The New Movies You Can Watch at Australian Cinemas From February 24

Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week.

CYRANO

Love can spring quickly, igniting sparks instantly. Or, it can build gradually and gracefully, including over a lifetime. It can be swift and bold like a lightning strike, too, or it can linger, evolve and swell like a gentle breeze. In the sumptuous confines of Cyrano, all of the above happens. The latest adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, this time as a musical via playwright Erica Schmidt's own song-filled on-stage version, lends its attention to two men who've fallen for the plucky Roxanne (Haley Bennett, Hillbilly Elegy) in opposite ways. Charming soldier Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr, The Trial of the Chicago 7) gets the fast-and-infatuated experience, while the movie's namesake (Peter Dinklage, I Care a Lot), a poet also handy in battle, has ached for his childhood pal for as long as he can remember.

Roxanne's two suitors make a chalk-and-cheese pair, with their contrasting approaches to matters of the heart — specifically, to winning her heart and helping ensure that she doesn't have to marry the rich and ruthless De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn, The Outsider) to secure her future — driving much of Cyrano's drama. Also present and accounted for, as all takes on the tale have included (see also: 80s rom-com Roxanne with Steve Martin, the Gérard Depardieu-starring Cyrano de Bergerac, 90s rom-com The Truth About Cats & Dogs with Uma Thurman and Janeane Garofalo, plus recent Netflix teen flicks Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and The Half of It): insecurities about appearance, a way with words and a ghostwriting gambit. Short in stature given Dinklage's casting, Cyrano can't even dream that Roxanne could love him. But he wants her to be happy above all else and knows that she's smitten with Christian, so he secretly lends his romantic rival his letter-penning abilities to help woo her by lyrical prose.

This Cyrano may have a different reason for not believing that Roxanne could reciprocate his feelings, even as she gets giddy over the correspondence he scripts for Christian — traditionally, a large nose gets in his way — but his slow-and-steady affection is especially apt in this particular film. The latest period piece from Joe Wright, it slips into the British director's resume alongside Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina, and initially seems as standard a silver-screen staging of Cyrano as a musical as he could reliably muster. But all three of those aforementioned movies are stunning in their own ways, especially the gutsy Anna Karenina. Unsurprisingly, his newest feature is as well. Doing his best work since that Tolstoy adaptation, and clearly back in his comfort zone after Pan, Darkest Hour and The Woman in the Window, Wright lets Cyrano take its time to bloom and blossom. And, when it flowers partway through, it makes viewers realise that it's been a gorgeous gem of a film all along.

Like on-screen love story, like surrounding flick, basically. That said, the routine air that initially seems to float through Cyrano's first act can't have been by design. Rather, the film winds up to its full heart-wrenching powers so patiently that it appears a tad too expected while its various pieces are being put into place — a fact hardly helped by how often this exact narrative or variations of it have made it to screens — until it's just simply and unshakeably wonderful. Wright doesn't change anything in his approach, helming a handsome, detail-laden, rhythmic piece of cinema from the outset, but the emotions that truly make the movie sing strengthen minute by minute. And yes, when it all clicks in just so, it's with its three main players literally crooning, conveying so much about their huge, swirling, all-encompassing feelings that normal dialogue couldn't have done justice to.

Read our full review.

HIVE

2021 swarmed with historic achievements for women in film, including Nomadland's Chloë Zhao becoming the first woman of colour and only second woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director, that category's nomination of two female filmmakers for the first time in its then 93-year history and the Cannes Film Festival awarding the Palme d'Or to a woman — Titane's Julia Ducournau — for only the second time. But before all of that, Kosovo-born writer/director Blerta Basholli achieved something at the Sundance Film Festival that'd never been done either: winning the US fest's World Cinema Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award and Best Director gong for Hive. It was a well-deserved feat for a movie that'd stick in memory even without such an achievement, and it's easy to see why Sundance's jurors and viewers responded with such a show of support. A powerhouse of a true tale that's brought to the screen with a devastatingly potent lead performance, Hive is simply unshakeable.

In Basholli's first feature, to peer at star Yllka Gashi (Kukumi) is to look deep into a battler's eyes. Hive directs its attention her way frequently. The also-Kosovan actor plays Fahrije Hoti, a woman who has never been allowed to stop fighting, although the men in her patriarchal village would prefer she'd keep quiet. They wish she'd just attend to her duties as a mother and do what's expected. They think she should be a silent, compliant wife, although there's a significant problem with that idea. With her husband missing for years due to the Kosovo War, she can't be a meekly obedient spouse even if that was in her nature — which it isn't — because the man she loves is gone, no sign of him either dead or alive has been recovered, and she's trapped in limbo as she waits, tries to keep caring for her family and endeavours to go on.

Those dismissive, misogynistic attitudes flung at Fahrije by her community join the litany of roadblocks that she's forced to rally against with every word, thought and breath she has. In her husband's absence, her father-in-law Haxhi (Çun Lajçi, Zana) is eager to maintain the status quo, but Fahrije has been trying to make ends meet anyway, all in a town — and amidst a male-dominated culture — that couldn't be more unsympathetic to her plight. She isn't alone, however, with many of the locale's other women also widowed due to the conflict, and similarly expected to survive without upsetting traditional gender roles. So, with the beehives that she dutifully attends to unable to keep providing enough income to pay her bills, the enterprising Fahrije and her friend Nazmije (Kumrije Hoxha, The Marriage) decide to start a female-run co-operative to make and sell ajvar, a pepper relish.

A picture of stinging resilience, unflappable fortitude and baked-in sorrow, Gashi is phenomenal as Fahrije. Not only does Hive keep gazing her way but, thanks to the raw compulsion of her performance, viewers eagerly do the same. The skill required to play stoic but also persistent, passionate and simmering with internalised pain can't be underestimated, and watching Gashi navigate that balance like it's the only thing she knows — because, for Fahrije after her husband's disappearance, it now is — is affecting on a gutwrenching level. Lived-in fury and resolve buzzes through every facet of her portrayal, all as the woman whose shoes she's walking in weathers derision, violence and attempted sexual assault for daring to dream of attempting to support herself. It comes as no surprise that various film festival prizes have been sent Gashi's way among Hive's collection of accolades, with ample merit.

Read our full review.

STUDIO 666

As the drummer for Nirvana and the frontman for Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl doesn't have many mixed bags on his resume. The music superstar has been in the spotlight for three-plus decades now, and boasts success after success to his name, complete with a list of awards and hits bound to make almost everyone else in the industry envious. But all their lives, Grohl and his fellow Foos must've dreamt of being horror movie stars — and the result, the pandemic-shot Studio 666, shouldn't entice any of them to quit their day jobs. A haunted-house horror-comedy, this rockstar lark is gonzo, gory and extremely goofy. It's a clear bit of fun for everyone involved, and it's made with overflowing love for the genre it slips into and parodies. But it's an indulgent and stretched exercise in famous folks following their whims at times like these, too. Achievement unlocked: there's Grohl's mixed bag.

Studio 666's setup revolves around Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel and keyboardist Rami Jaffee packing their bags for a live-in recording session at an Encino mansion. As the movie's 1993-set prologue shows, their temporary new home has a dark past, after the last group that inhabited the spot met bloody ends; however, ignorance is bliss for the Foo Fighters. Actually, an obligation to deliver their tenth album to their overbearing manager (Jeff Garlin, Curb Your Enthusiasm) inspires the move, as does the band's creative lull in conjuring up the record otherwise. Grohl instantