto streaming wasn't about following that well-thumbed recipe, however. Rather, in the David Attenborough- and Planet Earth-inspired Omnivore, he branches beyond the three-Michelin-starred Copenhagen eatery that's been voted the planet's best by The World's 50 Best Restaurants a whopping five times — from 2010–12, and also in 2014 and 2021 — to instead tell the tale of some of the staple ingredients that humanity wouldn't and couldn't exist without. Eight types of foodstuffs receive Omnivore's attention in its first season, starting with chilli, then moving onto tuna, salt, bananas, pigs, rice, coffee and corn. A certainty while watching, and listening to Redzepi narrate the journey: never thinking about any of these ingredients the same way again. Expect to yearn to taste different spicy meals, to visit Japan's tuna markets, to cook with the best of the best salt and to try kinds of bananas that you didn't previously know existed. Expect to gain a greater appreciation of the entire ecosystem that gets each one of the show's chosen foods to your plate — and the impact of the world's ecosystem upon them, and vice versa. Alongside Redzepi and Anthony Bourdain: Explore Parts Unknown alum Matt Goulding, filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die, Beasts of No Nation, True Detective season one) is one of Omnivore's driving forces, and it shows visually. Also evident: the care and dedication that Redzepi has put into sharing the series' slices of life, including the intimate portraits of those involved in the production of everything from pork products to corn's many edible uses. Omnivore streams via Apple TV+. Read our interview with René Redzepi and Ben Liebmann. Abbott Elementary The Parks and Recreation comparisons were there from the start with Abbott Elementary. This Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning comedy charts the hustle and bustle at the titular underfunded school in Philadelphia, rather than a government department in Pawnee, but the similarities have always been glaring. Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson, Miracle Workers) is the eager-beaver second-grade teacher keen to do everything she can for her students. Ava Coleman (Janelle James, Monsters at Work) is the principal content with coasting by on the bare minimum. There's even a newcomer in substitute Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams, The United States vs Billie Holiday), with whom sparks fly on Janine's part. It might seem a bold move to use one of the greatest-ever — warmest-ever, too — sitcoms as a template, or even just follow closely in its footsteps, but Abbott Elementary is up to the task. Those awards, which Parks and Recreation also deserved but rarely received, are well-earned by a series that is all heart, kindness and affection for one of the most-important careers there is, as well as appreciation for the obstacles facing US public-school teachers today. In its third season, Abbott Elementary knows that even a winning formula that's been proven elsewhere needs shaking up. So, it does the equivalent of Parks and Recreation sending Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler, Inside Out 2) to Washington by having Janine work for the school district to attempt to bring about change for her pupils at a higher level. It's a move that brings in the always-welcome Josh Segarra (The Big Door Prize) as her new boss, and also Keegan-Michael Key (IF) as the Superintendent that's his boss — and disrupts the status quo at the educational institution that she adores, including for her idol Barbara Howard (Sheryl Lee Ralph, Ray Donovan), plus colleagues Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter, The Right Mom) and Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti, Sound of Metal). The idea that one person can and does make a difference, no matter the recognition they do or don't receive, beats strongly in this good-natured series, which Brunson created and co-writes. So does a sense of humour about grappling with whatever the day throws your way, be it professional or personal chaos. Abbott Elementary streams via Disney+. Arcadian Filmmakers love imagining the world once life as we currently know it ceases to be. Even if some scenarios no longer play like hypotheticals — anything about pandemics, obviously, a realm that Contagion perfected with prophetic skill years in advance of COVID-19 — post-apocalyptic stories help us sift through the what ifs that plague our worst nightmares about humanity's possible unravelling. Accordingly, Arcadian doesn't unfurl a unique scenario, as a family endeavours to endure 15 years after the bulk of civilisation has been eradicated. But as it fill its duration with a father and his teenage boys as they eke out as happy a life as anyone can under such circumstances, or attempt to, all while needing to avoid monsters that strike by night and fear the light, this film has a few key components that make it stand out. Director Benjamin Brewer (The Trust) taunts his characters with foes that prove a striking feat of creature design, instantly carving their own place apart from the hordes of prior movie monsters. Also, the patriarch doing whatever it takes to protect his sons is played the one and only Nicolas Cage, who continues to hop between vastly dissimilar roles in the same month in Australia that's also delivered Longlegs to cinemas. Cage's Paul could be pals with John Krasinski's Lee from A Quiet Place, although he's parenting solo in Arcadian. Giving his kids as normal a routine as one can in the circumstances is his aim. The script by producer Mike Nilon (Braven) also gives him offspring curious about their reality, and insistent critters who aren't going to leave anyone alone. While there's a little convenience to parts of the plot, Cage, plus Jaeden Martell (Barry) and Maxwell Jenkins (Dear Edward) as Paul's sons Joseph and Thomas — and also Sadie Soverall (Saltburn) as a survivor from a nearby farm that isn't fond of outsiders — all give weighty performances that convey the emotional toll of fighting for every second and deeply realising that you'll never know if your next moment will be your last. And don't discount what affecting portrayals and unnerving beasts can do when combined. It isn't easy to craft creatures that not just startle but surprise as much as Arcadian's do. Trust Cage's latest genre effort, which also brings his work in Mandy, Color Out of Space and Pig to mind, to achieve that feat. Arcadian streams via Stan. Skywalkers: A Love Story When it comes to scaling great heights on-screen, viewers often fall into two camps if they're not real-life daredevils themselves. Some appreciate the spectacular sights and stunning feats safe in the knowledge that all that they're viewing is filmed footage, even in a documentary. Some still feel the need to virtually peer through their fingers, riding the same nerve-shredding fear that'd rush over them if they were confronted with the scene IRL. Whichever is your go-to, expect one of those reactions to arise while sitting down to Skywalkers: A Love Story. The movie played Sydney Film Festival 2024 in IMAX, but seeing it on a small screen doesn't rob it of its visual impact. Russian couple Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau are rooftoppers, starting out solo, first joining forces when he asked her to collaborate on a sponsored trip, then climbing higher and higher around the world — and the recordings of their gravity-defying ascents up buildings, along sky-high ledges, onto cranes on towering building sites and wherever else they can clamber up to is jaw-on-the-floor material for those who'd much rather remain on the ground. With 2018 documentary Momentum Generation about the era of surfers that Kelly Slater came up in, director Jeff Zimbalist unpacked an insular world for the masses with its main players as guides. Sharing the same credit with producer and first-time helmer Maria Bukhonina on Skywalkers: A Love Story, he takes the same approach with a different pastime. As a subtitle, A Love Story doesn't merely describe Beerkus and Nikolau's fixation with rooftopping, though, with Skywalkers laying bare their relationship from its beginning to the climb that threatens to send them on their separate ways: making it to the the tip of Merdeka 118, the Kuala Lumpur structure that reaches 678.9 metres into the heavens, ranking second on the world's largest skyscrapers list only to Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Nikolau doesn't just stand atop lofty properties, either, but busts out gymnastic and acrobatic poses, adding even more peril to their endeavours. Folks with a need to conquer such buildings aren't always worried about the legalities of their feats, making such a mission doubly tense — and giving this doco a heist-film feel as well. Beerkus and Nikolau smartly earmark the date of the 2022 World Cup final, when Argentina beat France on penalties, as their moment to go where no one had before on the just-built structure. Watching the outcome is nail-bitingly riveting. Skywalkers: A Love Story streams via Netflix. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Sunny It doesn't matter what the weather holds for Suzie Sakamoto: with her husband and son missing when Sunny begins, the series' titular term can't apply to her days. An American in Kyoto (Rashida Jones, Silo), she's filled with grief over the potential loss of her Japanese family, anxiously awaiting any news that her spouse Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Drive My Car) and their boy Zen (debutant Fares Belkheir) might've survived a plane crash. She'd prefer to do nothing except sit at home in case word comes; however, that's not considered to be mourning in the right way according to custom and also isn't appeasing her mother-in-law (Judy Ongg, Kaseifu no Mitazono). When Suzie soon has a robot for company — a homebot, an artificial-intelligence domestic helper that's an unexpected gift from Masa in this ten-part series, which adapts Colin O'Sullivan's 2018 novel The Dark Manual for the small screen — dwelling in her sorrow doesn't appear to be what he'd want in his absence, either. In this near-future vision of Japan, homebots are everywhere, aiding their humans with chores, organising tasks and plenty more — everywhere other than the Sakamoto house with its firmly anti-robot perspective, that is. Amid asking why her husband has not only sent the eponymous Sunny her way, but also why it's customised specifically to her, questions unsurprisingly spring about his true line of work. Has Suzie been married to a secret roboticist, rather than someone who designs refrigerators? What link does his job have with his disappearance? How does someone cope in such an already-traumatic situation when the person that they're possibly grieving mightn't be who they've said they are? Often with a science fiction twist, Apple TV+ can't get enough of mysteries. That truth is as engrained as the service's fondness for big-name talent, including across Severance, The Big Door Prize, Hello Tomorrow!, Silo, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Constellation, Sugar and Dark Matter. Thankfully, there's no content-factory feel to this lineup of shows. Sunny's closest equivalent hails from beyond the brand, bringing Charlie Brooker's Channel 4-started, now Netflix-made Black Mirror to mind, but even then it's far more interested in its characters than their relationship to technology. That said, that people and how they use tech remain the real enemy, not gadgets and advancements themselves, hums at the core of both series. Sunny streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. Futurama Good news, everyone — yet again. Futurama keeps returning, following an initial 1999–2003 run, then another from 2008–13, with a new comeback that began in 2023 and has not just this 2024 season locked in but also two more in years to come. Across the quarter of a century so far that Matt Groening's iconic show that's not The Simpsons has been on and off the air, much has changed about life off-screen. As a result, the details that it can project onto 31st-century existence have evolved as well. Squid Game parodies and NFTs would've made zero sense during the animated comedy's past stints, for instance. But whether satirising Y2K or chatbots, Futurama has almost felt adrift from time, blowing its own TV bubble to spoof the specifics of the day in its far-flung setting while consistently retaining the same vibe. Watch an early 00s-era episode, then one from the new batch, and it seems like nothing has passed between them. That's a skill that deserves all of the appreciation. For many other series, including ones that've existed for a far shorter duration, it's the stuff that dreams are made of — and, if he were real, that only someone like Professor Hubert J Farnsworth (Billy West, Spitting Image) could've managed. Futurama's longevity is a testament to its smart writing, sharp sense of humour and a setup that can keep pinballing in all directions. Where former 20th-century pizza delivery guy Philip J Fry (also voiced by West) can venture with the Professor and the crew of the latter's Planet Express cargo company — so, also with ship captain Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal, Dead to Me); robot Bender Bending Rodríguez (John DiMaggio, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts); and fellow employees Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr, Craig of the Creek), Amy Wong (Lauren Tom, Dragons: The Nine Realms) and Zoidberg (also West agin) — is limited only by Groening, fellow guiding hand David X Cohen (Disenchantment) and their team's imaginations. In the latest episodes, sometimes art heists come their way. Sometimes book clubs beckon. Bender's ancestry and the Martian equivalent of bullfighting all pop up, too. Layered in each is a mile-a-minute feast of jokes and a reflection of humanity's chaos today through a highly fictitious future. Long may it continue. Futurama streams via Disney+. Time Bandits If you're a history-loving kid who adores learning about existence before you popped into the world, doesn't fit in at home or at school thanks to that fascination, and regularly has your nose buried in a book, what's your ultimate fantasy? Time Bandits first explored that idea back in 1981, and now it's back to do it again in 2024. It takes bravery to go where Monty Python members Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin first did, remaking the pair's beloved movie — which The Man Who Killed Don Quixote's Gilliam directed and The New Incomplete and Utter History of Everything's Palin co-wrote with him — decades later. Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris are three such courageous folks. Together, the trio add a television take on the family-friendly flick to TV resumes that already include Wellington Paranormal, What We Do in the Shadows, Reservation Dogs, Our Flag Means Death, Flight of the Conchords and The Inbetweeners, and do so while giving audiences a gloriously entertaining time. Forget wondering if this second spin was necessary, aka the usual line of thinking when anything earns a new look; instead, the question is why didn't it happen earlier? Again, the focus is a boy called Kevin (Kal-El Tuck, Andy and the Band). Again, his parents (Wakefield's Felicity Ward and Deadpool & Wolverine's James Dryden) don't appreciate him or his interests. And again, the past demands even more of his attention when it suddenly and unexpectedly bursts out of his wardrobe. Cue zipping between different chapters of times gone by, via a scenario that the Bill & Ted franchise clearly owes a debt to, with the eponymous group (Better Nate Than Ever's Lisa Kudrow, Shardlake's Tadhg Murphy, You Don't Know Me's Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, The Riot's Rune Temte and Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities' Charlyne Yi) reluctantly taking Kevin in. Waititi (Next Goal Wins) directs a few episodes, too, and appears on-screen. Clement (Avatar: The Way of Water) also does the latter. They're having a ball both in front of and behind the lens, a sense of fun that infuses every episode whether it's taking a trip to Troy, making a visit to the Mayans or dwelling in medieval times. Cue spotting more familiar faces along the way, such as Waititi regular Rachel House (Heartbreak High), Wellington Paranormal's Mike Minogue and Karen O'Leary, Next Goal Wins' Oscar Kightley, the What We Do in the Shadows movie's Jonny Brugh, Our Flag Means Death's Con O'Neill, plus Shaun Micallef (Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe) and Ross Noble. Time Bandits streams via Apple TV+. Recent Big-Screen Gems to Watch (or Rewatch) Now That They're Streaming Perfect Days When Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day' enjoyed its initial sublime movie moment in Trainspotting, it soundtracked a descent into heroin's depths, including literally via the film's visual choices. For three decades since, that's been the tune's definitive on-screen use. Now drifts in Perfect Days, the Oscar-nominated Japan-set drama from German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Submergence). This slice-of-life movie takes its name from the song. It also places the iconic David Bowie-produced classic among the tracks listened to by toilet cleaner Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho, Vivant) as he goes about his daily routine. Fond of 60s- and 70s-era music, the Tokyo native's picks say everything about his mindset, both day by day and in his zen approach to his modest existence. 'Perfect Day' and Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' each also sum up the feeling of watching this gorgeous ode to making the most of what you have, seeing beauty in the everyday and being in the moment. Not every tune that Hirayama pops into his van's tape deck — cassettes are still his format of choice — has the same type of title. Patti Smith's 'Redondo Beach', The Animals' 'The House of the Rising Sun', Otis Redding's '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay' and The Rolling Stones' '(Walkin' Thru the) Sleepy City' also rank among his go-tos, all reflecting his mood in their own ways. If there's a wistfulness to Hirayama's music selections, it's in the manner that comes over all of us when we hark back to something that we first loved when we were younger. Perfect Days' protagonist is at peace with his life, however. Subtly layered into the film is the idea that things were once far different and more-conventionally successful, but Hirayama wasn't as content as he now is doing the rounds of the Japanese capital's public bathrooms, blasting his favourite songs between stops, eating lunch in a leafy park and photographing trees with an analogue camera. Perfect Days streams via Stan. Read our full review. Love Lies Bleeding In Love Lies Bleeding, a craggy ravine just outside a dusty New Mexico town beckons, ready to swallow sordid secrets in the dark of the desert's starry night. Tumbling into it, a car explodes in flames partway through the movie, exactly as the person pushing it in wants it to. There's the experience of watching Rose Glass' sophomore film emblazoned across the feature's very frames. After the expertly unsettling Saint Maud, the British writer/director returns with a second psychological horror, this time starring Kristen Stewart in the latest of her exceptionally chosen post-Twilight roles (see: Crimes of the Future, Spencer, Happiest Season, Lizzie, Personal Shopper, Certain Women and Clouds of Sils Maria). An 80s-set queer and sensual tale of love, lust, blood and violence, Love Lies Bleeding is as inkily alluring as the gorge that's pivotal to its plot, and as fiery as the inferno that swells from the canyon's depths. This neon-lit, synth-scored neo-noir thriller scorches, too — and burns so brightly that there's no escaping its glow. When the words "you have to see it to believe it" also grace Love Lies Bleeding — diving into gyms and in the bodybuilding world, it's no stranger to motivational statements such as "no pain no gain", "destiny is a decision" and "the body achieves what the mind believes" — they help sum up this wild cinematic ride as well. Glass co-scripts here with Weronika Tofilska (they each previously penned and helmed segments of 2015's A Moment in Horror), but her features feel like the result of specific, singular and searing visions that aren't afraid to swerve and veer boldly and committedly to weave their stories and leave an imprint. Accordingly, Love Lies Bleeding is indeed a romance, a crime flick and a revenge quest. It's about lovers on the run (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's Katy O'Brian pairs with Stewart) and intergenerational griminess. It rages against the machine. It's erotic, a road trip and unashamedly pulpy. It also takes the concept of strong female leads to a place that nothing else has, and you do need to witness it to fathom it. Love Lies Bleeding streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Rose Glass. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May and June this year — and our best 15 new TV shows, returning TV shows and straight-to-streaming films of 2024's first six months. There's also our highlights from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. And, you can also scope out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer. Top image: Apple TV+.
Not every film that wins an Oscar, earns a nomination for Hollywood's night of nights or gets selected by its country to go in the running for the coveted accolades makes it to cinemas Down Under beyond festivals. A movie can have international fests buzzing as well, yet still bypass a big-screen release in Australia. That's the fate for plenty of features; however, gone are the days when skipping a date with picture palaces was a sign of a bad movie. The streaming era means that a new flick is always dropping on one of the many platforms that are available to Aussie audiences. While they can't all be excellent, that's no different to what does make it to the silver screen. The gems that go straight to home viewing are up there with the gems that do get the movie-theatre treatment — as the highlights from January–June 2024 make clear. There are indeed Academy Award-winners on this list, as well as nominees. Films that'll compete next year, festival favourites, movies with big-name stars or from high-profile directors: they all feature as well. If you haven't caught them on the couch already alongside fellow straight-to-streaming standouts from 2024's first six months, take this as your motivation, whether you're after shattering documentaries, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction comedies, affecting dramas, gorgeous animation or plenty of horror. 20 Days in Mariupol Incompatible with life. No one should ever want to hear those three devastating words. No one who is told one of the most distressing phrases there is ever has them uttered their way in positive circumstances, either. Accordingly, when they're spoken by a doctor in 2024 Oscar-winner 20 Days in Mariupol, they're deeply shattering. So is everything in this on-the-ground portrait of the first 20 days in the Ukrainian port city as Russia began its invasion, with the bleak reality of living in a war zone documented in harrowing detail. Located less than 60 kilometres from the border, Mariupol quickly segues from ordinary life to an apocalyptic scene — and this film refuses to look away. Much of its time is spent in and around hospitals, which see an influx of patients injured and killed by the combat, and also become targets as well. Many of in 20 Days in Mariupol's faces are the afflicted, the medics tending to them in horrendous circumstances, and the loves ones that are understandably inconsolable. Too many of the carnage's victims are children and babies, with their parents crushed and heartbroken in the aftermath; sometimes, they're pregnant women. Directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, and narrated by him with the grimness and soberness that can be this movie's only tone, 20 Days in Mariupol even existing is an achievement. What it depicts — what it immerses viewers in with urgency, from shelled hospitals, basements-turned-bomb shelters and more of the city destroyed day after day to families torn apart, looting, struggling to find food and bodies of the dead taken to mass graves — needs to be viewed as widely as possible, and constantly. His footage has also featured in news reports, but it can and must never be forgotten. Doctors mid-surgery demand that Chernov's camera is pointed their way, and that he shows the world the travesties taking place. The Ukrainian reporter, who has also covered Donbas, flight MH17, Syria and the Battle of Mosul for the Associated Press, does exactly that. He's doing more than ensuring that everyone bears witness, though; he makes certain that there's no way to watch 20 Days in Mariupol, which shows the vast civilian impact and casualties, and see anything but ordinary people suffering, or to feel anything other than shock, anger and horror. 20 Days in Mariupol streams via DocPlay. Society of the Snow It was meant to be a fun trip to Chile with friends and family for a game. When the Old Christians Club rugby union team boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in Montevideo on October 13, 1972, destination Santiago, no one among them knew what would happen next. The plane didn't make it to its destination, as 1976 Mexican film Survive!, 1993 American movie Alive and now Spanish-US co-production Society of the Snow each cover. All three features boast apt titles, but only the latest sums up the grim reality and existential dilemma of crashing in the Andes, being stranded for 72 days in snowy climes with little resources against the weather — or for sustenance — and attempting to endure. Taken from the memoir by Pablo Vierci, aka La sociedad de la nieve in Spanish, only this phrase adorning JA Bayona's (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) picture encapsulates the tremendous effort that it took to find a way to persist, as well as the fact that trying to remain alive long enough to be rescued meant adapting everything about how the survivors approached each second, minute, hour, day, week and month — and also links in with how a catastrophe like this banded them together, doing whatever it took to find a way off the mountains, while reshaping how they contemplated what it meant to be human. Society of the Snow isn't just a disaster film detailing the specifics of the flight's failed trip, the immediate deaths and those that came afterwards, the lengthy wait to be found — including after authorities called the search off — and the crushing decisions made to get through. Bayona, who also helmed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami-focused The Impossible, has made a weighty feature that reckons with the emotional, psychological and spiritual toll, and doesn't think of shying away from the most difficult aspects of this real-life situation (including cannibalism). This is both gruelling and meaningful viewing, as crafted with technical mastery (especially by Don't Breathe 2 cinematographer Pedro Luque, plus Cinco lobitos' Andrés Gil and Cites' Jaume Martí as editors), built upon brutal candour, and paying tribute to resilience and then some. Its feats extend to its hauntingly acted performances from a cast that includes Enzo Vogrincic (El Presidente), Agustín Pardella (Secrets of Summer) and Matías Recalt (Planners), all contributing to an account of camaraderie and sacrifice that deserves its Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination. Society of the Snow streams via Netflix. The Devil's Bath Suspense and tension, how to cultivate such a strong atmosphere of unease that it feels as if it drips from the screen, the darker side of human nature, sheer existential exasperation: writer/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala know these things. The Austrian filmmakers are just as well-aware of how to make movies that crawl under your skin as much as distress does with their characters. For that sensation at its very best, see: Goodnight Mommy, their Oscar-submitted 2014 debut (which was then remade in America in 2022). The Devil's Bath earns the same description, too. The duo's first feature since 2019's Riley Keough (Under the Bridge)-starring English-language horror flick The Lodge, it needles deep as it follows new bride Agnes (Anja Plaschg, Axolotl Overkill), who is thrilled to be starting her married life to Wolf (David Scheig, Heribet), even if that joy doesn't seem completely reciprocated. Relationship disharmony bubbles at the heart of this 18th century-set film, but that's not the only force bearing down on a woman that no longer has any agency — and, soon, little hope left simmering as well. Franz and Fiala begin The Devil's Bath with a different scene of domestic struggle. They haunt their viewers from the outset, too. First up, a woman throws a baby over a waterfall, then turns herself in for punishment, knowing that she'll meet her end via decapitation. With that scene as a prologue, it hardly appears strange that Agnes is thrilled to receive a severed finger as a wedding gift — a digit that's meant to bring luck for starting a family. But nothing in the way of good fortunes spring when she's soon away from her other loved ones, left alone in a woodland cottage as Wolf works by day, stuck navigating his disinterest in the bedroom each evening and frowned upon constantly by her new mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter, Andrea Gets a Divorce). There's history to Franz and Fiala's screenplay, which draws upon real events, and the mood of despair that seeps from returning Goodnight Mommy cinematographer Martin Gschlacht's grey-toned frames sports a can-only-be-true bite to it. There's little sunshine shed on the imagery, or on the way that people treat each other — and there's even more terror in realising that the lines between this arresting picture's vision of the past, even as set within a deeply superstitious and puritanical community, and today are far from faint. The Devil's Bath streams via Shudder and AMC+. Hit Man The feeling that Glen Powell should star in everything didn't start with Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You. Writer/director Richard Linklater (Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood) has helped the notion bubble up before as early back as 2006's Fast Food Nation, then with 2016's Everybody Wants Some!! — and now he riffs on it with Hit Man. When viewers want an actor to feature everywhere, they want to see them step into all sorts of shoes but bring their innate talents and charm each time. So, Linklater enlists Powell as Gary Johnson, a real-life University of New Orleans professor who wouldn't be earning the movie treatment if he didn't also moonlight as a undercover police operative with a specific remit: playing hitmen with folks looking to pay someone to commit murder, sting-style. Johnson doesn't just give the gig the one-size-fits-all approach, though. Once he gets confidence in the job, he's dedicated to affording every target their own personal vision of their dream assassin. So, Powell gets to be a polo shirt-wearing nice guy, a long-haired master criminal, a besuited all-business type and more, including the suave smooth-talker Ron, the persona he adopts when Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona, Andor) thinks about offing her odious husband. Hit Man is as a screwball rom-com-meets-sunlit film noir, and an excellent one, as well as a feature based on a situation so wild that it can only stem from fact. Alongside charting Gary's exploits in the position and the murkiness of falling for Madison as Ron, it's also an acceptance that the kind of darkness and desperation needed for a person to want to hire a stranger to kill to make their life better isn't a rarity — if it was, Gary's services wouldn't have been needed. Linklater has been in comparably blackly comic but also clear-eyed territory before with Bernie, the past entry on his resume that Hit Man best resembles. The also-ace 2011 Jack Black (Kung Fu Panda 4)-led picture similarly told a true tale, and also sprang from an article by journalist Skip Hollandsworth. This time, Linklater penned the script with Powell instead of Hollandsworth, but the result is another black-comedy delight brimming with insight. Hit Man is a movie about finding one's identity, too, and Powell keeps showing that he's found his: a charismatic lead who anchors one of the most-entertaining flicks of the year. Hit Man streams via Netflix. Frida For almost a century, the art-loving world has peered at Frida Kahlo. Her self-portraits have stared steadfastly back. You can glean much about a person from how they commit their own likeness to canvas; whether donning a velvet dress, reclining in a hospital bed, standing between curtains, sitting opposite herself, or accompanied by a black cat and a monkey, Kahlo was unflinching. Exhibitions have adored her work, whether she's taking centre stage in her paintings or not, for decades upon decades. Creatives in other mediums have shown the same affection, be it via books (1983's Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo), biopics (2002's Frida, with Black Mirror's Salma Hayek as the artist; before that, 1983's Frida Still Life), operas (as first hit the stage in 1991) or ballets (Broken Wings debuted in 2016). 2024's Frida brings Kahlo back to the screen with a new approach that she'd surely approve of: making her directorial debut with this portrait of the iconic Mexican painter, editor-turned-director Carla Gutierrez (who spliced fellow biodocs RBG and Julia) lets her subject speak for herself and her own complexity. Actor Fernanda Echevarría (Ella Camina Sola) actually does the talking, because the treasure trove of materials that Gutierrez has gained access to — illustrated diaries, essays and letters, photos and footage, plus interview transcripts by Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo's Hayden Herrera — doesn't include Kahlo's voice. But the impact remains: this is Kahlo as she saw herself and as she was herself, as she always fought to convey when she was living. Drawing upon Kahlo's art, Gutierrez also uses animation by Sofía Inés Cázares (Daughter From Another Mother) and Renata Galindo (A la mala) to accompany Kahlo narrating her childhood, her medical studies, her life-changing accident at the age of 18, her marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera, her other romantic liaisons, and her thoughts about all of the above and more. It's an inspired touch, and not just in breaking up the black-and-white archival visuals with dances of colour. Seven decades since her death in 1954, Kahlo still feels alive in her work, but the latest raw, rich and deeply resonant documentary to pay tribute to her finds its own way to express and honour that sensation. Frida streams via Prime Video. American Fiction Here's Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison's (Jeffrey Wright, Rustin) predicament when American Fiction begins: on the page, his talents aren't selling books. Praise comes the Los Angeles-based professor's way for his novels, but not sales, nor attendees when he's part of writers' festival panels. And even then, publishers aren't fond of his latest manuscript. Sick of hearing that his work isn't "Black enough", and also incensed over the attention that fellow scribe Sintara Golden (Issa Rae, Barbie) is receiving for her book We's Lives in Da Ghetto, he gets a-typing, pumping out the kind of text that he vehemently hates — but 100-percent fits the stereotype of what the world keeps telling him that Black literature should be. It attracts interest, even more so when Monk takes his agent Arthur's (John Ortiz, Better Things) advice and adopts a new persona to go with it. Soon fugitive convict Stagg R Leigh and his book Fuck are a huge hit that no one can get enough of. Because of the story spun around who wrote the bestseller, too, the FBI even wants to know the author's whereabouts. Deservedly nominated for five 2024 Oscars — including for Best Picture, Best Actor for Wright and Best Supporting Actor for Sterling K Brown (Biosphere) as Monk's brother Clifford — American Fiction itself hails from the page, with filmmaker Cord Jefferson adapting Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure. Wright is indeed exceptional in this savvy satire of authenticity, US race relations and class chasms, and earns his awards contention for his reactions alone. Seeing how Monk adjusts himself to a world that keeps proving anything but his dream is an utter acting masterclass, in big and small moments alike. As the film dives into the character's personal chaos, that's where Brown's also-fantastic, often-tender performance comes in, plus Leslie Uggams (Extrapolations) as Monk's mother and Tracee Ellis Ross (Candy Cane Lane) as his sister, and also Erika Alexander (Run the World) as a neighbour who is a fan of his — not just Stagg R Leigh's — work. Don't discount how excellent American Fiction is beyond its literary hoax setup, in fact; as a character study, it's equally astute. American Fiction streams via Prime Video. Fancy Dance Lily Gladstone might've won the Golden Globe but not the Oscar for Killers of the Flower Moon, but her exceptional resume shows every sign of more awards coming her way. Fancy Dance, the other movie to join her filmography in 2023 — it premiered at Sundance that year, but only makes its way to streaming worldwide now — is yet another example of how the Certain Women and First Cow star is one of the very-best actors working right now. Where Gladstone's time in front of Martin Scorsese's lens showcased her mastery of restraint, playing an aunt trying to do what's best for her niece and a sister searching for her absent sibling benefits from her equal command of looseness. Jax, her character, is a pinball. When she bounces in any direction, it's with force and purpose as well as liveliness and determination, but the choice of where she's heading is rarely her own. All she wants is to find Tawi (debutant Hauli Sioux Gray) and protect 13-year-old Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson, Three Pines), but set against the reality that law enforcement mightn't look as enthusiastically for a missing Indigenous woman — or treat one with a record attempting to do right be her family with consideration — that's far from an easy task. Writer/director Erica Tremblay hails from the Seneca–Cayuga Nation, where much of Fancy Dance is set. As Gladstone is, she's also an alum of Reservation Dogs — including helming two episodes — and so is experienced at depicting everyday reservation life with authenticity. Accordingly, her first fictional feature after documentaries Heartland: A Portrait of Survival and In the Turn takes a social-realistic approach in its details, especially when it's simply surveying the space and empathy that First Nations versus white Americans aren't given. Because Jax has a criminal history, child services deems her unfit to look after Roki, or even to take the teen to the powwow where the girl is certain her mum will attend to again steal the show in the mother-daughter dance competition; instead, Jax's white father (Shea Whigham, Lawmen: Bass Reeves) and stepmother (Audrey Wasilewski, Ted) are their choice of guardians. Fancy Dance's protagonist isn't one to simply acquiesce to that decision, and Gladstone makes both her fire and her pain palpable — and her tenderness for Roki, who is weightily portrayed by her Under the Bridge co-star Deroy-Olson, as well. Fancy Dance streams via Apple TV+. Infested For those firmly of the idea that there's no new stories in horror, just fresh takes on well-established sources of fear, Infested isn't here to change minds. Rather, the French movie is the latest poster child for what looking at a tried-and-tested concept anew can do, including while pairing it with up-to-the-moment social commentary. The genre staple here: spiders. When writer/director Sébastien Vanicek begins his feature debut — which he co-scripts with Florent Bernard (Meet the Leroys) — it's with a specific breed of the venomous eight-legged scurrying nightmares unearthed, literally, in a Middle Eastern desert. Within moments of emerging from the earth, the critters make the smugglers that are attempting to capture them pay. Horror fans should clock that Infested nods to classic ways to kickstart a scary flick from the outset, then, bringing The Exorcist's opening scene to mind. Prayer won't help the Parisian banlieue residents soon fighting arachnids for their lives, however, after Kaleb (Théo Christine, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) innocently purchases a new addition to his bedroom menagerie of exotic pets from a local convenience store. As he disagrees with his sister Manon (feature first-timer Lisa Nyarko) about selling the apartment that they've inherited from their mother, grapples with his grief, trades in sneakers to his neighbours to stump up a buck and is faced with small-minded prejudice just by stepping outside his door, what happens when Kaleb soon has a spider (and quickly, more than one) to track down? The critter he calls Rihanna was always going to escape, so havoc unsurprisingly eventuates. That's not to say that Infested goes through the motions. With energy and style as well as needling suspense, Vanicek makes a creature-feature equivalent of British alien-invasion gem Attack the Block, with shades of Les Misérables — the 2019 crime-thriller, not Victor Hugo-penned tale — and 2022's fellow standout Athena. He also gets his audience squirming. He filters his recognisable setup through welcome eyes. He knows how to make a heightened situation feel real to the deep distress of arachnophobics, and to get terror and tension scuttling through veins. And, he ensures that desperately rallying against forces that won't let you escape, in a setting that embodies that exact notion, proves both urgent and immediate. Infested streams via Shudder and AMC+. Stopmotion One of the most-haunting performances in Australian cinema belongs to Irish Italian actor Aisling Franciosi. She's acted in The Fall and Game of Thrones, I Know This Much Is True and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter, and Jimmy's Hall and the upcoming Speak No Evil remake before and since, but her deservedly AACTA Award-winning work in The Nightingale — the second feature from The Babadook's Jennifer Kent, which follows a former convict's quest for revenge against a British officer in 1820s Tasmania — is stunning, searing and unforgettable. Also stellar half a decade later: Franciosi's turn in Stopmotion, which hails from the UK, has her playing the daughter of an animation genius and again tasks the immensely talented actor with confronting trauma. It's the product of a filmmaker in Robert Morgan with an uncompromising vision, too, with the English writer/director making his feature debut almost a decade after helming the D Is for Deloused segment in The ABCs of Death 2 with a movie that's never afraid to commit to its eerie chills, psychological thrills and macabre sense of wonder. Franciosi's Ella Blake has spent her entire life being told that her mother Suzanne (Stella Gonet, Breeders) is an unparalleled master at making the dead appear alive — because that's one way to see Stopmotion's eponymous art form. She's also spent much of her existence assisting rather than pursuing her own dreams, including after arthritis robs her mum of being able to use her hands to craft the exacting movements that their chosen medium requires. When the film begins, overwork has Ella fraying. Emotional cruelty has her internally raging, although she won't admit it. Suzanne has a project to finish, demanding her daughter's utmost commitment. When tragedy compounds her stress, Ella escapes into own creative vision instead, conjuring up a twisted fairy tale aided by a girl (Caoilinn Springall, The Midnight Sky) from an apartment neighbouring her new makeshift studio. Saying what Morgan unleashes from there is inventive, powerful and extraordinary — in live-action and animation alike — is an understatement. Stopmotion streams via Shudder and AMC+. Lumberjack the Monster Spanning big-screen releases, TV and straight-to-video fare, Takashi Miike has notched up 115 directorial credits in the 33 years since making his helming debut. Lumberjack the Monster isn't even the latest — it premiered at film festivals in 2023, which means that miniseries Onimusha and short Midnight have popped up since — but it is Miike back in horror mode, where 1999's Audition and 2001's Ichi the Killer famously dwelled. Here, the inimitable Japanese filmmaker and screenwriter Hiroyoshi Koiwai (Way to Find the Best Life) adapt the eponymous 2019 Mayusuke Kurai novel. Its namesake character also exists on the page in the movie itself, in a picture book. This is a serial-killer picture, though, and with more than one person taking multiple lives. A mass murderer wearing a bag over their head and swinging an axe is on a rampage, and lawyer Akira (Kazuya Kamenashi, Destiny) and surgeon Sugitani (Shôta Sometani, Sanctuary) aren't averse to dispensing death themselves. A clash is inevitable, not that the slick Akira expects it, or that his costumed attacker anticipates that their current target will survive his blade, sparking a cat-and-mouse game. Lumberjack the Monster doesn't just weave in fantasy boogeyman stories, offings upon offings, and characters with dark impulses going head to head. The police are on the case, giving the film a procedural layer, as well as Akira motivation to hunt down his assailant first. Science fiction also washes through, with brain-implanted chips and modifying human behaviour both for worse and for better part of the narrative. There's also a moral-redemption element weaved in. Consequently, it's no wonder that this tale is Miike joint. As well as being prolific, Miike loves making his resume the ultimate mashup. To name just a few examples, see: the yakuza action of Dead or Alive, superhero comedy Zebraman, titular genre of Sukiyaki Western Django, samurai efforts 13 Assassins and Blade of the Immortal, period drama Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, video-game adaptation Ace Attorney, romance For Love's Sake, thriller Lesson of the Evil, vampire movie Yakuza Apocalypse and the crime-driven First Love. Unsurprisingly, Lumberjack the Monster is specifically the engrossing — and bloodily violent — Frankenstein's monster of a flick that Miike was always going to relish making when splicing together such an array of elements came his way. Lumberjack the Monster streams via Netflix. The Kitchen He has an Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe for Judas and the Black Messiah. He was nominated for all of the above accolades for Get Out, and should've won them all then, too. His resume spans Skins, one of Black Mirror's most-memorable episodes, plus Sicario, Widows, Black Panther, Queen & Slim and Nope as well. But The Kitchen marks a first for Daniel Kaluuya: his first movie as a director. Hopefully more will follow. Co-helming with Kibwe Tavares — who also notches up his feature debut behind the lens after shorts including Jonah and Robot & Scarecrow, which both starred Kaluuya — and co-penning the screenplay with Calm with Horses' Joe Murtagh, the actor makes a stunning arrival as a filmmaker. The Kitchen's setup: in the year 2044 in London, with class clashes so pronounced that not being rich is basically treated as a crime, a man (Top Boy's Kane Robinson, aka rapper Kano) living in the titular housing development crosses paths with a 12-year-old boy (newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman) who has just lost his mother, with the pair discovering that they have no one but each other as they endeavour to find a way to survive. Robinson's Izy has bought into the social-climbing dream when The Kitchen begins. He'll do so literally if he can come up with the cash for an apartment in a swankier tower away from everything he's ever known within 21 days, a dream that he's been working towards at his job selling funerals. It's at the latter that he meets Bannerman's Benji, who has nowhere to live after his mother's death and no one else to turn to for help. The film's scenario is pure dystopia, reflecting the inequities, oppressions and realities of today as all great sci-fi should. Its intimate emotional core hones in on people attempting to persist and connect, as the genre's best always does as well. Accordingly, this is an impassioned and infuriated portrait of society's gaps as everyone watching can recognise, a nightmarish vision of what might come and a thoughtful character study. As directors, Kaluuya and Tavares excel at world-building, at bringing such rich detail and texture to the screen that viewers feel like they could step straight into its social realist-leaning frames, and at guiding affecting performances out of both Robinson and Bannerman (who adds to the feature's impressive first efforts). The Kitchen streams via Netflix. Orion and the Dark Learning to face life's chaos, or even just recognising that life is chaos, has a particular term when Charlie Kaufman is making movies and audiences do the confronting. Describing something as Kaufmanesque sprang from the screenwriter and filmmaker's stunning run at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 00s — the Spike Jonze (Her)-helmed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, plus the Michel Gondry (Microbe & Gasoline)-directed Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — and it's stuck ever since. Joining the trio of Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa and I'm Thinking of Ending Things as well, all three of which he penned plus helmed, is new family-friendly animation Orion and the Dark. A Kaufmanesque kid-appropriate flick? It exists, and it's wonderful. Feature first-timer Sean Charmatz (TV movie Trolls Holiday in Harmony) directs, and Emma Yarlett's 2014 children's book provides the source material; however, this account of a boy afraid of the dark who then meets the literal Dark (voiced by The Afterparty's Paul Walter Hauser) is a Kaufman affair through and through. Also, iconic German filmmaker — and one-time Parks and Recreation star — Werner Herzog (The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft) pops up. Loaned the vocal tones of Jacob Tremblay (The Little Mermaid) as a child and Colin Hanks (The Offer) as an adult, Orion is petrified of sleeping without the lights on. And, just like the kids in Monsters, Inc that are scared of creatures in their cupboards, Orion and the Dark's protagonist is frightened of something real. Dark exists and, alongside Orion's parents (The Fall of the House of Usher's Carla Gugino and Bull's Matt Dellapina), is exasperated by the boy's response to nighttime. He can't help taking it personally, in fact, then offers to assist. For one 24-hour period, as darkness falls around the world, he gets Orion to accompany him on his travels with friends Sleep (Natasia Demetriou, What We Do in the Shadows), Insomnia (Nat Faxon, Our Flag Means Death), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla, The Great North), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel, Bridgerton) and Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) to demonstrate that being distressed is unfounded. It isn't just Herzog's involvement and a joke about David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that prove that this is a movie as much for adults as kids; amid its gorgeous animation, its understanding of existential dread is also that astute. Orion and the Dark streams via Netflix. Spaceman Should astronaut become a dictionary-certified synonym for melancholy? Cinema believes so. Its latest case in point comes via Spaceman, where life temporarily lived above and beyond the earth replaces gravity with loneliness and disconnection for Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah). He's six months into a solo trip past Jupiter to investigate an eerie phenomenon in the heavens when this adaptation of Jaroslav Kalfař's 2017 sci-fi novel Spaceman of Bohemia kicks off. His quest is both time-sensitive and celebrated. South Korea is in close pursuit, he's frequently being told by Peter (Kunal Nayyar, Night Court), his contact at ground control — and Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini, Cat Person) happily keeps dialling him in for PR opportunities. As he soars through a strangely purple sky, however, endeavouring to fulfil his mission while pleading for maintenance approval on his crumbling ship, all that's really on his mind is his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan, Maestro). Pregnant and left at home alone, she's no longer taking his fast-as-light-speed phone calls. Then Hanus (Paul Dano, Mr & Mrs Smith) scurries in beside Jakub, demanding attention — as a giant spider in space is always going to. For the best part of a decade now, seeing a live-action movie starring Sandler has meant heading to Netflix. In Australia, even Uncut Gems, his greatest-ever performance, arrived via the streaming platform. Alongside The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and Hustle, add Spaceman to the list of such features that give their star worthy parts and would've made welcome cinema releases. It isn't new news that Sandler is an excellent actor in dramatic and/or weightier roles, or that his career is more than the Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore-style comedies that he first became known for. Spaceman director Johan Renck (Chernobyl) has cast him expertly, in fact, in this tale of isolation, arrested development, otherworldly arachnids and amorous entanglements. Sending Sandler on an Ad Astra-, First Man- and Solaris-esque trip proves contemplative and empathetic — and, amid spider's-eye flashbacks to his complicated childhood in the Czech Republic, time spent with Lenka on the ground and floating around the film's claustrophobic main setting, also brimming with raw and resonant emotion. Spaceman streams via Netflix. STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces To do justice to Steve Martin's life, career and impact requires more than just one movie. So, the engagingly and entertainingly in-depth, intimate, affectionate and informative STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces explores the comedian and actor's existence in a pair of parts. The first is subtitled 'Then', honing in on his childhood and early stand-up days. The second, aka 'Now', jumps in when he made the leap to movies in the late 70s, which is where The Jerk, Pennies From Heaven, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood and LA Story comes in — and, of course, includes his tours with his ¡Three Amigos! co-star Martin Short, as well as their murder-mystery-comedy TV hit Only Murders in the Building. The initial half gets Martin narrating, sharing reflections personal and professional as accompanied by archival footage aplenty (and ample tapes of his stints in front of audience). The latter section treats him as an interviewee, with his wife Anne Stringfield, Short, Jerry Seinfeld (who has had Martin as a guest on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee) and Tina Fey (who also co-starred with Martin in Baby Mama) among the talking heads. Behind it all is documentarian Morgan Neville, an Oscar-winner for 20 Feet From Stardom, as well as a filmmaker who is clearly taking his stylistic cues from his subject. That's noticeable in STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces' moniker, for starters — it throws caution to the winds of grammar and title formats just as Martin has to comedy rules, as the two-part film makes plain again and again. No matter how well-acquainted you are with Martin, insights flow freely in this fascinating way to spend three hours surveying the ways that he's made people laugh over decades upon decades, beginning with doing magic tricks and working at Disneyland on his school holidays in the 50s. Revelations bound through about Martin as a person, too; more than once, he notes that his life has felt as if it has played out backwards, and not just because he only first became a father in his 60s. Clips of his stand-up act, and the response to it in the 60s and 70s, are gold. Hanging out with the man who originally was only going to create Only Murders in the Building, not star in it, when he's bantering with Short are as well. STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces streams via Apple TV+. Am I OK? The question in Am I OK?'s title is indeed existential: is Lucy (Dakota Johnson, Madame Web) coping with being a thirtysomething in Los Angeles treading water emotionally, romantically and professionally? From there, more queries spring. Can she — or, more accurately, will she — shoot for more than not quite dating the smitten Ben (Whitmer Thomas, Big Mouth), right down to shaking his hand at the end of their evenings out together, and also for something beyond working as a day-spa receptionist while putting her passion and talent for art on the back burner? Is she capable of breaking free of a comfort zone padded out with spending all of her spare time with her best friend Jane (Sonoya Mizuno, House of the Dragon), including being so predictable that she always orders the same thing at their brunches at their favourite diner? Regarding the latter, she gets a push when Jane agrees to a lucrative transfer to London, splitting the pair for the first time since they were teenagers. Am I OK? is an arrested-development coming-of-age movie, then, and a film about being honest about who you are and want to be. Change comes for us all, even when we've built a cocoon to protect our happy status quo — and, at the heart of this romantic drama, change clearly comes for Lucy. She's forced to consider a path forward that doesn't involve solely being defined as half of a platonic duo. She also confronts the feelings for her coworker Brittany (Kiersey Clemons, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and the truth about her sexuality that she's never previously admitted. Am I OK? is a coming-out tale, too, but it treats Lucy's stuck-in-a-rut existence and at-first-tentative attempts to embrace how she truly feels holistically, seeing how life's passage inevitably shifts how we see ourselves. If the movie feels more honest than it might've been, that's because screenwriter Lauren Pomerantz (Strange Planet) spins a semi-autobiographical story. Also, the directing team of real-life couple Tig Notaro (2 Dope Queens) and Stephanie Allynne (who helmed Notaro's 2024 special Hello Again) — who met making 2015's In a World… — demonstrate the ideal light-but-delicate touch. Plus, Johnson and Mizuno exude genuine BFF chemistry, with the former again showing why fare such as this, Cha Cha Real Smooth, How to Be Single, The Peanut Butter Falcon, A Bigger Splash, Suspiria and The Lost Daughter, a diverse group of pictures, is a better fit than the Fifty Shades trilogy or a Spider-Man spinoff. Am I OK? streams via Binge. Looking for more viewing highlights? We picked the best 15 films that've reached cinemas in 2024's first half, too, plus the 15 best new TV shows of 2024 so far and the 15 best returning TV shows. We also keep a running list of must-stream TV from across the year so far, complete with full reviews. And, you can check out our list of film and TV streaming recommendations, which is updated monthly.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are eight that you can watch right now at home. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga To Valhalla, George Miller went: when Mad Max: Fury Road thundered across and shone upon the silver screen in 2015, and it did both, it gave cinema one of the greatest action movies ever made. It has taken nine years for the Australian filmmaker to back up one of the 21st century's masterpieces with another stunt-filled drive through his dystopian franchise — a realm that now dates back 45 years, with Mad Max first envisaging a hellscape Down Under in 1979 — and he's achieved the immensely enviable. Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's white-hued, silver-lipped war boys pray to gain entry to a mythological dreamscape just once, but Miller keeps returning again and again (only 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, in a now five-film series that also includes 1981's Mad Max 2, is anything less than heavenly). "The question is: do you have what it takes to make it epic?" Miller has Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love and Thunder) ask in Furiosa as biker-horde leader Dementus, he of the post-apocalyptic Thor-meets-Roman gladiator look and chariot-by-motorcycle mode of transport. Returning to all things Mad Max after an affecting detour to 2022's djinn fable Three Thousand Years of Longing, the writer/director might've been posing himself the same query — and he resoundingly answers in the affirmative. An origin story-spinning prequel has rarely felt as essential as this unearthing of its namesake's history, which Fury Road hinted at when it introduced Furiosa (then played by Charlize Theron, Fast X) and made her the movie's hero above and beyond Mad Max (Tom Hardy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage). Discovering the full Furiosa tale felt imperative then, too, and with good reason: Miller had already planned the figure's own film to flesh out her background before her celluloid debut, and that she existed well past her interactions with Max was always as apparent as the steely glare that said everything without words. Now with both Anya Taylor-Joy (The Super Mario Bros Movie) and Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) playing the lead, Furiosa lives up to that promise. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and George Miller. Monster When a movie repeats its events through fresh eyes, answers usually follow. But as Hirokazu Kore-eda opts for the Rashomon effect in Monster, using a technique that fellow great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa deployed with one of his famous features, the director that won the Palme d'Or for 2018's Shoplifters refuses to stop asking questions. In this picture, which picked up the Queer Palm at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival — and again sees Kore-eda collaborate with Kazuko Kurosawa (The Third Murder), daughter of Akira, as its costume designer — layers keep mounting. There's no shortage of cinema that stresses how there's never merely one set of peepers to peer through, but in this masterful and moving addition to that realm, from one of the best at conveying empathy that film as a medium benefits from today, each pass in search of the full story builds a case not just for filtering the world through more than what's easy and reactive, but through acceptance and understanding. Kore-eda knows this: that perspectives, just like perceptions, can be misleading, blinkered and blinded. So when rumour proclaims that a new teacher frequents hostess bars, when a boy has tales of being called names by the same educator, when said man points the finger at the kid as a bully to one of his classmates instead and when the two children at the centre of the situation are friends with a cherished bond, a clearcut view is in short supply. This is the first movie since 1995's Maborosi that the filmmaker has only helmed and not also written, but Yûji Sakamoto's (In Love and Deep Water) Cannes Best Screenplay-winning script is a classic entry on the director's resume. Monster is also Kore-eda's homecoming, after making his post-Shoplifters films until now elsewhere — 2019's The Truth in France, then 2022's Broker in South Korea — and it's a stellar return. Monster streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Watchers A quarter of a century ago, M Night Shyamalan started coaching audiences to associate his surname with on-screen twists. Now that The Sixth Sense writer/director's daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan is following in his footsteps by making her first feature, decades of that viewer training across Unbreakable, Signs, The Visit, Split, Glass and more laps at The Watchers' feet. The question going in for those watching is obvious: will the second-generation filmmaker, who first worked as a second-unit director on her dad's Old and Knock at the Cabin — and also penned and helmed episodes of exceptionally eerie horror TV series Servant, on which her father was the showrunner — turn M Night's well-known and -established penchant for surprise reveals that completely recontextualise his narratives into a family trademark? Viewing a Shyamalan movie from The Sixth Sense onwards has always been an exercise in piecing together a puzzle, sleuthing along as clues are dropped about how the story might swiftly shift. It's no different with The Watchers, which Ishana adapts from AM Shine's novel and M Night produces. The younger filmmaking Shyamalan leans into the expectations that come with being her dad's offspring and picking up a camera, making a supernatural mystery-thriller horror flick and living with his brand of screen stories for her entire life. That said, while it's easy to initially think of The Village when The Watchers sets its narrative in isolated surroundings where the woods are filled with threats, and also of Knock at the Cabin given that its four main characters are basically holed up in one, Ishana demonstrates her own prowess with this Dakota Fanning (Ripley)-led flick, including by heartily embracing her source material's gothic air. The Watchers streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Ishana Night Shyamalan. The Beast Watching a film by French writer/director Bertrand Bonello can feel like having a spell cast upon you. In movies such as 2016's Nocturama and 2019's Zombi Child, that's how magnetic and entrancing his blend of ethereal mood and dreamy imagery has felt. So it is with The Beast, too, another hypnotic feature that bewitches and also probes, because none of these three Bonello flicks ask their viewers to merely submit. Rather, they enchant while raising questions about the state of the world, whether digging into consumerism and anarchy, hierarchies of race and class, or the role of humanity in an increasingly technology-mediated society. The latter is the domain of the filmmaker's loose adaptation of Henry James' 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle — a take that, as its author didn't and couldn't, perceives how the clash of humanity's emotions and artificial intelligence's data-driven analysis is fated to favour the cold and the calculating. In 2044, the very fact that people are guided by their feelings has rendered them unsuitable for most jobs in The Beast's AI-dominated vision of the future. Played with the mastery of both deeply conveyed expression and telling stillness that's long characterised her performances, Dune: Part Two, Crimes of the Future and No Time to Die's Léa Seydoux is Gabrielle, who is among the throngs relegated to drone-like drudgery in this new world order. To shift her daily reality, where she reads the temperature of data cores, she only has one path forward: a cleansing of her DNA. It involves spending sessions immersed in a black goopy bath to confront her emotions and past, a procedure that she's told will rid her of her trauma and baggage. Crossing paths with Gabrielle at the treatment centre, Louis (1917 and True History of the Kelly Gang's George MacKay) has the same choice. The Beast streams via YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. Housekeeping for Beginners Every film is a portrait of ups and downs, no matter the genre. Without change and complications, plus either a sprinkling or a shower of chaos, there's little in the way of story for a movie to tell. In just three features, each hitting cinemas Down Under in successive years since 2022, Macedonian Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski has demonstrated how deeply he understands this fact — and also that life itself is, of course, the same rollercoaster ride. So, when Housekeeping for Beginners starts by jumping between a joyous sing-along and a grim doctor's visit, he lays that juxtaposition between existence's highs and the lows bare in his third picture's frames. He has form: You Won't Be Alone, his folkloric horror film set in 19th-century Macedonia, segued early from new life to a witch's fate-shaping demands; Of an Age, a queer love story that unfurls in Melbourne, kicked off by flitting between dancing and a desperate against-the-clock rush. In You Won't Be Alone, the shapeshifting Wolf-Eateress who chose an infant to be her protege was played by Anamaria Marinca, the Romanian actor who has proven an unforgettable screen presence ever since the one-two punch of 2004's TV two-parter Sex Traffic — which won her a Best Actress BAFTA — and 2007's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Stolevski reenlists her assistance for Housekeeping for Beginners, and also illustrates his awareness of another immutable fact: that the eyes of Anamaria Marinca relay tales all by themselves. Here, they're weary but sharp and determined. They're devoted yet fierce, too. They possess the unrelenting gaze of someone who won't stop fighting for those she loves no matter what it takes, and regardless of how she initially reacts, a path that her social-worker character Dita is no stranger to traversing. Housekeeping for Beginners streams via YouTube Movies and iTunes. Read our full review. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Move over New York — it's time for New South Wales to be overrun by a simian civilisation. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn't swap the Statue of Liberty for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Rather, it was just made in Australia; this franchise is long past needing to anchor itself in a specific location, but America's west coast is the in-narrative setting. No it-was-earth-all-along twists are necessary, either, as France's famous gift to the US signalled back in 1968 when Pierre Boulle's novel La Planète des singes initially made it to the screen. More than half a century later — plus four sequels to the OG Planet of the Apes, both live-action and animated TV shows, Tim Burton's (Wednesday) remake and the reboot flicks that started with 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes — the saga's basics are widely known in pop culture. The titular planet is humanity's own. In this vision of the future, a different kind of primate runs the show. Since day one, every Planet of the Apes tale has been a mirror. Gazing into the science-fiction series means seeing the power structures and societal struggles of our reality staring back — discrimination, authoritarianism and even the impact of a world-ravaging virus should ring a bell— but with humans no longer atop the pecking order. These are allegorical stories and, at their best, thoughtful ones, probing the responsibilities of being the planet's dominant force and the ramifications of taking that mantle for granted. Not every instalment has handled the task as well as it should've, but those that do leave a paw print. Coming after not just Rise of the Planet of the Apes but also 2014's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes from The Maze Runner, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and The Maze Runner: Death Cure director Wes Ball falls into that category. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. La Chimera It's a film about searching for treasure, and it is indeed a treasure. La Chimera is also dreamy in its look and, while watching, makes its viewers feel as if they've been whisked into one. There's much that fantasies are made of in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher's fourth feature, which follows Corpo Celeste, The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro — God's Own Country breakout and The Crown star Josh O'Connor leading the picture as a British archaeologist raiding tombs in 80s-era Italy chief among them. Thinking about Lara Croft, be it the game, or the Angelina Jolie (in 2001 and 2003 flicks)- or Alicia Vikander (2018's Tomb Raider)-led movies, is poking into the wrong patch of soil. Thinking instead about the way that life is built upon the dead again and again, and upon unearthed secrets as well, is part of what makes La Chimera gleam. Rohrwacher's latest, which also boasts her Happy as Lazzaro collaborator Carmela Covino as a collaborating writer — plus Marco Pettenello (Io vivo altrove!) — resembles an illusion not just because it's a rare mix of both magical-realist and neorealist in one, too (well, rare for most who aren't this director). In addition, this blend of romance and drama alongside tragedy and comedy sports its mirage-esque vibe thanks to being so welcomely easy to get lost in. As a snapshot of a tombaroli gang in Tuscany that pilfers from Etruscan crypts to try to get by, it's a feature to dig into. As an example of how poetic a film can be, it's one to soar with. The loose red thread that weaves throughout La Chimera's frames, intriguing folks within the movie, also embodies how viewers should react: we want to chase it and hold on forever, even as we know that, as the feature's 130 minutes tick by, the picture is destined to slip through our fingers. La Chimera streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. IF Imaginary friends should be seen, but people trying to survive an alien invasion should not be heard. So goes John Krasinski's recent flicks as a filmmaker. While IF, The Office star's fifth feature behind the lens, has nothing to do with 2018 horror hit A Quiet Place or its 2020 sequel A Quiet Place Part II, the three movies share a focus on the senses and their importance in forming bonds. When Krasinski's two post-apocalyptic hits forced humanity into silence for survival, they contemplated what it meant to be perceived — or not — as a basic element of human connection amid the bumps, jumps and tale of a family attempting to endure. With IF, the writer/director also ponders existence and absence. It skews younger, though, and also more whimsical, for a family-friendly story about a girl assisting made-up mates that are yearning Toy Story-style to have flesh-and-blood pals again. The horror genre still lingers over IF, however. It doesn't haunt in tone, because this isn't 2024's fellow release Imaginary; rather, it's a sentimental fantasy-adventure film, enthusiastically so. But from the moment that the movie's narrative introduces its IFs, as the picture dubs imaginary friends, it's easy to spot Krasinski's inspiration. In New York staying with her grandmother Margaret (Fiona Shaw, True Detective: Night Country) while her dad (Krasinski, Jack Ryan) is having heart surgery, 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming, The Walking Dead) starts seeing pretend creatures. Aided by Cal (Ryan Reynolds, Ghosted), who lives upstairs from Bea's nan, she then has a task: reuniting critters such as Blue (Steve Carell, Asteroid City), the purple-hued furry monster that, alongside Minnie Mouse-meets-butterfly Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), is one of the first IFs that she spots, with the now-adults that conjured them up as children. IF streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January, February, March, April, May and June 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2024's 15 best films, 15 best new TV shows and 15 best returning TV shows from the first half of the year. Also, here's 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows as well.
It might seem as if there's something shiny and brand new hitting the small screen all the time — and there is — but flicking through your streaming queue isn't just about finding something that you've never heard of before to watch. Among the non-stop array of television at everyone's fingertips, beloved favourites keep proving why they're must-see TV. Some even inspire menu choices, too. 2024's returning cohort so far has had us all shouting "yes chef!" again, welcoming back one of the best detective shows there is, and stepping into the worlds of stand-up and late-night comedy. Getting ridiculously catchy (and funny) girl-group tunes stuck in our heads, adoring an Aussie rom-com and embracing superhero satire have also been on the agenda — as has saying a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty great goodbye to an iconic series. With 2024 halfway through, we've made our picks of the top returning television shows of the year's first six months — aka the established delights that have splashed another ace new season our way, and also made us want to go back and rewatch past seasons. Your future binges will thank us. The Bear Serving up another sitting with acclaimed chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White, The Iron Claw), his second-in-charge Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, Inside Out 2) and their team after dishing up one of the best new shows of 2022 and best returning shows of 2023, the third season of The Bear is a season haunted. Creator and writer Christopher Storer (Dickinson, Ramy) — often the culinary dramedy's director as well — wouldn't have it any other way. Every series that proves as swift a success as this, after delivering as exceptional a first and second season as any show could wish for, has the tang of its prior glory left on its lips, so this one tackles the idea head on. How can anyone shake the past at all, good or bad, the latest ten episodes ruminate on as Carmy faces a dream that's come true but hasn't and can't eradicate the lifetime of internalised uncertainty that arises from having an erratic mother, absent father, elder brother he idolised but had his own demons, and a career spent striving to be the best and put his talents to the test in an industry that's so merciless and unforgiving even before you factor in dealing with cruel mentors. Haunting is talked about often in this third The Bear course, but not actually in the sense flavouring every bite that the show's return plates up. In the season's heartiest reminder that it's comic as well as tense and dramatic — its nine Emmy wins for season one, plus four Golden Globes across season one and two, are all in comedy categories — the Faks get to Fak aplenty. While charming Neil (IRL chef Matty Matheson) is loving his role as a besuited server beneath Richie aka Cousin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, No Hard Feelings), onboard with the latter's commitment to upholding a Michelin star-chasing fine-diner's front-of-house standards and as devoted to being Carmy's best friend as ever, he's also always palling around with his handyman brother Theodore (Ricky Staffieri, Read the Room). They're not the season's only Faks, and so emerges a family game. When one Fak wrongs another, they get haunted, which is largely being taunted and unsettled by someone from basically The Bear equivalent of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Boyles. For it to stop, you need to agree to give in. In Storer's hands, in a series this expertly layered as it picks up in the aftermath of sandwich diner The Original Beef of Chicagoland relaunching as fine-diner The Bear, this isn't just an amusing character-building aside. The Bear streams via Disney+. Read our full review. True Detective: Night Country Even when True Detective had only reached its second season, the HBO series had chiselled its template into stone: obsessive chalk-and-cheese cops with messy personal lives investigating horrifying killings, on cases with ties to power's corruption, in places where location mattered and with the otherworldly drifting in. A decade after the anthology mystery show's debut in 2014, True Detective has returned as Night Country, a six-part miniseries that builds its own snowman out of all of the franchise's familiar parts. The main similarity from there: like the Matthew McConaughey (The Gentlemen)- and Woody Harrelson (White House Plumbers)-led initial season, True Detective: Night Country is phenomenal. This is a return to form and a revitalisation. Making it happen after two passable intervening cases is a new guiding hand off-screen. Tigers Are Not Afraid filmmaker Issa López directs and writes or co-writes every episode, boasting Moonlight's Barry Jenkins as an executive producer. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto remains in the latter role, too, as do McConaughey, Harrelson and season-one director Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die); however, from its female focus and weighty tussling with the dead to its switch to a cool, blue colour scheme befitting its Alaskan setting, there's no doubting that López is reinventing her season rather than ticking boxes. In handing over the reins, Pizzolatto's police procedural never-standard police procedural is a powerhouse again, and lives up to the potential of its concept. The commitment and cost of delving into humanity's depths and advocating for those lost in its abyss has swapped key cops, victims and locations with each spin, including enlisting the masterful double act of Jodie Foster (Nyad) and boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis (Catch the Fair One) to do the sleuthing, but seeing each go-around with fresh eyes feels like the missing puzzle piece. López spies the toll on the show's first women duo, as well as the splinters in a remote community when its fragile sense of certainty is forever shattered. She spots the fractures that pre-date the investigation in the new season, a cold case tied to it, plus the gashes that've carved hurt and pain into the earth ever since people stepped foot on it. She observes the pursuit of profit above all else, and the lack of concern for whatever — whoever, the region's Indigenous inhabitants included — get in the way. She sees that the eternal winter night of 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle come mid-December isn't the only thing impairing everyone's sight. And, she knows that not everything has answers, with life sometimes plunging into heartbreak, or inhospitable climes, or one's own private hell, without rhyme or reason. True Detective: Night Country streams via Binge. Read our full review. Hacks Sometimes you need to wait for the things you love. In Hacks, that's true off- and on-screen. 2024 marks two years since the HBO comedy last dropped new episodes, after its first season was one of the best new shows of 2021 and its second one of the best returning series of 2022 — a delay first sparked by star Jean Smart (Babylon) requiring heart surgery, and then by 2023's Hollywood strikes. But this Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner returns better than ever in season three as it charts Smart's Deborah Vance finally getting a shot at a job that she's been waiting her entire career for. After scoring a huge hit with her recent comedy special, which was a product of hiring twentysomething writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, Julia), the Las Vegas mainstay has a new chance at nabbing a late-night hosting gig. (Yes, fictional takes on after-dark talk shows are having a moment, thanks to Late Night with the Devil and now this.) At times, some in Deborah's orbit might be tempted to borrow the Australian horror movie's title to describe to assisting her pitch for a post-primetime chair. That'd be a harsh comment, but savage humour has always been part of this showbiz comedy about people who tell jokes for a living. While Deborah gets roasted in this season, spikiness is Hacks' long-established baseline — and also the armour with which its behind-the-mic lead protects herself from life's and the industry's pain, disappointments and unfairness. Barbs can also be Deborah's love language, as seen in her banter with Ava. When season two ended, their tumultuous professional relationship had come to an end again via Deborah, who let her writer go to find bigger opportunities. A year has now passed when season three kicks off. Ava is a staff writer on a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-type series in Los Angeles and thriving, but she's also not over being fired. Back in Vanceland, everything is gleaming — but Deborah isn't prepared for being a phenomenon. She wants it. She's worked for years for it. It's taken until her 70s to get it. But her presence alone being cause for frenzy, rather than the scrapping she's done to stay in the spotlight, isn't an easy adjustment. Hacks streams via Stan. Read our full review. Girls5eva One of the funniest TV comedies of the 2020s is back with its third season, and as hilarious as ever. So what are you waiting five? If that question doesn't make any sense, then you clearly haven't yet experienced the wonder that is Girls5eva. It starts with a numerical pun-heavy earworm of a theme tune that no one should ever skip, then bounces along just as catchily and sidesplittingly in every second afterwards. A move to Netflix for season three — after streaming its first and second seasons via Peacock in the US and Stan in Australia — deserves to see the Tina Fey-executive produced music-industry sitcom switch from being one of the best shows that not enough people are watching to everyone's latest can't-stop-rewatching comedy obsession. In other words, this a series about a comeback and, thanks to its swap to the biggest player in the streaming game, now it's making a comeback itself. If it becomes a Netflix smash, here's hoping that it'll be famous at least one more time. Two years have passed for longterm fans since Girls5eva last checked in with Dawn Solano (Sara Bareilles, Broadway's Waitress), Wickie Roy (Renée Elise Goldsberry, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and also a Hamilton Tony-winner), Summer Dutkowsky (Busy Philipps, Mean Girls) and Gloria McManus (Paula Pell, Big Mouth), but the gap and the change of platforms haven't changed this gem. Consider the switch of streamer in the same way that Dawn and the gang are approaching their leap back into their girl group after two decades: as an all-in, go-hard-or-go-home, whatever-it-takes relaunch. Now firmly reunited, the surviving members of Girls5eva have taken to the road. So far, however, their big Returnity tour has been happy in Fort Worth. In the Texan city, their track 'Tap Into Your Fort Worth' keeps drawing in crowds, even if that's all that concertgoers want to hear. Also, the Marriott Suitelettes for Divorced Dads has become their home away from home, but resident diva Wickie isn't content just playing one place. Always dreaming huge, massive and stratospheric, she sets the band's sights on Radio City Music Hall, booking them in for a gig at a fee of $500,000. Cue a six-month timeline to sell it out — a feat made trickier by the fact that the show is on Thanksgiving — or risk ruin. Girls5eva streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Curb Your Enthusiasm A quarter of a century is a long time to spend with Larry David, even with gaps along the way. Friends and acquaintances of the fictionalised version seen in Curb Your Enthusiasm might have some not-so-positive things to say about investing that chunk with TV's great curmudgeons. If you're a fan of the satirical series that's been airing since 2000, however, 12 seasons isn't enough. But David has called time on his second small-screen smash. CYE hasn't beaten Seinfeld's episode count, but it has been on-screen on and off for far longer than the famous show about nothing. And as the ending approached, of course the inimitable force behind both started Curb Your Enthusiasm's final season with the series' version of Larry going where Seinfeld's characters closed out their story: jail. He's there not due criminal indifference, though, but rather thanks to the opposite. In Atlanta to attend a rich fan's (Sharlto Copley, Beast) birthday party, on a paid gig courtesy of the success of Young Larry — CYE's in-show show about David's childhood — he gives a bottle of water to Leon's (JB Smoove, Office Race) Auntie Rae (Ellia English, Blood Pageant) while she's in line to vote. That's illegal, the cops pounce immediately and one of the season's key threads is born. Larry being Larry, of course he wasn't really trying to make a stand against ridiculous voter-suppression laws. Larry still being Larry, he's also content to capitalise upon being seen as a hero, complete with droves of media attention. And, Larry never able to be someone other than Larry, he's still his petty normal self regardless of how much praise flows from Bruce Springsteen. Before Beef was winning Golden Globes, Emmys and other awards for trivial squabbles, David got there first — and before The Rehearsal and The Curse's Nathan Fielder was inspiring cringing so vigorous that you can feel it in your stomach, David was as well. The show's swansong season is vintage Curb Your Enthusiasm, including when a lawyer who looks like one of David's many enemies, overhearing golfing lessons, throwing things at CODA Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur, getting disgruntled over breakfast menus cutting off at 11am and bickering with the late, great Richard Lewis (Sandy Wexler) are involved. As always, it continues to be fascinated with whether someone as set in his ways as David, who was the inspiration for George Constanza, can and will ever change. He won't, and watching why that's the case only stopped being comedy gold when the ten-episode 12th season said farewell. Curb Your Enthusiasm streams via Binge. Read our full review. Colin From Accounts When Colin From Accounts arrived for its first season in 2022 with a nipple flash, a dog and strangers committing to take care of a cute injured pooch together, it also began with a "will they, won't they?" story. Ashley (Harriet Dyer, The Invisible Man) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall, Evil) crossed paths in the street in Sydney when she gave him a random peek, then he was distracted behind the wheel. Thanks to the titular pet, the pair were soon intricately involved in each other's lives — and a delightful small-screen Aussie rom-com was the end result as they endeavoured to work out what that actually meant. In season two, which picks up after the duo gave Colin From Accounts to new owners and then immediately regretted the decision, a couple of things are different from the outset: Gordon and Ashley are on a quest to get their pup back and they'll stop at almost nothing for their family to be reunited, and this award-winning series is now in "should've they or should've they not?" territory about its central romance. Falling in love is easy. Being in the honeymoon period, whether or not you've actually tied the knot — Colin From Accounts' protagonists haven't — is clearcut, too. Taking a relationship further means peeling away the rosy and glowing surface, however, which is where the series follows its medical student and microbrewery owner in its second season. Accordingly, through surprising news, meeting family members, historical baggage and more, Ashley and Gordon are still trying to navigate the reality of intertwining their lives, and also who they are as a couple. Creators, writers and stars Dyer and Brammall keep performing their parts to perfection; given they're married IRL and no strangers to working together (see: No Activity), the chemistry and naturalism isn't hard to maintain, but they're not just playing themselves. They're also particularly gifted with dialogue, ensuring that everything that the show's characters are saying — be it amusing, heartfelt, acerbic, insightful or all of the above — always feels authentic. Colin From Accounts streams via Binge. Read our full review, and our interview with Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall. Outer Range It was true of season one of Outer Range and it doesn't stop proving the case in season two: thinking about Twin Peaks, Yellowstone, Lost, The X-Files, The Twilight Zone and primetime melodramas while you're watching this sci-fi western series is unavoidable. In its second go-around, throw in Dark, too, and also True Detective. Here, an eerie void on a Wyoming cattle ranch sends people hurtling through time, rather than a cave beneath a nuclear power plant — and that concept, time, is dubbed a river instead of a flat circle. The idea behind Outer Range, as conjured up creator Brian Watkins for its debut season in 2022, has always been intriguing: what if a tunnel of blackness topped by a mist of floating energy suddenly opened up in the earth? Also, where would this otherworldly chasm lead? What would be the consequences of taking a tumble into its inky expanse? What does it mean? It isn't literally a mystery box Dark Matter-style, but it also still is in everything but shape — while contemplating what effect such a phenomena has on a rancher family that's worked the land that the ethereal cavern appears on for generations, as well as upon the broader small-town community of Wabang. Getting trippy came with the territory in season one, in an entrancing blend of the out-there and the earthy. Season two doubles down, dives in deeper and gallops across its chosen soil — a mix of the surreal and the soapy as well — with even more gusto. Just like with a vacuum that materialises on an otherwise ordinary-seeming paddock, no one should be leaping into Outer Range's second season unprepared. This isn't a series to jump into with no prior knowledge, or to just pick up along the way. It isn't simply the premise that Outer Range takes its time to reveal in all of its intricacy, a process that remains ongoing in season two; the characters, including Abbott patriarch Royal (Josh Brolin, Dune: Part Two), his wife Cecilia (Lili Taylor, Manhunt), their sons Perry (Tom Pelphrey, Love & Death) and Rhett (Lewis Pullman, Lessons in Chemistry), and stranger-in-their-midst Autumn (Imogen Poots, The Teacher), receive the same treatment. Outer Range streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Loot Across ten extremely amusing initial episodes in 2022, Loot had a message: billionaires shouldn't exist. So declared the show's resident cashed-up character, with Molly Wells (Maya Rudolph, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) receiving $87 billion in her divorce from tech guru John Novak (Adam Scott, Madame Web), then spending most of the sitcom's first season working out what to do with it (and also how to handle her newly single life in general). That she had a foundation to her name was virtually news to her. So was much about everything beyond the ultra-rich. And, she was hardly equipped for being on her own. But Loot's debut run came to an entertaining end with the big statement that it was always uttering not so quietly anyway. So what happens next, after one of the richest people in the world decides to give away all of her money? Cue season two of this ace workplace-set comedy. Created by former Parks and Recreation writers Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, in their second Rudolph-starring delight — 2018's Forever was the first — Loot splices together three popular on-screen realms as it loosely draws parallels with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his philanthropist ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. At her charity, as Molly's staff become the kind of friends that feel like family while doing their jobs, shows such as 30 Rock and Superstore (which Hubbard also has on his resume) score an obvious sibling. As its protagonist endeavours to do good, be better and discover what makes a meaningful life, The Good Place (which Yang also wrote for) and Forever get company. And in enjoying its eat-the-rich mode as well, it sits alongside Succession and The White Lotus, albeit while being far sillier. Loot streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Boys "Superheroes, they're just like us" has been an unspoken refrain humming beneath on-screen caped-crusader tales in recent decades. Possessing great powers doesn't mean knowing how to wield power, or greatness, or how to navigate the daily elements of life that don't revolve around possessing great powers, as movies and TV shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Extended Universe and beyond have kept stressing. Even as it dispenses a much-needed antidote to superhero worship's saturation of big- and small-screen entertainment — even as it has made distrusting the spandex-clad and preternaturally gifted its baseline — The Boys has also told this story. Across the entire extent of human history, what's more recognisable than power and dominance bringing out the worst in people? As adapted from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comics series of the same name by showrunner Eric Kripke (Supernatural) since 2019, this series has stared at the grimmest vision of a world with tights-adorned supposed saviours. It's a show where murder at the hands of supes, which is then covered up by the company profiting from elevating them above the masses, is an everyday reality. It's a dark satire. It's gleeful in its onslaught of OTT violence and sightings of genitals. What it means to grapple with the struggle to hold onto humanity has firmly been at The Boys' core since its first episode, however, making it a mirror. It has never been hard to see where art imitates life in this account of its namesake rag-tag crew (Thor: Ragnarok,'s Karl Urban, Oppenheimer's Jack Quaid, Wrath of Man's Laz Alonso, One on One's Tomer Capone and Bullet Train's Karen Fukuhara) saying "enough is enough" to the US' downward spiral. With flying, laser-eyed, super-strong, supernaturally speedy and otherwise-enhanced beings commercialised by a behemoth of a company called Vought International, The Boys has never been subtle at pointing its fingers at the many ways in which pop culture and the corporations behind it hold sway. The show's parallels with American politics in its portrait of a factionalised nation torn apart over a polarising leader who considers himself above the law are equally overt. Of course, the series is just as blatant in unpacking the consequences of letting the pursuit of power run riot. In its narrative, in chasing supremacy above all else, humans and supes really are just like each other — a truth season four doesn't ever let slip from view. The Boys streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Breeders Sitcoms about raising a family are almost as common as sitcoms in general, with the antics of being married with children up there with workplace shenanigans as one of the genre's go-to setups. Thanks to the OG UK version of The Office, Martin Freeman knows more than a little about employment-focused TV comedies. Courtesy of The Thick of It and Veep, actor-turned-director Chris Addison and writer Simon Blackwell also fall into that category. But Breeders, which the trio created and thrusts them into the world of mining parenting for laughs, isn't your standard take on its concept. As became immediately evident when the British series began in 2020, and remains the case now that it's wrapping up with its current fourth season — which aired overseas in 2023 but only hit Down Under in 2024 — this show does't subscribe to the rosy notion that being a mother or a father (or a son or daughter, or grandmother or grandfather) equals loveable chaos. There's love, of course. There's even more chaos. But there's also clear eyes, plus bleakness; again, this is largely helmed and scripted by alumni of two of the best, sharpest and most-candid political satires of the 21st century, and always feels as such. Season four begins with a time jump, with Breeders' overall path tracking Paul Worsley (Freeman, Secret Invasion) and Ally Grant's (Daisy Haggard, Boat Story) journey from when their two kids were very young — including babies, via flashbacks — to their teenage and young-adult years now. Consequently, five years on in the narrative from season three, another set of actors play Luke (Oscar Kennedy, Wreck) and Ava (debutant Zoë Athena) in this farewell run as the first is moving in with his girlfriend and the second explores her own love life, as well as grappling with the inescapable reality that her elder brother's ups and downs have always monopolised her family's attention. Paul and Ally also have the ailing health of Paul's parents Jim (Alun Armstrong, Tom Jones) and Jackie (Joanna Bacon, Benediction) to manage, in addition to the ebbs and flows of their own often-fraught relationship, plus just dealing with getting through the days, weeks, months and years in general (Ally turning 50 is one of this season's plot points). That this all sounds like standard life is part of the point; watching Breeders is like looking in a mirror, especially in its unvarnished and relatable all-you-can-do-is-laugh perspective. Freeman's knack for swearing will be especially missed. Breeders streams via Disney+. Abbott Elementary The Parks and Recreation comparisons were there from the start with Abbott Elementary. This Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning comedy charts the hustle and bustle at the titular underfunded school in Philadelphia, rather than a government department in Pawnee, but the similarities have always been glaring. Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson, Miracle Workers) is the eager-beaver second-grade teacher keen to do everything she can for her students. Ava Coleman (Janelle James, Monsters at Work) is the principal content with coasting by on the bare minimum. There's even a newcomer in substitute Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams, The United States vs Billie Holiday), with whom sparks fly on Janine's part. It might seem a bold move to use one of the greatest-ever — warmest-ever, too — sitcoms as a template, or even just follow closely in its footsteps, but Abbott Elementary is up to the task. Those awards, which Parks and Recreation also deserved but rarely received, are well-earned by a series that is all heart, kindness and affection for one of the most-important careers there is, as well as appreciation for the obstacles facing US public-school teachers today. In its third season, Abbott Elementary knows that even a winning formula that's been proven elsewhere needs shaking up. So, it does the equivalent of Parks and Recreation sending Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler, Inside Out 2) to Washington by having Janine work for the school district to attempt to bring about change for her pupils at a higher level. It's a move that brings in the always-welcome Josh Segarra (The Big Door Prize) as her new boss, and also Keegan-Michael Key (IF) as the Superintendent that's his boss — and disrupts the status quo at the educational institution that she adores, including for her idol Barbara Howard (Sheryl Lee Ralph, Ray Donovan), plus colleagues Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter, The Right Mom) and Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti, Sound of Metal). The idea that one person can and does make a difference, no matter the recognition they do or don't receive, beats strongly in this good-natured series, which Brunson created and co-writes. So does a sense of humour about grappling with whatever the day throws your way, be it professional or personal chaos. Abbott Elementary streams via Disney+. The Big Door Prize If there was a Morpho machine IRL rather than just in The Big Door Prize, and it dispensed cards that described the potential of TV shows instead of people, this is what it might spit out about the series that it's in: "comforting". For a mystery-tinged dramedy filled with people trying to work out who they are and truly want to be after an arcade game-esque console appears in their small town, this page-to-screen show has always proven both cathartic and relatable viewing. Its timing, dropping season one in 2023 as the pandemic-inspired great reset was well and truly in full swing, is a key factor. Last year as well as now — with season two currently upon us — this is a series that speaks to the yearning to face existential questions that couldn't be more familiar in a world where COVID-19 sparked a wave of similar "who am I?" musings on a global scale. The difference for the residents of Deerfield in this second spin: their journey no longer simply involves pieces of cardboard that claim to know where the bearer should be expending their energy, but also spans new animated videos that transform their inner thoughts and hopes into 32-bit clips. When the Morpho first made its presence known, high-school teacher Dusty (Chris O'Dowd, Slumberland) was cynical. Now he's taking the same route as everyone else in his community — including his wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, The Upshaws) and daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara, Fitting In) — by letting it steer his decisions. But whether he's making moves that'll impact his marriage, or his restaurant-owning best friend Giorgio (Josh Segarra, The Other Two) is leaping into a new relationship with Cass' best friend Nat (Mary Holland, The Afterparty), or other townsfolk are holding the Morpho up as a source of wisdom, easy happiness rarely follows. Season two of this David West Read (Schitt's Creek)-developed series still treats its magical machine as a puzzle for characters and viewers to attempt to solve, but it also digs deeper into the quest for answers that we all undertake while knowing deep down that there's no such thing as a straightforward meaning of life. As well as being extremely well-cast and thoughtful, it's no wonder that The Big Door Prize keeps feeling like staring in a mirror — and constantly intriguing as well. The Big Door Prize streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review, and our interview with Chris O'Dowd and Josh Segarra. The Tourist Same cast, new location, similar-enough scenario: that's the approach in The Tourist's second season, which brings back what was meant to be a once-off series from 2022. In its debut run, Jamie Dornan's (A Haunting in Venice) Elliot Stanley awoke in the Aussie outback with zero memory and his life in danger. When the first six episodes ended, he'd uncovered who he was, complete with a distressing criminal past, but was en route to starting anew with Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald, French Exit), the constable who helped him get to the bottom of his mystery. After the show worked so swimmingly to begin with, swiftly earning its renewal, screenwriters Harry and Jack Williams (Baptiste, The Missing, Liar) switch part of their initial setup for its next spin. The story moves to Elliot's homeland, while Helen is the tourist (as is her grating ex Ethan, as played by Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe's Greg Larsen). Remaining in the compellingly entertaining thriller-meets-dramedy's return is the lack of recollection about Elliot's history, even as he actively goes looking for it. The Tourist first rejoins its main couple on a train in southeast Asia. While not married, they're firmly in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. But the now ex-cop has a revelation: Elliot has received a letter from one of his childhood pals who wants to meet. Quickly, off to the Emerald Isle they go. Trying to shave off his bushy holiday beard in a public toilet leads to Elliot being kidnapped, plus Helen playing investigator again. As he attempts to flee his captors (Outlander's Diarmaid Murtagh, Inspektor Jury: Der Tod des Harlekins' Nessa Matthews and The Miracle Club's Mark McKenn), she seeks help from local Detective Sergeant Ruairi Slater (Conor MacNeill, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), but any dreams that The Tourist's globe-hopping couple had about happy reunions or relaxing Irish getaways are sent packing fast. Disturbing discoveries; feuding families led by the equally formidable Frank McDonnell (Francis Magee, Then You Run) and Niamh Cassidy (Olwen Fouéré, The Northman); again bringing Fargo and TV adaptation to mind: they're all influential factors in The Tourist's easy-to-binge (again) second season. The Tourist streams via Stan. Read our full review. Heartbreak High When Heartbreak High returned in 2022, the Sydney-set series benefited from a pivotal fact: years pass, trends come and go, but teen awkwardness and chaos is eternal. In its second season, Netflix's revival of the 1994–99 Australian favourite embraces the same idea. It's a new term at Hartley High, one that'll culminate in the Year 11 formal. Amerie (Ayesha Madon, Love Me) might be certain that she can change — doing so is her entire platform for running for school captain — but waiting for adulthood to start never stops being a whirlwind. Proving as easy to binge as its predecessor, Heartbreak High's eight new episodes reassemble the bulk of the gang that audiences were initially introduced to two years ago. Moving forward is everyone's planned path — en route to that dance, which gives the new batch of instalments its flashforward opening. The evening brings fire, literally. Among the regular crew, a few faces are missing in the aftermath. The show then rewinds to two months earlier, to old worries resurfacing, new faces making an appearance and, giving the season a whodunnit spin as well, to a mystery figure taunting and publicly shaming Amerie. The latter begins their reign of terror with a dead animal; Bird Psycho is soon the unknown culprit's nickname. Leaders, creepers, slipping between the sheets: that's Heartbreak High's second streaming go-around in a nutshell. The battle to rule the school is a three-person race, pitting Amerie against Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran, Mustangs FC) and Spider (Bryn Chapman Parish, Mr Inbetween) — one as progressive as Hartley, which already earns that label heartily, can get; the other season one's poster boy for jerkiness, toxicity and entitlement. Heightening the electoral showdown is a curriculum clash, with the SLT class introduced by Jojo Obah (Chika Ikogwe, The Tourist) last term as a mandatory response to the grade's behaviour questioned by Head of PE Timothy Voss (Angus Sampson, Bump). A new faculty member for the show, he's anti-everything that he deems a threat to traditional notions of masculinity. In Spider, Ant (Brodie Townsend, Significant Others) and others, he quickly has followers. Their name, even adorning t-shirts: CUMLORDS. Heartbreak High streams via Netflix. Read our full review and our interview with Thomas Weatherall. House of the Dragon It's a chair made out of swords. So notes Daemon Targaryen's (Matt Smith, Morbius) description of the Iron Throne. Not one but two hit HBO shows have put squabbles about the sought-after seat at their centre so far, and the second keeps proving a chip off the old block in a fantasy franchise where almost everyone meets that description. If the family trees sprawling throughout Game of Thrones for eight seasons across 2011–19 and now House of the Dragon for two since 2022 (with a third on the way) weren't so closely intertwined in all of their limbs, would feuding over everything, especially the line of succession, be such a birthright? Set within the Targaryens 172 years before Daenerys is born, House of the Dragon keeps the black-versus-green factionalism going in season two, to civil war-esque extremes over which two offspring of the late King Viserys the Peaceful (Paddy Considine, The Third Day) should wear the crown and plonk themselves in the blade-lined chair. The monarch long ago named Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy, Mothering Sunday) as his heir. But with his last breaths, his wife Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke, Slow Horses) claims that he picked their eldest son Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney, Rogue Heroes) instead. In King's Landing, the response was speedy, with Rhaenyra supplanted before she'd even heard over at Dragonstone that her father had passed away. Based on George RR Martin's Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon has also long painted Rhaenyra as the preferred type of chip off the old block. She too wants peace, not war. She also seeks stability for the realm over personal glory. If Viserys spotted that in her as a girl (Milly Alcock, Upright) when he chose her over Daemon, his brother who is now Rhaenyra's husband, he might've also predicted the dedication that she sports towards doing his legacy, and those before him, proud. Conversely, Aegon, also the grandson of Viserys' hand Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans, The King's Man), sees only entitlement above all else. Martin's tales of dynasties trade in the cycles that course through the bonds of blood, especially in House of the Dragon. Everyone watching knows what's to come for the Targaryens in Daenerys' time, right down to an aunt-nephew romance as the counterpart to Daemon and Rhaenyra's uncle-niece relationship. (No one watching has started this prequel series, the first spinoff of likely many to Game of Thrones, without being familiar with its predecessor). Ice-blonde hair, ambition that soars as high as the dragons they raise and fly, said flame-roaring beasts of the sky, the inability to host happy reunions: these are traits passed down through generations. Some are a matter of genes. Martin continues to explore why the others persist. House of the Dragon streams via Binge. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing highlights? We picked the 15 best new TV shows of 2024, too. We also keep a running list of must-stream TV from across the year so far, complete with full reviews. And, you can check out our list of film and TV streaming recommendations, which is updated monthly.
Popularity and greatness aren't the same thing, especially in art, but it's always nice when one — or some — of the movies that are getting audiences flocking to cinemas are among the year's best. 2023 managed that feat with Barbie and Oppenheimer. Across 2024's first six months, Dune: Part Two is leading the charge, and spicily. So, if you did see the latest trip to Arrakis at your local picture palace, you saw one of the highlights of the year so far. The newest exploits of House Atreides and the Fremen fuel just one of 2024's standouts starring Zendaya. Tennis love-triangle drama Challengers, the other, is also merely one of the new flicks this year to feature Josh O'Connor, too — as folks who caught Italian gem La Chimera know. As with every year, this turn of the calendar has been filled with filmic variety, including among the movies that we should all be talking about well into the future. Some won Oscars. Others would've in different years. Some unpack icons. Others demonstrate why particular actors are icons. Some whisk audiences back to the past. Others feel like reliving a memory. Even at 2024's midpoint, whittling down the top silver-screen releases so far isn't an easy task. It's true now as it always is no matter the year: more than 15 excellent features have debuted on screens Down Under between January–June, whether they were brand-new around the world or just new to us after premiering elsewhere in 2023. The absolute best of the best demand an immediate rewatch. They delight, surprise, challenge and engage. Give them another spin — or, if you missed them to-date, a first look — and you're in for a helluva ace viewing experience. Perfect Days When Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day' enjoyed its initial sublime movie moment in Trainspotting, it soundtracked a descent into heroin's depths, including literally via the film's visual choices. For three decades since, that's been the tune's definitive on-screen use. Now drifts in Perfect Days, the Oscar-nominated Japan-set drama from German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Submergence). This slice-of-life movie takes its name from the song. It also places the iconic David Bowie-produced classic among the tracks listened to by toilet cleaner Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho, Vivant) as he goes about his daily routine. Fond of 60s- and 70s-era music, the Tokyo native's picks say everything about his mindset, both day by day and in his zen approach to his modest existence. 'Perfect Day' and Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' each also sum up the feeling of watching this gorgeous ode to making the most of what you have, seeing beauty in the everyday and being in the moment. Not every tune that Hirayama pops into his van's tape deck — cassettes are still his format of choice — has the same type of title. Patti Smith's 'Redondo Beach', The Animals' 'The House of the Rising Sun', Otis Redding's '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay' and The Rolling Stones' '(Walkin' Thru the) Sleepy City' also rank among his go-tos, all reflecting his mood in their own ways. If there's a wistfulness to Hirayama's music selections, it's in the manner that comes over all of us when we hark back to something that we first loved when we were younger. Perfect Days' protagonist is at peace with his life, however. Subtly layered into the film is the idea that things were once far different and more-conventionally successful, but Hirayama wasn't as content as he now is doing the rounds of the Japanese capital's public bathrooms, blasting his favourite songs between stops, eating lunch in a leafy park and photographing trees with an analogue camera. Read our full review. Love Lies Bleeding In Love Lies Bleeding, a craggy ravine just outside a dusty New Mexico town beckons, ready to swallow sordid secrets in the dark of the desert's starry night. Tumbling into it, a car explodes in flames partway through the movie, exactly as the person pushing it in wants it to. There's the experience of watching Rose Glass' sophomore film emblazoned across the feature's very frames. After the expertly unsettling Saint Maud, the British writer/director returns with a second psychological horror, this time starring Kristen Stewart in the latest of her exceptionally chosen post-Twilight roles (see: Crimes of the Future, Spencer, Happiest Season, Lizzie, Personal Shopper, Certain Women and Clouds of Sils Maria). An 80s-set queer and sensual tale of love, lust, blood and violence, Love Lies Bleeding is as inkily alluring as the gorge that's pivotal to its plot, and as fiery as the inferno that swells from the canyon's depths. This neon-lit, synth-scored neo-noir thriller scorches, too — and burns so brightly that there's no escaping its glow. When the words "you have to see it to believe it" also grace Love Lies Bleeding — diving into gyms and in the bodybuilding world, it's no stranger to motivational statements such as "no pain no gain", "destiny is a decision" and "the body achieves what the mind believes" — they help sum up this wild cinematic ride as well. Glass co-scripts here with Weronika Tofilska (they each previously penned and helmed segments of 2015's A Moment in Horror), but her features feel like the result of specific, singular and searing visions that aren't afraid to swerve and veer boldly and committedly to weave their stories and leave an imprint. Accordingly, Love Lies Bleeding is indeed a romance, a crime flick and a revenge quest. It's about lovers on the run (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's Katy O'Brian pairs with Stewart) and intergenerational griminess. It rages against the machine. It's erotic, a road trip and unashamedly pulpy. It also takes the concept of strong female leads to a place that nothing else has, and you do need to witness it to fathom it. Read our full review, and our interview with Rose Glass. The Zone of Interest Quotes and observations about evil being mundane, as well as the result when people look the other way, will never stop being relevant. A gripping, unsettling masterpiece, The Zone of Interest is a window into why. The first film by Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer in more than a decade, the Holocaust-set feature peers on as the unthinkable happens literally just over the fence, but a family goes about its ordinary life. If it seems abhorrent that anything can occur in the shadow of any concentration camp or site of World War II atrocities, that's part of the movie's point. It dwells in the Interessengebiet, the 40-square-kilometre-plus titular area that comprised and surrounded the Auschwitz complex, to interrogate how banal genocide was to those in power; commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel, Babylon Berlin), even gloats that his name will be remembered and celebrated for its connection to mass extermination. Höss was a real person, and the real Nazi SS officer overseeing Auschwitz from 1940–43. His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) and five children are similarly drawn from truth. But The Zone of Interest finds its way to the screen via Martin Amis' fiction novel of the same name, then hones its interest down from the book's three narrators to the Höss family; a biopic, it isn't, even as it switches its character monikers back to reflect actuality. This is a work of deep probing and contemplation — a piece that demands that its viewers confront the daily reality witnessed and face how the lives of those in power, and benefiting from it, thrived with death not only as a neighbour but an enabler. Camp prisoners tend the Höss' garden. Ashes are strewn over the soil for horticultural effect. Being turned into the same is a threat used to keep the household's staff in line. All three of these details, as with almost everything in the feature, are presented with as matter-of-fact an air as cinema is capable of. Read our full review. Anatomy of a Fall A calypso instrumental cover of 50 Cent's 'P.I.M.P.' isn't the only thing that Anatomy of a Fall's audience won't be able to dislodge from their heads after watching 2023's deserving Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winner. A film that's thorny, knotty and defiantly unwilling to give any easy answers, this legal, psychological and emotional thriller about a woman on trial for her husband's death is unshakeable in as many ways as someone can have doubts about another person: so, a myriad. The scenario conjured up by writer/director Justine Triet (Sibyl) is haunting, asking not only if her protagonist committed murder, as the on-screen investigation and courtroom proceedings interrogate, but digging into what it means to be forced to choose between whether someone did the worst or is innocent — or if either matters. While the Gallic legal system provides the backdrop for much of the movie, the real person doing the real picking isn't there in a professional capacity, or on a jury. Rather, it's the 11-year-old boy who loved his dad, finds him lying in the snow with a head injury outside their French Alps home on an otherwise ordinary day, then becomes the key witness in his mum's case. Also impossible to forget: the performances that are so crucial in telling this tale of marital and parental bonds, especially from one of German's current best actors and the up-and-coming French talent playing her son. With her similarly astonishing portrayal in The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and I'm Your Man's Sandra Hüller is two for two in movies that initially debuted in 2023; here, she steps into the icy and complicated Sandra Voyter's shoes with the same kind of surgical precision that Triet applies to unpacking the character's home life. As Daniel, who couldn't be more conflicted about the nightmare situation he's been thrust into, Milo Machado Graner (Alex Hugo) is a revelation — frequently via his expressive face and posture alone. If Scenes From a Marriage met Kramer vs Kramer, plus 1959's Anatomy of a Murder that patently influences Anatomy of a Fall's name, this would be the gripping end result — as fittingly written by Triet with her IRL partner Arthur Harari (Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle). Read our full review. Priscilla Yearning to be one of the women in Sofia Coppola's films is futile, but for a single reason only: whether she's telling of teenage sisters, a wife left to her own devices in Tokyo, France's most-famous queen, the daughter of a Hollywood actor, Los Angeles high schoolers who want to rob, the staff and students at a girls school in the American Civil War, a Manhattanite worried that her husband is being unfaithful or Priscilla Presley, as the writer/director has across eight movies to-date, no one better plunges viewers into her female characters' hearts and heads. To watch the filmmaker's span of features from The Virgin Suicides to Priscilla is to feel as its figures do, and deeply. The second-generation helmer is an impressionistic great, colouring her flicks as much with emotions and mood as actual hues — not that there's any shortage of lush and dreamy shades, as intricately tied to her on-screen women's inner states, swirling through her meticulous frames. Call it the "can't help falling" effect, then: as a quarter-century of Coppola's films have graced screens, audiences can't help falling into them like they're in the middle of each themselves. That's still accurate with Priscilla, which arrives so soon after Elvis that no one could've forgotten that the lives of the king of rock 'n' roll and his bride have flickered through cinemas recently. Baz Luhrmann made his Presley movie in Australia with an American (Austin Butler, The Bikeriders) as Elvis and an Aussie (Olivia DeJonge, The Staircase) as Priscilla. Coppola crafted hers in North America with a Brisbanite (Jacob Elordi, Saltburn) in blue-suede shoes and a Tennessee-born talent (Cailee Spaeny, Mare of Easttown) adopting the Presley surname. The two features are mirror images in a hunk of burning ways, including their his-and-hers titles; whose viewpoint they align with; and conveying what it was like to adore Elvis among the masses, plus why he sparked that fervour, compared to expressing the experience of being the girl that he fell for, married, sincerely loved but kept in a gilded cage into she strove to fly free. Read our full review, and our interview with Cailee Spaeny. Robot Dreams Heartbreak is two souls wanting nothing more than each other, but life having other plans. So goes Robot Dreams, another dialogue-free marvel from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger, who had audiences feeling without words uttered with 2012's Blancanieves — and showed then with black and white imagery, as he does now with animation, that he's a master at deeply expressive visual storytelling. His fourth picture as a director was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards. In most years, if it wasn't up against Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron, it would've taken home the Oscar. It earns not just affection instead, but the awe deserved of a movie that perfects the sensation of longing for someone to navigate life with, finding them, adoring them, then having fate doing what fate does by throwing up complications. Usually this would be a boy-meets-girl, boy-meets-boy or girl-meets-girl story. Here, it's a dog-meets-robot tale. The time: the 80s, with nods to Tab and Pong to prove it. The place: a version of Manhattan where anthropomorphised animals are the only inhabitants — plus mechanised offsiders that, just by placing an order and putting together the contents of the package that arrives, can be built as instant friends. Eating macaroni meals for one and watching TV solo in his small East Village apartment each evening, Dog is achingly lonely when he orders his Amica 2000 after seeing an infomercial. As he tinkers to construct Robot, pigeons watch on from the window, but they've never been his company. Soon exuberantly strutting the streets hand in hand with his maker, the android is a dream pal, however, this kismet pairing isn't what gives Robot Dreams its name. Read our full review. Civil War Civil War is not a relaxing film, either for its characters or viewers, but writer/director Alex Garland (Men) does give Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) a moment to lie down among the flowers. She isn't alone among this stunning movie's stars on her stomach on a property filled with Christmas decorations en route from New York to Washington DC. Also, with shots being fired back and forth, no one is in de-stressing mode. For viewers of Dunst's collaborations with Sofia Coppola, however — a filmmaker that her Civil War co-star Cailee Spaeny just played Priscilla Presley for in Priscilla — the sight of her face beside grass and blooms was always going to recall The Virgin Suicides. Twenty-five years have now passed since that feature, which Garland nods to as a handy piece of intertextual shorthand. As the camera's focus shifts between nature and people, there's not even a tiny instant of bliss among this sorrow, nor will there ever be, as there was the last time that Dunst was framed in a comparable fashion. Instead, Civil War tasks its lead with stepping into the shoes of a seasoned war photographer in the middle of the violent US schism that gives the movie its name (and, with January 6, 2021 so fresh in everyone's memories, into events that could very well be happening in a version of right now). The US President (Nick Offerman, Origin) is into his third term after refusing to leave office, and the fallout is both polarising and immense. Think: bombed cities, suicide attackers, death squads, torture, lynchings, ambushes, snipers, shuttering the FBI, California and Texas inexplicably forming an alliance to fight back, Florida making its own faction, journalists killed on sight, refugee camps, deserted highways, checkpoints, resistance fighters, mass graves and, amid the rampant anarchy, existence as America currently knows it clearly obliterated. (Asking "what kind of American are you?" barely seems a stretch, though.) The front line is in Charlottesville, but Dunst's Lee Smith is destined for the White House with Reuters reporter Joel (Wagner Moura, Mr & Mrs Smith), where they're hoping to evade the lethal anti-media sentiment to secure an interview with the leader who has torn the country apart. Read our full review. La Chimera It's a film about searching for treasure, and it is indeed a treasure. La Chimera is also dreamy in its look and, while watching, makes its viewers feel as if they've been whisked into one. There's much that fantasies are made of in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher's fourth feature, which follows Corpo Celeste, The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro — God's Own Country breakout and The Crown star Josh O'Connor leading the picture as a British archaeologist raiding tombs in 80s-era Italy chief among them. Thinking about Lara Croft, be it the game, or the Angelina Jolie (in 2001 and 2003 flicks)- or Alicia Vikander (2018's Tomb Raider)-led movies, is poking into the wrong patch of soil. Thinking instead about the way that life is built upon the dead again and again, and upon unearthed secrets as well, is part of what makes La Chimera gleam. Rohrwacher's latest, which also boasts her Happy as Lazzaro collaborator Carmela Covino as a collaborating writer — plus Marco Pettenello (Io vivo altrove!) — resembles an illusion not just because it's a rare mix of both magical-realist and neorealist in one, too (well, rare for most who aren't this director). In addition, this blend of romance and drama alongside tragedy and comedy sports its mirage-esque vibe thanks to being so welcomely easy to get lost in. As a snapshot of a tombaroli gang in Tuscany that pilfers from Etruscan crypts to try to get by, it's a feature to dig into. As an example of how poetic a film can be, it's one to soar with. The loose red thread that weaves throughout La Chimera's frames, intriguing folks within the movie, also embodies how viewers should react: we want to chase it and hold on forever, even as we know that, as the feature's 130 minutes tick by, the picture is destined to slip through our fingers. Read our full review. The Taste of Things Cooking is an act of precision. It's also one of feeling. On the movie that nabbed him the Best Director award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Trần Anh Hùng (Éternité, Norwegian Wood) helms with the same care, spirit and emotion that his characters display in the kitchen. The Taste of Things' audience has a front-row seat to both, as this 1885-set French picture begins with dishes upon dishes being whipped up and the feature's gaze, via cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (Final Cut), lenses their creation intimately and sumptuously. The film's extraordinary opening 30 minutes-plus, as the camera is trained on the stove and counter with slight detours around the room to collect or wash ingredients, is meticulously crafted and at the same time instinctual. Think: the sensations of observing the finest of fine-dining chefs and being a child watching your grandmother make culinary magic, as nearly every kid has, all rolled into one appetising introductory sequence. In the home of gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel, The King of Algiers), and in its heart, his personal chef Eugénie (Juliette Binoche, The New Look) is so skilled and fastidious that she'd do small-screen hit The Bear proud; she's clearly a conjurer of the culinary arts, too. Hùng and Ricquebourg — the latter a well-deserving Lumiere Award-winner for his efforts here — are methodical with the choreography of setting the scene, while equally deeply immersed in the flow of the kitchen's tasks. As soundtracked by chirping birds, if this was The Taste of Things for 135 minutes and not just half an hour-ish, it'd remain a mesmerising movie. (A word of warning: eat before viewing, lest hunger pangs not just simmer but boil over.) Adapting 1924 novel The Passionate Epicure: La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet by epicure Marcel Rouff as he scripts and directs, Hùng does more than fashion among the most-handsomely staged and shot imagery of a meal coming to life, but his approach to this entrée establishes the flavour. Read our full review. Dune: Part Two Revenge is a dish best served sandy in Dune: Part Two. On the desert planet of Arrakis, where golden hills as far as the eye can see are shaped from the most-coveted and -psychedelic substance in author Frank Herbert's estimation, there's no other way. Vengeance is just one course on Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet, Wonka) menu, however. Pop culture's supreme spice boy, heir to the stewardship of his adopted realm, has a prophecy to fulfil whether he likes it or not; propaganda to navigate, especially about him being the messiah; and an Indigenous population, the Fremen, to prove himself to. So mines Denis Villeneuve's soaring sequel to 2021's Dune, which continues exploring the costs and consequences of relentless quests for power — plus the justifications, compromises, tragedies and narratives that are inescapable in such pursuits. The filmmaker crafts his fourth contemplative and breathtaking sci-fi movie in a row, then, after Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 as well. The vast arid expanse that constantly pervades the frames in Dune: Part Two isn't solely a stunning sight. It looks spectacular, as the entire feature does, with Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (The Creator) back after winning an Oscar for the first Dune; but as Paul, his widowed mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, Silo), and Fremen Stilgar (Javier Bardem, The Little Mermaid) and Chani (Zendaya, Euphoria) traverse it, it helps carve in some of this page-to-screen saga's fundamental ideas. So does the stark monochrome when the film jumps to Giedi Prime, home world to House Harkonnen, House Atreides' enemy, plus Arrakis' ruler both before and after Paul's dad Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) got the gig in Villeneuve's initial Dune. People here are dwarfed not only by their mammoth surroundings, but by the bigger, broader, non-stop push for supremacy. While there's no shortage of detail in both Part One and Part Two — emotional, thematic and visual alike — there's also no avoiding that battling against being mere pawns in an intergalactic game of chess is another of its characters' complicated fights. Read our full review, and our interview with Greig Fraser. The Promised Land The transfixing terrain of Mads Mikkelsen's face has been cast against formidably frosty and inhospitable climes before, weathering mirroring weathering. Sporting a piercing and determined glint in his eye, the Danish acting great has previously surveyed the Scandinavian landscape, too, seeing possibility where others spot peril. It was true in Arctic, in Valhalla Rising and now in The Promised Land: there's no stare as mesmerisingly resolute as his. When Ludvig Kahlen, Mikkelsen's latest character, insists that he can do what no one else has done — to begin with: settling the heath on the heather-covered Jutland moorland and building a colony for the king, a feat considered virtually impossible in the mid-18th century — doubting him isn't a possibility for anyone in the movie's audience. The BAFTA-nominated Another Round star has danced in historical drama territory for his countryman director Nikolaj Arcel in the past as well, with the pair reteaming after 2012's Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair. A different king sits on the throne in this film, Frederick V instead of Christian VII; however, the regal shadow remains inescapable. This time, Mikkelsen and Arcel tell not of a doctor influencing a monarch and a country, but of a soldier aligning his quest for a better future with a sovereign's wish, and learning what it means to chase a dream only to realise that you need something less tangible. Kahlen's attempt to farm land considered barren is equally a battle against entitlement and arrogance thanks to his clash with Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg, Borgen), a cruel local magistrate who contends that the king's land is his own — and feels far enough away from Copenhagen for there not to be any consequences for his claim. Read our full review. Challengers Tennis is a game of serves, shots, slices and smashes, and also of approaches, backhands, rallies and volleys. Challengers is a film of each, too, plus a movie about tennis. As it follows a love triangle that charts a path so back and forth that its ins and outs could be carved by a ball being hit around on the court, it's a picture that takes its aesthetic, thematic and emotional approach from the sport that its trio of protagonists are obsessed with as well. Tennis is everything to Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, Dune: Part Two), Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, West Side Story) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor, La Chimera), other than the threesome themselves being everything to each other. It's a stroke of genius to fashion the feature about them around the game they adore, then. Metaphors comparing life with a pastime are easy to coin. Movies that build such a juxtaposition into their fabric are far harder to craft. But it's been true of Luca Guadagnino for decades: he's a craftsman. Jumping from one Dune franchise lead to another, after doing Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All with Timothée Chalamet, Guadagnino proves something else accurate that's been his cinematic baseline: he's infatuated with the cinema of yearning. Among his features so far, only in Bones and All was the hunger for connection literal. The Italian director didn't deliver cannibalism in Call Me By Your Name and doesn't in Challengers, but longing is the strongest flavour in all three, and prominent across the filmmaker's Suspiria, A Bigger Splash and I Am Love also. So, combine the idea of styling a movie around a tennis match — one spans its entire duration, in fact — with a lusty love triangle, romantic cravings and three players at the top of their field, then this is the sublime end product. Challengers is so smartly constructed, so well thought-out down to every meticulous detail, so sensual and seductive, and so on point in conveying Tashi plus Art and Patrick's feelings, that it's instantly one of Guadagnino's grand slams. Read our full review, as well as what Zendaya, Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist had to say about the film when they were in Australia. All of Us Strangers As Fleabag knew, and also Sherlock as well, Andrew Scott has the type of empathetic face that makes people want to keep talking to him. Playing the hot priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) acclaimed comedy, he was the ultimate listener. Even as the Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch's (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) Holmes, and with a game always afoot, conversation flowed. All of Us Strangers puts this innate air — this sensation that to be in Scott's company is to want to unburden yourself to his welcoming ears — at its tender and feverishly beating heart, this time with Paul Mescal (Foe) as one of his discussion partners. Dreamy and contemplative, haunting and heartfelt, and also delicate and devastating, the fifth film by Weekend and 45 Years writer/director Andrew Haigh, which is his first since 2017's Lean on Pete, is stunningly cast with Scott in seeing-is-feeling mode as its isolated screenwriter protagonist alone. That Scott is joined by Mescal, Claire Foy (Women Talking) and Jamie Bell (Shining Girls) gives All of Us Strangers one of the finest four-hander casts in recent memory. Awards bodies clearly agree, with nods going around for everyone (alongside wins for Best Film and Best Director, the British Independent Film Awards gave all four of the feature's core cast members nominations, with Mescal scoring the Best Supporting Performance trophy, for instance). Haigh isn't merely preternaturally talented at picking the exact right actors to play his on-screen figures, but it's one of his most-crucial skills, as every performance in his latest shattering picture demonstrates. It comes as no surprise that Scott, Mescal, Foy and Bell are all excellent. It's similarly hardly unexpected that Haigh has made another movie that cuts so emotionally deep that viewers will feel as if they've been within its frames. Combine these stars with this filmmaker, though, and a feature that was always likely to combine its exceptional parts into a perfect sum is somehow even more affecting and astonishing. Read our full review. How to Have Sex Movies don't have pores, but How to Have Sex might as well. Following a trip to Greece with three 16-year-old best friends who want nothing more than to party their way into womanhood — and to get laid, too — this unforgettable British drama is frequently slick with sweat. Perspiration can dampen someone when they're giddily excited about a wild getaway, finishing school and leaving adolescence behind. It can get a person glistening when they're rushing and drinking, and flitting from pools and beaches to balconies and clubs. Being flushed from being sozzled, the stickiness that comes with expending energy, the cold chill of stress and horror, the fluster of a fluttering heart upon making a connection: they're all sources of wet skin as well. Filmmaker Molly Manning Walker catalogues them all. Viewers can see the sweat in How to Have Sex, with its intimate, spirited, like-you're-there cinematography. More importantly, audiences can feel why protagonist Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce, Vampire Academy) is perspiring, and the differences scene to scene, even when she's not quite sure herself. How to Have Sex also gets those watching sweating — because spying how you've been Tara, or her pals Em (debutant Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake, Halo), or lads Badger (Shaun Thomas, Ali & Ava) and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley, The Last Rifleman) in the neighbouring resort unit, is inescapable. Walker has been there herself, with parts of her debut feature as a writer and director drawn from her own time as a Tara, Em or Skye while also making the spring break and Schoolies-like pilgrimage from England to the Mediterranean. When the movie doesn't lift details directly from her own experience, it shares them with comparable moments that are virtually ripped from western teendom. One of the feature's strokes of genius is how lived-in it proves, whether Tara and her mates are as loud and exuberant as girls are when their whole lives are ahead of them, its main character is attempting to skip her troubles in a sea of strobing lights and dancing bodies, or slipping between the sheets — but not talking about it — is changing who Tara is forever. Read our full review, and our interview with Molly Manning Walker. Drive-Away Dolls No one might've thought of Joel and Ethan Coen as yin and yang if they hadn't started making movies separately. Since 2018's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, their latest feature together as sibling filmmakers, the elder of the Coen brothers went with Shakespearean intensity by directing 2021's The Tragedy of Macbeth on his lonesome — while Ethan now opts for goofy, loose and hilariously sidesplitting silliness with Drive-Away Dolls. The pair aren't done collaborating, with a horror flick reportedly in the works next. But their break from being an Oscar-winning team has gifted audiences two treats in completely different fashions. For the younger brother, he's swapped in his wife Tricia Cooke, editor of The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn't There, on a picture that couldn't slide more smoothly onto his resume alongside the madcap antics that the Coens combined are known for. Indeed, spying shades of the first of those two features that Cooke spliced in Drive-Away Dolls, plus Raising Arizona, Fargo and Burn After Reading as well, is both easy and delightful. As a duo, the Coen brothers haven't ever followed two women through lesbian bars, makeout parties and plenty of horniness between the sheets, though, amid wall dildos and other nods to intimate appendages, even if plenty about the Ethan-directed, Cooke-edited Drive-Away Dolls — which both Ethan and Cooke co-wrote — is classic Coens. There's the road-trip angle, conspiracy mayhem, blundering criminals in hot pursuit of Jamie (Margaret Qualley, Poor Things) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, Cat Person), dumb men (those crooks again) in cars and just quirky characters all round. There's the anarchic chases, witty yet philosophical banter and highly sought-after briefcase at the centre of the plot, too. And, there's the fact that this is a comedic caper, its love of slapstick and that a wealth of well-known faces pop up as the zany antics snowball. The Joel-and-Ethan team hasn't made a film as sapphic as this, either, however, or one that's a 90s-set nod to, riff on, and parody of 60s- and 70s-era sexploitation raucousness. Read our full review, and our interview with Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke.
The inimitable terrain of Julio Torres' mind. Japan from centuries ago. Italy in black and white. Brisbane in the 80s. Another multiverse. Another wasteland, too. These are some of the places that 2024's best new television shows across its first six months have taken viewers — be it with laughs, heart, thrills, scheming, bloodshed, ghouls or multiple Joel Edgertons. No one can say that there's been nothing that's new and good to watch between January–June, then. In today's streaming age, no one can make that claim anyway at any time, because there's always something joining a platform somewhere. So if you don't already have your own list of 2024 highlights, you must've been avoiding the small screen. Don't worry — we're here with 15 recommendations. Do you feel like slinking into a spectacular spy series that's also about a relationship, and puts a Brangelina movie to shame? That's also among our cream-of-the-crop TV picks for 2024's first half. So is the based-on-a-true-story Netflix surprise that got everyone talking — and that no one will forget after they've seen it. Here's the full list, ready for you to binge your way through now or help fill the rest of the year's couch time, whichever suits you. Fantasmas With Fantasmas, creator, writer, director and star Julio Torres welcomes viewers into a world that couldn't have been conjured up by anyone else but the former Saturday Night Live scribe, who then became the co-guiding force behind Los Espookys and filmmaker responsible for Problemista. Torres also leaves his audience grateful that they exist in this particular world, where HBO has given him the means and support to make a comedy series so singular, so clearly the work of a visionary and so gloriously surreal. Fantasmas has no peers beyond Torres' work, other than the patron saint of spilling the contents of your mind and heart onto the screen with zero willingness to compromise or hold back: David Lynch. That said, even that comparison — and the utmost of praise that comes with it — can't prepare viewers for a show where clear crayons are one idea whipped up by the on-screen Julio, another sees Steve Buscemi (Curb Your Enthusiasm) playing the letter Q as an avant-garde outsider, Santa Claus is taken to court by elves (including SNL's Bowen Yang), and series-within-a-series MELF riffs on 80s and 90s hit sitcom ALF but starring Paul Dano (Spaceman) and featuring quite the twist on its alien-adopting premise. As the sets appear like exactly sets but with a DIY spin, star-studded cameos stack up, and absurdist vignettes pop in and out to flesh out Julio's mindscape as much as the futuristic realm imagined by the IRL Torres, there is an overarching narrative at the core of Fantasmas. The series' take on Julio trades in concepts, plus in being unflinchingly himself, but doing anything is impossible without a Proof of Existence ID card in this dystopia. He's on a quest to secure one, which isn't straightforward. In the process, he's also searching for a tiny gold oyster earring, and pondering whether to upload his consciousness and jettison his body. By his side: robot companion Bibo (Joe Rumrill, The Calling) and agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez, returning from Los Espookys and Problemista), who is really just a performance artist playing an agent. As phantasmagorical as everything that the show flings at the screen can get, which is very, it also tears into relatable issues such as societal status, class clashes, housing, capitalism's many woes and inequities, and the treatment of immigrants. As purposefully eager as it is to show its crafting and creativity, too, it does so to stress the fact that it's being made by people chasing a dream rather than corporations bowing to an algorithm. Fantasmas streams via Binge. Read our full review. Shōgun Casting Hiroyuki Sanada (John Wick: Chapter 4), Cosmo Jarvis (Persuasion) and Anna Sawai (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) as its three leads is one of Shōgun's masterstrokes. The new ten-part adaptation of James Clavell's 1975 novel — following a first version in 1980 that featured Japanese icon and frequent Akira Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune — makes plenty of other excellent moves, but this is still pivotal. Disney+'s richly detailed samurai series knows how to thrust its viewers into a deeply textured world from the outset, making having three complex performances at its centre an essential anchoring tactic. Sanada plays Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who is among the political candidates vying to take control of the country. Jarvis is John Blackthorne, a British sailor on a Dutch ship that has run aground in a place that its crew isn't sure is real until they get there. And Sawai is Toda Mariko, a Japanese noblewoman who is also tasked with translating. Each character's tale encompasses much more than those descriptions, of course, and the portrayals that bring them to the screen make that plain from the moment they're each first seen. As Game of Thrones and Succession both were, famously so, Shōgun is another drama that's all about fighting for supremacy. Like just the former, too, it's another sweeping epic series as well. Although it's impossible not to see those links, knowing that both battling over who'll seize power and stepping into sprawling worlds are among pop culture's favourite things right now (and for some time) doesn't make Shōgun any less impressive. The scale is grand, and yet it doesn't skimp on intimacy, either. The minutiae is meticulous, demanding that attention is paid to everything at all times. Gore is no stranger from the get-go. Opening in the 17th century, the series finds Japan in crisis mode, Toranaga facing enemies and Blackthorne among the first Englishmen that've made it to the nation — much to the alarm of Japan's sole European inhabitants from Portugal. Getting drawn in, including by the performances, is instantaneous. Shōgun proves powerful and engrossing immediately, and lavish and precisely made as well, with creators Justin Marks (Top Gun: Maverick) and Rachel Kondo (on her first TV credit) doing a spectacular job of bringing it to streaming queues. Shōgun streams via Disney+. Read our full review. Ripley Boasting The Night Of's Steven Zaillian as its sole writer and director — joining a list of credits that includes penning Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Irishman, and also winning an Oscar for Schindler's List — the latest exquisite jump into the Ripley realm doesn't splash around black-and-white hues as a mere stylistic preference. In this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book, the setting is still coastal Italy at its most picturesque, and therefore a place that most would want to revel in visually; Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr Ripley's director a quarter-century back, did so with an intoxicating glow. For Zaillian, however, stripping away the warm rays and beaches and hair, blue seas and skies, and tanned skin as well, ensures that all that glitters is never gold or even just golden in tone as he spends time with Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers). There's never even a glint of a hint of a travelogue aesthetic, with viewers confronted with the starkness of Tom's choices and actions — he is a conman and worse, after all — plus the shadows that he persists in lurking in and the impossibility of ever grasping everything that he desires in full colour. On the page and on the screen both before and now, the overarching story remains the same, though, in this new definitive take on the character. It's the early 60s rather than the late 50s in Ripley, but Tom is in New York, running fake debt-collection schemes and clinging to the edges of high-society circles, when he's made a proposal that he was never going to refuse. Herbert Greenleaf (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, who has also acted in his own three features You Can Count on Me, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea) enlists him to sail to Europe to reunite with a friend, the shipping magnate's son Dickie (Johnny Flynn, One Life). As a paid gig, Tom is to convince the business heir to finally return home. But Dickie has no intention of giving up his Mediterranean leisure as he lackadaisically pursues painting — and more passionately spends his time with girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning, The Equalizer 3) — to join the family business. Ripley streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Mr & Mrs Smith 2005 movie Mr & Mrs Smith isn't the first time that title adorned a spy caper about a literally killer couple. That honour goes not to the Brad Pitt (Babylon)- and Angelina Jolie (Eternals)-starring, Brangelina-sparking film, but to a 90s TV series. No one remembers 1996's Mr & Mrs Smith, where Scott Bakula (who was not long off Quantum Leap at the time) and Maria Bello (Beef) took on the eponymous parts. It didn't last, with just nine episodes airing and a further four made but left unseen. But its existence gives 2024's Mr & Mrs Smith a full-circle vibe, with Donald Glover (Atlanta) and Maya Erskine's (PEN15) now both adopting the monikers and ushering the premise back to episodic storytelling. Bakula and Bello's Mr & Mrs Smith didn't inspire Pitt and Jolie's; however, the latter did give rise to Glover and Erskine's — and any history isn't mere trivia. Instead, it speaks to a concept that's so appealing that it keeps being reused, whether coincidentally or knowingly, and to an idea that's now being given its full Mr & Mrs Smith due, in line with True Lies and The Americans: that relationships are mysteries, missions and investigations. The backstory behind Glover and Erskine bringing glorious chemistry to John and Jane Smith doesn't stop there, because Mr & Mrs Smith circa 2024 has been in the works for three years. When announced in February 2021, it was with Atlanta-meets-Fleabag hopes, with Glover co-starring and co-creating with Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). Then creative differences with Glover saw Waller-Bridge — who also co-wrote the No Time to Die screenplay and created Killing Eve — leave the project within six months. While it's impossible to know how that iteration of Mr & Mrs Smith would've turned out, whether with more overt comedy, talkier or boasting a darker tone, Glover's interpretation with fellow Atlanta alum Francesca Sloane lives up to the promise of two creatives from one of the 21st century's best dramedies turning their attention to espionage and romance. There's an intimacy, a lived-in feel and hangout charm to this Mr & Mrs Smith, even as it swaps Brangelina's already-wed pair discovering that they're assassin rivals for a duo only tying the knot for the gig. Mr and Mrs Smith streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Baby Reindeer A person walking into a bar. The words "sent from my iPhone". A comedian pouring their experiences into a one-performer play. A twisty true-crime tale making the leap to the screen. All four either feature in, inspired or describe Baby Reindeer. All four are inescapably familiar, too, but the same can't be said about this seven-part Netflix series. Written by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, and also based on his real-life experiences, this is a bleak, brave, revelatory, devastating and unforgettable psychological thriller. It does indeed begin with someone stepping inside a pub — and while Gadd plays a comedian on-screen as well, don't go waiting for a punchline. When Martha (Jessica Gunning, The Outlaws) enters The Heart in Camden, London in 2015, Donny Dunn (Gadd, Wedding Season) is behind the counter. "I felt sorry for her. That's the first feeling I felt," the latter explains via voiceover. Perched awkwardly on a stool at the bar, Martha is whimpering to herself. She says that she can't afford to buy a drink, even a cup of tea. Donny takes pity, offering her one for free — and her face instantly lights up. That's the fateful moment, one of sorrow met with kindness, that ignites Baby Reindeer's narrative and changes Donny's life. After that warm beverage, The Heart instantly has a new regular. Sipping Diet Cokes from then on (still on the house), Martha is full of stories about all of the high-profile people that she knows and her high-flying lawyer job. But despite insisting that she's constantly busy, she's also always at the bar when Donny is at work, sticking around for his whole shifts. She chats incessantly about herself, folks that he doesn't know and while directing compliments Donny's way. He's in his twenties, she's in her early forties — and he can see that she's smitten, letting her flirt. He notices her laugh. He likes the attention, not to mention getting his ego stroked. While he doesn't reciprocate her feelings, he's friendly. She isn't just an infatuated fantasist, however; she's chillingly obsessed to an unstable degree. She finds his email address, then starts messaging him non-stop when she's not nattering at his workplace. (IRL, Gadd received more than 40,000 emails.) Baby Reindeer streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Such Brave Girls If Such Brave Girls seems close to reality, that's because it is. In the A24 co-produced series — which joins the cult-favourite entertainment company's TV slate alongside other standouts such as Beef, Irma Vep, Mo and The Curse over the past two years — sisters Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson both star and take inspiration from their lives and personalities. Making their TV acting debuts together, the pair also play siblings. Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson), their on-screen surrogates, are navigating life's lows not only when the show's six-part first season begins, but as it goes on. The entire setup was sparked by a phone conversation between the duo IRL, when one had attempted to take her life twice and the other was £20,000 in debt. For most, a sitcom wouldn't come next; however, laughing at and lampooning themselves, and seeing the absurdity as well, is part of Such Brave Girls' cathartic purpose for its driving forces. If you've ever thought "what else can you do?" when finding yourself inexplicably chuckling at your own misfortune, that's this series — this sharp, unsparing, candid, complex and darkly comedic series — from start to finish. Creating the three-time BAFTA-nominated show, writing it and leading, Sadler plays Josie as a bundle of nerves and uncertainty. The character is in her twenties, struggling with her mental health and aspiring to be an artist, but is largely working her way through a never-ending gap year. Davidson's Billie is the eternally optimistic opposite — albeit really only about the fact that Nicky (Sam Buchanan, Back to Black), the guy that she's hooking up with, will eventually stop cheating on her, fall in love and whisk her away to Manchester to open a vodka bar bearing her name. Both girls live at home with their mother Deb (Louise Brealey, Lockwood & Co), who also sees a relationship as the solution to her problems, setting her sights on the iPad-addicted Dev (Paul Bazely, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) a decade after Josie and Billie's father went out for teabags and never came home. With actor-slash-director Simon Bird behind the lens — alongside first-timer Marco Alessi on one episode — if Such Brave Girls seems like it belongs in the same acerbically comedic realm as The Inbetweeners and Everyone Else Burns, there's a reason for that, too. Such Brave Girls streams via Stan. Read our full review. Boy Swallows Universe A magical-realist coming-of-age tale, a clear-eyed family drama, a twisty crime and detective thriller, a time capsule of Brisbane in the 80s: since first hitting the page in 2018, Trent Dalton's Boy Swallows Universe has worn its happy flitting between different genres and tones, and constant seesawing from hope to heartbreak and back again, as confidently as readers have long envisaged Eli Bell's wide grin. That hopping and jumping, that refusal to be just one type of story and stick to a single mood, has always made sense on the page — and in the excellent seven-part adaptation that now brings Australia's fastest-selling debut novel ever to the screen, it also couldn't feel more perfect. As played by the charmingly talented Felix Cameron (Penguin Bloom), Eli's smile is indeed big. As scripted by screenwriter John Collee (Hotel Mumbai), and with Dalton among the executive producers, the miniseries embraces its multitudes wholeheartedly. Like style, like substance: a semi-autobiographical novel penned by a writer and journalist who lived variations of plenty that he depicts, learned and accepted early that everyone has flaws, and patently has the imagination of someone who coped with life's hardships as a child by escaping into dreams of an existence more fanciful, Dalton's tome and every iteration that it inspires has to be many things in one bustling package. Its characters are, after all. Seeing people in general, parts of a city usually overlooked, and folks with complicated histories or who've made questionable choices — those forced in particular directions out of financial necessity, too — in more than just one fashion flutters at the centre of Boy Swallows Universe. In the Australian Book Industry Awards' 2019 Book of the Year, Literary Book of the Year and Audio Book of the Year, and now on streaming, Eli's nearest and dearest demand it. So does the enterprising Darra-dwelling 12-year-old boy who knows how to spy the best in those he loves, but remains well-aware of their struggles. His older brother Gus (Lee Tiger Halley, The Heights) hasn't spoken since they were younger, instead drawing messages in the sky with his finger, but is as fiercely protective as elder siblings get. Doting and dedicated mum Frankie (Phoebe Tonkin, Babylon) is a recovering heroin addict with a drug dealer for a partner. And Lyle Orlik (Travis Fimmel, Black Snow), that mullet-wearing stepfather, cares deeply about Eli and Gus — including when Eli convinces him to let him join his deliveries. Boy Swallows Universe streams via Netflix. Read our full review, and our interview with Bryan Brown. Exposure When the words "DO NOT MESSAGE" greet someone that's looking through their friend's phone, curiosity kicks in. When that mysterious contact is spied, plus a list of deleted texts and apologies for unintended hurt, immediately after your best mate has taken her own life and left you to find their body, uncovering the person on the other end of the thread becomes an obsession. Twenty-seven-year-old photographer Jacs (Alice Englert, Bad Behaviour) is all impulse and immediate gratification when Exposure begins, when she's at a rave hooking up with a stranger and dancing with her lifelong BFF Kel (Mia Artemis, Anyone But You). The next morning, everything changes forever, except a haunting truth that no one likes realising when tragedy strikes: our worst moments alter us forever, but they can't fix our worst traits or paper over our other traumas. So Jacs keeps being Jacs as she heads home from Sydney to Port Kembla, where she'll barely let her mother Kathy (Essie Davis, One Day) and Kel's ex Angus (Thomas Weatherall, Heartbreak High) lend their support, and where her self-sabotaging spiral only gains momentum as she attempts to turn amateur, fixated, dogged detective. Pain ran in the family in the aforementioned Bad Behaviour, the 2023 New Zealand film — not to be confused with the 2023 Australian miniseries that streamed via Stan, as Exposure also does — that Englert made her feature directorial debut with, plus penned and co-starred in. The movie told of a former child actor (Jennifer Connolly, Dark Matter) and her stunt-performer daughter working through their baggage around the former's attendance at a new-age retreat. Filmmaking talent also ran in the family, given that Englert is the offspring of Oscar-winner Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog). While she's solely on-screen this time, with Lucy Coleman (Hot Mess) scripting and Bonnie Moir (Love Me) helming, Englert is superb again, including at excavating life's agonies once more. Exposure's moniker applies in multiple ways, spanning the controversial contents of an award-winning snap, facing past distresses, playing sleuth and confronting your own chaos — and it equally fits the raw and rich performance at the centre of this six-parter, which also showcases Davis and Weatherall's typically excellent work. Exposure streams via Stan. The Vince Staples Show It was true when Seinfeld made a series about a real-life standup comedian playing a fictionalised version of himself one of the world's biggest sitcoms in the 90s. It remained accurate when Larry David started riffing on his own existence in Curb Your Enthusiasm — and also when Pete Davidson leapt from making his life movie fodder in The King of Staten Island to turning it into TV in Bupkis. Donald Glover wasn't directly referencing his own career in Atlanta, and neither The Other Two nor Girls5eva bring exact replicas of real-life figures to the screen, but the same idea pumps through them as well: fame or proximity to it doesn't stop anyone from grappling with life's frustrating minutiae. Add The Vince Staples Show to the list, with the five-part series featuring its namesake as a take on himself. Whether or not you know who he is is part of the show's joke. On- and off- screen, he's a rapper and actor. Staples' very real single 'Norf Norf' gets quoted to him in the TV comedy. The fact that he's been in Abbott Elementary is referenced in the debut episode. But just attempting to have an ordinary day doing everyday things in an average way — driving home, heading to the bank, attending a family reunion, visiting an amusement park and returning to his old school — is as impossible for him as it is for us all. Sometimes, Staples' celebrity complicates matters in The Vince Staples Show. It also never helps. Usually, he's stuck navigating Murphy's law, so asking for a loan ends up with him caught up in a robbery, while endeavouring to source something decent to eat at a theme park takes him on an absurdist odyssey that winks at David Lynch and the Coen brothers. Having an entertainment career doesn't stop him from being confused for someone else by the police (Killing It's Scott MacArthur, You People's Bryan Greenberg and The Menu's Arturo Castro) — the same cops who ask for free tickets to his shows while they're locking him up — or ensure that cashiers treat him politely. If it assists with anything, it's with giving Staples a deadpan acceptance that anything and everything might come his way. Twice asked if something interesting happened during his day by his girlfriend Deja (Andrea Ellsworth, Truth Be Told), his reply is "not really", even though viewers have just witnessed the exact opposite in both instances. The Vince Staples Show streams via Netflix. Read our full review Dark Matter When an Australian actor makes it big, it can feel as if there's more than one of them. Joel Edgerton, who has been on local screens for almost three decades and made the leap to Hollywood with the Australian-shot Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, is such a talent. He's usually everywhere and in almost everything (such as The Stranger, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Thirteen Lives, Master Gardener, I'm a Virgo, The Boys in the Boat and Bluey in just the past two years), and viewers would follow him anywhere. Dark Matter wasn't written to capitalise upon that idea. Rather, it hails from the page of Blake Crouch's 2016 novel, with the author also creating the new nine-part sci-fi series that it's based on. But the show's lead casting leans into the notion that you can never have too much Edgerton by multiplying him in the multiverse. For the characters in Dark Matter, however, the fact that there's more than a single Jason Dessen causes considerable issues. The series' protagonist is a former experimental physics genius-turned-professor in Chicago. He's married to artist-turned-gallerist Daniela (Jennifer Connelly, Bad Behaviour), a father to teenager Charlie (Oakes Fegley, The Fabelmans) and the best friend of award-winning college pal Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia). And, he's been happy living the quiet family life, although pangs of envy quietly arise when he's celebrating Ryan's prestigious new accolade. Then, when another Jason pops up to pull off a kidnapping and doppelgänger plot, he's soon navigating a cross between Sliding Doors and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Everything is a multiverse tale of late, but Dark Matter is also a soul-searching "what if?" drama, exploring the human need to wonder what might've been if just one choice — sometimes big, sometimes small — had veered in a different direction. While a box is pivotal mode of transport like this is Doctor Who, as are all manner of worlds to visit, this is high-concept sci-fi at its most grounded. Neither version of Jason wants to hop through parallel worlds in the name of adventure or exploration — they're simply chasing their idea of everyday perfection. Dark Matter streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. Fallout A young woman sheltered in the most literal sense there is, living her entire life in one of the subterranean facilities where humanity endeavours to start anew. A TV and movie star famed for his roles in westerns, then entertaining kids, then still alive but irradiated 219 years after the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles. An aspiring soldier who has never known anything but a devastated world, clinging to hopes of progression through the military. All three walk into the wasteland in Fallout, the live-action adaptation of the gaming series that first arrived in 1997. All three cross paths in an attempt to do all that anyone can in a post-apocalyptic hellscape: survive. So goes this leap into a world that's had millions mashing buttons through not only the OG game, but also three released sequels — a fourth is on the way — plus seven spinoffs. Even with Westworld' Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as executive producers, giving Fallout the flesh-and-blood treatment is a massive and ambitious task. But where 2023 had The Last of Us, 2024 now has this; both are big-name dystopian titles that earned legions of devotees through gaming, and both are excellent in gripping and immersive fashion at making the move to television. Fallout's vision of one of the bleakest potential futures splits its focus between Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell, Yellowjackets), who has no concept of how humanity can exist on the surface when the show kicks off; Cooper Howard aka bounty hunter The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, I'm a Virgo), the screen gunslinger who saw the bombs fall and now wields weapons IRL; and Maximus (Aaron Moten, Emancipation), a trainee for the Brotherhood of Steel, which is committed to restoring order by throwing around its might (and using robotic armour). The show's lead casting is gleaming, to the point that imagining anyone but this trio of actors as Lucy, Howard-slash-The Ghoul and Maximus is impossible. Where else has Walton's resume, with its jumps between law-and-order efforts, westerns traditional and neo, and comedy — see: The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, The Hateful Eight, Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones, as a mere few examples — been leading than here? (And, next, also season three of The White Lotus.) Fallout streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten. The Sympathizer Fresh from winning an Oscar for getting antagonistic in times gone by as United States Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr gets antagonistic in times gone by again in The Sympathizer — as a CIA handler, a university professor, a politician and a Francis Ford Coppola-esque filmmaker on an Apocalypse Now-style movie, for starters. In another addition to his post-Marvel resume that emphasises how great it is to see him stepping into the shoes of someone other than Tony Stark, he takes on multiple roles in this espionage-meets-Vietnam War drama, which adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. But Downey Jr is never the show's lead, which instead goes to Australian Hoa Xuande (Last King of the Cross). The latter plays the Captain, who works for South Vietnamese secret police in Saigon before the city's fall, and is also a spy for the North Vietnamese communist forces. It's his memories, as typed out at a reeducation camp, that guide the seven-part miniseries' narrative — jumping back and forth in time, as recollections do, including to his escape to America. As the Captain relays the details of his mission and attempts to work both sides, The Sympathizer isn't just flitting between flashbacks as a structural tactic. The act of remembering is as much a focus as the varied contents of the Captain's memories — to the point that rewinding to add more context to a scene that's just been shown, or noting that he didn't specifically witness something but feels as if he can fill in the gap, also forms the storytelling approach. Perspective and influence are high among the show's concerns, too, as the Captain navigates the sway of many colonial faces (making Downey Jr's multiple roles a powerful and revealing touch) both in Vietnam and in the US. Behind it all off-screen is a filmmaker with a history of probing the tales that we tell ourselves and get others believing, as seen in stone-cold revenge-thriller classic Oldboy, 2022's best film Decision to Leave and 2018 miniseries The Little Drummer Girl: the inimitable Park Chan-wook. He co-created The Sympathizer for the screen with Don McKellar (Blindness) and it always bears is imprint, whether or not he's directing episodes — he helms three — with his piercing style, or getting help from Fernando Meirelles (who has been busy with this and Sugar) and Marc Munden (The Third Day). The Sympathizer streams via Binge. Read our full review. Constellation If a great getaway to a beach, island or faraway city can be life-changing, what does a journey to space do? So ponders Constellation, among other questions. Inquiries are sparked instantly, from the moment that a mother in a cabin in northern Sweden, where there's snow as far as the eye can see but a frost infecting more than just the temperature, leaves her pre-teen daughter to follow a voice. The screams that she seeks out are yelling "mama!" — and what they mean, and why she's abandoning one girl to find another, is just one of the matters that Constellation interrogates. The woman is Jo Ericsson, as played by Noomi Rapace with the maternal devotion that also marked her turn in Lamb, plus the protective instincts that were key in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant as well — and the fierceness that helped bring her to fame as Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films. Jo, an astronaut, is Europe's representative on the International Space Station when Constellation jumps backwards from its opening icy horror to a different kind of terror. Not long out from returning back to earth, she FaceTimes with her nine-year-old daughter Alice (Rosie and Davina Coleman, The Larkins) and husband Magnus (James D'Arcy, Oppenheimer). Then, something goes bump in the sky. Trauma leaves people changed, too; what if this incident, during which setting foot on our pale blue dot again is anything but assured, isn't the only distressing facet of travelling to the heavens? On the at-risk ISS, on a spacewalk to locate the source of the collision, Jo finds the mummified body of what looks like a 60s-era Russian cosmonaut. There'll soon be another astronaut dead inside the station, destroyed infrastructure, the first escape pod shuttling her three remaining colleagues back to terra firma and Jo left alone trying to repair the second so that she herself can alight home. Where both Gravity and Moon spring to mind in Constellation's initial space-set scenes, plus Proxima in the show's focus on mother-daughter connections (Interstellar, Ad Astra and First Man have dads covered), it's the earthbound Dark that feels like a touchstone once Jo is back among her loved ones. There's a similar moodiness to this series, which also features Nobel Prize-winning former Apollo astronaut Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks, Better Call Saul), who has had his own incidents in space — and there's a feeling that characters can't always trust what they think is plainly apparent to the show, too, plus a certainty that nothing is simply linear about what's occurring. Constellation streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review, and our interview with Jonathan Banks. Sugar Colin Farrell's recent hot streak continues. After a busy few years that've seen him earn Oscar and BAFTA nominations for The Banshees of Inisherin, collect a Gotham Awards nod for After Yang, steal scenes so heartily in The Batman that TV spinoff The Penguin is on the way and pick up the Satellite Awards' attention for The North Water, Sugar now joins his resume. The Irish actor's television credits are still few — and, until his True Detective stint in 2015, far between — but it's easy to see what appealed to him about leading this mystery series. From the moment that the Los Angeles-set noir effort begins — in Tokyo, in fact — it drips with intrigue. Farrell's John Sugar, the show's namesake, is a suave private detective who takes a big Hollywood case against his handler Ruby's (Kirby, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off) recommendation. He's soon plunged into shadowy City of Angels chaos, bringing The Big Sleep, Chinatown, LA Confidential and Under the Silver Lake to mind, and loving movie history beyond sharing the same genre as said flicks. Softly spoken, always crispy dressed, understandably cynical and frequently behind the wheel of a blue vintage convertible, Sugar, the PI, is a film fan. The series bakes that love and its own links to cinema history into its very being through spliced-in clips and references elsewhere — and also foregrounds the idea that illusions, aka what Tinseltown so eagerly sells via its celluloid dreams, are inescapable in its narrative in the process. Twists come, not just including a brilliant move that reframes everything that comes before, but as Sugar endeavours to track down Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler, Don't Worry Darling). She's the granddaughter of worried legendary film producer Jonathan (James Cromwell, Succession); daughter of less-concerned (and less-renowned) fellow producer Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris, Better Call Saul); half-sister of former child star David (Nate Corddry, Barry), who is on the comeback trail; and ex-step daughter of pioneering rocker Melanie (Amy Ryan, Beau Is Afraid). Trying to find her inspires heated opposition. Also sparked: an excellently cast series that splashes its affection of film noir and LA movies gone by across its frames, but is never afraid to be its own thing. Sugar streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review, and our interview with Kirby and Simon Kinberg. Criminal Record It was accurate with side-splitting hilarity in The Thick of It, as dripping with heartbreak in Benediction and in the world of Doctor Who in-between: Peter Capaldi is one of Scotland's most fascinating actors today. Criminal Record uses his can't-look-away presence to excellent effect, casting him as DCI Daniel Hegarty, one of the eight-part series' two key detectives. By day, the no-nonsense Hegarty is a force to be reckoned with on the force. By night, he moonlights as a driver, seeing much that lingers in London as he's behind the wheel. In his not-so-distant past is a case that brings DS June Lenker (Cush Jumbo, The Good Fight) into his orbit — a case that she's certain is linked to a distressed emergency call by a woman trying to flee domestic abuse, and who says that her partner has already committed murder, gotten away with it and sent another man to prison for the crime in the process. Hegarty contends otherwise, and gruffly, but Lenker is determined to discover the truth, find her potential victim, ascertain whether someone innocent is in jail and learn why every move she makes to dig deeper comes with professional retaliation. This is no odd-couple cop show. It's largely a two-hander, however — and saying that it couldn't be better cast is an understatement. Capaldi is already someone who makes every moment that he's on-screen better. So is Jumbo, which makes watching them face off as riveting as television gets. Passive aggression oozes from the frame when Hegarty and Lenker first confront each other. Tension drips throughout the series relentlessly, but do so with particular vigour whenever its key cops are in close proximity. Criminal Record doesn't waste time keeping audiences guessing about who's dutifully taking their role as part of the thin blue line and who's part of policing at its most corrupt; instead, it lets those two sides that are both meant to be on the upstanding end of the law-and-order divide clash, surveying the damage that ripples not just through the fuzz but also the community. While twists and mysteries are also layered in, they regularly come second to Criminal Record's extraordinary performances, plus its thematic willingness to tear into what policing should be, can be and often is. Criminal Record streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing highlights? Check out our list of film and TV streaming recommendations, which is updated monthly. We also keep a running list of must-stream TV from across the year so far, complete with full reviews.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from June's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now The Bear Serving up another sitting with acclaimed chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White, The Iron Claw), his second-in-charge Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, Inside Out 2) and their team after dishing up one of the best new shows of 2022 and best returning shows of 2023, the third season of The Bear is a season haunted. Creator and writer Christopher Storer (Dickinson, Ramy) — often the culinary dramedy's director as well — wouldn't have it any other way. Every series that proves as swift a success as this, after delivering as exceptional a first and second season as any show could wish for, has the tang of its prior glory left on its lips, so this one tackles the idea head on. How can anyone shake the past at all, good or bad, the latest ten episodes ruminate on as Carmy faces a dream that's come true but hasn't and can't eradicate the lifetime of internalised uncertainty that arises from having an erratic mother, absent father, elder brother he idolised but had his own demons, and a career spent striving to be the best and put his talents to the test in an industry that's so merciless and unforgiving even before you factor in dealing with cruel mentors. Haunting is talked about often in this third The Bear course, but not actually in the sense flavouring every bite that the show's return plates up. In the season's heartiest reminder that it's comic as well as tense and dramatic — its nine Emmy wins for season one, plus four Golden Globes across season one and two, are all in comedy categories — the Faks get to Fak aplenty. While charming Neil (IRL chef Matty Matheson) is loving his role as a besuited server beneath Richie aka Cousin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, No Hard Feelings), onboard with the latter's commitment to upholding a Michelin star-chasing fine-diner's front-of-house standards and as devoted to being Carmy's best friend as ever, he's also always palling around with his handyman brother Theodore (Ricky Staffieri, Read the Room). They're not the season's only Faks, and so emerges a family game. When one Fak wrongs another, they get haunted, which is largely being taunted and unsettled by someone from basically The Bear equivalent of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Boyles. For it to stop, you need to agree to give in. In Storer's hands, in a series this expertly layered as it picks up in the aftermath of sandwich diner The Original Beef of Chicagoland relaunching as fine-diner The Bear, this isn't just an amusing character-building aside. The Bear streams via Disney+. Read our full review. Hit Man The feeling that Glen Powell should star in everything didn't start with Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You. Writer/director Richard Linklater (Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood) has helped the notion bubble up before as early back as 2006's Fast Food Nation, then with 2016's Everybody Wants Some!! — and now he riffs on it with Hit Man. When viewers want an actor to feature everywhere, they want to see them step into all sorts of shoes but bring their innate talents and charm each time. So, Linklater enlists Powell as Gary Johnson, a real-life University of New Orleans professor who wouldn't be earning the movie treatment if he didn't also moonlight as a undercover police operative with a specific remit: playing hitmen with folks looking to pay someone to commit murder, sting-style. Johnson doesn't just give the gig the one-size-fits-all approach, though. Once he gets confidence in the job, he's dedicated to affording every target their own personal vision of their dream assassin. So, Powell gets to be a polo shirt-wearing nice guy, a long-haired master criminal, a besuited all-business type and more, including the suave smooth-talker Ron, the persona he adopts when Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona, Andor) thinks about offing her odious husband. Hit Man is as a screwball rom-com-meets-sunlit film noir, and an excellent one, as well as a feature based on a situation so wild that it can only stem from fact. Alongside charting Gary's exploits in the position and the murkiness of falling for Madison as Ron, it's also an acceptance that the kind of darkness and desperation needed for a person to want to hire a stranger to kill to make their life better isn't a rarity — if it was, Gary's services wouldn't have been needed. Linklater has been in comparably blackly comic but also clear-eyed territory before with Bernie, the past entry on his resume that Hit Man best resembles. The also-ace 2011 Jack Black (Kung Fu Panda 4)-led picture similarly told a true tale, and also sprang from an article by journalist Skip Hollandsworth. This time, Linklater penned the script with Powell instead of Hollandsworth, but the result is another black-comedy delight brimming with insight. Hit Man is a movie about finding one's identity, too, and Powell keeps showing that he's found his: a charismatic lead who anchors one of the most-entertaining flicks of the year. Hit Man streams via Netflix. Fancy Dance Lily Gladstone might've won the Golden Globe but not the Oscar for Killers of the Flower Moon, but her exceptional resume shows every sign of more awards coming her way. Fancy Dance, the other movie to join her filmography in 2023 — it premiered at Sundance that year, but only makes its way to streaming worldwide now — is yet another example of how the Certain Women and First Cow star is one of the very-best actors working right now. Where Gladstone's time in front of Martin Scorsese's lens showcased her mastery of restraint, playing an aunt trying to do what's best for her niece and a sister searching for her absent sibling benefits from her equal command of looseness. Jax, her character, is a pinball. When she bounces in any direction, it's with force and purpose as well as liveliness and determination, but the choice of where she's heading is rarely her own. All she wants is to find Tawi (debutant Hauli Sioux Gray) and protect 13-year-old Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson, Three Pines), but set against the reality that law enforcement mightn't look as enthusiastically for a missing Indigenous woman — or treat one with a record attempting to do right be her family with consideration — that's far from an easy task. Writer/director Erica Tremblay hails from the Seneca–Cayuga Nation, where much of Fancy Dance is set. As Gladstone is, she's also an alum of Reservation Dogs — including helming two episodes — and so is experienced at depicting everyday reservation life with authenticity. Accordingly, her first fictional feature after documentaries Heartland: A Portrait of Survival and In the Turn takes a social-realistic approach in its details, especially when it's simply surveying the space and empathy that First Nations versus white Americans aren't given. Because Jax has a criminal history, child services deems her unfit to look after Roki, or even to take the teen to the powwow where the girl is certain her mum will attend to again steal the show in the mother-daughter dance competition; instead, Jax's white father (Shea Whigham, Lawmen: Bass Reeves) and stepmother (Audrey Wasilewski, Ted) are their choice of guardians. Fancy Dance's protagonist isn't one to simply acquiesce to that decision, and Gladstone makes both her fire and her pain palpable — and her tenderness for Roki, who is weightily portrayed by her Under the Bridge co-star Deroy-Olson, as well. Fancy Dance streams via Apple TV+. Exposure When the words "DO NOT MESSAGE" greet someone that's looking through their friend's phone, curiosity kicks in. When that mysterious contact is spied, plus a list of deleted texts and apologies for unintended hurt, immediately after your best mate has taken her own life and left you to find their body, uncovering the person on the other end of the thread becomes an obsession. Twenty-seven-year-old photographer Jacs (Alice Englert, Bad Behaviour) is all impulse and immediate gratification when Exposure begins, when she's at a rave hooking up with a stranger and dancing with her lifelong BFF Kel (Mia Artemis, Anyone But You). The next morning, everything changes forever, except a haunting truth that no one likes realising when tragedy strikes: our worst moments alter us forever, but they can't fix our worst traits or paper over our other traumas. So Jacs keeps being Jacs as she heads home from Sydney to Port Kembla, where she'll barely let her mother Kathy (Essie Davis, One Day) and Kel's ex Angus (Thomas Weatherall, Heartbreak High) lend their support, and where her self-sabotaging spiral only gains momentum as she attempts to turn amateur, fixated, dogged detective. Pain ran in the family in the aforementioned Bad Behaviour, the 2023 New Zealand film — not to be confused with the 2023 Australian miniseries that streamed via Stan, as Exposure also does — that Englert made her feature directorial debut with, plus penned and co-starred in. The movie told of a former child actor (Jennifer Connolly, Dark Matter) and her stunt-performer daughter working through their baggage around the former's attendance at a new-age retreat. Filmmaking talent also ran in the family, given that Englert is the offspring of Oscar-winner Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog). While she's solely on-screen this time, with Lucy Coleman (Hot Mess) scripting and Bonnie Moir (Love Me) helming, Englert is superb again, including at excavating life's agonies once more. Exposure's moniker applies in multiple ways, spanning the controversial contents of an award-winning snap, facing past distresses, playing sleuth and confronting your own chaos — and it equally fits the raw and rich performance at the centre of this six-parter, which also showcases Davis and Weatherall's typically excellent work. Exposure streams via Stan. Under Paris Creature features are often humanity-did-wrong features. Under Paris doesn't have Godzilla stomping around as a scaly, fire-breathing, Tokyo-destroying embodiment of nuclear devastation's reach and impact, but it does set a giant shark on the loose beneath the French capital due to pollution, specifically the Great Pacific garbage patch, making its natural saltwater terrain uninhabitable. This genre of film doesn't restrict its badly behaving people to merely causing the source of their misery, either, often surveying a range of terrible reactions that exacerbate the issue as well. Underestimating the situation is one such response, which has a well-known history in flicks about killer sharp-toothed fish. The mayor of New England's Amity Island in Jaws wasn't great, and now the the City of Light's equivalent (Anne Marivin, Rebecca) is just as uncaring when she refuses to shut down the city's waterways — despite the pleas of marine researcher Sophia Assalas (Bérénice Bejo, The Movie Teller), police chief Angèle (Aurélia Petit, Saint Omer) and law-enforcement diver Adil (Nassim Lyes, All-Time High) — because it'll disrupt a billion-dollar triathlon with its swimming leg in the River Seine. The chomping shadow of Steven Spielberg's (The Fabelmans) summer blockbuster lingers over Under Paris heavily, as it has over all shark movies for almost five decades now. Rare is the film that lives up to the Hollywood great as well as this, however, even though oh-so-much of the story plays out as expected. As Sophia first witnesses calamity when her research crew falls victim to Lilith, the shark they've been tracking, and then is forced to help save Paris three years later when environmental activist Mika (Léa Léviant, Mortel) advises that the creature has made its way to the city, it helps immensely that this shark-in-the-Seine picture isn't a Snakes on a Plane-esque comedy. Fresh from directing episodes of Lupin, Farang and Budapest director Xavier Gens is firmly making a thriller, not playing the scenario for laughs. The setpieces, many in the Parisian catacombs, are both efficient and effective. The film's visuals overall earn the same description. And while nodding to Free Willy as well is a touch clunky, The Artist Oscar-nominee Bejo is never anything less than committed. Under Paris streams via Netflix. Am I OK? The question in Am I OK?'s title is indeed existential: is Lucy (Dakota Johnson, Madame Web) coping with being a thirtysomething in Los Angeles treading water emotionally, romantically and professionally? From there, more queries spring. Can she — or, more accurately, will she — shoot for more than not quite dating the smitten Ben (Whitmer Thomas, Big Mouth), right down to shaking his hand at the end of their evenings out together, and also for something beyond working as a day-spa receptionist while putting her passion and talent for art on the back burner? Is she capable of breaking free of a comfort zone padded out with spending all of her spare time with her best friend Jane (Sonoya Mizuno, House of the Dragon), including being so predictable that she always orders the same thing at their brunches at their favourite diner? Regarding the latter, she gets a push when Jane agrees to a lucrative transfer to London, splitting the pair for the first time since they were teenagers. Am I OK? is an arrested-development coming-of-age movie, then, and a film about being honest about who you are and want to be. Change comes for us all, even when we've built a cocoon to protect our happy status quo — and, at the heart of this romantic drama, change clearly comes for Lucy. She's forced to consider a path forward that doesn't involve solely being defined as half of a platonic duo. She also confronts the feelings for her coworker Brittany (Kiersey Clemons, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and the truth about her sexuality that she's never previously admitted. Am I OK? is a coming-out tale, too, but it treats Lucy's stuck-in-a-rut existence and at-first-tentative attempts to embrace how she truly feels holistically, seeing how life's passage inevitably shifts how we see ourselves. If the movie feels more honest than it might've been, that's because screenwriter Lauren Pomerantz (Strange Planet) spins a semi-autobiographical story. Also, the directing team of real-life couple Tig Notaro (2 Dope Queens) and Stephanie Allynne (who helmed Notaro's 2024 special Hello Again) — who met making 2015's In a World… — demonstrate the ideal light-but-delicate touch. Plus, Johnson and Mizuno exude genuine BFF chemistry, with the former again showing why fare such as this, Cha Cha Real Smooth, How to Be Single, The Peanut Butter Falcon, A Bigger Splash, Suspiria and The Lost Daughter, a diverse group of pictures, is a better fit than the Fifty Shades trilogy or a Spider-Man spinoff. Am I OK? streams via Binge. Lumberjack the Monster Spanning big-screen releases, TV and straight-to-video fare, Takashi Miike has notched up 115 directorial credits in the 33 years since making his helming debut. Lumberjack the Monster isn't even the latest — it premiered at film festivals in 2023, which means that miniseries Onimusha and short Midnight have popped up since — but it is Miike back in horror mode, where 1999's Audition and 2001's Ichi the Killer famously dwelled. Here, the inimitable Japanese filmmaker and screenwriter Hiroyoshi Koiwai (Way to Find the Best Life) adapt the eponymous 2019 Mayusuke Kurai novel. Its namesake character also exists on the page in the movie itself, in a picture book. This is a serial-killer picture, though, and with more than one person taking multiple lives. A mass murderer wearing a bag over their head and swinging an axe is on a rampage, and lawyer Akira (Kazuya Kamenashi, Destiny) and surgeon Sugitani (Shôta Sometani, Sanctuary) aren't averse to dispensing death themselves. A clash is inevitable, not that the slick Akira expects it, or that his costumed attacker anticipates that their current target will survive his blade, sparking a cat-and-mouse game. Lumberjack the Monster doesn't just weave in fantasy boogeyman stories, offings upon offings, and characters with dark impulses going head to head. The police are on the case, giving the film a procedural layer, as well as Akira motivation to hunt down his assailant first. Science fiction also washes through, with brain-implanted chips and modifying human behaviour both for worse and for better part of the narrative. There's also a moral-redemption element weaved in. Consequently, it's no wonder that this tale is Miike joint. As well as being prolific, Miike loves making his resume the ultimate mashup. To name just a few examples, see: the yakuza action of Dead or Alive, superhero comedy Zebraman, titular genre of Sukiyaki Western Django, samurai efforts 13 Assassins and Blade of the Immortal, period drama Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, video-game adaptation Ace Attorney, romance For Love's Sake, thriller Lesson of the Evil, vampire movie Yakuza Apocalypse and the crime-driven First Love. Unsurprisingly, Lumberjack the Monster is specifically the engrossing — and bloodily violent — Frankenstein's monster of a flick that Miike was always going to relish making when splicing together such an array of elements came his way. Lumberjack the Monster streams via Netflix. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Fantasmas With Fantasmas, creator, writer, director and star Julio Torres welcomes viewers into a world that couldn't have been conjured up by anyone else but the former Saturday Night Live scribe, who then became the co-guiding force behind Los Espookys and filmmaker responsible for Problemista. Torres also leaves his audience grateful that they exist in this particular world, where HBO has given him the means and support to make a comedy series so singular, so clearly the work of a visionary and so gloriously surreal. Fantasmas has no peers beyond Torres' work, other than the patron saint of spilling the contents of your mind and heart onto the screen with zero willingness to compromise or hold back: David Lynch. That said, even that comparison — and the utmost of praise that comes with it — can't prepare viewers for a show where clear crayons are one idea whipped up by the on-screen Julio, another sees Steve Buscemi (Curb Your Enthusiasm) playing the letter Q as an avant-garde outsider, Santa Claus is taken to court by elves (including SNL's Bowen Yang), and series-within-a-series MELF riffs on 80s and 90s hit sitcom ALF but starring Paul Dano (Spaceman) and featuring quite the twist on its alien-adopting premise. As the sets appear like exactly sets but with a DIY spin, star-studded cameos stack up, and absurdist vignettes pop in and out to flesh out Julio's mindscape as much as the futuristic realm imagined by the IRL Torres, there is an overarching narrative at the core of Fantasmas. The series' take on Julio trades in concepts, plus in being unflinchingly himself, but doing anything is impossible without a Proof of Existence ID card in this dystopia. He's on a quest to secure one, which isn't straightforward. In the process, he's also searching for a tiny gold oyster earring, and pondering whether to upload his consciousness and jettison his body. By his side: robot companion Bibo (Joe Rumrill, The Calling) and agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez, returning from Los Espookys and Problemista), who is really just a performance artist playing an agent. As phantasmagorical as everything that the show flings at the screen can get, which is very, it also tears into relatable issues such as societal status, class clashes, housing, capitalism's many woes and inequities, and the treatment of immigrants. As purposefully eager as it is to show its crafting and creativity, too, it does so to stress the fact that it's being made by people chasing a dream rather than corporations bowing to an algorithm. Fantasmas streams via Binge. Presumed Innocent When Presumed Innocent begins, Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal, Road House) has devoted his career to putting away Chicago's criminals. He isn't expecting to be soon treated the same way. Audiences with an awareness of both film and literary history know what's coming, though, with the eight-part Apple TV+ series the latest page-to-screen show from David E Kelley — and also another program with a story that already made the leap from bookshelves to the big screen before getting the television treatment. In recent years, Kelley has ushered A Man in Full, Anatomy of a Scandal, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Undoing and Big Little Lies down the first route. He's taken The Lincoln Lawyer down the second as well. His pedigree spinning legal narratives dates back to LA Law, The Practice, Ally McBeal and Boston Legal, too. Now, he's adapting author Scott Turow's debut 1987 novel, which initially became a hit 1990 Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny)-starring feature. Turning the tale into a series and the passage of more than three decades are a gift to Presumed Innocent's complexity; there's more time, obviously, to fill out the intricacies of a scenario where a hotshot prosecutor is now a suspected murderer, and to ensure that the misogyny of the 80s and 90s doesn't still shine through. At a time when being chief deputy under District Attorney Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp, who also appeared in A Man in Full) is already a fraught scenario — aka an election year — Sabich's life is turned upside down when his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve, 2021's Cannes Best Actress-winner for The Worst Person in the World) is found dead. The circumstances closely resemble a case that the two had previously worked on, so Rusty takes the lead. What only his supportive wife Barbara (Ruth Negga, Good Grief) knows is that the pair had an affair, which almost tore apart the Sabichs' marriage. A secret like that doesn't stay quiet for long, though, especially with Horgan's adversary Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle, Loot) and Rusty's ambitious counterpart Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard, Memory) looking to appease the electorate, and quickly. Presumed Innocent hasn't skimped on casting, to its benefit — in a show that isn't painting its protagonist as a hero or anything as clearcut, Gyllenhaal is at his slippery best, while both Reinsve and Negga flesh out the women caught up in his mess, and Sarsgaard eats up the screen, especially when Rusty and Molto face off in court. Presumed Innocent streams via Apple TV+. The Boys "Superheroes, they're just like us" has been an unspoken refrain humming beneath on-screen caped-crusader tales in recent decades. Possessing great powers doesn't mean knowing how to wield power, or greatness, or how to navigate the daily elements of life that don't revolve around possessing great powers, as movies and TV shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Extended Universe and beyond have kept stressing. Even as it dispenses a much-needed antidote to superhero worship's saturation of big- and small-screen entertainment — even as it has made distrusting the spandex-clad and preternaturally gifted its baseline — The Boys has also told this story. Across the entire extent of human history, what's more recognisable than power and dominance bringing out the worst in people? As adapted from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comics series of the same name by showrunner Eric Kripke (Supernatural) since 2019, this series has stared at the grimmest vision of a world with tights-adorned supposed saviours. It's a show where murder at the hands of supes, which is then covered up by the company profiting from elevating them above the masses, is an everyday reality. It's a dark satire. It's gleeful in its onslaught of OTT violence and sightings of genitals. What it means to grapple with the struggle to hold onto humanity has firmly been at The Boys' core since its first episode, however, making it a mirror. It has never been hard to see where art imitates life in this account of its namesake rag-tag crew (Thor: Ragnarok,'s Karl Urban, Oppenheimer's Jack Quaid, Wrath of Man's Laz Alonso, One on One's Tomer Capone and Bullet Train's Karen Fukuhara) saying "enough is enough" to the US' downward spiral. With flying, laser-eyed, super-strong, supernaturally speedy and otherwise-enhanced beings commercialised by a behemoth of a company called Vought International, The Boys has never been subtle at pointing its fingers at the many ways in which pop culture and the corporations behind it hold sway. The show's parallels with American politics in its portrait of a factionalised nation torn apart over a polarising leader who considers himself above the law are equally overt. Of course, the series is just as blatant in unpacking the consequences of letting the pursuit of power run riot. In its narrative, in chasing supremacy above all else, humans and supes really are just like each other — a truth season four doesn't ever let slip from view. The Boys streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. House of the Dragon It's a chair made out of swords. So notes Daemon Targaryen's (Matt Smith, Morbius) description of the Iron Throne. Not one but two hit HBO shows have put squabbles about the sought-after seat at their centre so far, and the second keeps proving a chip off the old block in a fantasy franchise where almost everyone meets that description. If the family trees sprawling throughout Game of Thrones for eight seasons across 2011–19 and now House of the Dragon for two since 2022 (with a third on the way) weren't so closely intertwined in all of their limbs, would feuding over everything, especially the line of succession, be such a birthright? Set within the Targaryens 172 years before Daenerys is born, House of the Dragon keeps the black-versus-green factionalism going in season two, to civil war-esque extremes over which two offspring of the late King Viserys the Peaceful (Paddy Considine, The Third Day) should wear the crown and plonk themselves in the blade-lined chair. The monarch long ago named Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy, Mothering Sunday) as his heir. But with his last breaths, his wife Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke, Slow Horses) claims that he picked their eldest son Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney, Rogue Heroes) instead. In King's Landing, the response was speedy, with Rhaenyra supplanted before she'd even heard over at Dragonstone that her father had passed away. Based on George RR Martin's Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon has also long painted Rhaenyra as the preferred type of chip off the old block. She too wants peace, not war. She also seeks stability for the realm over personal glory. If Viserys spotted that in her as a girl (Milly Alcock, Upright) when he chose her over Daemon, his brother who is now Rhaenyra's husband, he might've also predicted the dedication that she sports towards doing his legacy, and those before him, proud. Conversely, Aegon, also the grandson of Viserys' hand Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans, The King's Man), sees only entitlement above all else. Martin's tales of dynasties trade in the cycles that course through the bonds of blood, especially in House of the Dragon. Everyone watching knows what's to come for the Targaryens in Daenerys' time, right down to an aunt-nephew romance as the counterpart to Daemon and Rhaenyra's uncle-niece relationship. (No one watching has started this prequel series, the first spinoff of likely many to Game of Thrones, without being familiar with its predecessor). Ice-blonde hair, ambition that soars as high as the dragons they raise and fly, said flame-roaring beasts of the sky, the inability to host happy reunions: these are traits passed down through generations. Some are a matter of genes. Martin continues to explore why the others persist. House of the Dragon streams via Binge. Read our full review. The Acolyte When you've just made two seasons of a time-loop TV show about reckoning with the past, what comes next? For Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland, another jump backwards beckons. The Star Wars franchise has been telling tales set not just in a galaxy far, far away but also a long time ago for almost five decades; however, across its 11 movies and five live-action Disney+ TV shows until now, it hasn't ever explored the events of as long a time ago as Headland's The Acolyte brings to the screen. Welcome to the High Republic era a century before Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace — and into a thrilling new angle into one of pop culture's behemoths. Stepping through the events before the events that it has already relayed to audiences isn't new for Star Wars, as went the prequels, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Andor, but so now goes The Acolyte as well. The key aspect of the latter isn't just that this eight-instalment series gains the space to jettison familiar faces and spin its narrative anew — it's also that it's traversing more of the world that George Lucas first envisaged in the 70s, and what the force means to more than the usual faces and those tied to them. And, it isn't afraid to question the heroes-versus-villains divide that's as engrained in all things Star Wars as lightsabers, having a bad feeling and droids. Taking place in a period of peace and prosperity — well, for some — The Acolyte is still home to heroes. Villains are part of the tale, too. But the idea that the Jedi always fall into the first camp and their enemies can only sit in the second is probed. Similarly queried is the notion that anything in the Star Wars realm, let alone everything, is that binary. The premise: Jedi are being eliminated by a mysterious warrior, a setup that is pushed to the fore immediately and initially aligns its emotional response as audiences since 1977 know to expect. But as gets uttered three episodes in, "this is not about good or bad — it's about power and who gets to wield it". The Acolyte's opening showdown unfolds in the type of cantina that's hardly new to the saga, but the battle itself is. From beneath a mask, a warrior (Amandla Stenberg, Bodies Bodies Bodies) isn't afraid to throw down, throw knives and throw around her ability to use the force, with a Jedi her target. In the aftermath, the robe-adorned head honchos have ex-padawan Osha in their sights. Now working as a meknik, which entails undertaking dangerous spaceship maintenance tasks that robots are legally only supposed to do, she fits the description. Her old Jedi mentor Sol (Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game) isn't so sure, though, especially knowing her past. The Acolyte streams via Disney+. Read our full review. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April and May this year, and also from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer. Top images: FX, Brian Roedel/Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO and Stan.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are eight that you can watch right now at home. The Fall Guy The Nice Guys mightn't have scored a sequel, but The Fall Guy does nicely instead. Getting a hearty workout: Ryan Gosling's charm, comedic talent that just earned an Oscar-nominated showcase in Barbie and action skills as last seen in The Gray Man. He's back in stunts, too, as Drive first gifted the world so mesmerisingly. A loose remake of the 80s television series of the same name, The Fall Guy is a take-it-and-run-with-it kind of film, then. Not only does it grasp hold of what Gosling does best and sprint, but the same applies for co-lead Emily Blunt (Pain Hustlers) — and, of course, for director David Leitch (Bullet Train), who first took the journey from stunt performer to filmmaker with John Wick, has kept filling his resume with action fare since (see: Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw and Bullet Train) and now virtually comes full circle in helming a flick where his protagonist does the same gig that he once did. Gosling's Colt Seavers is also taking it and running with it — in a profession where it's his job to help bring whatever impossible physical endeavour is required to the screen, as well as on the gig that gets him to Sydney. The Fall Guy starts 18 months prior to his trip Down Under, however, but still with him doubling for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bullet Train), one of the world's biggest actors. Seavers has a career that he loves and steady work at it thanks to Ryder's fame. He's also happily romancing Jody Moreno (Blunt), a camera operator with dreams of doing more. Then a stunt goes wrong, leaving him badly injured, battered and bruised emotionally and psychologically, and inspiring him to quit the business. Only a call from Ryder-loving producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso) sparks his return to the industry — he makes a crust as a valet once he's fit and able in-between — and, even then, it's only really the fact that Moreno is helming Ryder's latest movie as her directorial debut that nudges him onto the plane. Then, upon his arrival in Australia, Seavers soon discovers that the situation isn't exactly what he's been told. The Fall Guy streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with David Leitch and Kelly McCormick. Challengers Tennis is a game of serves, shots, slices and smashes, and also of approaches, backhands, rallies and volleys. Challengers is a film of each, too, plus a movie about tennis. As it follows a love triangle that charts a path so back and forth that its ins and outs could be carved by a ball being hit around on the court, it's a picture that takes its aesthetic, thematic and emotional approach from the sport that its trio of protagonists are obsessed with as well. Tennis is everything to Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, Dune: Part Two), Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, West Side Story) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor, La Chimera), other than the threesome themselves being everything to each other. It's a stroke of genius to fashion the feature about them around the game they adore, then. Metaphors comparing life with a pastime are easy to coin. Movies that build such a juxtaposition into their fabric are far harder to craft. But it's been true of Luca Guadagnino for decades: he's a craftsman. Jumping from one Dune franchise lead to another, after doing Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All with Timothée Chalamet, Guadagnino proves something else accurate that's been his cinematic baseline: he's infatuated with the cinema of yearning. Among his features so far, only in Bones and All was the hunger for connection literal. The Italian director didn't deliver cannibalism in Call Me By Your Name and doesn't in Challengers, but longing is the strongest flavour in all three, and prominent across the filmmaker's Suspiria, A Bigger Splash and I Am Love also. So, combine the idea of styling a movie around a tennis match — one spans its entire duration, in fact — with a lusty love triangle, romantic cravings and three players at the top of their field, then this is the sublime end product. Challengers is so smartly constructed, so well thought-out down to every meticulous detail, so sensual and seductive, and so on point in conveying Tashi plus Art and Patrick's feelings, that it's instantly one of Guadagnino's grand slams. Challengers streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, as well as what Zendaya, Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist had to say about the film when they were in Australia. Perfect Days When Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day' enjoyed its initial sublime movie moment in Trainspotting, it soundtracked a descent into heroin's depths, including literally via the film's visual choices. For three decades since, that's been the tune's definitive on-screen use. Now drifts in Perfect Days, the Oscar-nominated Japan-set drama from German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Submergence). This slice-of-life movie takes its name from the song. It also places the iconic David Bowie-produced classic among the tracks listened to by toilet cleaner Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho, Vivant) as he goes about his daily routine. Fond of 60s- and 70s-era music, the Tokyo native's picks say everything about his mindset, both day by day and in his zen approach to his modest existence. 'Perfect Day' and Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' each also sum up the feeling of watching this gorgeous ode to making the most of what you have, seeing beauty in the everyday and being in the moment. Not every tune that Hirayama pops into his van's tape deck — cassettes are still his format of choice — has the same type of title. Patti Smith's 'Redondo Beach', The Animals' 'The House of the Rising Sun', Otis Redding's '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay' and The Rolling Stones' '(Walkin' Thru the) Sleepy City' also rank among his go-tos, all reflecting his mood in their own ways. If there's a wistfulness to Hirayama's music selections, it's in the manner that comes over all of us when we hark back to something that we first loved when we were younger. Perfect Days' protagonist is at peace with his life, however. Subtly layered into the film is the idea that things were once far different and more-conventionally successful, but Hirayama wasn't as content as he now is doing the rounds of the Japanese capital's public bathrooms, blasting his favourite songs between stops, eating lunch in a leafy park and photographing trees with an analogue camera. Perfect Days streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Robot Dreams Heartbreak is two souls wanting nothing more than each other, but life having other plans. So goes Robot Dreams, another dialogue-free marvel from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger, who had audiences feeling without words uttered with 2012's Blancanieves — and showed then with black and white imagery, as he does now with animation, that he's a master at deeply expressive visual storytelling. His fourth picture as a director was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards. In most years, if it wasn't up against Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron, it would've taken home the Oscar. It earns not just affection instead, but the awe deserved of a movie that perfects the sensation of longing for someone to navigate life with, finding them, adoring them, then having fate doing what fate does by throwing up complications. Usually this would be a boy-meets-girl, boy-meets-boy or girl-meets-girl story. Here, it's a dog-meets-robot tale. The time: the 80s, with nods to Tab and Pong to prove it. The place: a version of Manhattan where anthropomorphised animals are the only inhabitants — plus mechanised offsiders that, just by placing an order and putting together the contents of the package that arrives, can be built as instant friends. Eating macaroni meals for one and watching TV solo in his small East Village apartment each evening, Dog is achingly lonely when he orders his Amica 2000 after seeing an infomercial. As he tinkers to construct Robot, pigeons watch on from the window, but they've never been his company. Soon exuberantly strutting the streets hand in hand with his maker, the android is a dream pal, however, this kismet pairing isn't what gives Robot Dreams its name. Robot Dreams streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Origin For most filmmakers, Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents would've screamed for the documentary treatment. A non-fiction text published in 2020, it works through the thesis that racism in America isn't just the product of xenophobia, but is an example of social stratification. The journalist and author — and, in 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winner — examines how categorising populations into groups with a perceived grading is at the heart of US race relations, and how the same was true in Nazi Germany and still does in the treatment of the Dalit in India. A doco could spring easily from there. If it happens to in the future, no one should be surprised. Ava DuVernay, who brings Wilkerson's prize-winning tome to the screen now, has demonstrated again and again with Selma, The 13th and A Wrinkle in Time that she's not most directors, however. Make the points in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents via a documentary, if and when that occurs, and they'd be accurate and powerful. Express them through cinema's function as an empathy machine, via personal tales including Wilkerson's own, and they resonate by getting audiences stepping into a range of shoes. Watching isn't merely investigating and learning in Origin, as Wilkerson as a character — played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (The Color Purple) in a phenomenally passionate and thoughtful lead performance — does in a movie that's also a biopic about her life and work. Sitting down to DuVernay's film is all about feeling, understanding what it's like to be a range of people who are forced to grapple with being seen as less than others for no reason but the fact that urge to judge that keeps proving inherent in human nature. Origin streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Boy Kills World In The Hunger Games and its sequels and prequels, a post-apocalyptic totalitarian state enforces order by murder, picking children via lottery to compete until just one remains standing. Before it reached pages and screens, The Running Man, Battle Royale and Series 7: The Contenders were among the stories that got there first, always with kill-or-be-killed contests at their cores. Now Boy Kills World enters the fray, but in a city ruled over by despot Van Der Koy matriarch Hilda (Famke Janssen, Locked In), with a group of candidates chosen annually, then slaughtered at big televised display that is The Culling no matter what. The titular Boy (played by the US Goodnight Mommy remake's Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti as a kid) is the rare exception: after witnessing his sister and mother's execution in this nightmarish realm, he's simply left for dead. Making his feature debut, director Moritz Mohr (TV's Viva Berlin!) holds tight to another big-screen staple: a revenge mission. As an adult, that the role of Boy falls to Bill Skarsgård fresh from John Wick: Chapter 4 says plenty. The vengeance that's always fuelled that Keanu Reeves (The Matrix Resurrections)-led franchise, and fellow influence Oldboy as well, mixes with cinema's wealth of fight-to-the-death tales. Also thrown in with the fervour of a fan mixing together his favourite things — which is Mohr's unapologetic approach from start to finish — is a colour scheme that Kill Bill also deployed, Deadpool-style humour and violence, notes cribbed from Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman movies and Argylle with its carnage, and nods to video games and Hong Kong action fare plus Looney Tunes and anime. Boy Kills World streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Moritz Mohr. The First Omen Resurrecting horror franchises that first gleamed bright in the 70s is a trend that Hollywood isn't done idolising. Halloween did it. The Exorcist returned as well. Via remakes, Carrie, Suspiria and Black Christmas have all made comebacks since the 2010s. The Omen was always going to get its turn, then. Taking the prequel route — because the OG 1976 film hadn't spawned one yet with 1978's Damien — Omen II, 1981's Omen III: The Final Conflict and 1991's Omen IV: The Awakening, plus a 2006 remake and 2016's one-season TV series — gives rise to The First Omen, as set in Rome in 1971. Fans will know that June 6 that year was when Damien was born. Spinning backstories into new movies can create flicks that smack of inevitability above all else, but not here: this is a genuinely eerie and dread-laced Omen entry with an expert command of unnerving imagery by first-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson (Brand New Cherry Flavour), plus a well-chosen anchor in lead actor Nell Tiger Free (Game of Thrones). Horror, unusual babies, childminding at its most disquieting, a claustrophobic location, a lack of agency, distressing displays of faith: Free has been here before. Indeed, if Stevenson and her co-writers Tim Smith (a screenwriting debutant) and Keith Thomas (the director of 2022's awful Firestarter remake) used Servant as their inspiration in more ways than one, they've made a savvy choice. Featuring their star for four seasons between 2019–2023, that M Night Shyamalan (Knock at the Cabin)-produced series was one of the great horror streaming efforts of the past five years. The First Omen goes heavier on jolting visuals to go with its nerve-jangling atmosphere, but it too stands out. Its worst choice is being needlessly and gratingly blatant in connecting dots in its very last moments, even if nearly half a century has passed since this spawn-of-Satan saga began. The First Omen streams via Disney+, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Back to Black Casting a biopic can't be easy. The awards-courting label that hangs over the genre that's earned Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer), Will Smith (King Richard), Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Renée Zellweger (Judy) and Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) lead actor and actress Oscars over the past decade alone can't make the task any less tricky, either. Then, when music bios get a spin — which is often — the weight of recognition and fandom is an especially heavy factor. Does the actor resemble the star that they're playing physically or in spirit? Can they? Will their attempt to slip into someone else's mega fame read like a triumphant ode or a faded facsimile? Will they try to inhabit rather than impersonate? Is doing the real-life person justice even possible? The questions go on. Even with those queries in mind, Back to Black has chosen its lead well. In Industry's Marisa Abela, who has just six prior acting credits on her resume before now — Barbie is the latest; Man in a Box, her first, came when she was only 11 — the Amy Winehouse-focused film from director Sam Taylor-Johnson (A Million Little Pieces) and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool) has someone who looks the part beehive or not, and convincingly lives and breathes it behind a north London accent. She sings it, too, when the picture weaves in her own vocals atop Winehouse's music. But casting isn't the only key element for a biopic. The dance that a feature is taking through a well-known figure's life needs the material and the approach to support its central performance — the lyrics and tune to match with sheer talent, in music terms. If they fall flat, so does the flick. And unlike a bad song for an exceptional singer, there's no second chances in this realm. Back to Black streams via YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January, February, March, April and May 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
For much of the past six months, audiences worldwide have spent their movie dates watching Sydney on-screen. When two big Hollywood productions transform the Harbour City into their production playground and setting, as both Anyone But You and The Fall Guy did, cinema's spotlight shines bright and wide. Now, for 12 winter days between Wednesday, June 5–Sunday, June 16, Sydney Film Festival patrons can turn the tables, watching the world via almost 200 flicks gracing local silver screens and fluttering before their eyes. Again curated by Festival Director Nashen Moodley as every fest since 2012 has been — which gives him that honour on 13 of the event's 71 festivals across its entire run so far, too — SFF's 2024 lineup also guides its gaze towards Sydney. Opening with a tribute to the power and the passion of Midnight Oil, with the band formed in the New South Wales capital more than half a century ago, is only one example. So, to be more accurate, this year's Sydney Film Festival continues a trend that started on Boxing Day 2023 as well as its usual annual tradition: surveying everywhere from Sydney itself to the edges of the earth, space and time. Maybe you're keen to keep a homegrown flavour to your SFF schedule this year. Perhaps you're eager to roam anywhere that you can from your cinema seat. Whether a dose of weirdness is your ideal film fest flavour, or you're buzzing to catch the latest titles that've been getting the international festival scene talking, they're all on the program. And, you'll also find all of the above among our 12 suggestions below to help you narrow down your choices. Kinds of Kindness Since winning the 2012 Sydney Film Festival prize with Alps, Yorgos Lanthimos has technically bid the Greek Weird Wave goodbye by making his movies in English. That's one clear trend among his five features after nabbing SFF's prestigious award in Moodley's first year at the helm. Another pattern applies to his last three flicks, and it's a killer move: teaming up with Emma Stone, a collaboration that scored her her second Best Actress Oscar earlier in 2024 for the Frankenstein-esque delight that is Poor Things. Kinds of Kindness isn't a Poor Things repeat, just as that wasn't a do-over of The Favourite. This time, Lanthimos and Stone have teamed up on a triptych fable that tells the tales of a man without choice, a policeman with a wife who returns after going missing and a woman on the hunt for a spiritual leader. In a feature that also stars Poor Things' Willem Dafoe (Asteroid City) and Margaret Qualley (Drive-Away Dolls), plus Hong Chau (The Menu), Joe Alwyn (Stars at Noon), Mamoudou Athie (The Burial) and Hunter Schafer (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), the picture's three-time creative partners are still making accolade-garnering magic, however, with Jesse Plemons (Killers of the Flower Moon) picking up 2024's Cannes Best Actor award. The Seed of the Sacred Fig The Seed of the Sacred Fig isn't merely another must-see SFF 2024 title, but also another new work by a Sydney Film Festival prizewinner. Mohammad Rasoulof's There Is No Evil took home the Berlinale's Golden Bear in 2020 before winning the Harbour City's ultimate movie gong in 2021 — and, as it told four stories connected to the use of the death penalty in Iran, it haunted and broke the hearts of everyone who saw it. Watching the Iranian writer/director's work has always been essential (including 2011's Goodbye, 2013's Manuscripts Don't Burn and 2017's A Man of Integrity), but more so since then. Even before playing to audiences in Sydney, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is impossible to forget due to the situation surrounding the picture off-screen. When the movie was selected by Cannes this year — where it won the Jury Special Award — Rasoulof was sentenced to a flogging and eight years in prison, sparking him to flee. On-screen, the film doesn't shy away from Iran's legal system or political unrest, following a Revolutionary Court investigator and his family amid protests sweeping the nation, and as fighting back against oppression isn't only on display on the country's streets. The Pool It's far too cold in Sydney in June for dive-in movies, but playing The Pool in its namesake location would've been a dream pairing of a film and its setting if the season had been right. SFF cinemagoers will instead get cosy indoors rather than splash around in their bathing costumes at Bondi Icebergs, but stepping through the swimming spot's history, allure and place in the Harbour City is on the itinerary regardless. Here's one guarantee: given how photogenic that the famous venue is anyway even just in everyday snaps, as everyone in Australian can instantly recognise, this documentary about it isn't going to be hard on the eyes. Filmmaker Ian Darling has a thing for chronicling Sydney icons in his two recent docos to wash across Sydney Film Festival's screens. The other: The Final Quarter, about Sydney Swans legend Adam Goodes and his treatment by the press and fans towards the end of his career, which earned a standing ovation at its State Theatre SFF world premiere in 2019. With The Pool, Darling switches from unfurling details through media clips to enlisting Icebergs regulars to share their recollections — and likely another warm hometown response beckons. Copa '71 SFF 2024 kicks off just two days after the Matildas took to the turf in Sydney to play their 14th soldout game in a row in Australia, notching up a 2–0 win over China in a friendly. It runs at the same time as Vivid is welcoming Mackenzie Arnold and Tony Gustavsson as speakers. And, it arrives almost a year after the Harbour City was one of the host spots for the 2023 Women's World Cup. So, the timing couldn't be better for Copa '71 to sit in the festival's program. This documentary jumps five decades back and heads to Mexico, to the 1971 Women's World Cup. If you think that you should know more about this event than you currently do, that's one of the movie's points as well. Filmmakers Rachel Ramsay (a producer earning her first directing credit) and James Erskine (Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard) share the competition's story. They unpack how 100,000 fans can fill a stadium to support women's football but the tournament can fade into history, too. Also, the vast disparity between how men's soccer is managed, marketed, treated and regarded compared to women's is also on the doco's agenda. The Substance It was true of 2017's Revenge, her exceptional debut feature, and the word out of Cannes is that it's also true of her seven-years-later sophomore effort: French talent Coralie Fargeat is a helluva filmmaker. Matching style with substance and a feminist statement worked strikingly in her blood-soaked vengeance movie. Now, she's in sci-fi body-horror territory as a celebrity attempts to address the warring forces of time's inevitable passing and Hollywood's obsession with youth by opting for an experimental medical treatment. (Fargeat also just received the Cannes Best Screenplay award for her efforts.) Whether or not you've ever thought that Margaret Qualley, an actor with multiple appearances on SFF 2024's lineup, resembles not only her mother Andie MacDowell (her Maid co-star) but also Demi Moore (Feud), Fargeat draws the latter connection. Qualley is Sue, Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, with one the younger version of the other. In a film that also enlists Dennis Quaid (Lawman: Bass Reeves) as a television executive — with the actor stepping in after Ray Liotta (Cocaine Bear), who was originally cast, passed away — messing with the natural order of things via a temporary clone has consequences. The Moogai Indigenous horror film The Moogai is making its Australian premiere at 2024's Sydney Film Festival, but the pair are no strangers to each other. Before writer/director Jon Bell, a creator of Cleverman and a scribe on the Mystery Road TV series, helmed his first feature with this name, he made a 2020 short of the same moniker that played SFF (and SXSW, and was nominated for an AACTA Award). It too starred Shari Sebbens (Her Dark Reflection) and Meyne Wyatt (Strife). Expanding that short film to full length, Bell's second take on The Moogai did the rounds of both Sundance and SXSW — the Austin version — earlier this year before heading home. In the two flicks, a malevolent spirit awaits and the trauma of the Stolen Generations fuels an eerie flick. Sebbens plays Sarah, a young mother who has just had her second child with Watt's Fergus when the movie's titular figure makes its presence known. The Moogai is also a contender for Sydney Film Festival's brand-new First Nations Award, which is offering a prize of $35,000 for the winning First Nations filmmaker, with ten flicks competing for that honour. The Outrun Since the 2020s arrived and her third decade as a actor began, Saoirse Ronan has played a young wife who falls in love with fossil collector Mary Anning in Ammonite, a showgirl in The French Dispatch, a police constable in See How They Run and a woman trying to find a path through a dystopian future in Foe. Variety has always been the spice of the Irish actor's on-screen life. In The Outrun, the four-time Oscar-nominee (for Atonement, Brooklyn, Lady Bird and Little Women) is Rona, who is trying to move past a history of addiction. Ronan's involvement in any film is enough to put it high on the must-watch list, but she isn't the only drawcard here. The Outrun adapts Amy Liptrot's 2017 memoir of the same name, about the Scottish author and journalist's experiences returning to the Orkney Islands. Liptrot also co-wrote the screenplay. Hitting the keyboard with her is director Nora Fingscheidt — who might've first followed up her excellent 2019 feature System Crasher with the mixed Sandra Bullock (Bullet Train) vehicle The Unforgivable, but is a helmer to watch nonetheless. The Contestant Films about people trapped in a sole space aren't rare. But no matter what Cube or Buried or Devil conjured up, or everything from Oldboy to Bodies Bodies Bodies as well, the scenario at the heart of The Contestant stands out because it actually happened. In 1998, Tomoaki Hamatsu aka Nasubi became a TV star by doing nothing more than existing in a single room alone and sans clothing on reality series Susunu! Denpa Shōnen. To survive, he had to win competitions to obtain the necessary supplies. Also, he had no idea that audiences were watching. Of course a documentary was eventually going to to chronicle this months-long ordeal, how it happened and the repercussions, with Clair Titley (One Born Every Minute) examining the reality of a situation that could've come straight from a horror movie in The Contestant. Nasubi became immensely famous in Japan for his role in the show — footage from which is included in the doco — but as a result of a Faustian bargain with a television producer that he didn't really know that he was making. If you're not already a fan of the format at its far less extreme, this film definitely won't change that. I Saw the TV Glow In Jane Schoenbrun's We're All Going to the World's Fair, a screen became a portal to another world when its teenage protagonist embraced an online trend by playing a virtual horror game. I Saw the TV Glow, the filmmaker's next feature, also gets young eyes trained at a small screen and plunging into what they find awaiting. If you've ever loved a television show so much that you felt like it completed you, saw you and understood you far more than anything flesh and blood around you ever could — and you also couldn't stomach that series coming to an end — then you'll understand Owen (Justice Smith, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Atypical) in one of the most-talked-about flicks out of 2024's Sundance and Berlinale film festivals. That pop culture, including the screen dreams that we eagerly insert ourselves into in our minds while watching, is an escape isn't a new revelation. But after exploring the digital allure in We're All Going to the World's Fair, Schoenbrun now brings their perspective to a tale of connection through the broadcast stories we take into our heads and hearts. The writer/director makes deeply layered films about the loneliness and isolation of growing up, and working out who you want to be, the relationships with screens that we all have, and gender dysphoria — and their latest has Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst (Y2K) among the cast, plus Emma Stone (The Curse) and her husband Dave McCary (Brigsby Bear) as producers. Dahomey 2024's Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear-winner shares a name with a West African kingdom that existed for three centuries, on land now situated within the Republic of Benin — a place that earned the great Werner Herzog's attention in 1987's Cobra Verde and also provided the setting for 2022's The Woman King. The focus of Dahomey for Both Sides of the Blade actor and Atlantics filmmaker Mati Diop in her latest directorial effort: 26 royal treasures taken from the country in the 1800s by French colonial troops, plus their journey home now. How do these statues and objects feel about their their path? One of Diop's creative touches is to give the artifacts a voice and turn them into characters, rather than keep them as mere items discussed by everyone else. It's a telling choice in a documentary that traces the treasures' repatriation and unpacks the bigger picture not just surrounding the contents of museums around the world, but the impact of colonialism, especially in North Africa — all within 67 minutes. All We Imagine as Light Love and hope flow within All We Imagine as Light, and also in nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti, Poacher) and her roommate Anu (Divya Prabha, Family), who are each grappling with affairs of the heart in their own ways. So unfurls this sensual film that bases its characters in Mumbai, then takes them on the road to an otherworldly beach town. The romantic drama has earned love itself off-screen and proven a beacon of hope IRL as well, as writer/director Payal Kapadia makes her first fiction feature. Kapadia's full-length debut came via 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, which premiered at that year's Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight and picked up the Golden Eye for Best Documentary. Before that, her short Afternoon Clouds also played the fest. Kapadia's ties to the French event continue with All We Imagine as Light, which made history just by being selected in competition — a feat an Indian film hasn't achieved in three decades prior. And while it didn't take out the Palme d'Or, it came as close as anything could, earning the Grand Prix, the festival's next gong, which Oscar-winner The Zone of Interest received in 2023. Problemista It's currently a great time to be a Julio Torres fan. That's been true for almost a decade thanks to his work as a writer on Saturday Night Live — 2017's famous 'Papyrus' sketch with Ryan Gosling, which earned a sequel also starring the Barbie and The Fall Guy talent in 2024, was penned by him — and then due to two seasons of glorious HBO comedy Los Espookys in 2019 and 2022. 2024 brings two treats, however, and both at the same time if you're heading to Sydney Film Festival. On the big screen, Problemista sees Torres write, direct and star, making his feature debut as a helmer and acting opposite none other than Tilda Swinton (The Killer). On the small screen, his comedy series Fantasmas will debut on Binge on Saturday, June 8. Accordingly, after you watch Problemista you can start Fantasmas, or vice versa. With Torres' new movie, he plays a man who wants to design toys in New York, then loses his job and looks set to be deported, with a job working for Swinton's demanding art collector Elizabeth his possible lifeline. Wu-Tang Clan's RZA (Minions: Rise of Gru) also pops up. So does Past Lives star Greta Lee. And narrating the whole thing? The iconic Isabella Rossellini, who also appeared in Los Espookys, and hasn't been far from screens of late courtesy of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Cat Person, Julia, La Chimera and now this. Sydney Film Festival 2024 takes place from Wednesday, June 5–Sunday, June 16 at various cinemas and venues around Sydney. For more information — and for tickets — head to the festival's website.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from May's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now Hacks Sometimes you need to wait for the things you love. In Hacks, that's true off- and on-screen. It's been two years since the HBO comedy last dropped new episodes, after its first season was one of the best new shows of 2021 and its second one of the best returning series of 2022 — a delay first sparked by star Jean Smart (Babylon) requiring heart surgery, and then by 2023's Hollywood strikes. But this Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner returns better than ever in season three as it charts Smart's Deborah Vance finally getting a shot at a job that she's been waiting her entire career for. After scoring a huge hit with her recent comedy special, which was a product of hiring twentysomething writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, Julia), the Las Vegas mainstay has a new chance at nabbing a late-night hosting gig. (Yes, fictional takes on after-dark talk shows are having a moment, thanks to Late Night with the Devil and now this.) At times, some in Deborah's orbit might be tempted to borrow the Australian horror movie's title to describe to assisting her pitch for a post-primetime chair. That'd be a harsh comment, but savage humour has always been part of this showbiz comedy about people who tell jokes for a living. While Deborah gets roasted in this season, spikiness is Hacks' long-established baseline — and also the armour with which its behind-the-mic lead protects herself from life's and the industry's pain, disappointments and unfairness. Barbs can also be Deborah's love language, as seen in her banter with Ava. When season two ended, their tumultuous professional relationship had come to an end again via Deborah, who let her writer go to find bigger opportunities. A year has now passed when season three kicks off. Ava is a staff writer on a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-type series in Los Angeles and thriving, but she's also not over being fired. Back in Vanceland , everything is gleaming — but Deborah isn't prepared for being a phenomenon. She wants it. She's worked for years for it. It's taken until her 70s to get it. But her presence alone being cause for frenzy, rather than the scrapping she's done to stay in the spotlight, isn't an easy adjustment. Hacks streams via Stan. Read our full review. Bodkin When podcasting grasped onto IRL mysteries and the world listened, it started a 21st-century circle of true crime obsessions. First, the audio format dived into the genre. Next, screens big and small gave it renewed attention, not that either ever shirked reality's bleakest details. Now, movies and TV shows are known to spin stories around folks investigating such cases to make podcasts, turning detective as they press record. And, as Only Murders in the Building did, sometimes there's also a podcast venturing behind the scenes of a fictional affair about podcasters sleuthing a case. While Bodkin mightn't come with an accompanying digital audio series stepping into its minutiae, it does take its fellow murder-mystery comedy's lead otherwise. Swaps are made — West Cork is in, New York is out; deaths pile up in an Irish village, not an apartment building; three chalk-and-cheese neighbours give way to a trio of mismatched journalists — but the shared format is as plain to see as blood splatter. Call that part of the 21st-century circle of true crime obsessions, too, as one hit inspires more. Bodkin is easy to get hooked on as well, even if it's not as guaranteed to return for additional seasons. Siobhán Cullen (The Dry), Will Forte (Strays) and Robyn Cara (Mixtape) give this seven-part series its investigating threesome: Irishwoman-in-London Dove Maloney, a hard-nosed reporter who just lost a source on a big story; American Gilbert Power, who capitalised upon his wife's cancer for his first podcast hit; and enthusiastic researcher Emmy Sizergh, who wants to be Dove and, much to her idol's dismay, is fine with following Gilbert's lead to get there. They're thrown together in the show's titular town not by Dove's choice, but because she's bundled off by her editor. Gilbert and Emmy are well-aware that she's not there willingly — Dove isn't the type to hide her disdain for anything, be it her latest assignment, Gilbert's medium of choice and his approach, and Emmy's eagerness. Bodkin beckons courtesy of a cold case from a quarter-century back when the village gathered for its then-annual Samhain festival (an influence upon Halloween). Three people disappeared, which Gilbert is certain is a killer hook for the next big hit he desperately needs for the sake of both his reputation and his finances; however, Dove is adamant that there's much more going on than the narrative that Gilbert has already decided to tell. Bodkin streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Outer Range It was true of season one of Outer Range and it doesn't stop proving the case in season two: thinking about Twin Peaks, Yellowstone, Lost, The X-Files, The Twilight Zone and primetime melodramas while you're watching this sci-fi western series is unavoidable. In its second go-around, throw in Dark, too, and also True Detective. Here, an eerie void on a Wyoming cattle ranch sends people hurtling through time, rather than a cave beneath a nuclear power plant — and that concept, time, is dubbed a river instead of a flat circle. The idea behind Outer Range, as conjured up creator Brian Watkins for its debut season in 2022, has always been intriguing: what if a tunnel of blackness topped by a mist of floating energy suddenly opened up in the earth? Also, where would this otherworldly chasm lead? What would be the consequences of taking a tumble into its inky expanse? What does it mean? It isn't literally a mystery box Dark Matter-style, but it also still is in everything but shape — while contemplating what effect such a phenomena has on a rancher family that's worked the land that the ethereal cavern appears on for generations, as well as upon the broader small-town community of Wabang. Getting trippy came with the territory in season one, in an entrancing blend of the out-there and the earthy. Season two doubles down, dives in deeper and gallops across its chosen soil — a mix of the surreal and the soapy as well — with even more gusto. Just like with a vacuum that materialises on an otherwise ordinary-seeming paddock, no one should be leaping into Outer Range's second season unprepared. This isn't a series to jump into with no prior knowledge, or to just pick up along the way. It isn't simply the premise that Outer Range takes its time to reveal in all of its intricacy, a process that remains ongoing in season two; the characters, including Abbott patriarch Royal (Josh Brolin, Dune: Part Two), his wife Cecilia (Lili Taylor, Manhunt), their sons Perry (Tom Pelphrey, Love & Death) and Rhett (Lewis Pullman, Lessons in Chemistry), and stranger-in-their-midst Autumn (Imogen Poots, The Teacher), receive the same treatment. Outer Range streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Jim Henson Idea Man Making a documentary about Jim Henson can't be a difficult task. He's the man who created The Muppets, co-created Sesame Street, co-helmed The Dark Crystal and directed Labyrinth — and stepping through all four, complete with footage from them and behind-the-scenes clips as well, could fuel several portraits of the iconic puppeteer. Jim Henson Idea Man features plenty from that key Henson quartet, all teeming with insights. When viewers aren't getting a peek at The Muppet Show being made, they're exploring the technical trickery behind Kermit singing 'Rainbow Connection' in the swamp in The Muppet Movie. Or, if you're not hearing about how the Bert and Ernie dynamic was fuelled by Henson and Frank Oz's real-life personalities, you're being taken through the first version of The Dark Crystal where little was in any known language, then hearing from Jennifer Connelly (Dark Matter) about the picture that made "dance, magic dance" one of the most-famous lines from a movie song. Ron Howard (Thirteen Lives) has a dream job, then. He also makes the most of everything that a tribute to Henson needs. But, affectionate as it was always going to be — Henson is that rightly beloved, and always will be — his doco also dives deeper. Talking heads, including Oz (Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker), other colleagues and Henson's four surviving children, are on hand to chat through the man behind the on-screen magic amid the treasure trove of material. Again, this Cannes-premiering documentary is a tribute and an authorised one, but it also examines the impact of its subject's devotion to his work on his marriage, as well as on his wife and fellow puppeteer Jane's career. Howard and screenwriter Mark Monroe (The Beach Boys) are loving but clear-eyed in their approach — and wide-spanning in their range for anyone who hasn't delved into much of Henson's work beyond The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. As it hops through a birth-to-death timeline, the attention given to Henson's experimental films is essential and a delight. For 1965's Time Piece, he was nominated for an Academy Award, with the short held up here as a key to understanding the inner Henson beyond his public persona. Getting viewers discovering or rediscovering that piece, and what it conveys about its creator, is high among Jim Henson Idea Man's many gifts. Jim Henson Idea Man streams via Disney+. Eric In the space of a mere two days to close out May, two tales of two puppeteers have popped up on streaming. Eric is pure fiction, but it's impossible not to think about Jim Henson while watching it, regardless of whether you also have a small-screen date with Jim Henson Idea Man. Creator and writer Abi Morgan — who has previously penned the likes of Shame, The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman, Suffragette, River and The Split — puts a Henson-esque figure with his own hit TV show for kids at the core of her six-part miniseries. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) in a performance that's bound to receive awards attention, Vincent Anderson even physically resembles the man behind The Muppets and Sesame Street, but he definitely isn't Henson. Firstly, Anderson is an abusive alcoholic. Secondly, his nine-year-old son Edgar (debutant Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing one morning on his walk to school. And thirdly, the eponymous Eric is a seven-foot-tall monster muppet who his boy scribbled to life on the page and then starts following Vincent as his mental health struggles after Edgar disappears. As a series, the 1985-set Eric is ambitious — and, as well as exceptionally acted, also instantly involving and deeply layered as it ponders how a sunny world can turn unkind, cruel and corrupt. It's an ordinary day when Edgar trundles out his New York City door alone, and routine even in the fact that Vincent and his wife Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann, C'mon C'mon) have been fighting. But soon the Anderson family is plunged into crisis. As he frays visibly, Vincent still can't tear himself away from work, becoming obsessed with turning Eric into his show's newest character. Cassie is certain that reward money from her husband's rich parents, who he's estranged from, will help rustle up information on her son's whereabouts. At the NYPD, detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III, One Piece) is working the case while handling his own baggage. He's still trying to find another missing kid from 11 months ago, too, but with far less support because that child is Black. Ledroit is also a closeted gay Black man in a workplace and at a time that's hardly welcoming, with a dying partner at home. Eric streams via Netflix. Read our full review. The Veil It's simple to glean how and why Elisabeth Moss (Next Goal Wins) was cast as The Veil's Imogen Salter, the MI6 agent whose speciality is complex undercover gigs, even if the part in this six-episode miniseries initially seems like the opposite of her recent work. In The Handmaid's Tale, Shining Girls and The Invisible Man, trauma and abuse came her characters' ways — but the flipside, of course, is persisting, enduring and fighting back. The inner steeliness that it takes to survive dystopian subjugation, domestic violence and an assault isn't far removed from the outward resolve that Imogen wears like a second skin. The more that The Veil goes on, the more that the show and Moss unpack why its key intelligence agent sports such armour, plus the emotional underpinning that's definitely familiar territory for the actor. The role by the end of the series screams her name, in fact, but the cool, calm, collected and ass-kicking Imogen does as well. Watching Moss as a top-of-her-game spy who puts everyone in their place is the kind of idea that should always get an immediate green light. The Veil is gripping from start to finish, and also a better show because it has Moss at its centre. Imogen isn't her character's real name, a detail that's par for the course in espionage antics and also symbolic of someone trying to construct a new facade atop pain that won't fade. Her latest gig puts Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan, The Stranger's Case) in her sights, a woman who similarly mightn't be who she says she is. At a snowy refugee camp (Australian Wakefield actor Dan Wyllie plays its man in charge) on the border of Turkey and Syria, the latter is attacked for her purported ties to ISIS — not just as an operative but as a mastermind, which she denies. Working with French DGES agent Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah, Street Flow 2) and American CIA agent Max Peterson (Josh Charles, The Power), Imogen's task is to obtain the truth out of Adilah, who says that she just wants to get back to her young daughter. It's also plain to see why creator and writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, SAS Rogue Heroes), plus directors Daina Reid (a Shining Girls and The Handmaid's Tale alum) and Damon Thomas (The Big Cigar), put Moss and the also-excellent Marwan together for much of the series. The Veil streams via Disney+. The Idea of You He's just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him. The Idea of You doesn't use specific those words, aka a gender-flipped version of the Notting Hill quote that became entrenched in popular consciousness a quarter century ago, but it follows the same broad tale and conveys that exact sentiment. He is Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine, Mary & George), the twentysomething pop idol who fronts British boy band August Moon. She is divorcee Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway, Armageddon Time), an art dealer hitting her 40s who's a mother to teenage Izzy (Ella Rubin, Masters of the Air). And as they meet-cute — not at a bookstore but at Coachella, where Solène is escorting her daughter and her friends to see August Moon, including a VIP meet-and-greet with Hayes and his bandmates backstage — there's no avoiding thinking about Hugh Grant (Unfrosted) and Julia Roberts (Leave the World Behind). Thanks to the internet, although author Robinne Lee has rebuffed the idea that she wrote the novel The Idea of You as fan fiction, there's no escaping Harry Styles popping into your head, either. Actor-turned-writer Lee (Kaleidoscope) knows a thing or two about fanfic: she featured in the movie adaptations of the Fifty Shades books. But the potential Styles of it all doesn't matter when the style of the tale, especially on-screen, is a rom-com about a woman being seen at a time in her life when traditionally the opposite happens. There shouldn't be an air of wish fulfilment to this story in a perfect world, or a race to join the dots to connect it to a celebrity and make that the crux of the narrative's importance. Writer/director Michael Showalter (Spoiler Alert) and co-screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt (The First Lady), both of whom are actors themselves, thankfully don't opt for that path. Instead, while the movie's characters could've used more flesh in the script and cliches remain apparent, The Idea of You gets layered performances out of Hathaway and Galitzine to make its setup feel emotionally authentic. The details: that cute meeting, her reluctance, his perseverance, chasing their hearts on August Moon's tour of Europe, then navigating the reality behind the fantasy. The Idea of You streams via Prime Video. The Tattooist of Auschwitz How do you bring a tale of the holocaust's horrors and the human spirit's tenacity to the screen when it's as complicated as The Tattooist of Auschwitz? Many of complexities surrounding Heather Morris' book aren't on the page, but rather in the story's dialogue between truth and fiction — with the narrative based on a real-life concentration camp survivor's recollections, but questions raised about inaccuracies in the text's account. As a six-part miniseries, The Tattooist of Auschwitz confronts the queries surrounding its contents, which reached shelves in 2018, by constantly noting how unreliable that memories can be. Each episode opens with "based on the memories of holocaust survivor Lali Sokolov" before sections of the phrase fades, leaving just "the memories of Lali Sokolov" lingering. Backtracking as the elderly Lali (Harvey Keitel, Paradox Effect) recounts his time at Auschwitz to probe how true the specifics are, offer different versions, revise the minutiae and sway the perspective is also an element of the show, as are other figures — such as Stefan Baretzki (Jonas Nay, Concordia), an SS officer overseeing the younger Lali (Jonah Hauer-King, The Little Mermaid) — appearing like ghosts to put forward another viewpoint. Screenwriters Jacquelin Perske (Fires), Gabbie Asher (Sanctuary) and Evan Placey (Soulmates) — and also director Tali Shalom-Ezer (The Psychologist), who helms the entire miniseries — frame The Tattooist of Auschwitz as a portrait of a man looking back at his life and an examination of the fact that every recounting is always guided by storytelling choices. It's a canny move, recognising that Lali's experiences as a Slovakian Jewish prisoner during World War II can only be filtered through his eyes, especially as gutwrenching horror surrounds him but love still springs. Being enlisted with the titular job, which brings a sliver of benefits and freedoms within the camp; falling for fellow detainee Gita (Anna Próchniak, Unmoored) while he's inking; the fraught nature of their fight to be together in such grim circumstances; the reality of death everywhere around them; his relationship with the volatile Baretzki: as Lali at age 87 chats through it with aspiring writer Morris (Melanie Lynskey, Yellowjackets), that this is his journey and that his recounting isn't infallible remain constantly in mind. Keitel is particularly excellent, but the most haunting element of the compelling series, unsurprisingly, is the moments that it spends with the dead — moments where there's no possibility of different perceptions — who stare straight to camera when they pass. The Tattooist of Auschwitz streams via Stan. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Colin From Accounts When Colin From Accounts arrived for its first season in 2022 with a nipple flash, a dog and strangers committing to take care of a cute injured pooch together, it also began with a "will they, won't they?" story. Ashley (Harriet Dyer, The Invisible Man) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall, Evil) crossed paths in the street in Sydney when she gave him a random peek, then he was distracted behind the wheel. Thanks to the titular pet, the pair were soon intricately involved in each other's lives — and a delightful small-screen Aussie rom-com was the end result as they endeavoured to work out what that actually meant. In season two, which picks up after the duo gave Colin From Accounts to new owners and then immediately regretted the decision, a couple of things are different from the outset: Gordon and Ashley are on a quest to get their pup back and they'll stop at almost nothing for their family to be reunited, and this award-winning series is now in "should've they or should've they not?" territory about its central romance. Falling in love is easy. Being in the honeymoon period, whether or not you've actually tied the knot — Colin From Accounts' protagonists haven't — is clearcut, too. Taking a relationship further means peeling away the rosy and glowing surface, however, which is where the series follows its medical student and microbrewery owner in its second season. Accordingly, through surprising news, meeting family members, historical baggage and more, Ashley and Gordon are still trying to navigate the reality of intertwining their lives, and also who they are as a couple. Creators, writers and stars Dyer and Brammall keep performing their parts to perfection; given they're married IRL and no strangers to working together (see: No Activity), the chemistry and naturalism isn't hard to maintain, but they're not just playing themselves. They're also particularly gifted with dialogue, ensuring that everything that the show's characters are saying — be it amusing, heartfelt, acerbic, insightful or all of the above — always feels authentic. Colin From Accounts streams via Binge. Read our full review. Dark Matter When an Australian actor makes it big, it can feel as if there's more than one of them. Joel Edgerton, who has been on local screens for almost three decades and made the leap to Hollywood with the Australian-shot Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, is such a talent. He's usually everywhere and in almost everything (such as The Stranger, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Thirteen Lives, Master Gardener, I'm a Virgo, The Boys in the Boat and Bluey in just the past two years), and viewers would follow him anywhere. Dark Matter wasn't written to capitalise upon that idea. Rather, it hails from the page of Blake Crouch's 2016 novel, with the author also creating the new nine-part sci-fi series that it's based on. But the show's lead casting leans into the notion that you can never have too much Edgerton by multiplying him in the multiverse. For the characters in Dark Matter, however, the fact that there's more than a single Jason Dessen causes considerable issues. The series' protagonist is a former experimental physics genius-turned-professor in Chicago. He's married to artist-turned-gallerist Daniela (Jennifer Connelly, Bad Behaviour), a father to teenager Charlie (Oakes Fegley, The Fabelmans) and the best friend of award-winning college pal Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia). And, he's been happy living the quiet family life, although pangs of envy quietly arise when he's celebrating Ryan's prestigious new accolade. Then, when another Jason pops up to pull off a kidnapping and doppelgänger plot, he's soon navigating a cross between Sliding Doors and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Everything is a multiverse tale of late, but Dark Matter is also a soul-searching "what if?" drama, exploring the human need to wonder what might've been if just one choice — sometimes big, sometimes small — had veered in a different direction. While a box is pivotal mode of transport like this is Doctor Who, as are all manner of worlds to visit, this is high-concept sci-fi at its most grounded. Neither version of Jason wants to hop through parallel worlds in the name of adventure or exploration — they're simply chasing their idea of everyday perfection. Dark Matter streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. Excellent Recent Films You Might've Missed on the Big Screen Anatomy of a Fall A calypso instrumental cover of 50 Cent's 'P.I.M.P.' isn't the only thing that Anatomy of a Fall's audience won't be able to dislodge from their heads after watching 2023's deserving Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winner. A film that's thorny, knotty and defiantly unwilling to give any easy answers, this legal, psychological and emotional thriller about a woman on trial for her husband's death is unshakeable in as many ways as someone can have doubts about another person: so, a myriad. The scenario conjured up by writer/director Justine Triet (Sibyl) is haunting, asking not only if her protagonist committed murder, as the on-screen investigation and courtroom proceedings interrogate, but digging into what it means to be forced to choose between whether someone did the worst or is innocent — or if either matters. While the Gallic legal system provides the backdrop for much of the movie, the real person doing the real picking isn't there in a professional capacity, or on a jury. Rather, it's the 11-year-old boy who loved his dad, finds him lying in the snow with a head injury outside their French Alps home on an otherwise ordinary day, then becomes the key witness in his mum's case. Also impossible to forget: the performances that are so crucial in telling this tale of marital and parental bonds, especially from one of German's current best actors and the up-and-coming French talent playing her son. With her similarly astonishing portrayal in The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and I'm Your Man's Sandra Hüller is two for two in movies that initially debuted globally in 2023; here, she steps into the icy and complicated Sandra Voyter's shoes with the same kind of surgical precision that Triet applies to unpacking the character's home life. As Daniel, who couldn't be more conflicted about the nightmare situation he's been thrust into, Milo Machado Graner (Alex Hugo) is a revelation — frequently via his expressive face and posture alone. If Scenes From a Marriage met Kramer vs Kramer, plus 1959's Anatomy of a Murder that patently influences Anatomy of a Fall's name, this would be the gripping end result — as fittingly written by Triet with her IRL partner Arthur Harari (Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle). Anatomy of a Fall streams via Stan. Read our full review. May December A line about not having enough hot dogs might be one of its first, but the Julianne Moore (Sharper)-, Natalie Portman (Thor: Love and Thunder)- and Charles Melton (Riverdale)-starring May December is a movie of mirrors and butterflies. In the literal sense, director Todd Haynes wastes few chances to put either in his frames. The Velvet Goldmine, Carol and Dark Waters filmmaker doesn't shy away from symbolism, knowing two truths that stare back at his audience from his latest masterpiece: that what we see when we peer at ourselves in a looking glass isn't what the rest of the world observes, and that life's journey is always one of transformation. Inspired by the real-life Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, May December probes both of these facts as intently as anyone scrutinising their own reflection. Haynes asks viewers to do the same. Unpacking appearance and perception, and also their construction and performance, gazes from this potently thorny — and downright potent — film. That not all metamorphoses end with a beautiful flutter flickers through just as strongly. May December's basis springs from events that received ample press attention in the 90s: schoolteacher Letourneau's sexual relationship with her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau. She was 34, he was 12. First-time screenwriter Samy Burch changes names and details in her Oscar-nominated script — for Best Original Screenplay, which is somehow the film's only nod by the Academy — but there's no doubting that it takes its cues from this case of grooming, which saw Letourneau arrested, give birth to the couple's two daughters in prison, then the pair eventually marry. 2000 TV movie All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story used the recreation route; however, that was never going to be a Haynes-helmed feature's approach. The comic mention of hot dogs isn't indicative of May December's overall vibe, either: this a savvily piercing film that sees the agonising impact upon the situation's victim, the story its perpetrator has spun around herself, and the relentless, ravenous way that people's lives and tragedies are consumed by the media and public. May December streams via Binge and Prime Video. Read our full review. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March and April this year, and also from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer. Top image: Christine Tamalet / FX.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are 13 that you can watch right now at home. Civil War Civil War is not a relaxing film, either for its characters or viewers, but writer/director Alex Garland (Men) does give Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) a moment to lie down among the flowers. She isn't alone among this stunning movie's stars on her stomach on a property filled with Christmas decorations en route from New York to Washington DC. Also, with shots being fired back and forth, no one is in de-stressing mode. For viewers of Dunst's collaborations with Sofia Coppola, however — a filmmaker that her Civil War co-star Cailee Spaeny just played Priscilla Presley for in Priscilla — the sight of her face beside grass and blooms was always going to recall The Virgin Suicides. Twenty-five years have now passed since that feature, which Garland nods to as a handy piece of intertextual shorthand. As the camera's focus shifts between nature and people, there's not even a tiny instant of bliss among this sorrow, nor will there ever be, as there was the last time that Dunst was framed in a comparable fashion. Instead, Civil War tasks its lead with stepping into the shoes of a seasoned war photographer in the middle of the violent US schism that gives the movie its name (and, with January 6, 2021 so fresh in everyone's memories, into events that could very well be happening in a version of right now). The US President (Nick Offerman, Origin) is into his third term after refusing to leave office, and the fallout is both polarising and immense. Think: bombed cities, suicide attackers, death squads, torture, lynchings, ambushes, snipers, shuttering the FBI, California and Texas inexplicably forming an alliance to fight back, Florida making its own faction, journalists killed on sight, refugee camps, deserted highways, checkpoints, resistance fighters, mass graves and, amid the rampant anarchy, existence as America currently knows it clearly obliterated. (Asking "what kind of American are you?" barely seems a stretch, though.) The front line is in Charlottesville, but Dunst's Lee Smith is destined for the White House with Reuters reporter Joel (Wagner Moura, Mr & Mrs Smith), where they're hoping to evade the lethal anti-media sentiment to secure an interview with the leader who has torn the country apart. Civil War streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Monkey Man Dev Patel means business in Monkey Man, both on- and off-screen. Starring in the ferocious vengeance-dripping action-thriller, he plays Kid, a man on a mission to punish the powers that be in Yatana (a fictional Indian city inspired by Mumbai) for their injustices, and specifically for the death of his mother Neela (Adithi Kalkunte, who Patel worked with on Hotel Mumbai) when he was a boy. As the film's director, producer and co-writer, he isn't holding back either, especially in adding something to his resume that no other project has offered in his almost two decades as an actor since Skins marked his on-camera debut. Dev Patel: action star has an excellent ring to it. So does Dev Patel: action filmmaker. Both labels don't merely sound great with Monkey Man; this is a frenetic and thrilling flick, and also a layered one that marries its expertly choreographed carnage with a statement. In the post-John Wick action-movie realm, it might seem as if every actor is doing features about formidable lone forces taking on their enemies. Patel initially began working on Monkey Man over ten years ago, which is when Keanu Reeves (The Matrix Resurrections) first went avenging, but his film still acknowledges what its viewers will almost-inevitably ponder by giving John Wick a shoutout. Thinking about the Charlize Theron (Fast X)-led Atomic Blonde and Bob Odenkirk (The Bear)-starring Nobody is understandable while watching, too — but it's The Raid and Oldboy, plus the decades of Asian action onslaughts and revenge-filled Korean efforts around them, that should stick firmest in everyone's mind. All directors are product of their influences; however, Patel achieves the rare feat of openly adoring his inspirations while filtering them through his exact vision to fashion a picture that's always 100-percent his own (and 100-percent excellent). Monkey Man streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Dev Patel. Love Lies Bleeding In Love Lies Bleeding, a craggy ravine just outside a dusty New Mexico town beckons, ready to swallow sordid secrets in the dark of the desert's starry night. Tumbling into it, a car explodes in flames partway through the movie, exactly as the person pushing it in wants it to. There's the experience of watching Rose Glass' sophomore film emblazoned across the feature's very frames. After the expertly unsettling Saint Maud, the British writer/director returns with a second psychological horror, this time starring Kristen Stewart in the latest of her exceptionally chosen post-Twilight roles (see: Crimes of the Future, Spencer, Happiest Season, Lizzie, Personal Shopper, Certain Women and Clouds of Sils Maria). An 80s-set queer and sensual tale of love, lust, blood and violence, Love Lies Bleeding is as inkily alluring as the gorge that's pivotal to its plot, and as fiery as the inferno that swells from the canyon's depths. This neon-lit, synth-scored neo-noir thriller scorches, too — and burns so brightly that there's no escaping its glow. When the words "you have to see it to believe it" also grace Love Lies Bleeding — diving into gyms and in the bodybuilding world, it's no stranger to motivational statements such as "no pain no gain", "destiny is a decision" and "the body achieves what the mind believes" — they help sum up this wild cinematic ride as well. Glass co-scripts here with Weronika Tofilska (they each previously penned and helmed segments of 2015's A Moment in Horror), but her features feel like the result of specific, singular and searing visions that aren't afraid to swerve and veer boldly and committedly to weave their stories and leave an imprint. Accordingly, Love Lies Bleeding is indeed a romance, a crime flick and a revenge quest. It's about lovers on the run (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's Katy O'Brian pairs with Stewart) and intergenerational griminess. It rages against the machine. It's erotic, a road trip and unashamedly pulpy. It also takes the concept of strong female leads to a place that nothing else has, and you do need to witness it to fathom it. Love Lies Bleeding streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Rose Glass. Late Night with the Devil If David Dastmalchian ever tires of acting, which will hopefully never happen, he'd make an entrancing late-night television host. He even has the audition tape for it: Late Night with the Devil. Of course, the star who earned his first movie credit on The Dark Knight, and has stood out in Blade Runner 2049, The Suicide Squad, Dune and the third season of Twin Peaks — plus Boston Strangler, The Boogeyman, Oppenheimer and Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter all in 2023 alone, alongside Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — might be hoping for a less eerie and unsettling gig IRL. Dastmalchian is a fan of horror anchors, writing an article for Fangoria about them. Here, putting in a helluva can't-look-away performance, he plays one. That said, the namesake of Night Owls with Jack Delroy isn't meant to fit the mould so unnervingly, nor is the series that he's on. Delroy is a Johnny Carson rival — and, because Australian filmmakers Cameron and Colin Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres, Scare Campaign) write and direct Late Night with the Devil, he's also a Don Lane-type talent — who isn't afraid of embracing the supernatural on his live talk show. On Halloween in 1977, airing his usual special episode for the occasion, he decides to attempt to arrest the flagging ratings of what was once a smash by booking four attention-grabbing guests. What occurs when Delroy, who is grieving the loss of his actor wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig, NCIS Sydney) a year earlier, shares the stage with not only a famous skeptic and a psychic, but also with a parapsychologist and a girl who is reportedly possessed? That might sound like the setup for a joke, but it's this new Aussie horror gem's captivating premise. Late Night with the Devil streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Colin and Cameron Cairnes. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Godzilla is finally an Oscar-winner. It's about time. But the septuagenarian reptile didn't score Hollywood's top trophy for curling up in the Colosseum for a snooze, rocking electric-pink spikes, thundering into Hollow Earth — the world literally within our world where titans spring from — and teaming up with King Kong to take on a rival giant ape that rides an ice-breathing kaiju and uses a skeletal spine as a rope. Japan's exceptional Godzilla Minus One, which took home 2024's Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, wasn't that kind of monster movie. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which hails from the American-made Monsterverse, definitely is. Arriving shortly after one of its titular figures received such a coveted filmmaking accolade (and also after the US franchise's ace streaming series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters), this sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs Kong is patently from the goofily entertaining rather than deeply meaningful brand of Godzilla flicks. Yes, there's room for both. It might seem a hard job to follow up one of the best-ever takes on the nuclear-powered creature with an action-adventure-fantasy monster mash that also features a Hawaiian shirt-wearing veterinarian (Dan Stevens, Welcome to Chippendale) dropping in via helicopter to do dental work on King Kong, the return of the Monsterverse's resident conspiracy-theorist podcaster (Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta), a complicated mother-daughter dynamic (via Rebecca Hall, Resurrection, and Kaylee Hottle, Magnum PI) and a mini Kong called Suko — plus, in its very first minutes, several other animals being ripped apart by Godzilla and Kong. When he took on the gig of helming pictures in this franchise, however, You're Next, The Guest, Blair Witch and Death Note filmmaker Adam Wingard chose fun chaos. His two entries so far aren't dreaming of competing for thoughtfulness with the movies coming out of the country that created Godzilla. Rather, they're made with affection for that entire legacy, and also Kong's, which dates back even further to 1933. Getting audiences relishing the spectacle of this saga is the clear aim, then — and Wingard's attempts put exactly that in their sights above all else. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, Kaylee Hottle and Adam Wingard. Abigail Abigail, aka the tween vampire ballerina film that unveiled that premise in its trailer, is still an entertaining time irrespective of your starting knowledge, thankfully. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's fifth full-length directorial effort — and their first after bringing back Ghostface in 2022's Scream and 2023's Scream VI — begins as a blend of a heist affair, horror mansion movie and whodunnit. It kicks off with a kidnapping skilfully pulled off by a motley crew (is there any other type?), then with holing up in the mastermind's sprawling and eerie safe house with their 12-year-old captive, then with fingers being pointed and their charge toying with them. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are slick with their opening, from breaking into a well-secured estate to avoiding surveillance cameras while speeding through the streets afterwards. They're playful, too, when corralling everyone in their next location — a setup that they've turned into an ace horror watch before in 2019's Ready or Not — and letting suspicions run wild. The six abductors here, as given nicknames Reservoir Dogs-style but with a Rat Pack spin, and told not to divulge their true identities or histories to each other: Joey (Melissa Barrera, Carmen), a recovering addict with medical skills; Frank (Dan Stevens, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), who has a background in law enforcement; Rickles (William Catlett, Constellation), an ex-marine; Sammy (Kathryn Newton, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), the resident hacker; Peter (Kevin Durand, Pantheon), the dim-witted muscle; and Dean (Angus Cloud, Euphoria), the stoner wheelman. The middleman for their employer: the no-nonsense Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, The Gentlemen). And the girl: Abigail (Alisha Weir, Wicked Little Letters), of course, who is the daughter of someone obscenely rich and powerful. She's just finished dance rehearsals, is still in her tutu, and proves the picture of scared and unsettled when she's snatched from her bedroom, drugged and blindfolded — until she isn't. Abigail streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Wicked Little Letters Whether it's via a post or tweet or message, in a comment or status update, thanks to a Notes app screenshot or in an email, mean words aren't hard to share two decades into the 21st century. Click a few buttons, slide your finger across a touchscreen, then vitriol can be directed virtually instantaneously worldwide. Countless people — too many, all sticklers for unpleasantness — do just that. Such behaviour has almost become a reflex. A century ago, however, spewing nastiness by text required far more effort. Someone had to put ink to paper, commit their hatred to physical form in their own handwriting, tuck it into an envelope, pay for postage, then await the mail service to deliver their malice. Wicked Little Letters isn't an ode to that dedication, but there's no avoiding that sending offensive missives in its 1920s setting was a concerted, determined act — and also that no one could claim just seconds later that they were hacked. Times change, and technology with it, but people don't: that's another way of looking at this British dramedy, which is indeed based on a true tale. Director Thea Sharrock (The One and Only Ivan) and screenwriter Jonny Sweet (Gap Year) know that there's a quaintness about the chapter of history that they're bringing to the screen, but not to the attitudes behind the incident. In Sussex by the sea on the English Channel, spiteful dispatches scandalised a town, with the situation dubbed "the Littlehampton libels". In Wicked Little Letters' account, Edith (Olivia Colman, Wonka) keeps receiving notes that overuse vulgar terms, and the God-fearing spinster, who lives with her strict father (Timothy Spall, The Heist Before Christmas) and dutiful mother (Gemma Jones, Emily), is certain that she knows the source. Living next door, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley, Fingernails) is an Irish single mother to Nancy (Alisha Weir, Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical), has Bill (Malachi Kirby, My Name Is Leon) as her live-in boyfriend, and is fond of a drink at the pub and of sharing her opinion. The two neighbours are as chalk and cheese as women of the time could get, but were once friendly. When Edith blames Rose, the latter's pleas that she's innocent — and that she'd just tell the former her grievances to her face, not send them anonymously — fall on deaf ears among most of the resident police. Wicked Little Letters streams via YouTube Movies. Read our full review. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person What if a vampire didn't want to feed on humans? When it happens in Interview with the Vampire, rats are the solution. In Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, Sasha (Sara Montpetit, White Dog) gets her sustenance from pouches of blood instead, but her family — father (Steve Laplante, The Nature of Love), mother (Sophie Cadieux, Chouchou), aunt (Marie Brassard, Viking) and cousin Denise (Noémie O'Farrell, District 31') — are increasingly concerned once more than half a century passes and she keeps avoiding biting necks. Sasha still looks like a goth teenager, yet she's 68, so her relatives believe that it's well past time for her to embrace an inescapable aspect of being a bloodsucker. What if she didn't have to, though? The potential solution in the delightful first feature by director Ariane Louis-Seize, who co-writes with Christine Doyon (Germain s'éteint), is right there in this 2023 Venice International Film Festival award-winner's title. With What We Do in the Shadows, both on the big and small screens, the idea that vamps are just like the living when it comes to sharing houses has gushed with laughs. Swap out flatmates for adolescence — including pesky parents trying to cramp a teen's style — and that's Louis-Seize's approach in this French-language Canadian effort. As much as Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person brings fellow undead fare to mind, however, and more beyond, the Québécois picture is an entrancing slurp of vampire and other genres on its own merits. There's an Only Lovers Left Alive-style yearning and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night-esque elegance to the film. Beetlejuice and The Hunger bubble up, too, as do Under the Skin, Ginger Snaps and The Craft as well. But comparable to how drinking from someone doesn't transform you into them — at least according to a century-plus of bloodsucking tales on the page, in cinemas and on TV — nodding at influences doesn't turn this coming-of-age horror-comedy into its predecessors. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person streams via iTunes. Read our full review. You'll Never Find Me When The Rocky Horror Picture Show starts with just-engaged couple Brad Majors and Janet Weiss knocking on a stranger's door on a dark and rainy night, with the pair hoping to find both shelter from the elements and assistance, no one could predict what awaits inside. There isn't much that connects the stage-to-screen cult musical-comedy hit from nearly 50 years back with expertly tense and atmospheric Australian horror film You'll Never Find Me, but that basic setup gets a spin — and a wild ride is again the end result. Also, if you're the type to take life tips from pop culture, a familiar piece of advice proves true once more. Even the most casual of filmgoers know that little that's good ever comes from an unexpected thump on someone's house, regardless of whether you're doing the banging or hearing it from the other side. Knock at the Cabin, Knock Knock, The Strangers: they all back this idea up, too, and the list goes on. In You'll Never Find Me — which Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen write, direct and produce as their first feature — the weather is indeed violently stormy and the evening is inescapably black when a young woman (Jordan Cowan, Krystal Klairvoyant) taps on the caravan that Patrick (Brendan Rock, The Stranger) calls home. They're both tentative, anxious and unsettled. She asks for help, he obliges, but suspicion lingers in the air as heavily as the sound of thunder and the wail of wind. The thick blanket of distrust doesn't fray as they talk, either, with the new arrival — named only The Visitor in the feature's credits — claiming that she fell asleep on the beach, hence her presence on her host's doorstep at 2am. But Patrick keeps finding holes in her story. She's also doubtful about his claims that he doesn't have a phone that she could use, public facilities are too far away for her to get to without him driving her to it and they'll need to wait until the rain subsides to depart. You'll Never Find Me streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire There's nothing strange in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, even with the spirits of sewer dragons, Slimer and pre-Sumerian demons all lurking about. There's nothing unusual about the movie's neighbourhood, either, with the supernatural comedy franchise revisiting New York after Ghostbusters: Afterlife's detour to Oklahoma. No surprises are found among the characters, mixing OG faces from 1984's Ghostbusters and its 1989 sequel Ghostbusters II with cast members from the saga's last flick (and still sadly pretending that 2016's excellent female-led Ghostbusters didn't happen). But something unexpected does occur in this fifth film to ask "who ya gonna call?", this time directed by Gil Kenan (A Boy Called Christmas) with Jason Reitman (The Front Runner), Afterlife's helmer and the son of the first two films' Ivan Reitman (Draft Day), scripting: its love of nostalgia is as strong as in Afterlife; however, Frozen Empire is welcomely absent its immediate predecessor's needy force. That said, simply being better than Afterlife is a low hurdle to clear. It's also what Frozen Empire achieves and little more. Kenan ain't afraid of a by-the-numbers script that stitches together references to the franchise's past and as many characters as can be jam-packed in. Frozen Empire begins with Callie (Carrie Coon, The Gilded Age), her teen kids Trevor (Finn Wolfhard, Stranger Things) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace, Crater), and their former science teacher Gary (Paul Rudd, Only Murders in the Building) all in Ecto-1, in hot pursuit of an otherworldly wraith in Manhattan — and the fact that Callie parents, Gary yearns to be seen as a parent and Trevor reminds everyone that he's 18 now sets the scene for their parts moving forward. So does Phoebe taking charge, but Kenan and Reitman only make half an effort to push her to the fore. When Phoebe links up with Dan Aykroyd's (Zombie Town) Ray Stantz, who now runs a store that buys possessed possessions, the Ghostbusters saga gets its best path forward so far with this cast. And yet, possibly scared of the ridiculous backlash to Kate McKinnon (Barbie), Kristen Wiig (Palm Royale), Melissa McCarthy (The Little Mermaid) and Leslie Jones (Our Flag Means Death) in jumpsuits almost a decade back, Frozen Empire largely pads itself out with filler to stop Phoebe always being the main point of focus. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Great Escaper Two British acting icons enjoy their last on-screen hurrah in The Great Escaper, which is reason enough to see the based-on-a-true-story drama about a World War II veteran making a run for it. At the age of 90, Michael Caine announced that playing 89-year-old Bernard Jordan would be his last role in a film career that dates back to 1950. Glenda Jackson only returned to acting in 2015, after decades in politics since the 90s, then passed away after lending her talents to Bernard's wife Irene. The film they're in doesn't always match their efforts, with William Ivory's (Isolation Stories) script happy to hit the obvious notes, and forcefully — and director Oliver Parker just as content to do the same, as he also was on Johnny English Reborn, Dad's Army and Swimming with Men. Still, as it tells a spirited tale, it unsurprisingly does so with far more weight beyond its formula — as real as its events are — with Caine (Best Sellers) and Jackson (Mothering Sunday) in the lead parts. Normally when a movie links to the Second World War and involves fleeing, it's a period-set flick, but not this one. Jordan's stint of absconding came in June 2014, when he took his leave from his East Sussex nursing home without informing anyone to travel to Normandy for the 70th-anniversary D-Day commemorations. That makes The Great Escaper a breaking-out adventure of a unique kind — and Caine and Jackson, the latter as the spouse following her absent husband's antics from afar, are an excellent pair who bring gravitas to their roles whether they're sharing the frame or their characters are in different countries. The flashbacks to their younger years (featuring The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power's Will Fletcher and Bad Education's Laura Marcus) are less compelling. There's also little in the way of subtlety to the film's old-fashioned telling. But this story also proves affecting in pondering how war heroes are celebrated, then forgotten as they age, and also the human toll of every conflict long after it has been waged. The Great Escaper streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Baghead Sit in a chair. Embrace the otherworldly. Whether you're ready for it or not — physically and emotionally alike — bear witness to the dead being summoned. Speak to those who are no longer in the land of the living. Perhaps, while you're chatting, get caught in a dialogue with something nefarious as well. Talk to Me used this setup to audience-wowing and award-winning effect. Now comes Baghead, which stems from a short film that pre-dates 2023's big Australian-made horror hit, and was shot before Michael and Danny Philippou's A24-distributed flick played cinemas, but still brings it to mind instantly. Audiences can be haunted by what they've seen before, especially in a busy, ever-growing genre where almost everything is haunted anyway and few pictures feel genuinely new. Here, as first-time feature filmmaker Alberto Corredor adapts his own applauded short (which has nothing to do with the mumblecore effort starring Greta Gerwig before she was directing Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie), there's no shaking how Talk to Me gnaws at Baghead. The director and screenwriters Christina Pamies (another debutant) and Bryce McGuire (Night Swim) make grief their theme, and with commitment; the pain of loss colours the movie as much as its shadowy imagery. But, despite boasting two dedicated performances, Corredor's Baghead is routine again and again. At The Queen's Head in Berlin, Owen Lark (Peter Mullan, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) oversees a ramshackle four-centuries-old pub where customers aren't there for the drinks. The basement is the big drawcard for those in the know, with the being that resides in it, in a hole in a brick wall, luring punters in the door. Everyone who arrives with cash and a plea for help is in mourning. When Neil (Jeremy Irvine, Benediction) makes an entrance, he knows exactly what he wants. Baghead begins not with Owen letting his latest patron meet the entity that shares the movie's title, though, but with him endeavouring to vanquish it. If he was successful, there'd be no film from there. Because he isn't, his estranged daughter Iris (Freya Allan, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) is summoned to the German city by a solicitor (Ned Dennehy, The Peripheral), becoming the watering hole's next owner. Baghead streams via YouTube Movies. Read our full review, and our interview with Freya Allan. Kung Fu Panda 4 What happens when you've scored your dream job, especially when getting everything that you've ever wanted has meant navigating a lengthy and challenging quest — and when you've always been an underdog (well, an underpanda to be precise)? So asks Kung Fu Panda 4, posing that question to Po (Jack Black, The Super Mario Bros Movie), the black-and-white mammal whose journey to becoming a martial-arts master has sat at the heart of this franchise since 2008. Po loves being the Dragon Warrior, even when 2011's Kung Fu Panda 2 and 2016's Kung Fu Panda 3 have thrown ups and downs his way. In the movie series' fourth big-screen entry, however, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman, Sam & Kate) advises that it's time to start thinking about his successor in the post, as Po should be moving up the ranks to take on the job of the Valley of Peace's Spiritual Leader. One big problem: the panda isn't thrilled. Another: he doesn't love any of the candidates. There's also The Chameleon (Viola Davis, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), a sorceress, to deal with — potentially with the help of thieving fox Zhen (Awkwafina, IF). Black's voice has always done plenty of heavy lifting in the Kung Fu Panda flicks, alongside the general concept — a panda as a kung fu whiz — and the slapstick silliness that comes to the screen with it. None of that changes in Kung Fu Panda 4, and no one involved appears to want it to. Also still a constant: the reliance upon well-known names lending their vocals to the movie's menagerie (Argylle's Bryan Cranston, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai's James Hong, John Wick: Chapter 4's Ian McShane and Dumb Money's Seth Rogen have been here before; Everything Everywhere All At Once Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan and Unfrosted's Ronny Chieng are among the newcomers). The visuals remain vivid, but the story is in a rush to ping pong to the next sight gag or excuse to get the film's cast bantering. As directed Mike Mitchell (The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part) and Stephanie Stine (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), the film bounces, leaps, kicks and rolls along merrily enough, though — just — for younger audiences. Kung Fu Panda 4 streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January, February, March and April 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
As the state capital and one of the region's most vibrant cities, Sydney is bursting at the seams with diverse cultural happenings. Luckily, we're here to guide you. We've rounded up a trifecta of the most thrilling and culturally important experiences over the coming months.
We adore our sport here in Oz, perhaps more than any other nation. Some of the biggest events of the year and we're all in the mood for some good old fashioned sporting excitement, there's really nothing that beats the primal, up close and personal thrill of live competition. Happily, there are a bunch of world-class events making their way to NSW over the next few months that you'll definitely want to attend. From statewide NRL rivalries to monumental city marathons to the all-out automobile action, there's truly something for everyone. Get ready to laugh, cry, lose your voice, and, hopefully, revel in the unparalleled joy of victory.
Eurovision might be known for synth, synth and more synth, but Australia isn't one to bust out the usual Europop tunes. When you're a country outside of Europe that competes in the huge song contest, you want to make a splash for something other than geography. 2023 saw Perth synth-metal band Voyager bust out a pop-metal tune, for instance. In 2024, Electric Fields are representing the nation with 'One Milkali (One Blood)', which features the language Yankunytjatjara from the Anangu peoples. Yes, May is here, which means that Eurovision is here. And, so are the latest batch of earworms that'll get a spin on the Eurovision Song Contest stage in Malmö, Sweden — the host for this year after Loreen's 2023 win for 'Tattoo'. This is Christmas for pop songs belted out competitively in a glitzy ceremony filled with eye-catching outfits. The 68th Eurovision Song Contest will kick off at 5am AEST on Wednesday, May 8, which is when Electric Fields will take to the stage in the hope of making it through to the grand final on Sunday, May 12 (which is again at 5am AEST). For newcomers, Eurovision started back in 1956 as a competition between a mere seven nations. Now, almos seven decades later, it's a glitter-strewn and spandex-fuelled global musical phenomenon. Thirty-seven countries not only in Europe but from elsewhere will compete in 2024 — hello Australia — and viewers tune in en masse to watch, sing along and add new pop tunes to their queues. Australians keen to tune in will be directing their eyeballs to SBS, with the broadcaster's usual annual celebration of all things Europop returning for another round. 2024 marks 41 years of the network showing Eurovision, in fact. When Electric Fields play their track, they'll be up against performers from 14 other countries — including Silia Kapsis, who was born and raised in Sydney, has Greek and Cypriot heritage, and is representing Cyprus with the song 'Liar'. Other competitors across both the contest actor and singer Olly Alexander (It's a Sin) for the UK; Austria's Kaleen, who has been Eurovision's stage director before and now gets her shot behind the microphone; Aiko, the first Czech artist to feature on Times Square's screens; and 5MIINUST x Puuluup, teaming up pop and zombie-folk for Estonia. There's also the 90s-style Finnish sounds of Windows95man; Germany's ISAAK, who started as a street musician; Hera Björk, who represented Iceland in 2010; and Belgian singer and actor Mustii — and the list goes on. If Electric Fields makes their way through to the grand final — with only 21 acts making the cut, and France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Sweden automatically guaranteed spots — you'll also want to get up early on Sunday, May 12. Or, even if they don't, that's when this year's winner will be anointed. Of course, for those who can't tear themselves out of bed before it's light and can somehow manage to avoid the internet and social media, both semis and the grand final will also screen in primetime on the same dates. Electric Fields, aka vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding and keyboardist Michael Ross, are making history in their use of Yankunytjatjara, which will be heard at Eurovision for the first time. The pair are performing with guest vocalists Brendan Maclean, Alyson Joyce and Simi Vuata, and are accompanied by Fred Leone on the yidaki. When you're watching their performance, as well as the rest of the event, SBS' usual local hosts Myf Warhurst and Joel Creasey will once again be leading the Australian coverage. This year, Courtney Act joins in from behind the scenes at Eurovision. If you can't decide whether to beat the sun or wait and host a party at sensible hour, it's worth remembering that Australians can indeed vote for Eurovision, but only until around 15 minutes after the last song is performed in each live semi-final broadcast and about 25 minutes after the last track ends in the grand final. Voting is open to everyone in all finals — whether you're from a country participating in that final or not — and the artists who get through from the two semi finals to the grand final will be solely chosen by the audience at home. Still remaining the same: the rule that says Australians can't actually vote for Electric Fields, because no one can vote for the country they represent. Eurovision 2024 Broadcasts: LIVE BROADCASTS: Semi final one: 5am AEST on Wednesday, May 8 on SBS and SBS on Demand — featuring Electric Fields Semi final two: 5am AEST on Friday, May 10 on SBS and SBS on Demand Grand final: 5am AEST on Sunday, May 12 on SBS and SBS on Demand STREAMING REPLAYS: Semi final one: from 8.30am AEST on Wednesday, May 8 on SBS on Demand — featuring Electric Fields Semi final two: from 8.30am AEST on Friday, May 10 on SBS on Demand Grand final: from 10.30am AEST on Sunday, May 12 on SBS on Demand TV ACCESS ALL AREAS BROADCASTS: Semi final one: 7.30pm AEST on Friday, May 10 on SBS — featuring Electric Fields Semi final two: 7.30pm AEST on Saturday, May 11 on SBS Grand final: 7.30pm AEST on Sunday, May 12 on SBS SBS' Eurovision 2024 coverage runs from Wednesday, May 8–Sunday, May 12. For more information, head to the broadcaster's website — and for more information about Eurovision, head to the event's website. Images: Alma Bengtsson / Sara Louise Bennett.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from April's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now Ripley Boasting The Night Of's Steven Zaillian as its sole writer and director — joining a list of credits that includes penning Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Irishman, and also winning an Oscar for Schindler's List — the latest exquisite jump into the Ripley realm doesn't splash around black-and-white hues as a mere stylistic preference. In this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book, the setting is still coastal Italy at its most picturesque, and therefore a place that most would want to revel in visually; Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr Ripley's director a quarter-century back, did so with an intoxicating glow. For Zaillian, however, stripping away the warm rays and beaches and hair, blue seas and skies, and tanned skin as well, ensures that all that glitters is never gold or even just golden in tone as he spends time with Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers). There's never even a glint of a hint of a travelogue aesthetic, with viewers confronted with the starkness of Tom's choices and actions — he is a conman and worse, after all — plus the shadows that he persists in lurking in and the impossibility of ever grasping everything that he desires in full colour. On the page and on the screen both before and now, the overarching story remains the same, though, in this new definitive take on the character. It's the early 60s rather than the late 50s in Ripley, but Tom is in New York, running fake debt-collection schemes and clinging to the edges of high-society circles, when he's made a proposal that he was never going to refuse. Herbert Greenleaf (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, who has also acted in his own three features You Can Count on Me, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea) enlists him to sail to Europe to reunite with a friend, the shipping magnate's son Dickie (Johnny Flynn, One Life). As a paid gig, Tom is to convince the business heir to finally return home. But Dickie has no intention of giving up his Mediterranean leisure as he lackadaisically pursues painting — and more passionately spends his time with girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning, The Equalizer 3) — to join the family business. Ripley streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Fallout A young woman sheltered in the most literal sense there is, living her entire life in one of the subterranean facilities where humanity endeavours to start anew. A TV and movie star famed for his roles in westerns, then entertaining kids, then still alive but irradiated 219 years after the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles. An aspiring soldier who has never known anything but a devastated world, clinging to hopes of progression through the military. All three walk into the wasteland in Fallout, the live-action adaptation of the gaming series that first arrived in 1997. All three cross paths in an attempt to do all that anyone can in a post-apocalyptic hellscape: survive. So goes this leap into a world that's had millions mashing buttons through not only the OG game, but also three released sequels — a fourth is on the way — plus seven spinoffs. Even with Westworld' Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as executive producers, giving Fallout the flesh-and-blood treatment is a massive and ambitious task. But where 2023 had The Last of Us, 2024 now has this; both are big-name dystopian titles that earned legions of devotees through gaming, and both are excellent in gripping and immersive fashion at making the move to television. Fallout's vision of one of the bleakest potential futures splits its focus between Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell, Yellowjackets), who has no concept of how humanity can exist on the surface when the show kicks off; Cooper Howard aka bounty hunter The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, I'm a Virgo), the screen gunslinger who saw the bombs fall and now wields weapons IRL; and Maximus (Aaron Moten, Emancipation), a trainee for the Brotherhood of Steel, which is committed to restoring order by throwing around its might (and using robotic armour). The show's lead casting is gleaming, to the point that imagining anyone but this trio of actors as Lucy, Howard-slash-The Ghoul and Maximus is impossible. Where else has Walton's resume, with its jumps between law-and-order efforts, westerns traditional and neo, and comedy — see: The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, The Hateful Eight, Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones, as a mere few examples — been leading than here? (And, next, also season three of The White Lotus.) Fallout streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten. Heartbreak High When Heartbreak High returned in 2022, the Sydney-set series benefited from a pivotal fact: years pass, trends come and go, but teen awkwardness and chaos is eternal. In its second season, Netflix's revival of the 1994–99 Australian favourite embraces the same idea. It's a new term at Hartley High, one that'll culminate in the Year 11 formal. Amerie (Ayesha Madon, Love Me) might be certain that she can change — doing so is her entire platform for running for school captain — but waiting for adulthood to start never stops being a whirlwind. Proving as easy to binge as its predecessor, Heartbreak High's eight new episodes reassemble the bulk of the gang that audiences were initially introduced to two years ago. Moving forward is everyone's planned path — en route to that dance, which gives the new batch of instalments its flashforward opening. The evening brings fire, literally. Among the regular crew, a few faces are missing in the aftermath. The show then rewinds to two months earlier, to old worries resurfacing, new faces making an appearance and, giving the season a whodunnit spin as well, to a mystery figure taunting and publicly shaming Amerie. The latter begins their reign of terror with a dead animal; Bird Psycho is soon the unknown culprit's nickname. Leaders, creepers, slipping between the sheets: that's Heartbreak High's second streaming go-around in a nutshell. The battle to rule the school is a three-person race, pitting Amerie against Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran, Mustangs FC) and Spider (Bryn Chapman Parish, Mr Inbetween) — one as progressive as Hartley, which already earns that label heartily, can get; the other season one's poster boy for jerkiness, toxicity and entitlement. Heightening the electoral showdown is a curriculum clash, with the SLT class introduced by Jojo Obah (Chika Ikogwe, The Tourist) last term as a mandatory response to the grade's behaviour questioned by Head of PE Timothy Voss (Angus Sampson, Bump). A new faculty member for the show, he's anti-everything that he deems a threat to traditional notions of masculinity. In Spider, Ant (Brodie Townsend, Significant Others) and others, he quickly has followers. Their name, even adorning t-shirts: CUMLORDS. Heartbreak High streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Such Brave Girls If Such Brave Girls seems close to reality, that's because it is. In the A24 co-produced series — which joins the cult-favourite entertainment company's TV slate alongside other standouts such as Beef, Irma Vep, Mo and The Curse over the past two years — sisters Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson both star and take inspiration from their lives and personalities. Making their TV acting debuts together, the pair also play siblings. Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson), their on-screen surrogates, are navigating life's lows not only when the show's six-part first season begins, but as it goes on. The entire setup was sparked by a phone conversation between the duo IRL, when one had attempted to take her life twice and the other was £20,000 in debt. For most, a sitcom wouldn't come next; however, laughing at and lampooning themselves, and seeing the absurdity as well, is part of Such Brave Girls' cathartic purpose for its driving forces. If you've ever thought "what else can you do?" when finding yourself inexplicably chuckling at your own misfortune, that's this series — this sharp, unsparing, candid, complex and darkly comedic series — from start to finish. Creating the three-time BAFTA-nominated show, writing it and leading, Sadler plays Josie as a bundle of nerves and uncertainty. The character is in her twenties, struggling with her mental health and aspiring to be an artist, but is largely working her way through a never-ending gap year. Davidson's Billie is the eternally optimistic opposite — albeit really only about the fact that Nicky (Sam Buchanan, Back to Black), the guy that she's hooking up with, will eventually stop cheating on her, fall in love and whisk her away to Manchester to open a vodka bar bearing her name. Both girls live at home with their mother Deb (Louise Brealey, Lockwood & Co), who also sees a relationship as the solution to her problems, setting her sights on the iPad-addicted Dev (Paul Bazely, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) a decade after Josie and Billie's father went out for teabags and never came home. With actor-slash-director Simon Bird behind the lens — alongside first-timer Marco Alessi on one episode — if Such Brave Girls seems like it belongs in the same acerbically comedic realm as The Inbetweeners and Everyone Else Burns, there's a reason for that, too. Such Brave Girls streams via Stan. Read our full review. Baby Reindeer A person walking into a bar. The words "sent from my iPhone". A comedian pouring their experiences into a one-performer play. A twisty true-crime tale making the leap to the screen. All four either feature in, inspired or describe Baby Reindeer. All four are inescapably familiar, too, but the same can't be said about this seven-part Netflix series. Written by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, and also based on his real-life experiences, this is a bleak, brave, revelatory, devastating and unforgettable psychological thriller. It does indeed begin with someone stepping inside a pub — and while Gadd plays a comedian on-screen as well, don't go waiting for a punchline. When Martha (Jessica Gunning, The Outlaws) enters The Heart in Camden, London in 2015, Donny Dunn (Gadd, Wedding Season) is behind the counter. "I felt sorry for her. That's the first feeling I felt," the latter explains via voiceover. Perched awkwardly on a stool at the bar, Martha is whimpering to herself. She says that she can't afford to buy a drink, even a cup of tea. Donny takes pity, offering her one for free — and her face instantly lights up. That's the fateful moment, one of sorrow met with kindness, that ignites Baby Reindeer's narrative and changes Donny's life. After that warm beverage, The Heart instantly has a new regular. Sipping Diet Cokes from then on (still on the house), Martha is full of stories about all of the high-profile people that she knows and her high-flying lawyer job. But despite insisting that she's constantly busy, she's also always at the bar when Donny is at work, sticking around for his whole shifts. She chats incessantly about herself, folks that he doesn't know and while directing compliments Donny's way. He's in his twenties, she's in her early forties — and he can see that she's smitten, letting her flirt. He notices her laugh. He likes the attention, not to mention getting his ego stroked. While he doesn't reciprocate her feelings, he's friendly. She isn't just an infatuated fantasist, however; she's chillingly obsessed to an unstable degree. She finds his email address, then starts messaging him non-stop when she's not nattering at his workplace. (IRL, Gadd received more than 40,000 emails.) Baby Reindeer streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV One of the most difficult episodes of documentary television to watch in 2024 hails from five-part series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. It's also essential to see. In its third chapter, this dive into the reality behind Nickelodeon's live-action children's TV success from the late-90s onwards gives the microphone to Drake Bell, who unravels his experiences while first working on The Amanda Show (led by Amanda Bynes, Easy A) and then on Drake & Josh (co-starring Josh Peck, Oppenheimer) — specifically his interactions with dialogue coach Brian Peck, who became immersed in Bell's life to a disturbing degree and was convicted in 2004 of sexually assaulting him. The case wasn't a major scandal at the time, incredulously. Even with Bell's name withheld because he was a minor, it was the second instance of a Nickelodeon staff member being arrested for such horrendous crimes in mere months, and yet widespread media coverage and public awareness didn't follow. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV marks the first time that Bell talks about it publicly. Witnessing him speak through the details is as harrowing as it is heartbreaking. Originally releasing as four episodes, then adding a fifth hosted by journalist Soledad O'Brien to reflect upon the revelations covered, this docuseries has much that's distressing in its sights — much of it under television producer Dan Schneider. From sketch series All That onwards, he was a Nickelodeon bigwig; Kenan & Kel, Zoey 101, iCarly and Sam & Cat are also among the shows on his resume. Former child actors such as Giovonnie Samuels, Bryan Hearne, Alexa Nikolas, Katrina Johnson, Kyle Sullivan, Raquel Lee and Leon Frierson talk about the pressures on set, and the inappropriate jokes that they didn't realise were inappropriate jokes worked into their material. Ex-The Amanda Show writers Christy Stratton (Freeridge) and Jenny Kilgen step through the misogynistic environment among the creatives; that they were forced to split a salary between them but do the same amount of work as their male colleagues is only the beginning. Parents, including Bell's father Joe, share their unsurprisingly upset perspectives. Bynes' post-Nickelodeon fortunes also get the spotlight. Clips and behind-the-scenes footage are weaved in throughout, too, and looking at any of the network's shows from the era the same way again is impossible. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV streams via Binge. Scoop What did it take to get one of the most important interviews with a member of the royal family that has ever aired on British television (and most important interviews in general)? That's Scoop's question — and not only do director Philip Martin (The Crown) and screenwriters Peter Moffat (61st Street) and Geoff Bussetil (The English Game) ask it while adapting Sam McAlister's 2022 book Scoops, but their compelling journalism thriller answers it in detail. The bulk of the feature is set in 2019, spending its time among the BBC staff at news and current affairs show Newsnight as they first try to lock in and then attempt to execute a chat with Prince Andrew. The end result, aka the program's 'Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal' episode, will go down in history; even if you didn't see it then or haven't since, everyone knows of that discussion and its ramifications. Getting it to the screen was the result of hard work, dedication and smarts on the parts of booker and producer McAllister, host Emily Maitlis and editor Esme Wren — and a tale that deserves to be just as well known. Billie Piper (I Hate Suzie) plays McAllister as whip-smart, fiercely determined and indefatigable when she's chasing a story, but undervalued at her job, so much so that her colleagues regularly accuse her of wasting time following up the wrong guests instead of simply complying with their requests. She's certain that a class clash isn't helping — and just as confident that she knows what she's doing, including when she begins corresponding with the Duke of York's (Rufus Sewell, Kaleidoscope) private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes, Orphan Black: Echoes) about getting him on-camera to discuss his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. She needs backup from both Maitlis (Gillian Anderson, Sex Education) and Wren (Romola Garai, One Life), as well as the entire team's support, in bringing the chat to fruition. Just like the IRL interview itself, this polished how-it-happened procedural is riveting viewing as it slides into its genre alongside Spotlight and She Said. Scoop streams via Netflix. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Sugar Colin Farrell's recent hot streak continues. After a busy few years that've seen him earn Oscar and BAFTA nominations for The Banshees of Inisherin, collect a Gotham Awards nod for After Yang, steal scenes so heartily in The Batman that TV spinoff The Penguin is on the way and pick up the Satellite Awards' attention for The North Water, Sugar now joins his resume. The Irish actor's television credits are still few — and, until his True Detective stint in 2015, far between — but it's easy to see what appealed to him about leading this mystery series. From the moment that the Los Angeles-set noir effort begins — in Tokyo, in fact — it drips with intrigue. Farrell's John Sugar, the show's namesake, is a suave private detective who takes a big Hollywood case against his handler Ruby's (Kirby, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off) recommendation. He's soon plunged into shadowy City of Angels chaos, bringing The Big Sleep, Chinatown, LA Confidential and Under the Silver Lake to mind, and loving movie history beyond sharing the same genre as said flicks. Softly spoken, always crispy dressed, understandably cynical and frequently behind the wheel of a blue vintage convertible, Sugar, the PI, is a film fan. The series bakes that love and its own links to cinema history into its very being through spliced-in clips and references elsewhere — and also foregrounds the idea that illusions, aka what Tinseltown so eagerly sells via its celluloid dreams, are inescapable in its narrative in the process. Twists come, not just including a brilliant move that reframes everything that comes before, but as Sugar endeavours to track down Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler, Don't Worry Darling). She's the granddaughter of worried legendary film producer Jonathan (James Cromwell, Succession); daughter of less-concerned (and less-renowned) fellow producer Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris, Better Call Saul); half-sister of former child star David (Nate Corddry, Barry), who is on the comeback trail; and ex-step daughter of pioneering rocker Melanie (Amy Ryan, Beau Is Afraid). Trying to find her inspires heated opposition. Also sparked: an excellently cast series that splashes its affection of film noir and LA movies gone by across its frames, but is never afraid to be its own thing. Sugar streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Sympathizer Fresh from winning an Oscar for getting antagonistic in times gone by as United States Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr gets antagonistic in times gone by again in The Sympathizer — as a CIA handler, a university professor, a politician and a Francis Ford Coppola-esque filmmaker on an Apocalypse Now-style movie, for starters. In another addition to his post-Marvel resume that emphasises how great it is to see him stepping into the shoes of someone other than Tony Stark, he takes on multiple roles in this espionage-meets-Vietnam War drama, which adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. But Downey Jr is never the show's lead, which instead goes to Australian Hoa Xuande (Last King of the Cross). The latter plays the Captain, who works for South Vietnamese secret police in Saigon before the city's fall, and is also a spy for the North Vietnamese communist forces. It's his memories, as typed out at a reeducation camp, that guide the seven-part miniseries' narrative — jumping back and forth in time, as recollections do, including to his escape to America. As the Captain relays the details of his mission and attempts to work both sides, The Sympathizer isn't just flitting between flashbacks as a structural tactic. The act of remembering is as much a focus as the varied contents of the Captain's memories — to the point that rewinding to add more context to a scene that's just been shown, or noting that he didn't specifically witness something but feels as if he can fill in the gap, also forms the storytelling approach. Perspective and influence are high among the show's concerns, too, as the Captain navigates the sway of many colonial faces (making Downey Jr's multiple roles a powerful and revealing touch) both in Vietnam and in the US. Behind it all off-screen is a filmmaker with a history of probing the tales that we tell ourselves and get others believing, as seen in stone-cold revenge-thriller classic Oldboy, 2022's best film Decision to Leave and 2018 miniseries The Little Drummer Girl: the inimitable Park Chan-wook. He co-created The Sympathizer for the screen with Don McKellar (Blindness) and it always bears is imprint, whether or not he's directing episodes — he helms three — with his piercing style, or getting help from Fernando Meirelles (who has been busy with this and Sugar) and Marc Munden (The Third Day). The Sympathizer streams via Binge. Loot Across ten extremely amusing initial episodes in 2022, Loot had a message: billionaires shouldn't exist. So declared the show's resident cashed-up character, with Molly Wells (Maya Rudolph, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) receiving $87 billion in her divorce from tech guru John Novak (Adam Scott, Madame Web), then spending most of the sitcom's first season working out what to do with it (and also how to handle her newly single life in general). That she had a foundation to her name was virtually news to her. So was much about everything beyond the ultra-rich. And, she was hardly equipped for being on her own. But Loot's debut run came to an entertaining end with the big statement that it was always uttering not so quietly anyway. So what happens next, after one of the richest people in the world decides to give away all of her money? Cue season two of this ace workplace-set comedy. Created by former Parks and Recreation writers Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, in their second Rudolph-starring delight — 2018's Forever was the first — Loot splices together three popular on-screen realms as it loosely draws parallels with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his philanthropist ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. At her charity, as Molly's staff become the kind of friends that feel like family while doing their jobs, shows such as 30 Rock and Superstore (which Hubbard also has on his resume) score an obvious sibling. As its protagonist endeavours to do good, be better and discover what makes a meaningful life, The Good Place (which Yang also wrote for) and Forever get company. And in enjoying its eat-the-rich mode as well, it sits alongside Succession and The White Lotus, albeit while being far sillier. Loot streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Big Door Prize If there was a Morpho machine IRL rather than just in The Big Door Prize, and it dispensed cards that described the potential of TV shows instead of people, this is what it might spit out about the series that it's in: "comforting". For a mystery-tinged dramedy filled with people trying to work out who they are and truly want to be after an arcade game-esque console appears in their small town, this page-to-screen show has always proven both cathartic and relatable viewing. Its timing, dropping season one in 2023 as the pandemic-inspired great reset was well and truly in full swing, is a key factor. Last year as well as now — with season two currently upon us — this is a series that speaks to the yearning to face existential questions that couldn't be more familiar in a world where COVID-19 sparked a wave of similar "who am I?" musings on a global scale. The difference for the residents of Deerfield in this second spin: their journey no longer simply involves pieces of cardboard that claim to know where the bearer should be expending their energy, but also spans new animated videos that transform their inner thoughts and hopes into 32-bit clips. When the Morpho first made its presence known, high-school teacher Dusty (Chris O'Dowd, Slumberland) was cynical. Now he's taking the same route as everyone else in his community — including his wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, The Upshaws) and daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara, Fitting In) — by letting it steer his decisions. But whether he's making moves that'll impact his marriage, or his restaurant-owning best friend Giorgio (Josh Segarra, The Other Two) is leaping into a new relationship with Cass' best friend Nat (Mary Holland, The Afterparty), or other townsfolk are holding the Morpho up as a source of wisdom, easy happiness rarely follows. Season two of this David West Read (Schitt's Creek)-developed series still treats its magical machine as a puzzle for characters and viewers to attempt to solve, but it also digs deeper into the quest for answers that we all undertake while knowing deep down that there's no such thing as a straightforward meaning of life. As well as being extremely well-cast and thoughtful, it's no wonder that The Big Door Prize keeps feeling like staring in a mirror — and constantly intriguing as well. The Big Door Prize streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. An Excellent Recent Film You Might've Missed Showing Up Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams are one of cinema's all-time great pairings. After 2008's Wendy and Lucy, 2010's Meek's Cutoff and 2016's Certain Women, all divine, add Showing Up to the reasons that their collaborations are an event. Again, writer/director Reichardt hones in on characters who wouldn't grace the screen otherwise, and on lives that rarely do the same. With her trademark empathy, patience and space, she spends time with people and problems that couldn't be more relatable as well. Her first picture since 2019's stunning First Cow, which didn't feature Williams, also feels drawn from the filmmaker's reality. She isn't a sculptor in Portland working an administration job at an arts and crafts college while struggling to find the time to create intricate ceramic figurines, but she is one of America's finest auteurs in an industry that so scarcely values the intricacy and artistry of her work. No one needs to have stood exactly in Showing Up's protagonist's shoes, or in Reichardt's, to understand that tussle — or the fight for the always-elusive right balance between passion and a paycheque, all while everyday chaos, family drama and the minutiae of just existing also throws up roadblocks. Showing Up couldn't have a better title. For Lizzy (Wiliams, The Fabelmans), who spends the nine-to-five grind at her alma mater with her mother (Maryann Plunkett, Manifest) as her boss, everything she does — or needs or wants to — is about doing exactly what the movie's moniker says. That doesn't mean that she's thrilled about it. She definitely isn't happy about her frenemy, neighobour and landlord Jo (Hong Chau, Asteroid City), who won't fix her hot water, couldn't be more oblivious to anyone else's problems and soon has her helping play nurse to an injured pidgeon. Reichardt spins the film's narrative around Lizzy's preparations for a one-night-only exhibition, including trying to carve out the hours needed to finish her clay pieces amid her job, the bird, advocating for a liveable home, professional envy and concerns for her alienated brother (John Magaro, Past Lives). The care and detail that goes into Lizzy's figurines is mirrored in Reichardt's own efforts, in another thoughtful and resonant masterpiece that does what all of the filmmaker's masterpieces do: says everything even when nothing is being uttered, proves a wonder of observation, boasts a pitch-perfect cast and isn't easily forgotten. Showing Up streams via Netflix. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February and March this year, and also from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are seven that you can watch right now at home. Dune: Part Two Revenge is a dish best served sandy in Dune: Part Two. On the desert planet of Arrakis, where golden hills as far as the eye can see are shaped from the most-coveted and -psychedelic substance in author Frank Herbert's estimation, there's no other way. Vengeance is just one course on Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet, Wonka) menu, however. Pop culture's supreme spice boy, heir to the stewardship of his adopted realm, has a prophecy to fulfil whether he likes it or not; propaganda to navigate, especially about him being the messiah; and an Indigenous population, the Fremen, to prove himself to. So mines Denis Villeneuve's soaring sequel to 2021's Dune, which continues exploring the costs and consequences of relentless quests for power — plus the justifications, compromises, tragedies and narratives that are inescapable in such pursuits. The filmmaker crafts his fourth contemplative and breathtaking sci-fi movie in a row, then, after Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 as well. The vast arid expanse that constantly pervades the frames in Dune: Part Two isn't solely a stunning sight. It looks spectacular, as the entire feature does, with Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (The Creator) back after winning an Oscar for the first Dune; but as Paul, his widowed mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, Silo), and Fremen Stilgar (Javier Bardem, The Little Mermaid) and Chani (Zendaya, Euphoria) traverse it, it helps carve in some of this page-to-screen saga's fundamental ideas. So does the stark monochrome when the film jumps to Giedi Prime, home world to House Harkonnen, House Atreides' enemy, plus Arrakis' ruler both before and after Paul's dad Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) got the gig in Villeneuve's initial Dune. People here are dwarfed not only by their mammoth surroundings, but by the bigger, broader, non-stop push for supremacy. While there's no shortage of detail in both Part One and Part Two — emotional, thematic and visual alike — there's also no avoiding that battling against being mere pawns in an intergalactic game of chess is another of its characters' complicated fights. Dune: Part Two streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Greig Fraser. Immaculate Add screaming to the ever-growing list of things that Sydney Sweeney can do spectacularly well. Indeed, thanks to Immaculate, which gets the Euphoria and The White Lotus star putting her pipes to stellar bellowing use, the horror genre has a brand-new queen; long may she reign if this is what audiences have to look forward to. This film about a nun who moves to a convent in the Italian countryside, then mysteriously becomes pregnant without having had sex, isn't just a job for Sweeney. She auditioned for the movie a decade back, it didn't come to fruition, but she strove to make it happen now. She stars. She produces. She enlisted Michael Mohan, who she worked with on Everything Sucks! and The Voyeurs, as its director. The passion that drove her quest to bring Immaculate to viewers is just as apparent in her formidable performance, too, including echoing with feeling — and blistering intensity— when she's shrieking. No one should just be realising now how versatile an actor that Sweeney is. Her portrayal of Sister Cecilia, who found her way to becoming a bride of Christ after a traumatic near-death incident in her younger years, is exactly what the film's title suggests: immaculate. It's also a showcase of a role that requires her to be sweet, dutiful, faithful, ferocious, indefatigable, vengeful and desperate to survive all in the same flick — and she kills it — but adaptability, resourcefulness and displaying a multitude of skills has been her on-screen wheelhouse beyond just one movie. Take Sweeney's last four cinema releases, for instance, all of which hail from 2023–24. Reality, Anyone But You, Madame Web and Immaculate couldn't be more dissimilar to each other, and neither could the actor's parts in them. Throw in her Saturday Night Live hosting stint, and she's firmly at the "is there anything that she isn't capable of?" stage of her career. Immaculate streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Michael Mohan. The Zone of Interest Quotes and observations about evil being mundane, as well as the result when people look the other way, will never stop being relevant. A gripping, unsettling masterpiece, The Zone of Interest is a window into why. The first film by Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer in more than a decade, the Holocaust-set feature peers on as the unthinkable happens literally just over the fence, but a family goes about its ordinary life. If it seems abhorrent that anything can occur in the shadow of any concentration camp or site of World War II atrocities, that's part of the movie's point. It dwells in the Interessengebiet, the 40-square-kilometre-plus titular area that comprised and surrounded the Auschwitz complex, to interrogate how banal genocide was to those in power; commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel, Babylon Berlin), even gloats that his name will be remembered and celebrated for its connection to mass extermination. Höss was a real person, and the real Nazi SS officer overseeing Auschwitz from 1940–43. His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) and five children are similarly drawn from truth. But The Zone of Interest finds its way to the screen via Martin Amis' fiction novel of the same name, then hones its interest down from the book's three narrators to the Höss family; a biopic, it isn't, even as it switches its character monikers back to reflect actuality. This is a work of deep probing and contemplation — a piece that demands that its viewers confront the daily reality witnessed and face how the lives of those in power, and benefiting from it, thrived with death not only as a neighbour but an enabler. Camp prisoners tend the Höss' garden. Ashes are strewn over the soil for horticultural effect. Being turned into the same is a threat used to keep the household's staff in line. All three of these details, as with almost everything in the feature, are presented with as matter-of-fact an air as cinema is capable of. The Zone of Interest streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. How to Have Sex Movies don't have pores, but How to Have Sex might as well. Following a trip to Greece with three 16-year-old best friends who want nothing more than to party their way into womanhood — and to get laid, too — this unforgettable British drama is frequently slick with sweat. Perspiration can dampen someone when they're giddily excited about a wild getaway, finishing school and leaving adolescence behind. It can get a person glistening when they're rushing and drinking, and flitting from pools and beaches to balconies and clubs. Being flushed from being sozzled, the stickiness that comes with expending energy, the cold chill of stress and horror, the fluster of a fluttering heart upon making a connection: they're all sources of wet skin as well. Filmmaker Molly Manning Walker catalogues them all. Viewers can see the sweat in How to Have Sex, with its intimate, spirited, like-you're-there cinematography. More importantly, audiences can feel why protagonist Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce, Vampire Academy) is perspiring, and the differences scene to scene, even when she's not quite sure herself. How to Have Sex also gets those watching sweating — because spying how you've been Tara, or her pals Em (debutant Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake, Halo), or lads Badger (Shaun Thomas, Ali & Ava) and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley, The Last Rifleman) in the neighbouring resort unit, is inescapable. Walker has been there herself, with parts of her debut feature as a writer and director drawn from her own time as a Tara, Em or Skye while also making the spring break and Schoolies-like pilgrimage from England to the Mediterranean. When the movie doesn't lift details directly from her own experience, it shares them with comparable moments that are virtually ripped from western teendom. One of the feature's strokes of genius is how lived-in it proves, whether Tara and her mates are as loud and exuberant as girls are when their whole lives are ahead of them, its main character is attempting to skip her troubles in a sea of strobing lights and dancing bodies, or slipping between the sheets — but not talking about it — is changing who Tara is forever. How to Have Sex streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Molly Manning Walker. Bob Marley: One Love There's no doubting who Bob Marley: One Love is about, but the Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard)-directed biopic also brings two other big-screen portraits of music superstars to mind. There's always a dance through a legend's history flickering somewhere, or close to it, with the initial dramatised look at the reggae icon arriving after Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis both proved major hits in recent years. Where the first, which focused on Freddie Mercury, had Live Aid, Bob Marley: One Love has the One Love Peace Concert. Both are gigs to build a movie around, and both features have done just that. Baz Luhrmann's portrait of the king of rock 'n' roll wanted its audience to understand what it was like to watch its namesake, be in his presence and feel entranced by every hip thrust — and, obviously without the gyrating pelvis, Bob Marley: One Love also opts for that approach. Enter Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley, in a vital piece of casting. Although it may not earn him an Oscar as Bohemian Rhapsody did Rami Malek (Oppenheimer), or even a nomination as Elvis scored for Austin Butler (Masters of the Air), the British actor turns in a phenomenal performance. He's worlds away from being a Ken in Barbie. He isn't in wholly new territory seeing that he played Malcolm X in One Night in Miami and Barack Obama in TV series The Comey Rule. He's also magnetic and mesmerising — and, in the process, expresses how and why Marley was magnetic and mesmerising. Ben-Adir's vocals are blended with Marley's. Accordingly, you're largely listening to the singer himself. But there's a presence about Ben-Adir in the part, perfecting Jamaican patois, getting kinetic and uninhibited in his movement while he's behind the microphone, radiating charisma, but also conveying purpose and self-possession. It's a portrayal that's as entrancing and alive as the music that's always echoing alongside it; with Marley's discography, that's saying something. Bob Marley: One Love streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton and Reinaldo Marcus Green. Riceboy Sleeps When Riceboy Sleeps charts the passage of time from 1990 to 1999 partway into the movie, the Canadian film does so with Dong-hyun at its centre. As a six-year-old (played by debutant Dohyun Noel Hwang) navigating his initial taste of school from behind his large round glasses, he's shy, sensitive, and constantly reminded that he's different by teachers and classmates. As a 15-year-old (Ethan Hwang, The Umbrella Academy) with bleached-blonde hair and faux blue eyes, he's adopted a coping mechanism: trying to blend in. Riceboy Sleeps isn't just about Dong-hyun, who takes the anglicised name David in his attempts to assimilate. It's as much about his mother So-young (fellow feature first-timer Choi Seung-yoon), who relocates him from South Korea to North America after his soldier father's suicide. Writer/director Anthony Shim's sophomore release after 2019's Daughter hones in on the act of seeing, too — gleaning what's around you, who, why, the past that lingers, the stories that echo — as Dong-hyun and So-young survey where they are, where they've been, and how their history keeps dictating their present and future. In that aforementioned time jump, Shim — who helms, pens, edits and acts — and cinematographer Christopher Lew (Quickening) make eyes the focus. When Riceboy Sleeps dwells in the first year of the 90s, Dong-hyun's spectacles are frames within the frame, giving the boy his own windows to the world that he fidgets with, seems burdened by and, in an act of bullying by his peers, has dinged up and taken away. When the movie hits the end of the decade, Dong-hyun is putting in his contacts, therefore making the lens with which he perceives his existence invisible. Semi-inspired by his own childhood as a South Korean arrival to Vancouver Island in the 90s, including attending a school where he was the only Asian student, Riceboy Sleeps is this thoughtful at every level. The movement, and later lack thereof, of Lew's camerawork is just as loaded with meaning: in Canada, it's restless in long wide shots, careening around gracefully but noticeably and finding points to fixate on; back across the Pacific Ocean in the picture's bookending segments, it's still but just as observational. Riceboy Sleeps streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Boys in the Boat The Social Network isn't a rowing film, but the Henley Royal Regatta sequence in David Fincher's (The Killer) 2010 triumph quickly became one of cinema's most-famous oar-sweeping moments. Prestige, money, tradition, opulence, power, competition, determination: they all wash through the tightly shot segment, which gleams with the water of the River Thames, the sweat on the crew's faces and, just as importantly, with status. Definitely a rowing film, The Boys in the Boat paddles into the same world; however, a commentator's line mid-movie sums up the focus and angle of this old-fashioned underdog sports flick. "Old money versus no money at all" is how the usual big and rich names in the field and the University of Washington's junior varsity team are compared. George Clooney's (The Tender Bar) ninth feature as a director doesn't just spot the class-clash difference there — his entire picture wades into that gulf. Drawn from 2013 non-fiction novel The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown, reuniting Clooney with his The Midnight Sky screenwriter Mark L Smith in the process, The Boys in the Boat is about the UW's rowing efforts, rower Joe Rantz and coach Al Ulbrickson, too — plus an against-the-odds quest, bold choices, the struggles of the Great Depression, the reality of an Olympics held under the Nazi regime and the looming shadow of war. But thrumming at its heart like a coxswain is setting the pace is the mission to keep afloat one stroke at a time, and not merely in the pursuit of glory and medals. What rowing means to Rantz (Callum Turner, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), the character at its centre, as well as to the classmates-turned-crewmates catching and extracting with him under the guidance of the stoic Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton, I'm a Virgo), is pure survival first and foremost. The Boys in the Boat streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Joel Edgerton. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January, February and March 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
It's hard to look past the historically bright personality and sticky pub floors of Oxford Street when passing through Paddington, but the beating heart of Sydney's eastern suburbs has spent the last few years undergoing a facelift amid the challenges of lockouts and lockdowns. Paddington has one of the most tightly-knit communities of the city, with a shared pride in both its history and present-day diversity of venues and businesses. Here, we've distilled a taste of it in partnership with Paddo Collective the locals who know it best. Read on to discover some of our favourite spots to visit in the daytime, then flick the switch above and we'll dim the lights to show your favourite things to do once the sun goes down.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from March's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now Girls5eva One of the funniest TV comedies of the 2020s is back with its third season, and as hilarious as ever. So what are you waiting five? If that question doesn't make any sense, then you clearly haven't yet experienced the wonder that is Girls5eva. It starts with a numerical pun-heavy earworm of a theme tune that no one should ever skip, then bounces along just as catchily and sidesplittingly in every second afterwards. A move to Netflix for season three — after streaming its first and second seasons via Peacock in the US and Stan in Australia — might just see the Tina Fey-executive produced music-industry sitcom switch from being one of the best shows that not enough people are watching to everyone's latest can't-stop-rewatching comedy obsession. In other words, this a series about a comeback and, thanks to its swap to the biggest player in the streaming game, now it's making a comeback itself. If it becomes a Netflix smash, here's hoping that it'll be famous at least one more time. Two years have passed for longterm fans since Girls5eva last checked in with Dawn Solano (Sara Bareilles, Broadway's Waitress), Wickie Roy (Renée Elise Goldsberry, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and also a Hamilton Tony-winner), Summer Dutkowsky (Busy Philipps, Mean Girls) and Gloria McManus (Paula Pell, Big Mouth), but the gap and the change of platforms haven't changed this gem. Consider the switch of streamer in the same way that Dawn and the gang are approaching their leap back into their girl group after two decades: as an all-in, go-hard-or-go-home, whatever-it-takes relaunch. Now firmly reunited, the surviving members of Girls5eva have taken to the road. So far, however, their big Returnity tour has been happy in Fort Worth. In the Texan city, their track 'Tap Into Your Fort Worth' keeps drawing in crowds, even if that's all that concertgoers want to hear. Also, the Marriott Suitelettes for Divorced Dads has become their home away from home, but resident diva Wickie isn't content just playing one place. Always dreaming huge, massive and stratospheric, she sets the band's sights on Radio City Music Hall, booking them in for a gig at a fee of $500,000. Cue a six-month timeline to sell it out — a feat made trickier by the fact that the show is on Thanksgiving — or risk ruin. Girls5eva streams via Netflix. Read our full review. 20 Days in Mariupol Incompatible with life. No one should ever want to hear those three devastating words. No one who is told one of the most distressing phrases there is ever has them uttered their way in positive circumstances, either. Accordingly, when they're spoken by a doctor in 2024 Oscar-winner 20 Days in Mariupol, they're deeply shattering. So is everything in this on-the-ground portrait of the first 20 days in the Ukrainian port city as Russia began its invasion, with the bleak reality of living in a war zone documented in harrowing detail. Located less than 60 kilometres from the border, Mariupol quickly segues from ordinary life to an apocalyptic scene — and this film refuses to look away. Much of its time is spent in and around hospitals, which see an influx of patients injured and killed by the combat, and also become targets as well. Many of in 20 Days in Mariupol's faces are the afflicted, the medics tending to them in horrendous circumstances, and the loves ones that are understandably inconsolable. Too many of the carnage's victims are children and babies, with their parents crushed and heartbroken in the aftermath; sometimes, they're pregnant women. Directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, and narrated by him with the grimness and soberness that can be this movie's only tone, 20 Days in Mariupol even existing is an achievement. What it depicts — what it immerses viewers in with urgency, from shelled hospitals, basements-turned-bomb shelters and more of the city destroyed day after day to families torn apart, looting, struggling to find food and bodies of the dead taken to mass graves — needs to be viewed as widely as possible, and constantly. His footage has also featured in news reports, but it can and must never be forgotten. Doctors mid-surgery demand that Chernov's camera is pointed their way, and that he shows the world the travesties taking place. The Ukrainian reporter, who has also covered Donbas, flight MH17, Syria and the Battle of Mosul for the Associated Press, does exactly that. He's doing more than ensuring that everyone bears witness, though; he makes certain that there's no way to watch 20 Days in Mariupol, which shows the vast civilian impact and casualties, and see anything but ordinary people suffering, or to feel anything other than shock, anger and horror. 20 Days in Mariupol streams via DocPlay. STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces To do justice to Steve Martin's life, career and impact requires more than just one movie. So, the engagingly and entertainingly in-depth, intimate, affectionate and informative STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces explores the comedian and actor's existence in a pair of parts. The first is subtitled 'Then', honing in on his childhood and early stand-up days. The second, aka 'Now', jumps in when he made the leap to movies in the late 70s, which is where The Jerk, Pennies From Heaven, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood and LA Story comes in — and, of course, includes his tours with his ¡Three Amigos! co-star Martin Short, as well as their murder-mystery-comedy TV hit Only Murders in the Building. The initial half gets Martin narrating, sharing reflections personal and professional as accompanied by archival footage aplenty (and ample tapes of his stints in front of audience). The latter section treats him as an interviewee, with his wife Anne Stringfield, Short, Jerry Seinfeld (who has had Martin as a guest on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee) and Tina Fey (who also co-starred with Martin in Baby Mama) among the talking heads. Behind it all is documentarian Morgan Neville, an Oscar-winner for 20 Feet From Stardom, as well as a filmmaker who is clearly taking his stylistic cues from his subject. That's noticeable in STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces' moniker, for starters — it throws caution to the winds of grammar and title formats just as Martin has to comedy rules, as the two-part film makes plain again and again. No matter how well-acquainted you are with Martin, insights flow freely in this fascinating way to spend three hours surveying the ways that he's made people laugh over decades upon decades, beginning with doing magic tricks and working at Disneyland on his school holidays in the 50s. Revelations bound through about Martin as a person, too; more than once, he notes that his life has felt as if it has played out backwards, and not just because he only first became a father in his 60s. Clips of his stand-up act, and the response to it in the 60s and 70s, are gold. Hanging out with the man who originally was only going to create Only Murders in the Building, not star in it, when he's bantering with Short are as well. STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces streams via Apple TV+. Spaceman Should astronaut become a dictionary-certified synonym for melancholy? Cinema believes so. Its latest case in point comes via Spaceman, where life temporarily lived above and beyond the earth replaces gravity with loneliness and disconnection for Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah). He's six months into a solo trip past Jupiter to investigate an eerie phenomenon in the heavens when this adaptation of Jaroslav Kalfař's 2017 sci-fi novel Spaceman of Bohemia kicks off. His quest is both time-sensitive and celebrated. South Korea is in close pursuit, he's frequently being told by Peter (Kunal Nayyar, Night Court), his contact at ground control — and Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini, Cat Person) happily keeps dialling him in for PR opportunities. As he soars through a strangely purple sky, however, endeavouring to fulfil his mission while pleading for maintenance approval on his crumbling ship, all that's really on his mind is his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan, Maestro). Pregnant and left at home alone, she's no longer taking his fast-as-light-speed phone calls. Then Hanus (Paul Dano, Mr & Mrs Smith) scurries in beside Jakub, demanding attention — as a giant spider in space is always going to. For the best part of a decade now, seeing a live-action movie starring Sandler has meant heading to Netflix. In Australia, even Uncut Gems, his greatest-ever performance, arrived via the streaming platform. Alongside The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and Hustle, add Spaceman to the list of such features that give their star worthy parts and would've made welcome cinema releases. It isn't new news that Sandler is an excellent actor in dramatic and/or weightier roles, or that his career is more than the Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore-style comedies that he first became known for. Spaceman director Johan Renck (Chernobyl) has cast him expertly, in fact, in this tale of isolation, arrested development, otherworldly arachnids and amorous entanglements. Sending Sandler on an Ad Astra-, First Man- and Solaris-esque trip proves contemplative and empathetic — and, amid spider's-eye flashbacks to his complicated childhood in the Czech Republic, time spent with Lenka on the ground and floating around the film's claustrophobic main setting, also brimming with raw and resonant emotion. Spaceman streams via Netflix. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin Who needs facts when you can have a ball with irreverently riffing on history? It worked for Blackadder, then with The Great and Our Flag Means Death, and now does the same for The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. It was evident from the concept when it was announced, and the trailer afterwards as well: this series is firmly in the same mode as the pirate comedy that gave streaming two wonderfully funny and heartfelt seasons, then was cancelled. The similarities don't stop being apparent now that Noel Fielding's latest stint of silliness is here with its six-instalment first season. Accordingly, viewers looking for something to help with their Our Flag Means Death heartbreak have somewhere to turn. Everyone who loves The Mighty Boosh's Fielding when he's getting surreal — something that his The Great British Bake Off hosting gig can't quite offer, even with his outfits — is also catered for. Awaiting in The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin is an entertaining jaunt that's exactly what anyone should expect given its premise, star, his fondness for whimsy and flamboyant outfits, plus Britain's love of parodying its own past. Fielding co-writes and executive produces, alongside leading — and his brother Michael is among the fellow The Mighty Boosh alum on-screen. Dick jokes abound, because who could pass up the opportunity given its protagonist? A who's who of English comedy also features. The year is 1735. The place is the UK, obviously. The subject is a real-life highwayman. If Dick Turpin isn't familiar, he's the son of a butcher, he was his father's apprentice, but then took on a different career as part of the Essex gang. In reality, he was executed by hanging at the age of 33. In The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, standing on the gallows provides the opening. From there, the series steps through his time as a thief after being a vegan pacifist didn't gel with the family business. The key things that Dick takes with him when he leaves home, when his father John (Mark Heap, Significant Other) quickly replaces him with his cousin Benny (Michael Fielding, Merry Little Batman): eye-catching purple boots and a sewing machine. Soon enough, he has a crew by his side — and an instantly amusing revisionist history about Britain's equivalent of Ned Kelly is the result. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. 3 Body Problem How do you follow up Game of Thrones? So asks one of the biggest questions in pop culture over the past decade. HBO's hit adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series ended five years ago, but the network behind it, the TV industry in general, and everyone involved in it on- and off-screen has been grappling with that query since the series became a worldwide smash. For the cable station that made it, more Game of Thrones shows is the answer, aka House of the Dragon, the upcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight and other floated spinoffs. For Hollywood, leaning in on fantasy franchises has been a solution. And for David Benioff and DB Weiss, the showrunners on the Westeros-set phenomenon, bringing another complex book saga to the small screen is the chosen path. Those novels: Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, which arrives as 3 Body Problem, with 2008 book The Three-Body Problem as the basis for its eight-episode first season. Invasions, feuds, jumping timelines, a hefty cast of characters: they're all still in place. So are John Bradley (Marry Me), Liam Cunningham (Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter) and Jonathan Pryce (Slow Horses) among the cast, answering the "what comes next?" question for three Game of Thrones actors. Also, that composer Ramin Djawadi (Jack Ryan) is on music duties again isn't difficult to notice. With 3 Body Problem, which sees Benioff and Weiss team up with True Blood and The Terror's Alexander Woo to bring Cixin's text to the screen, sprawling high fantasy gives away to time- and space-hopping hard sci-fi, however. The danger to global stability still springs from a battle for supremacy, but one where countdowns start dancing in front of some people's eyes, particle accelerators stop functioning properly, other folks can't be seen in security footage, scientists seem to be killing themselves and aliens linger. The series begins with a physics professor being beaten to death in front of a crowd containing his daughter during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Then, it flits to London today to watch the entire sky wink, gleaming helmets spirit whoever dons them into a complicated and intricate virtual-reality game, and what lurks beyond the earth — and who — play a significant part. 3 Body Problem streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Road House It's a brave actor who tries to follow in Patrick Swayze's footsteps. The late, great star was one of a kind, other than the fact that the 80s and 90s screamed out for him to team up with Kurt Russell on-screen. But folks persist in attempting to take his lead, including Diego Luna (Andor) in the also Swayze-starring Dirty Dancing prequel Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Édgar Ramírez (Dr Death) in the terrible 2015 Point Break remake and now Jake Gyllenhaal (Guy Ritchie's The Covenant) in Road House, another do-over of a Swayze hit. Gyllenhaal fares best in a film that isn't its predecessor in a swathe of ways — there's less sleaze to the titular establishment, and in general; less heat to its central romance; less zen about its protagonist; and no throats being ripped out — but is aided immensely by its key casting. No one needed a Road House remake, let alone one where its cooler is a former UFC fighter who has fallen on troubled times in and out of the octagon. Surely no one wanted to witness a strutting Conor McGregor make his acting debut, and so gratingly, as one of the new Road House's villains. But Gyllenhaal leaning into eccentricity as Dalton works a charm. The plot remains largely the same, albeit shifted to Florida, which sees director Doug Liman (Chaos Walking) also take a few stylistic cues from Miami Vice. In the eponymous venue, Dalton — Elwood, not James — is recruited to take over security by Frankie (Jessica Williams, Shrinking), with her bar suffering from a violence problem. Thugs keep smashing up the place, and patrons. Also, bouncers are constantly leaving the job. There's a cool, calm and collected air to Dalton's quest to clean up the joint, which contrasts with his inner turmoil. Soon, though, he's being threatened in an attempt to run him out of town. Daniela Melchior (Fast X) co-stars as the doctor that becomes his love interest, Billy Magnussen (Lift) as the drug-peddling nepo-baby baddie with designs on The Road House's land, Arturo Castro (The Vince Staples Show) as a motorcycle-gang henchman who genuinely appreciates Dalton's approach and Hannah Love Lanier (Special Ops: Lioness) as a bookshop-running teenager, but Road House circa 2024 is Gyllenhaal's show. This isn't the first attempt to capitalise upon the original Road House's success — even if it was nominated for five Razzies — thanks to 2006's Road House 2. Being better than that is a low bar, but this Road House clears it. Road House streams via Prime Video. Apples Never Fall On the page and on the screen, audiences know what's in store when Sydney-born and -based author Liane Moriarty's name is attached to a book or TV series. Domestic disharmony within comfortable communities fuels her tales, as do twisty mystery storylines. When they hit streaming, the shows adapted from her novels add in starry casts as well. Indeed, after Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, it might come as a shock that Nicole Kidman (Expats) is nowhere to be found in the seven-episode Apples Never Fall. The Australian actor will be back in another version of Moriarty's tomes, also with a three-word title, with The Last Anniversary currently in the works. Fresh from an Oscar nomination for Nyad, Annette Bening is no mere stand-in right now. Also, where Kidman has co-starred with Reese Witherspoon (The Morning Show), Laura Dern (The Son) and Alexander Skarsgård (Mr & Mrs Smith), and also Melissa McCarthy (The Little Mermaid), Michael Shannon (The Flash) and Luke Evans (Good Grief), Bening is joined by Sam Neill (The Twelve), Alison Brie (Somebody I Used to Know) and Jake Lacy (A Friend of the Family). If Lacy's involvement brings The White Lotus to mind, he's again at home playing affluent and arrogant — but no one is on holiday in Apples Never Fall. Rather, in West Palm Beach, the tennis-obsessed Delaney family finds their well-off existence shattered when matriarch Joy (Bening) goes missing, leaving just a banged-up and blood-splattered bicycle, a strewn-about basket of apples and her mobile phone behind. Her adult children (Lacy, Brie, Thai Cave Rescue's Conor Merrigan Turner and The Speedway Murders' Essie Randles) are worried, while husband Stan (Neill) first advises that his spouse is merely ill, a choice that does nothing to stop suspicion rocketing his way. In addition to charting the search for Joy, the Queensland-shot Apples Never Fall bounces through ample backstory. After its introductory instalment, each episode focuses on one of the family; across them all, the timeline is split into "then" and "now". It soon becomes apparent that the doting Joy and determined Stan were talented players, then established the Delaney Tennis Academy when his aspirations were cruelled by injury, and she sidelined hers to support him and have their kids. Another person looms large over the narrative, too: Savannah (Georgia Flood, Blacklight), who graces the Delaneys' doorstep in its flashbacks, fleeing from domestic abuse — or so she claims. Apples Never Fall streams via Binge. Read our full review. Breeders Sitcoms about raising a family are almost as common as sitcoms in general, with the antics of being married with children up there with workplace shenanigans as one of the genre's go-to setups. Thanks to the OG UK version of The Office, Martin Freeman knows more than a little about employment-focused TV comedies. Courtesy of The Thick of It and Veep, actor-turned-director Chris Addison and writer Simon Blackwell also fall into that category. But Breeders, which the trio created and thrusts them into the world of mining parenting for laughs, isn't your standard take on its concept. As became immediately evident when the British series began in 2020, and remains the case now that it's wrapping up with its current fourth season — which aired overseas in 2023 but is only hitting Down Under in 2024 — this show does't subscribe to the rosy notion that being a mother or a father (or a son or daughter, or grandmother or grandfather) equals loveable chaos. There's love, of course. There's even more chaos. But there's also clear eyes, plus bleakness; again, this is largely helmed and scripted by alumni of two of the best, sharpest and most-candid political satires of the 21st century, and always feels as such. Season four begins with a time jump, with Breeders' overall path tracking Paul Worsley (Freeman, Secret Invasion) and Ally Grant's (Daisy Haggard, Boat Story) journey from when their two kids were very young — including babies, via flashbacks — to their teenage and young-adult years now. Consequently, five years on in the narrative from season three, another set of actors play Luke (Oscar Kennedy, Wreck) and Ava (debutant Zoë Athena) in this farewell run as the first is moving in with his girlfriend and the second explores her own love life, as well as grappling with the inescapable reality that her elder brother's ups and downs have always monopolised her family's attention. Paul and Ally also have the ailing health of Paul's parents Jim (Alun Armstrong, Tom Jones) and Jackie (Joanna Bacon, Benediction) to manage, in addition to the ebbs and flows of their own often-fraught relationship, plus just dealing with getting through the days, weeks, months and years in general (Ally turning 50 is one of this season's plot points). That this all sounds like standard life is part of the point; watching Breeders is like looking in a mirror, especially in its unvarnished and relatable all-you-can-do-is-laugh perspective. Freeman's knack for swearing will be especially missed. Breeders streams via Disney+. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Palm Royale More things in life should remind the world about Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, 2021's wonderfully goofy (and just wonderful) Florida-set comedy starring Kristen Wiig (MacGruber) and Annie Mumolo (Barbie), plus Jamie Dornan (The Tourist) singing to seagulls. The also Wiig-led Palm Royale is one such prompt. Thankfully, watching the page-to-screen dramedy doesn't cause audiences to wish that they were just viewing Barb and Star, though. The two share the same US state as a locale, too, alongside bright colour schemes, a bouncy pace and a willingness to get silly, especially with sea life, but Palm Royale engages all on its own. Adapting Juliet McDaniel's Mr & Mrs American Pie for the small screen, this 60s-set effort also knows how to make gleaming use of its best asset: Saturday Night Live, Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters alum Wiig. In its ten-episode first season, the show's storyline centres on Maxine Simmons. A former beauty-pageant queen out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, she thinks nothing of scaling the wall to the titular country club, then breezing about like she's meant to be there — sipping grasshoppers and endeavouring to eavesdrop her way into a social-climbing friendship with Palm Beach's high-society set — and Wiig sells every second of the character's twist-filled journey. Even better: she heartily and entertainingly conveys the everywoman aspects of someone who has yearning for a better life as her main motivation, and isn't willing to settle for anything less than she thinks that she deserves, even in hardly relatable circumstances. There's no doubting that Maxine is both an underdog and an outsider in the milieu that she so frenziedly covets. When she's not swanning around poolside, idolising self-appointed bigwig Evelyn Rollins (Allison Janney, The Creator) and ambassador's wife Dinah Donahue (Leslie Bibb, About My Father) among the regulars — their clique spans widow Mary Jones Davidsoul (Julia Duffy, Christmas with the Campbells) and mobster spouse Raquel Kimberly-Maco (Claudia Ferri, Arlette) — and ordering her cocktail of choice from bartender Robert (Ricky Martin, American Crime Story), she's staying in a far-from-glamorous motel. Funding for her quest to fit in with the rich and gossip-column famous comes via pawning jewellery owned by her pilot husband Douglas'(Josh Lucas, Yellowstone) comatose aunt Norma Dellacorte (Carol Burnett, Better Call Saul), the plastics and mouthwash heiress who ruled the scene until suffering an embolism. Palm Royale streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. High Country The role of Andie Whitford, the lead part in High Country, was written for Leah Purcell. It's easy to understand why. There's a quiet resolve to the character — a been-there-seen-that air to weathering tumult, too — that's long been a part of the Indigenous Australian star's acting toolkit across a three-decade career that started in 90s TV shows such as GP, Police Rescue and Water Rats, and has recently added The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and Shayda to her resume (plus much in-between). Andie is a seasoned police detective who takes a job back in uniform overseeing the town of Broken Ridge, which is located in the mountainous Victorian region that gives the mystery series its name. A big reason for the move: stability and work-life balance, aka relocating for the sake of her personal life with spouse Helen (Sara Wiseman, Under the Vines) and daughter Kirra (Pez Warner, making her TV debut). An existence-resetting tree change is meant to be on the cards, then. But her arrival, especially being installed as the new police chief, doesn't earn the sunniest of welcomes. Then there's the missing-person cases that swiftly start piling up, some old, some new, some previously explained by pointing fingers in specific directions. High Country's framework, down to its character types, is easily recognisable. Creators Marcia Gardner and John Ridley, who worked with Purcell on Wentworth, know what everyone does: that a great story can make any whodunnit-driven procedural feel different. So, also part of the series are Andie's retiring predecessor (Ian McElhinney, The Boys in the Boat), who is fixated on a past disappearance; the former teacher (Henry Nixon, The PM's Daughter) he's certain is responsible, who has become the town outcast; a local ranger (Aaron Pedersen, Jack Irish), one of the few other Indigenous faces in town; the financially challenged proprietor (Linda Cropper, How to Stay Married) of a haven for artists; cop colleagues of varying help and loyalty (Romance at the Vineyard's Matt Domingo and Wyrmwood: Apocalypse's Luke McKenzie); and rabble-rousing siblings (Boy Swallows Universe's Nathaniel Dean and The Clearing's Jamie Timony). Crucially, where the show takes them always feels like its own journey. This might also be the second Aussie effort in two months to use this part of the country as a backdrop, following Force of Nature: The Dry 2, but High Country is similarly no mere rehash there. High Country streams via Binge. The Regime After past wins for Mildred Pierce and Mare of Easttown, Kate Winslet might just add another Emmy to her mantle for The Regime. When the British actor turns her attention to TV for HBO, she unveils spectacular performances — something that she does everywhere anyway (see also: the 30-year-old Heavenly Creatures, 20-year-old Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and more-recent Ammonite, for instance), but this working relationship has been going particularly well for her. Winslet's latest small-screen stint for the US network takes her into the realm of satire, and to a Central European country under authoritarian rule. Nothing for the nation's current leadership is quite going to plan, though. This is a place where Chancellor Elena Vernham singing 'If You Leave Me Now' to open an official dinner, keeping her deceased father in a glass coffin, and overhauling the palace that she calls home due to fears of moisture and black mould are all everyday occurrences. Each of the above happens in The Regime's first episode, as does hiring a soldier linked to a scandal involving the deaths of protestors at a cobalt mine — with his new gig initially requiring him to monitor the air quality in every room that the Chancellor enters. Winslet (Avatar: The Way of Water) is mesmerising as Vernham, who takes her cues from a range of IRL world leaders — it's easy to glean which — in a show that's as captivating as its lead performance. She has excellent company, too, spanning the always-ace Matthias Schoenaerts (Amsterdam) as said military man-turned-Vernham's new advisor, Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie) as her regular offsider, plus everyone from Hugh Grant (Wonka) to Martha Plimpton (A Town Called Malice) popping up and making the most of their supporting parts. The Regime's creator Will Tracy wrote The Menu and also episodes of Succession, so he has experience being scathing; his time on the staff of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver also shows its influence. If he'd been watching Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin while dreaming up this (including nabbing Riseborough from the cast), that wouldn't come as a surprise, either. With Stephen Frears (The Lost King) and Jessica Hobbs (The Crown) behind the camera, The Regime is a probingly directed effort as well as it works through its six chapters. The Regime streams via Binge. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January and February this year, and also from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer.
Whenever a public holiday with a religious history rolls around, it means different things to different people. Easter is one of them — a four-day period filled with bunnies for some, oh-so-many chocolate eggs for most, and a relaxing break from work for many. That makes finding the perfect Easter viewing a bit trickier than most occasions. Unlike Christmas movies, paschal flicks haven't become their own category. Unlike Halloween and horror films, there's not an existing genre to tap into, either. And, when a movie has clearly been made with Easter in mind, it tends to fall into one of two camps: religious-themed epics and rabbit-filled, kid-focused family fare. If you're keen to mark the occasion through cinema — and eager to find something to watch while you're binge-eating all of those hot cross buns — don't worry. No, you don't have to settle for the obvious. Instead, fill your long weekend with everything from Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka and Keanu Reeves as humanity's saviour to Jordan Peele's take on bunnies, all thanks to our 16 classic and eclectic Easter streaming options. Donnie Darko The creepiest rabbit in cinema belongs to one movie: Richard Kelly's (The Box) 2001 sci-fi thriller Donnie Darko. Once you've met Frank, as the eponymous teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal, Road House) does while he's sleepwalking one night, then you can be forgiven for feeling more than a little unnerved. Making quite the bold, striking and memorable filmmaking debut, Kelly's film saddles Donnie with plenty of other worries, too. Doomsday visions, wormholes and time loops; hosting a Halloween party; general adolescent angst — they're all included. So is Patrick Swayze (whose footsteps Gyllenhaal follows in in the Road House remake) as an unsettling motivational speaker, Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Deuce) playing her real-life brother's on-screen sister, and a mind-bending movie that proves both ominous and dreamy all at once (and boasts a great 80s-themed soundtrack). Donnie Darko streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Wonka In 2023, the world was gifted a new sweet treat. Casting Bones and All, Call Me By Your Name and Dune favourite Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka in a film directed by Paddington and Paddington 2's Paul King was always going to get the film-loving world's attention. Wonka thankfully proved a delight, too. Your best Easter viewing, then? Pairing it with the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is also still a gem. It's a magical ticket of a book-to-screen adaptation, thanks in no small part to the inimitable Gene Wilder. We all know the tale by now, which follows a poverty-stricken child who wins a chocolate contest and gets a super-exclusive tour of the eponymous figure's sweets-making outfit, and it keeps standing the test of time for great reason. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory streams via Binge, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Wonka streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Who Framed Roger Rabbit It's the part live-action, part animated film that's really not for kids, and it's still a delight more than three decades later. Who Framed Roger Rabbit steps back to 1947, plays with both neo-noir and comedy, and creates a world where humans and cartoons — or Toons as they're called — co-exist. A who's who of Hollywood's late-80s best and brightest were all considered for the part of private detective Eddie Valiant (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's Harrison Ford, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire's Bill Murray and Candy Cane Lane's Eddie Murphy among them), but Bob Hoskins is pitch-perfect in the role. Also working a charm is the film's dark but funny tone, its exceptional special effects, and the reteaming of Robert Zemeckis (Pinocchio) and Christopher Lloyd (The Mandalorian) after Back to the Future. Oh, and the fact that this always-entertaining PI tale is basically an oddball take on all-time classic Chinatown. Who Framed Roger Rabbit streams via Disney+, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections In one of the biggest sci-fi franchises of the past two decades, one man is chosen to save humanity, with the anointed hero navigating difficult trials and tribulations in the process. While the original trilogy of The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are all jam-packed with futuristic imagery and dystopian drama, writer/director siblings Lana and Lilly Wachowski (Sense8) spin a story that's also laden with spiritual symbolism — so much so that a religion called Matrixism even popped up. Obviously, who wouldn't want to worship Keanu Reeves (John Wick: Chapter 4) as Neo? These movies did the first time around, and repeated the feat with Lana Wachowski's solo effort The Matrix Resurrections as well. The middle two flicks are nowhere near as impressive and entertaining as the first or latest, but The Matrix franchise always makes for thrilling piece of science fiction. The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions stream via Stan, Prime Video, YouTube Movies and iTunes. The Matrix Resurrections streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Us As a director using genre to lay bare society's oppressive ills — and to entertain audiences with audacious and ambitious horror stories in the process — Jordan Peele is three for three on the big screen. Nope was a 2022 standout. Before that, back in 2017, Get Out felt like a breath of fresh air with its smart and savage tale of racial alienation. And, that feeling coursed through 2019's Us, too, a film that simultaneously splashes in the same thematic pool and rides its own narrative wave. Focusing on a family of four, a summer vacation to Santa Cruz and sinister lookalikes who start stalking their every move, Peele finds a new way to ponder America's divisive reality both historically and at present, all while making an immensely unnerving addition to an already unsettling genre: the doppelgänger movie. Playing dual roles, Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) puts in a phenomenal performance as the matriarch doing whatever it takes to fight for both her family and her freedom, while many of the film's meticulously crafted visuals — and plethora of rabbits — are pure nightmare fodder. Us streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Cool Hand Luke "Nobody can eat 50 eggs", Lucas Jackson (the late, great Paul Newman) is told in 1967 prison drama Cool Hand Luke. If that sounds like a challenge you're willing to take up, you're in good company. Naturally, you're currently thinking about chocolate eggs; however, Newman's famous character endeavours to eat 50 of the real deal. Even locked up in a Florida chain gang for vandalising parking metres, that's the kind of rule-breaking, authority-defying guy he is. Nominated for four Oscars and winning one (for Best Supporting Actor for George Kennedy), this is one of cinema's anti-establishment standouts, tracking the penal system's repeated attempts to put Luke in his place, and his continued determination to flout every restriction that's thrown at him. Cool Hand Luke is also layered with religious symbolism in its narrative and in its imagery — as you'd expect in a tale of a man repeatedly persecuted for remaining faithful to his true nature. Cool Hand Luke streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Con Air Whatever occasion happens to be upon us, there's a Nicolas Cage movie for it. The Family Man and Trapped in Paradise are set around Christmas, for example; Moonstruck and Wild at Heart are pitch-perfect Valentine's Day viewing; and you can choose from the likes of Mandy, Vampire's Kiss and Color Out of Space at Halloween. For Easter, Con Air fits the bill. It is the movie that has Cage exclaim "put the bunny back in the box," after all. Here, he plays a former army ranger-turned-paroled convict who's trying to head home when his prison flight is hijacked by fellow criminals. And it's particularly apt viewing after Cage played Cage in meta comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent recently, and Con Air played a pivotal part in it. Con Air streams via Disney+, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Easter Parade Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Easter, and a dazzling array of singing and dancing? Blend them all together, and that's Easter Parade. A huge box-office hit upon its initial 1948 release, this lively musical understandably makes the most of its stars — who act, croon and show off their fancy footwork opposite each other in their only cinematic collaboration. Astaire plays Broadway hotshot Don Hewes, who's far from happy when his dance partner breaks off their pairing. Emotionally wounded, he vows he'll catapult the next dancer he meets to fame. That'd be Garland's Hannah Brown, although the path to success (and to romance) is hardly straightforward. As Easter Parade charts the ups and downs of Don and Hannah's new arrangement, though, it's obviously absolutely overflowing with show-stopping song-and-dance numbers. Easter Parade streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Aardman has enjoyed an enviable track record over the stop-motion animation studio's 50-year career, as well as its two-plus decades making movies. But while the OG Chicken Run is great and the delightful Shaun the Sheep flicks aren't just for kids, Wallace and Gromit hold a soft spot in everyone's hearts. That makes their only big-screen outing to date, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, extra special. Parodying monster movies, including old-school Hammer horror films, it tasks a certain cheese fiend and his canine sidekick with trying to rid a village suddenly plagued by bunnies. An Oscar-winner for Best Animated Feature, the result is an amusing, offbeat and energetic adventure with clever sight gags, an eccentric vibe, an array of intelligently used pop culture references, and guest voice work from Helena Bonham Carter (One Life) and Ralph Fiennes (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar). Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit streams via Binge, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Celia Australian cinema is filled with stellar classic titles — films that engage, enthral, say something about our country and showcase the depth of our filmmaking talent. Sadly, the almost-forgotten Celia isn't cited among such company enough, although it deserves to be celebrated as one of the best features that we've ever had to offer. Set in 1957, its tale is dark, ominous and oh-so-telling as it blends small-town prejudices with fearful childhood imaginings. Written and directed by Ann Turner, the film focuses on an unhappy, grieving nine-year-old school girl (Rebecca Smart, Skin Deep) surrounded by a community that's paranoid about communists and unwelcoming to pet rabbits. Yes, there's that Easter-appropriate link — and this is kind of coming-of-age horror effort Australia rarely makes. Celia streams via Brollie, YouTube Movies and iTunes. The Last Temptation of Christ If you're going to watch one serious film about the obvious religious figure this Easter, make it Martin Scorsese's (Killers of the Flower Moon) The Last Temptation of Christ. Faith is one of the great veteran filmmaker's favourite themes and, here, he tackles it with his trademark smarts and depth, all while presenting Jesus not as a revered icon but as a person. Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) plays the Judean carpenter in the spotlight, turning in one of his reliably fantastic performances. Also popping up among the cast: Harvey Keitel (Paradox Effect), Barbara Hershey (Beacon 23), and Twin Peaks alumni Harry Dean Stanton and David Bowie. Like many a movie that's dared to take a provocative approach to this tale, the 1988 film earned protests, censorship and bans when it originally hit cinemas — and nabbed Scorsese an Academy Award nomination for Best Director as well. The Last Temptation of Christ streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Monty Python's Life of Brian When famed comedy troupe Monty Python turned their attention to religion, they didn't take the obvious route. Instead, their satirical comedy follows Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a Jewish man who happens to be born on Christmas right next door to Jesus, and gets mistaken for his neighbour as a result. As one well-known line of dialogue has told us all for decades, "he's not the Messiah — he's a very naughty boy". Eventually, he'll be trying to look on the bright side of life as well. Written by the whole group, and starring them as well, Monty Python's Life of Brian is the silliest, most irreverent biblical-related flick you're ever likely to see. Unsurprisingly, when it was released back in 1979, it was accused of blasphemy. Monty Python's Life of Brian streams via Netflix, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are 12 that you can watch right now at home. Anatomy of a Fall A calypso instrumental cover of 50 Cent's 'P.I.M.P.' isn't the only thing that Anatomy of a Fall's audience won't be able to dislodge from their heads after watching 2023's deserving Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winner. A film that's thorny, knotty and defiantly unwilling to give any easy answers, this legal, psychological and emotional thriller about a woman on trial for her husband's death is unshakeable in as many ways as someone can have doubts about another person: so, a myriad. The scenario conjured up by writer/director Justine Triet (Sibyl) is haunting, asking not only if her protagonist committed murder, as the on-screen investigation and courtroom proceedings interrogate, but digging into what it means to be forced to choose between whether someone did the worst or is innocent — or if either matters. While the Gallic legal system provides the backdrop for much of the movie, the real person doing the real picking isn't there in a professional capacity, or on a jury. Rather, it's the 11-year-old boy who loved his dad, finds him lying in the snow with a head injury outside their French Alps home on an otherwise ordinary day, then becomes the key witness in his mum's case. Also impossible to forget: the performances that are so crucial in telling this tale of marital and parental bonds, especially from one of German's current best actors and the up-and-coming French talent playing her son. With her similarly astonishing portrayal in The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and I'm Your Man's Sandra Hüller is two for two in movies that initially debuted in 2023; here, she steps into the icy and complicated Sandra Voyter's shoes with the same kind of surgical precision that Triet applies to unpacking the character's home life. As Daniel, who couldn't be more conflicted about the nightmare situation he's been thrust into, Milo Machado Graner (Alex Hugo) is a revelation — frequently via his expressive face and posture alone. If Scenes From a Marriage met Kramer vs Kramer, plus 1959's Anatomy of a Murder that patently influences Anatomy of a Fall's name, this would be the gripping end result — as fittingly written by Triet with her IRL partner Arthur Harari (Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle). Anatomy of a Fall streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Poor Things Richly striking feats of cinema by Yorgos Lanthimos aren't scarce. Sublime performances by Emma Stone are hardly infrequent. Screen takes on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein couldn't be more constant. For Lanthimos, see: Dogtooth and Alps in the Greek Weird Wave filmmaker's native language, plus The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite since he started helming movies in English. With Stone, examples abound in her Best Actress Oscar for La La Land, supporting nominations before and after for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and Lanthimos' aforementioned regal satire, and twin 2024 Golden Globe nods for their latest collaboration as well as TV's The Curse. And as for the best gothic-horror story there is, not to mention one of the most influential sci-fi stories ever, the evidence is everywhere from traditional adaptations to debts owed as widely as The Rocky Horror Show and M3GAN. Combining the three results in a rarity, however: a jewel of a pastel-, jewel- and bodily fluid-toned feminist Frankenstein-esque fairy tale that's a stunning creation, as zapped to life with Lanthimos' inimitable flair, a mischievous air, Stone at her most extraordinary and empowerment blazing like a lightning bolt. With cascading black hair, an inquisitive stare, incessant frankness and jolting physical mannerisms, Poor Things' star is Bella Baxter in this adaptation of Alasdair Grey's award-winning 1992 novel by Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara (The Great). Among the reasons that the movie and its lead portrayal are so singular: as a character with a woman's body revived with a baby's brain, Stone plays someone from infancy to adulthood, all with the astonishingly exact mindset and mannerisms to match, and while making every move, choice and feeling as organic as birth, living and death. In this fantastical steampunk vision of Victorian-era Europe, London-based Scottish doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe, Asteroid City) is Bella's maker. Even if she didn't call him God, he's been playing it. But curiosity, the quest for agency and independence, horniness and a lust for adventure all beckon his creation on a radical, rebellious, gorgeously rendered, gloriously funny and generously insightful odyssey. So, Godwin tries to marry Bella off to medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef, Ramy), only for her to discover masturbation and sex, and run off to the continent with caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law). Poor Things streams via Disney+, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Priscilla Yearning to be one of the women in Sofia Coppola's films is futile, but for a single reason only: whether she's telling of teenage sisters, a wife left to her own devices in Tokyo, France's most-famous queen, the daughter of a Hollywood actor, Los Angeles high schoolers who want to rob, the staff and students at a girls school in the American Civil War, a Manhattanite worried that her husband is being unfaithful or Priscilla Presley, as the writer/director has across eight movies to-date, no one better plunges viewers into her female characters' hearts and heads. To watch the filmmaker's span of features from The Virgin Suicides to Priscilla is to feel as its figures do, and deeply. The second-generation helmer is an impressionistic great, colouring her flicks as much with emotions and mood as actual hues — not that there's any shortage of lush and dreamy shades, as intricately tied to her on-screen women's inner states, swirling through her meticulous frames. Call it the "can't help falling" effect, then: as a quarter-century of Coppola's films have graced screens, audiences can't help falling into them like they're in the middle of each themselves. That's still accurate with Priscilla, which arrives so soon after Elvis that no one could've forgotten that the lives of the king of rock 'n' roll and his bride have flickered through cinemas recently. Baz Luhrmann made his Presley movie in Australia with an American (Austin Butler, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as Elvis and an Aussie (Olivia DeJonge, The Staircase) as Priscilla. Coppola crafted hers in North America with a Brisbanite (Jacob Elordi, Saltburn) in blue-suede shoes and a Tennessee-born talent (Cailee Spaeny, Mare of Easttown) adopting the Presley surname. The two features are mirror images in a hunk of burning ways, including their his-and-hers titles; whose viewpoint they align with; and conveying what it was like to adore Elvis among the masses, plus why he sparked that fervour, compared to expressing the experience of being the girl that he fell for, married, sincerely loved but kept in a gilded cage into she strove to fly free. Priscilla streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Cailee Spaeny. All of Us Strangers As Fleabag knew, and also Sherlock as well, Andrew Scott has the type of empathetic face that makes people want to keep talking to him. Playing the hot priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) acclaimed comedy, he was the ultimate listener. Even as the Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch's (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) Holmes, and with a game always afoot, conversation flowed. All of Us Strangers puts this innate air — this sensation that to be in Scott's company is to want to unburden yourself to his welcoming ears — at its tender and feverishly beating heart, this time with Paul Mescal (Foe) as one of his discussion partners. Dreamy and contemplative, haunting and heartfelt, and also delicate and devastating, the fifth film by Weekend and 45 Years writer/director Andrew Haigh, which is his first since 2017's Lean on Pete, is stunningly cast with Scott in seeing-is-feeling mode as its isolated screenwriter protagonist alone. That Scott is joined by Mescal, Claire Foy (Women Talking) and Jamie Bell (Shining Girls) gives All of Us Strangers one of the finest four-hander casts in recent memory. Awards bodies clearly agree, with nods going around for everyone (alongside wins for Best Film and Best Director, the British Independent Film Awards gave all four of the feature's core cast members nominations, with Mescal scoring the Best Supporting Performance trophy, for instance). Haigh isn't merely preternaturally talented at picking the exact right actors to play his on-screen figures, but it's one of his most-crucial skills, as every performance in his latest shattering picture demonstrates. It comes as no surprise that Scott, Mescal, Foy and Bell are all excellent. It's similarly hardly unexpected that Haigh has made another movie that cuts so emotionally deep that viewers will feel as if they've been within its frames. Combine these stars with this filmmaker, though, and a feature that was always likely to combine its exceptional parts into a perfect sum is somehow even more affecting and astonishing. All of Us Strangers streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Drive-Away Dolls No one might've thought of Joel and Ethan Coen as yin and yang if they hadn't started making movies separately. Since 2018's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, their latest feature together as sibling filmmakers, the elder of the Coen brothers went with Shakespearean intensity by directing 2021's The Tragedy of Macbeth on his lonesome — while Ethan now opts for goofy, loose and hilariously sidesplitting silliness with Drive-Away Dolls. The pair aren't done collaborating, with a horror flick reportedly in the works next. But their break from being an Oscar-winning team has gifted audiences two treats in completely different fashions. For the younger brother, he's swapped in his wife Tricia Cooke, editor of The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn't There, on a picture that couldn't slide more smoothly onto his resume alongside the madcap antics that the Coens combined are known for. Indeed, spying shades of the first of those two features that Cooke spliced in Drive-Away Dolls, plus Raising Arizona, Fargo and Burn After Reading as well, is both easy and delightful. As a duo, the Coen brothers haven't ever followed two women through lesbian bars, makeout parties and plenty of horniness between the sheets, though, amid wall dildos and other nods to intimate appendages, even if plenty about the Ethan-directed, Cooke-edited Drive-Away Dolls — which both Ethan and Cooke co-wrote — is classic Coens. There's the road-trip angle, conspiracy mayhem, blundering criminals in hot pursuit of Jamie (Margaret Qualley, Poor Things) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, Cat Person), dumb men (those crooks again) in cars and just quirky characters all round. There's the anarchic chases, witty yet philosophical banter and highly sought-after briefcase at the centre of the plot, too. And, there's the fact that this is a comedic caper, its love of slapstick and that a wealth of well-known faces pop up as the zany antics snowball. The Joel-and-Ethan team hasn't made a film as sapphic as this, either, however, or one that's a 90s-set nod to, riff on, and parody of 60s- and 70s-era sexploitation raucousness. Drive-Away Dolls streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke. May December A line about not having enough hot dogs might be one of its first, but the Julianne Moore (Sharper)-, Natalie Portman (Thor: Love and Thunder)- and Charles Melton (Riverdale)-starring May December is a movie of mirrors and butterflies. In the literal sense, director Todd Haynes wastes few chances to put either in his frames. The Velvet Goldmine, Carol and Dark Waters filmmaker doesn't shy away from symbolism, knowing two truths that stare back at his audience from his latest masterpiece: that what we see when we peer at ourselves in a looking glass isn't what the rest of the world observes, and that life's journey is always one of transformation. Inspired by the real-life Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, May December probes both of these facts as intently as anyone scrutinising their own reflection. Haynes asks viewers to do the same. Unpacking appearance and perception, and also their construction and performance, gazes from this potently thorny — and downright potent — film. That not all metamorphoses end with a beautiful flutter flickers through just as strongly. May December's basis springs from events that received ample press attention in the 90s: schoolteacher Letourneau's sexual relationship with her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau. She was 34, he was 12. First-time screenwriter Samy Burch changes names and details in her Oscar-nominated script — for Best Original Screenplay, which is somehow the film's only nod by the Academy — but there's no doubting that it takes its cues from this case of grooming, which saw Letourneau arrested, give birth to the couple's two daughters in prison, then the pair eventually marry. 2000 TV movie All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story used the recreation route; however, that was never going to be a Haynes-helmed feature's approach. The comic mention of hot dogs isn't indicative of May December's overall vibe, either: this a savvily piercing film that sees the agonising impact upon the situation's victim, the story its perpetrator has spun around herself, and the relentless, ravenous way that people's lives and tragedies are consumed by the media and public. May December streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Mean Girls On years ending in four in even-numbered decades, we watch new Mean Girls films. So goes the 21st century so far, as the hit 2004 teen comedy about high-school hierarchies returns to the big screen in 2024 as a musical, after breaking out the singing and dancing onstage first. Just like donning pink every Wednesday because Regina George (Reneé Rapp, The Sex Lives of College Girls) demands it, there's a dutifulness about the repeat Mean Girls. Tina Fey, writing the script for the third time — basing her first on Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes — seems to fear the consequences for breaking the rules, too. Cue a Mean Girls movie musical that truly plays out as those four words lead viewers to expect: largely the same down to most lines and jokes, just with songs. Anyone looking at the longer running time in advance and chalking up the jump from 97 to 112 minutes to the tunes is 100-percent spot on. The latest Mean Girls also resembles protagonist Cady Heron (Angourie Rice, The Last Thing He Told Me): eager to fit into its new surroundings after being perfectly happy and comfortable elsewhere. That causes some awkwardness, sometimes trying to break the mould, but largely assimilating. Penning her first film script since the OG Mean Girls was her very first, 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Mr Mayor creator Fey revises details and gags that were always going to need revising. Social media, the internet and mobile phones are all worked in, necessarily so, as is sex positivity. Mean Girls 2024 is primarily dedicated to making Mean Girls 2024 happen, though; here as well, it's exactly as those three words have audiences anticipating. Scrap the songs and choreography (other than the Winter Talent Show performances, of course), and directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez (Quarter Life Poetry: Poems for the Young, Broke & Hangry) would've just remade the first film two decades later. Mean Girls streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Angourie Rice. Force of Nature: The Dry 2 "Nature holds us all to account" is one of Force of Nature: The Dry 2's trailer-friendly lines. Even for those who didn't see the film's sneak peeks in the months between its arrival and the feature's release — a period stretched by Hollywood's 2023 strikes, pushing the picture's date with cinemas from August to February 2024 — it sounds primed for promo snippets when it's uttered in the movie itself. But this Australian detective franchise has earned the right to occasionally be that blunt and loaded with telling importance in its dialogue. And, it makes it work. In 2021's The Dry and here, in a flick that could've been called The Wet thanks to its drenched forest setting, the Aaron Falk saga uses its surroundings to mirror its emotional landscape. Nature holds its characters to account not just in a narrative sense, but by reflecting what they're feeling with astute specificity — so much so that the parched Victorian wheatbelt in the initial movie and the saturated greenery in Force of Nature are as much extensions of the series' on-screen figures as they are stunning backdrops. Chief among this page-to-film realm's players is Falk, the federal police officer that Eric Bana and his Blueback director Robert Connolly treat like terrain to trek through and traverse. His stare has its own cliffs and gorges. His life upholding the law and beyond has its peaks and valleys as well. In The Dry, it was evident that the yellowed, drought-stricken fields that monopolised the frame said plenty about how much Falk and everyone around him was holding back. In Force of Nature, all the damp of the fictional Giralang mountains — Victoria's Otways, Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley IRL — speaks volumes about what's streaming through the movie's characters inside. Cinematography is one of this franchise's strengths, and that Andrew Commis (Nude Tuesday) lenses the second picture's location just as evocatively and meticulously as Stefan Duscio (Shantaram) did the first is crucial: these features make their audience see every detail that envelops Falk and company, and therefore constantly spy the parallels between their environs and their inner turmoil. Force of Nature: The Dry 2 streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Eric Bana and Robert Connolly. Argylle For the past decade, spy films have been Matthew Vaughn's caper, thanks to Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kingsman: The Golden Circle and The King's Man until now. With Argylle, he's still being playful with a genre that he clearly loves but isn't precious about, and he's also approaching espionage antics from another angle. 80s action-adventure comedy Romancing the Stone, which isn't about secret intelligence operatives, is one of this page-to-screen effort's blatant inspirations. Something that both do have at their centres: writers caught up in scenarios that would usually only happen on paper. 2022's The Lost City took the same route — but Argylle throws in a touch of North by Northwest, and also gets meta about its own origins. And no, Taylor Swift didn't write the source material. For his eighth feature, which hits 20 years after he made his directorial debut with the Daniel Craig (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery)-starring Layer Cake, Vaughn adapts the novel that gives Argylle its name; however, the specifics aren't quite that simple. The IRL title was only published as the flick hits cinemas, starting a franchise on the shelf. That said, the film — which is similarly aiming to begin a series — jumps to a later as-yet-unreleased book. Those tomes are credited to Elly Conway, which is the name of the movie version of Argylle's protagonist. In the feature, Elly (Bryce Dallas Howard, Jurassic World Dominion) is also an author who has written a saga about spies. Back in reality, who she really is has sparked a frenzy, hence the theories that she could be one of the world's biggest pop stars amid a massive world tour and a huge concert film. Again, despite Swifties' dreams, that speculation needs to be shaken off. Argylle streams via YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Matthew Vaughn. The Color Purple For most, there isn't much in Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel The Color Purple that screams for the musical spin. Broadway still came calling. On the page, this tale always featured a jazz and blues singer as a key character. When it initially reached the screen in 1985 with Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans) directing, it also worked in an anthem that earned an Oscar nomination and has been much-covered since; Quincy Jones composed the film's score and produced the movie. But if the idea of lavish song-and-dance numbers peppered throughout such a bleak account of incest, rape, domestic abuse, racism, injustice, violence and poverty feels like hitting a wrong note, claims otherwise keep springing. First arrived 2005's Tony-winning stage adaptation, then 2015's also-awarded revival. Now, joining the ranks of books that became movies, then musicals, then musical movies just like the new Mean Girls, a second feature brings Walker's story to cinemas — this time with belted-out ballads and toe-tapping tunes. With each take, The Color Purple's narrative has predominantly remained the same as when it first hit bookshelves, crushing woe, infuriating prejudice and rampant inequity included. Musicals don't have to be cheery, but how does so much brutality give rise to anything but mournful songs? The answer here: by leaning into the rural Georgia-set tale's embrace of hope, resilience and self-discovery. Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule follows up co-helming Beyoncé's Black Is King by heroing empowerment and emancipation in his version of The Color Purple — and while the film that results can't completely avoid an awkward tonal balance, it's easy to see the meaning behind its striving for a brighter outlook. When what its characters go through as Black women in America's south in the early 20th century is so unsparing, welcoming wherever light can pierce the gloom is a human reaction, and how Celie (American Idol-winner Fantasia Barrino in her feature film debut) copes. The Color Purple streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Madame Web When a spider spins a web, the strands are designed to trap prey for the eight-legged arachnid to consume. Madame Web tries to do something similar. The fourth live-action film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, it attempts to create a movie meal by capturing bits and pieces from anywhere and everywhere. There's Spidey nods, of course, variations on the "with great power comes great responsibility" line and more than one Spidey-like figure included. Introducing a new superhero to the screen, it's an origin story, complete with a tragic past to unfurl. Set in 2003 but with ample 90s tunes in the soundtrack, it endeavours to get retro as well. In its best touch, Madame Web winks at star Dakota Johnson's (Cha Cha Real Smooth) Hollywood family history, with a pigeon bringing The Birds, as led by her grandmother Tippi Hedren (The Ghost and the Whale), to mind. And, catching inspiration just like flies, the film also strives to be a serial-killer thriller. Look out, though. Here's hoping that spiders have more luck snaring a feast than Sony has in swinging Madame Web into its not-MCU franchise. They're not officially counted as part of the saga, and they're both exceptional unlike this, but the studio's animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse also help explain Madame Web's existence and approach. In trying to carve out a Spidey space around the Peter Parker version of the webslinger, who is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony has been throwing everything it can at the screen. In the Spider-Verse flicks, that means a kaleidoscope of spider-folk, plus dazzling visuals and creative storytelling to match, demonstrating that people in suits isn't the best way to tell caped-crusader tales in cinema. In the SSU, focusing on a heap of peripheral Spidey figures is instead the tactic — and it's as piecemeal as it sounds. Madame Web streams via YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. Next Goal Wins American Samoa's 31–0 loss to Australia in 2001 wasn't the biggest-ever defeat in football history, but it set the world record for the largest trouncing in an international match. It's also the scoreline behind an impassioned quest to achieve something that the US territory in the South Pacific Ocean had never done before in soccer: kick a goal. And, it's the starting point for a documentary and a comedy both called Next Goal Wins, with the first arriving in 2014 and the second now Taika Waititi's eighth feature. Each charts the squad's attempt to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and each tells an underdog tale. One strikes charmingly and winningly, the other keeps deserving red cards — and it's Waititi's long-delayed flick, which was initially filmed before the pandemic, underwent reshoots in 2021, then finally premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, that shouldn't be on the pitch. Since leaping from New Zealand indies Eagle vs Shark, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Waititi might've won an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit; however, his best post-Thor: Ragnarok work has been on the small screen. Neither Jojo Rabbit nor Thor: Love and Thunder reached the filmmaker's past heights, but the hilarious US TV spinoff of What We Do in the Shadows, sublime Indigenous American dramedy Reservation Dogs and heartwarming pirate rom-com Our Flag Means Death have all proven gems. The current underwhelming cinema streak continues with the Michael Fassbender (The Killer)-led Next Goal Wins, which is as forceful as his last non-MCU picture in wanting to be a quirky, silly and sweet crowd-pleaser, and as clumsy, awkward and thinly sketched. While new takes on already-covered stories never mean that the originals are binned, sending viewers sprinting towards Mike Brett and Steve Jamison's (On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)) iteration of Next Goal Wins can't have been Waititi's intention. Next Goal Wins streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January and February 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
No one alive today was living and breathing during Leonardo da Vinci's lifetime in the 15th and 16th centuries; however, Melbourne's The Lume is doing its best to help its patrons experience the Italian Renaissance-era great's existence. Opening on Saturday, March 16, Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius sees the venue — which is Australia's first permanent digital-only art gallery — devote its surfaces to stepping into the artist and inventor's tale. His paintings grace the walls. His machines are dotted around its halls. Even original sheets from his notebooks, that boast his writing and sketches, are on display. Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius was first announced in 2023, and is understandably The Lume's major 2024 exhibition, alongside a massive reason for folks living outside of Melbourne to head to the Victorian capital this year. Back in February, the venue also revealed that pages from da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus feature, displaying in Australia for the first time ever. Add them to the must-see list next to the world's most-famous enigmatic smile, The Last Supper, the artist's anatomical drawings and more. Attendees at the Grande Experiences-run Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre site can see what The Lume is calling its "most ambitious, immersive and breathtaking yet". That's quite the claim for a collection that follows a van Gogh celebration, a focus on Monet and his contemporaries and the First Nations-centric Connection. Given everything that's a part of Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius, though, that statement also isn't surprising. No one will forget the Mona Lisa after heading to the exhibition. The artwork is almost everywhere within the 3000-square-metre space, and in a larger-than-life fashion — because that's how Grande Experiences' whole setup works. The iconic piece also links in with the segment of the showcase that's all about French optical engineer Pascal Cotte, who invented a multispectral camera and has peeled back the artwork's layers using his research. So, get excited about Mona Lisa Revealed, which includes an exact 360-degree replica — the only one in the world — as created thanks to Cotte's 240,000,000-pixel multispectral camera. The Last Supper also enjoys the spotlight in a big way, with emphasis on the 'big'. Similarly among Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius' highlights: 40 of da Vinci's machine inventions, which are on loan from the Museo Leonardo da Vinci in Rome. Leonardo is just as well-known for his flying machine concepts, with his 15th-century vision of human flight scoring The Lume's attention. This part of the exhibition heroes recreations made in Italy from the artist and inventor's sketches, and also uses the materials and techniques that he would've at the time. Letting visitors check out pages from Codex Atlanticus is a huge coup. The 12-volume set is filled with da Vinci's drawings and writings, detailing his thoughts and featuring his sketches on a wide array of topics. It's priceless. It includes entries from its author from between 1478–1519, dating up to the year of his death. Since 1637, it has called Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana home — and it's thanks to a relationship between it and Grande Experiences, which is also behind Rome's Museo Leonardo da Vinci, that some of its sheets can display Down Under. Stepping through da Vinci's journey at Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius also spans recreations of Florence's streets, Venice's canals and Milan — as brought to life via sight, sound, scent, touch and taste. Flying over Florence using virtual reality, dining at a Renaissance-themed experience where The Last Supper provides the backdrop, being turned into a da Vinci sketch thanks to AI, seeing how you align with the artist's Vitruvian Man drawing: that's all on offer, too. That said, Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius isn't solely about its namesake's well-known works, with the 3000-square-metre multi-sensory gallery also exploring his inspirations and those creating their own masterpieces at the same time. Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and works by Caravaggio can all be sighted, for instance. In Queensland, at HOTA, Home of the Arts, Grande Experiences's Italian Renaissance Alive will also take a broader look at the Italian Renaissance period from late March — but anyone wanting to be steeped in da Vinci's works in particular will need to head to Melbourne. Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius opens at The Lume, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 5 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf, Melbourne, from Saturday, March 16, 2024 — head to the venue's website for tickets and further information. Images: Alicia Taylor.
Maybe you're the kind of film lover who wouldn't dream of navigating Oscar season without seeing every movie that you possibly can as the accolades approach. Perhaps you wait to find out who wins big before deciding what to watch that you haven't caught already. Either way, the 2024 Academy Awards have now happened, taking place on Monday, March 11, Down Under — and a new batch of pictures, and the folks behind them, now have Hollywood's most-coveted cinema trophy to their names. We've been along for the ride since these pictures hit the big and small screen. So, if you need the full rundown, we have the list of winners, the nominees before that, our picks for who we predicted would and should win, exactly where you can see 2024's nominees in Australia and a drinking game designed to go with with this year's ceremony. Now, we also have all the details on nine films that have just been anointed Oscar-winners at the 96th Academy Awards that you can check out right now. Watch them. Rewatch them. Either way, you're in for some stellar viewing. And if you're wondering where The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One are — aka two of the very best recipients of the night — they sadly aren't currently in cinemas or streaming Down Under, but keep an eye out for them when they hit digital. Oppenheimer Cast Cillian Murphy and a filmmaker falls in love. Danny Boyle did with 28 Days Later and Sunshine, then Christopher Nolan followed with Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Dunkirk. There's an arresting, haunting, seeps-under-your-skin soulfulness about the Irish actor, never more so than when he was wandering solo through the empty zombie-ravaged streets in his big-screen big break, then hurtling towards the sun in an underrated sci-fi gem, both for Boyle, and now playing "the father of atomic bomb" in Nolan's epic biopic Oppenheimer. Flirting with the end of the world, or just one person's end, clearly suits Murphy. Here he is in a mind-blower as the destroyer of worlds — almost, perhaps actually — and so much of this can't-look-away three-hour stunner dwells in his expressive eyes. As J Robert Oppenheimer, those peepers see purpose and possibility. They spot quantum mechanics' promise, and the whole universe lurking within that branch of physics. They ultimately spy the consequences, too, of bringing the Manhattan Project successfully to fruition during World War II. Dr Strangelove's full title could never apply to Oppenheimer, nor to its eponymous figure; neither learn to stop worrying and love the bomb. The theoretical physicist responsible for the creation of nuclear weapons did enjoy building it in Nolan's account, Murphy's telltale eyes gleaming as Oppy watches research become reality — but then darkening as he gleans what that reality means. Directing, writing and adapting the 2005 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, Nolan charts the before and after. He probes the fission and fusion of the situation in intercut parts, the first in colour, the second in black and white. In the former, all paths lead to the history-changing Trinity test on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico desert. In the latter, a mushroom cloud balloons through Oppenheimer's life as he perceives what the gadget, as it's called in its development stages, has unleashed. Oscars: Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr), Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score Nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Sound Where to watch: Streaming via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Poor Things Richly striking feats of cinema by Yorgos Lanthimos aren't scarce. Sublime performances by Emma Stone are hardly infrequent. Screen takes on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein couldn't be more constant. For Lanthimos, see: Dogtooth and Alps in the Greek Weird Wave filmmaker's native language, plus The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite since he started helming movies in English. With Stone, examples abound in her Best Actress Oscar for La La Land, supporting nominations before and after for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and Lanthimos' aforementioned regal satire, and twin 2024 Golden Globe nods for their latest collaboration as well as TV's The Curse. And as for the best gothic-horror story there is, not to mention one of the most influential sci-fi stories ever, the evidence is everywhere from traditional adaptations to debts owed as widely as The Rocky Horror Show and M3GAN. Combining the three results in a rarity, however: a jewel of a pastel-, jewel- and bodily fluid-toned feminist Frankenstein-esque fairy tale that's a stunning creation, as zapped to life with Lanthimos' inimitable flair, a mischievous air, Stone at her most extraordinary and empowerment blazing like a lightning bolt. With cascading black hair, an inquisitive stare, incessant frankness and jolting physical mannerisms, Poor Things' star is Bella Baxter in this adaptation of Alasdair Grey's award-winning 1992 novel by Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara (The Great). Among the reasons that the movie and its lead portrayal are so singular: as a character with a woman's body revived with a baby's brain, Stone plays someone from infancy to adulthood, all with the astonishingly exact mindset and mannerisms to match, and while making every move, choice and feeling as organic as birth, living and death. In this fantastical steampunk vision of Victorian-era Europe, London-based Scottish doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe, Asteroid City) is Bella's maker. Even if she didn't call him God, he's been playing it. But curiosity, the quest for agency and independence, horniness and a lust for adventure all beckon his creation on a radical, rebellious, gorgeously rendered, gloriously funny and generously insightful odyssey. So, Godwin tries to marry Bella off to medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef, Ramy), only for her to discover masturbation and sex, and run off to the continent with caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law). Oscars: Won: Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and streaming via Disney+, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Anatomy of a Fall A calypso instrumental cover of 50 Cent's 'P.I.M.P.' isn't the only thing that Anatomy of a Fall's audience won't be able to dislodge from their heads after watching 2023's deserving Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winner. A film that's thorny, knotty and defiantly unwilling to give any easy answers, this legal, psychological and emotional thriller about a woman on trial for her husband's death is unshakeable in as many ways as someone can have doubts about another person: so, a myriad. The scenario conjured up by writer/director Justine Triet (Sibyl) is haunting, asking not only if her protagonist committed murder, as the on-screen investigation and courtroom proceedings interrogate, but digging into what it means to be forced to choose between whether someone did the worst or is innocent — or if either matters. While the Gallic legal system provides the backdrop for much of the movie, the real person doing the real picking isn't there in a professional capacity, or on a jury. Rather, it's the 11-year-old boy who loved his dad, finds him lying in the snow with a head injury outside their French Alps home on an otherwise ordinary day, then becomes the key witness in his mum's case. Also impossible to forget: the performances that are so crucial in telling this tale of marital and parental bonds, especially from one of German's current best actors and the up-and-coming French talent playing her son. With her similarly astonishing portrayal in The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and I'm Your Man's Sandra Hüller is two for two in movies that initially debuted in 2023; here, she steps into the icy and complicated Sandra Voyter's shoes with the same kind of surgical precision that Triet applies to unpacking the character's home life. As Daniel, who couldn't be more conflicted about the nightmare situation he's been thrust into, Milo Machado Graner (Alex Hugo) is a revelation — frequently via his expressive face and posture alone. If Scenes From a Marriage met Kramer vs Kramer, plus 1959's Anatomy of a Murder that patently influences Anatomy of a Fall's name, this would be the gripping end result — as fittingly written by Triet with her IRL partner Arthur Harari (Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle). Oscars: Won: Best Original Screenplay Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Justine Triet), Best Actress (Sandra Hüller), Best Film Editing Where to watch: In Australian cinemas. Read our full review. The Holdovers Melancholy, cantankerousness, angst, hurt and snow: all five blanket Barton Academy in Alexander Payne's The Holdovers. It's Christmas in the New England-set latest film from the Election, About Schmidt and Nebraska director, but festive cheer is in short supply among the students and staff that give the movie its moniker. The five pupils all want to be anywhere but stuck at their exclusive boarding school over the yuletide break, with going home off the cards for an array of reasons. Then four get their wish, leaving just Angus Tully (debutant Dominic Sessa), who thought he'd be holidaying in Saint Kitts until his mother told him not to come so that she could have more time alone with his new stepdad. His sole company among the faculty: curmudgeonly classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, Billions), who's being punished for failing the son of a wealthy donor, but would be hanging around campus anyway; plus grieving head cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Only Murders in the Building), who is weathering her first Christmas after losing her son — a Barton alum — in the Vietnam War. The year is 1970 in Payne's long-awaited return behind the lens after 2017's Downsizing, as the film reinforces from its opening seconds with retro studio credits. The Holdovers continues that period-appropriate look in every frame afterwards — with kudos to cinematographer Eigil Bryld (No Hard Feelings), who perfects not only the hues and grain but the light and softness in his imagery — and matches it with the same mood and air, as if it's a lost feature unearthed from the era. Cat Stevens on the soundtrack, a focus on character and emotional truths, zero ties to franchises, a thoughtful story given room to breathe and build: that's this moving and funny dramedy. Christmas flicks regularly come trimmed with empty, easy nostalgia, but The Holdovers earns its wistfulness from a filmmaker who's no stranger to making movies that feel like throwbacks to the decade when he was a teen. Oscars: Won: Best Supporting Actress (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and streaming via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. American Fiction Here's Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison's (Jeffrey Wright, Rustin) predicament when American Fiction begins: on the page, his talents aren't selling books. Praise comes the Los Angeles-based professor's way for his novels, but not sales, nor attendees when he's part of writers' festival panels. And even then, publishers aren't fond of his latest manuscript. Sick of hearing that his work isn't "Black enough", and also incensed over the attention that fellow scribe Sintara Golden (Issa Rae, Barbie) is receiving for her book We's Lives in Da Ghetto, he gets a-typing, pumping out the kind of text that he vehemently hates — but 100-percent fits the stereotype of what the world keeps telling him that Black literature should be. It attracts interest, even more so when Monk takes his agent Arthur's (John Ortiz, Better Things) advice and adopts a new persona to go with it. Soon fugitive convict Stagg R Leigh and his book Fuck are a huge hit that no one can get enough of. Because of the story spun around who wrote the bestseller, too, the FBI even wants to know the author's whereabouts. Deservedly nominated for five 2024 Oscars — including for Best Picture, Best Actor for Wright and Best Supporting Actor for Sterling K Brown (Biosphere) as Monk's brother Clifford — American Fiction itself hails from the page, with filmmaker Cord Jefferson adapting Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure. Wright is indeed exceptional in this savvy satire of authenticity, US race relations and class chasms, and earns his awards contention for his reactions alone. Seeing how Monk adjusts himself to a world that keeps proving anything but his dream is an utter acting masterclass, in big and small moments alike. As the film dives into the character's personal chaos, that's where Brown's also-fantastic, often-tender performance comes in, plus Leslie Uggams (Extrapolations) as Monk's mother and Tracee Ellis Ross (Candy Cane Lane) as his sister, and also Erika Alexander (Run the World) as a neighbour who is a fan of his — not just Stagg R Leigh's — work. Don't discount how excellent American Fiction is beyond its literary hoax setup, in fact; as a character study, it's equally astute. Oscars: Won: Best Adapted Screenplay Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jeffrey Wright), Best Supporting Actor (Sterling K Brown), Best Original Score Where to watch: Streaming via Prime Video. Read our full review. The Zone of Interest Quotes and observations about evil being mundane, as well as the result when people look the other way, will never stop being relevant. A gripping, unsettling masterpiece, The Zone of Interest is a window into why. The first film by Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer in more than a decade, the Holocaust-set feature peers on as the unthinkable happens literally just over the fence, but a family goes about its ordinary life. If it seems abhorrent that anything can occur in the shadow of any concentration camp or site of World War II atrocities, that's part of the movie's point. It dwells in the Interessengebiet, the 40-square-kilometre-plus titular area that comprised and surrounded the Auschwitz complex, to interrogate how banal genocide was to those in power; commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel, Babylon Berlin), even gloats that his name will be remembered and celebrated for its connection to mass extermination. Höss was a real person, and the real Nazi SS officer overseeing Auschwitz from 1940–43. His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) and five children are similarly drawn from truth. But The Zone of Interest finds its way to the screen via Martin Amis' fiction novel of the same name, then hones its interest down from the book's three narrators to the Höss family; a biopic, it isn't, even as it switches its character monikers back to reflect actuality. This is a work of deep probing and contemplation — a piece that demands that its viewers confront the daily reality witnessed and face how the lives of those in power, and benefiting from it, thrived with death not only as a neighbour but an enabler. Camp prisoners tend the Höss' garden. Ashes are strewn over the soil for horticultural effect. Being turned into the same is a threat used to keep the household's staff in line. All three of these details, as with almost everything in the feature, are presented with as matter-of-fact an air as cinema is capable of. Oscars: Won: Best International Feature, Best Sound Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Glazer), Best Adapted Screenplay Where to watch: In Australian cinemas. Read our full review. 20 Days in Mariupol Incompatible with life. No one should ever want to hear those three devastating words. No one who is told one of the most distressing phrases there is ever has them uttered their way in positive circumstances, either. Accordingly, when they're spoken by a doctor in 20 Days in Mariupol, they're deeply shattering. So is everything in this on-the-ground portrait of the first 20 days in the Ukrainian port city as Russia began its invasion, with the bleak reality of living in a war zone documented in harrowing detail. Located less than 60 kilometres from the border, Mariupol quickly segues from ordinary life to an apocalyptic scene — and this film refuses to look away. Much of its time is spent in and around hospitals, which see an influx of patients injured and killed by the combat, and also become targets as well. Many of in 20 Days in Mariupol's faces are the afflicted, the medics tending to them in horrendous circumstances, and the loves ones that are understandably inconsolable. Too many of the carnage's victims are children and babies, with their parents crushed and heartbroken in the aftermath; sometimes, they're pregnant women. Directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, and narrated by him with the grimness and soberness that can be this movie's only tone, 20 Days in Mariupol even existing is an achievement. What it depicts — what it immerses viewers in with urgency, from shelled hospitals, basements-turned-bomb shelters and more of the city destroyed day after day to families torn apart, looting, struggling to find food and bodies of the dead taken to mass graves — needs to be viewed as widely as possible, and constantly. His footage has also featured in news reports, but it can and must never be forgotten. Doctors mid-surgery demand that Chernov's camera is pointed their way, and that he shows the world the travesties taking place. The Ukrainian reporter, who has also covered Donbas, flight MH17, Syria and the Battle of Mosul for the Associated Press, does exactly that. He's doing more than ensuring that everyone bears witness, though; he makes certain that there's no way to watch 20 Days in Mariupol, which shows the vast civilian impact and casualties, and see anything but ordinary people suffering, or to feel anything other than shock, anger and horror. Oscars: Won: Best Documentary Feature Where to watch: Streaming via DocPlay. Barbie No one plays with a Barbie too hard when the Mattel product is fresh out of the box. As that new doll smell lingers, and the toy's synthetic limbs gleam and locks glisten, so does a child's sense of wonder. The more that the world-famous mass-produced figurine is trotted through DreamHouses, slipped into convertibles and decked out in different outfits, though — then given non-standard makeovers — the more that playing with the plastic fashion model becomes fantastical. Like globally beloved item, like live-action movie bearing its name. Barbie, the film, starts with glowing aesthetic perfection. It's almost instantly a pink-hued paradise for the eyes, and it's also a cleverly funny flick from its 2001: A Space Odyssey-riffing outset. The longer that it continues, however, the harder and wilder that Lady Bird and Little Women director Greta Gerwig goes, as does her Babylon and Amsterdam star lead-slash-producer Margot Robbie as Barbie. In Barbie's Barbie Land, life is utopian. Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie and her fellow dolls (including The Gray Man's Ryan Gosling as Stereotypical Ken) genuinely believe that their rosy beachside suburban excellence is infectious, too. And, they're certain that this female-championing realm — and the Barbies being female champions of all skills, talents and appearances — has changed the real world inhabited by humans. But there's a Weird Barbie living in a misshapen abode. While she isn't Barbie's villain, not for a second, her nonconformist look and attitude says everything about Barbie at its most delightful. Sporting cropped hair, a scribbled-on face and legs akimbo, she's brought to life by Saturday Night Live great Kate McKinnon having a blast, and explained as the outcome of a kid somewhere playing too eagerly. Meet Gerwig's spirit animal; when she lets Weird Barbie's vibe rain down like a shower of glitter, covering everything and everyone in sight both in Barbie Land and in reality, the always-intelligent, amusing and dazzling Barbie is at its brightest and most brilliant. Oscars: Won: Best Original Song ('What Was I Made For?', Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell) Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrera), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song ('I'm Just Ken', Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt), Best Costume Design, Best Production Design Where to watch: Streaming via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar After stepping into a play as a live production in a TV show in Asteroid City, and also flicking through a magazine's various articles in The French Dispatch before that, Wes Anderson gets an author sharing his writing in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. The 39-minute short film features Ralph Fiennes (The Menu) as Roald Dahl, who did indeed pen the tale that gives this suitably symmetrically shot affair its name — the book it's in, too — with the account that he's spilling one of several in a film that enthusiastically makes Anderson's love of layers known in its playful structure as much as its faux set. So, Dahl chats. The eponymous Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) does as well. And, Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel, The Green Knight) and his patient Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) also have a natter. The stories within stories within stories (within stories) share the fact that Khan has learned to see without his eyes, Chatterjee couldn't be more fascinated and Sugar wants to learn the trick for himself — to help with his gambling pastime. In his three decades as a filmmaker, Anderson has only ever made both features and shorts with one of two people responsible for their ideas: himself, sometimes with Owen Wilson (Haunted Mansion), Noah Baumbach (White Noise), Jason Schwartzman (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and/or Roman Coppola (Mozart in the Jungle) contributing; and Dahl. With the latter, first came Anderson's magnificent stop-motion Fantastic Mr Fox adaptation — and now The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar sits among a series of four new shorts, all of which released in September 2023, that are based on the author's work. This is still a dream match, with the director's beloved jewel and pastel colours, dollhouse-esque visuals, moving sets, love of centred framing and dialogue rhythm all proving a treat in this account of personal and spiritual growth. The cast is as divine on-screen as it sounds on paper, too, especially Cumberbatch and Patel. The next in the set, the 17-minute The Swan, pushes Rupert Friend (High Desert) to the fore in a darker tale about a bully. With The Ratcatcher and Poison, too, the only quibble is with the decision to release all four shorts separately, rather than package them together as an anthology film. Oscars: Won: Best Live-Action Short Where to watch: Streaming via Netflix. Read our full review. Looking for more Oscar-nominees to watch? You can also check out our full rundown of where almost all of this year's contenders are screening or streaming in Australia.
Billie Eilish doesn't ask "what were the Academy Awards made for?" in her Oscar-nominated tune from Barbie. If she did, however, Hollywood saluting the films of the past year is one answer. For everyone watching at home, here's another: watching the biggest annual stint of cinema-industry recognition there is, and also getting into the celebratory spirit at home. So, you've seen this year's nominated movies. Whether you're hoping that Oppenheimer, Barbie, Poor Things, Past Lives or something else gets a shiny statuette for their efforts, you've pondered who might win — and who should. The next step when the 96th Oscars take place on Monday, March 11, Down Under time, is to feel the Kenergy over cocktails (or whatever other beverage takes your fancy). Don't just nurse your glass and imbibe randomly, though. To truly get you into the Oscars spirit, our 2024 drinking game outlines when to take a small sip, a big gulp, a couple of mouthfuls or however much of a swig that you feel like. Some of our cues to join in are relevant every year. Some are specific to 2024's gongs. So, ensure you've got the requisite supplies, pay attention to everything happening during the ceremony and say cheers to Hollywood's night of nights — and drink responsibly, of course. A Small Sip: Drink Like You've Found Bliss in Your Daily Routine A winner gets played off. The term "Barbenheimer" is uttered. Barbenheimer gets credited with saving cinema. Someone pretends to be a Barbie. Margot Robbie wears pink. Martin Scorsese receives a standing ovation. Steven Spielberg receives a standing ovation. Lengthy movies are mentioned — whether celebrated, complained about or parodied. Taylor Swift appears or gets a shoutout — or one of her songs is busted out. Jimmy Kimmel feuds with Matt Damon. The strikes are referenced. Artificial intelligence comes up. The words "movie magic" or "magic of the movies" get a mention. Someone uses their speech — or presenting gig — to angle for their next job. Matthew McConaughey says "alright, alright, alright". Sam Rockwell dances. [caption id="attachment_945212" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kimberley French/Netflix ©2023[/caption] A Big Gulp: Drink Like You're Working Up the Courage to Make History "Destroyer of worlds" gets uttered. Someone comments that they forgot that Cillian Murphy is Irish. Kate McKinnon appears as Weird Barbie. Someone involved in Barbie other than Margot Robbie wears pink. You hear an Australian or New Zealand accent. Meryl Streep wins without being nominated. Someone makes up a new category. A joke bombs and AI gets the blame. Someone says that this is going better than the Golden Globes. 'P.I.M.P.' is played — any version. Leonardo DiCaprio's love life is mentioned. The rest of the Kens appear onstage with Ryan Gosling during the 'I'm Just Ken' performance. Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlize Theron co-present an award. A winner forgets to thank their spouse, but remembers at the last minute. Someone mentions the Dune cups. [caption id="attachment_945213" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.[/caption] A Few Mouthfuls: Drink Like You're Trying to Balance Your Personal and Professional Passions Someone ponders whether they — or Sandra Hüller — killed their partner. Wes Anderson won't accept the award for Best Live-Action Short because the stage setup isn't symmetrical. Bradley Cooper conducts the orchestra. Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix attend as Harley Quinn and the Joker. Emma Stone brings her The Curse co-star Nathan Fielder as her date. A toilet is cleaned during the ceremony. Nicolas Cage tries to swap faces with someone. Godzilla appears. Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are all seen together. Someone has a Dune cup. Anyone eats flamin' hot Cheetos. Nicole Kidman forgets how to clap again. Someone reads out the wrong winner. [caption id="attachment_945214" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Seacia Pavao / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC[/caption] As Much as You Like: Drink Like You've Been Left Behind at Christmas Getting left behind at Christmas is worked into a skit. Justine Triet becomes just the fourth woman to win the Best Director category. During Lily Gladstone's Best Actress speech, if she wins. Past Lives wins an award. An Australian wins an award. Someone exclaims "I must go punch that baby!". Messi from Anatomy of a Fall makes an appearance. America Ferrera recreates her Barbie speech. Robert Downey Jr says that he's returning as Iron Man. Greta Gerwig announces that she's making a toy franchise that started with Barbie. The 2024 Oscars will be announced on Monday, March 11, Australian and New Zealand time. For further details, head to the awards' website. Wondering where to watch this year's Oscar contenders? We've put together a rundown for both Australia and New Zealand. Wondering who'll win? Check out our predictions.
In just a few years time, the Academy Awards will notch up a century of celebrating the best movies to grace the silver screen each year. How will the acclaimed accolades build up to that point? In 2024, at the 96th ceremony, probably with a whole lot of love sent Oppenheimer's way. The J Robert Oppenheimer biopic earned the most nominations of any film from the past year. Don't be surprised if it takes home the most trophies as well, including for Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. We won't be come Monday, March 11, Down Under time. While winning an Oscar — or a swag of them — over other flicks doesn't mean that there aren't masterpieces among the fellow nominees, or among pictures that didn't even make the cut as well, Oppenheimer is a worthy favourite in a range of 2024 Oscar fields. What will it collect? What will it nab that another film should instead? Who else might win, and what? Can't they just give both Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone Best Actress Oscars? That's all part of our predictions. As we did in 2022 and 2023, we've watched everything — many of which you can too in both Australia and New Zealand right now — and done some assessing and prognosticating. Here are the results, aka the movies and folks likely to shortly be able to add "Oscar-winner" to their posters and resumes in 15 key categories. Best Motion Picture The nominees: American Fiction Anatomy of a Fall Barbie The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon Maestro Oppenheimer Past Lives Poor Things The Zone of Interest Should win: Poor Things Could win: Poor Things Will win: Oppenheimer Barbenheimer was a phenomenon before either Oppenheimer or Barbie even reached cinemas in 2023, with both arriving on the same day to create a memorable pop-culture moment. They shared a release date, and the same wave of attention — but only one can win Best Motion Picture at the Oscars. That one: Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan's biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer is a mind-blower, and one of 2023's absolute best films. It has some stunning company in this category, however, most of which would also make excellent picks for the Academy's big gong: Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, Past Lives and The Zone of Interest, for instance. Then there's Poor Things, which is pure jaw-on-the-floor viewing, and its own unique creation at every turn. It deserves to win. It could achieve the feat. Even if it misses out to Oppenheimer, it'll still be the standout feature of the past 12 months. Best Director The nominees: Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest Should win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer Could win: Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things Will win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer Despite his stunning resume, Christopher Nolan has only been nominated for the Best Director Oscar once before, for Dunkirk. If Greta Gerwig had secured a nod for Barbie, they would've faced off again; the first time, Guillermo del Toro deservedly won for The Shape of Water. Everyone knows that the Academy completely overlooked Gerwig this year — but this is Nolan's year anyway. Don't discount Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, though. This is also his second nomination, after The Favourite — and again (see: Best Motion Picture above), there's nothing like his riff on Frankenstein. Nolan and Lanthimos' fellow nominees are equally at the top of their games with their latest work, so there's no bad choice here if Justine Triet becomes just the fourth woman to win this category, Martin Scorsese collects just his second directing Oscar or Jonathan Glazer nabs his first. Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role The nominees: Annette Bening, Nyad Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall Carey Mulligan, Maestro Emma Stone, Poor Things Should win: Emma Stone, Poor Things Could win: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon Will win: Emma Stone, Poor Things Give Emma Stone an Oscar for her line reading of "I must go punch that baby!" alone. Of course, that's not the only reason that she should win the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role category for a second time — the first was for La La Land — but it's emblematic of the commitment that she gives her work in Poor Things. Her delivery, her physicality, her constant ability to surprise: now that's a performance. If only two actors could share this field, though. With heartbreaking subtlety as well as searing defiance, Lily Gladstone is exquisite in Killers of the Flower Moon — and if she wins, which she may well, it'll be wonderful. Her speech will also be the highlight of the night. She's also already the first Native American woman to receive a nomination in this field, and will keep making history if she ends up with a statuette in her hands. Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role The nominees: Bradley Cooper, Maestro Colman Domingo, Rustin Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction Should win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer Could win: NA — Cillian Murphy will win for Oppenheimer Will win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer "Dearest Cillian. Finally a chance to see you lead... Love, Chris." That's how Cillian Murphy's script for Oppenheimer came — and although this isn't the Irish talent's first-ever leading part, Christopher Nolan pushing him to the fore of his latest film will garner him an Oscar. It's remarkable casting, even given that Murphy is never less than excellent in anything that he's in, back to and preceding when 28 Days Later first thrust him to broader attention. If anyone else has their name read out, it'll be a massive shock. That's not criticism of Murphy's fellow nominees, though. Bradley Cooper directs himself to a career-best portrayal in Maestro, while none of Rustin, The Holdovers or American Fiction would be the movies they are without Colman Domingo, Paul Giamatti and Jeffrey Wright, respectively. Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role The nominees: Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple America Ferrera, Barbie Jodie Foster, Nyad Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers Should win: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers Could win: NA — Da'Vine Joy Randolph will win for The Holdovers Will win: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers Not all award-winners keep their accolades on a mantle; however, Da'Vine Joy Randolph's must be getting crowded — or wherever else she puts the trophies that she's been collecting for her soulful turn in The Holdovers. She won at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, Satellite Awards, Film Independent Spirit Awards, National Board of Review and Screen Actors Guild, plus thanks to an extremely hefty list of other critics' associations. She won't leave the Oscars empty-handed. As with Best Actor, this is a category where there's no shortage of deserving nominees, but still one certain winner. If someone else does cause an upset, Jodie Foster being rewarded for her efforts in Nyad would see her win for just her second nomination in this field — she's received the Best Actress prize twice for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs — a whopping 47 years after her first for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role The nominees: Sterling K Brown, American Fiction Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer Ryan Gosling, Barbie Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things Should win: Ryan Gosling, Barbie Could win: Ryan Gosling, Barbie Will win: Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer There's no walking out of Oppenheimer without thinking that Robert Downey Jr is going to win an Oscar for playing AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss. And no, he won't just emerge victorious because he's not playing Iron Man, although it's such a treat to see him in such a weighty part (and outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) again. That said, if you did the Barbenheimer double on the same day (Barbie then Oppenheimer is the best order), then you would've walked out of Barbie thinking that Ryan Gosling should get the Best Supporting Actor prize, too. Winning for comedy is significantly difficult at the Oscars, but his Ken almost stole Barbie from Margot Robbie. Whatever the outcome, Gosling will sing 'I'm Just Ken' at the ceremony, so he'll be up on stage at least once. Best Original Screenplay The nominees: Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari The Holdovers, David Hemingson Maestro, Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer May December, Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik Past Lives, Celine Song Should win: Past Lives, Celine Song Could win: Past Lives, Celine Song Will win: Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet and Arthur Harari That Celine Song's Past Lives only received two Oscar nominations is near unfathomable. That it might go home without any awards is as well. Song missed out in the Best Director field, but the Academy does like to use its screenwriting awards to redress wrongs elsewhere — Quentin Tarantino and Jordan Peele both have wins here, for instance. It's for the same reason that Justine Triet and Arthur Harari will likely win for Anatomy of a Fall, especially given that France didn't put the film forward for Best International Feature, so it couldn't have been nominated and obviously can't win there. It's worth noting that May December's sole Oscar recognition is in this category, and that that's a ridiculous oversight, so an award for it would also be stellar. Best Adapted Screenplay The nominees: American Fiction, Cord Jefferson Barbie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan Poor Things, Tony McNamara The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer Should win: Poor Things, Tony McNamara Could win: Barbie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Will win: Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan As noted in the Best Original Screenplay category, winners for putting pen to paper — or fingers to the keyboard — often let the Academy throw some love towards movies largely ignored elsewhere. Consequently, if Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach score victory for Barbie, that trend just might hold up again (although Barbie is particularly in with a great chance in Best Costume Design and Best Production Design). If Barbie loses, expect Oppenheimer to top it — again. Anything could succeed in this field, though, because Poor Things, The Zone of Interest and American Fiction all also boast cracking scripts. Poor Things isn't just a marvel; it's as bold as any movie could ever dream of. Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara did get nominated for The Favourite, too. Best International Feature The nominees: Io Capitano, Italy Perfect Days, Japan Society of the Snow, Spain The Teachers' Lounge, Germany The Zone of Interest, United Kingdom Should win: Perfect Days, Japan Could win: Society of the Snow, Spain Will win: The Zone of Interest, United Kingdom Finding a viewing experience that's more sublime, soulful and thoughtful than Perfect Days — not just among the nominees for Best International Feature, but in general — is a near-impossible task. Watching the Tokyo-set Japanese contender about a toilet cleaner, which is directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Submergence), is as life-changing as cinema gets. A British film set in Germany and told in German, The Zone of Interest is unforgettable in a completely different way given that it is set during the Holocaust among a family living next door to Auschwitz. It's also exceptional — and an worthy recipient of this award. Indeed, there's no wrong pick, which means that Society of the Snow could sneak in for also telling a harrowing real-life tale. Best Animated Feature The nominees: The Boy and the Heron Elemental Nimona Robot Dreams Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Should win: The Boy and the Heron Could win: The Boy and the Heron Will win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won an Academy Award in this very category. Among the American films that've made it to the final five in 2024, sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the pick of the bunch — and another spectacular achievement for the medium of animation. Twice now, watching the Spider-Verse movies means realising how live-action takes on superheroes will never be able to relay the full story. If Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse wins, that'll be an ace outcome. Going past Hayao Miyazaki's comeback The Boy and the Heron would be downright audacious at the same time, however. With his first film since 2013's The Wind Rises, the master Studio Ghibli co-founder adds one of his best movies yet to his resume. It's imaginative, heartfelt, smart, breathtaking and awe-inspiring — and that's just the beginning. Best Documentary Feature The nominees: Bobi Wine: The People's President The Eternal Memory Four Daughters To Kill a Tiger 20 Days in Mariupol Should win: 20 Days in Mariupol Could win: NA — 20 Days in Mariupol will win Will win: 20 Days in Mariupol For two years in a row, the Best Documentary Feature field will likely offer a damning indictment of Russia with its winner. Navalny did just that in 2023, with the film must-see viewing then and even more so since Vladimir Putin opponent Alexei Navalny's recent death in incarceration. With 20 Days in Mariupol, the invasion of Ukraine is in the spotlight. This is a movie that can't be unseen, nor forgotten. An on-the-ground exploration of the first 20 days of the war in the titular city, including in hospitals where victims of bombings and shellings are sent, this is as essential as documentary filmmaking gets. Fighting for freedom is also at the heart of Bobi Wine: The People's President, which could earn some love — and battling for justice similarly drives the also-excellent To Kill a Tiger. Best Original Score The nominees: American Fiction, Laura Karpman Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, John Williams Killers of the Flower Moon, Robbie Robertson Oppenheimer, Ludwig Göransson Poor Things, Jerskin Fendrix Should win: Poor Things, Jerskin Fendrix Could win: Poor Things, Jerskin Fendrix Will win: Oppenheimer, Ludwig Göransson Ludwig Göransson knows what it's like to win an Oscar thanks to Black Panther. Soon, the Swedish composer will probably know what it's like to win two. As the greatest scores do, his work on Oppenheimer turns it into the film that it needs to be but wouldn't without such influentual music — which, seeing how astounding everything else is about the movie, isn't a minor achievement. Jerskin Fendrix's tunes for Poor Things do all of that with such distinctiveness, while also feeling so deeply perfect for the feature, that it would come as a surprise to no one if he was somehow composing from within its frames. Giving this award to Robbie Robertson, who does wondrous work for Killers of the Flower Moon, would also be a touching posthumous tribute to The Band musician and regular Martin Scorsese collaborator. Best Original Song The nominees: 'The Fire Inside', Flamin' Hot, Diane Warren 'I'm Just Ken', Barbie, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt 'It Never Went Away', American Symphony, Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson 'Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)', Killers of the Flower Moon, Scott George 'What Was I Made For?', Barbie, Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell Should win: 'I'm Just Ken', Barbie, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt Could win: 'I'm Just Ken', Barbie, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt Will win: 'What Was I Made For?', Barbie, Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell First, the obvious observation: Best Original Song is Barbie's to lose. Bringing the eponymous doll to the screen notched up two of the five nominees in this category, and is almost certain to win for one of them — after they're both performed live, with Ryan Gosling singing 'I'm Just Ken', of course, and Billie Eilish belting out 'What Was I Made For?'. Expect Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell to take home the trophy, which'll be the pair's second Oscar thanks to 'No Time to Die' from, yes, No Time to Die. Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt's catchy dive into Ken's soul keeps getting stuck in the world's heads due to more than just its melody, though. And if there's a non-Barbie upset, it might come from Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson's 'It Never Went Away' from American Symphony. Best Cinematography The nominees: El Conde, Edward Lachman Killers of the Flower Moon, Rodrigo Prieto Maestro, Matthew Libatique Oppenheimer, Hoyte van Hoytema Poor Things, Robbie Ryan Should win: Oppenheimer, Hoyte van Hoytema Could win: Poor Things, Robbie Ryan Will win: Oppenheimer, Hoyte van Hoytema Again and again throughout 2024's Oscar contenders, the fields often come down to two prime candidates: Oppenheimer and Poor Things. Either winning in most categories is a magnificent outcome; when movies this superb are competing against each other, there's no such thing as a losing flick — just one that gets the trophy and one that doesn't. Hoyte van Hoytema and Robbie Ryan's lensing for this pair of pictures is exquisite in different ways; stark and precise for the former, dreamy and inventive for the latter. Oppenheimer emerged with the prize at this year's American Society of Cinematographers Awards, though, which can be a reliable guide. Don't discount Rodrigo Prieto for Killers of the Flower Moon, even if he should've been nominated for Barbie as well. Best Film Editing The nominees: Anatomy of a Fall, Laurent Sénéchal The Holdovers, Kevin Tent Killers of the Flower Moon, Thelma Schoonmaker Oppenheimer, Jennifer Lame Poor Things, Yorgos Mavropsaridis Should win: Oppenheimer, Jennifer Lame Could win: Poor Things, Yorgos Mavropsaridis Will win: Oppenheimer, Jennifer Lame It's happening again: Oppenheimer and Poor Things leading the pack, that is — and likely Oppenheimer winning. Just as with Best Cinematography, there's form for Christopher Nolan's film getting the nod over Yorgos Lanthimos' flick thanks to other accolades. Oppenheimer's Jennifer Lame won at the American Cinema Editors Eddie Awards, for instance. Thelma Schoonmaker is an editing icon, however; this is her eighth Oscar nomination for a Martin Scorsese movie, a run that spans wins for The Aviator and The Departed. And editing is so pivotal to Anatomy of a Fall in telling its story — over every other contender in this field, actually — that Laurent Sénéchal's chances can't be ruled out. The 2024 Oscars will be announced on Monday, March 11, Australian and New Zealand time. For further details, head to the awards' website. Wondering where to watch this year's Oscar contenders? We've put together a rundown for both Australia and New Zealand.
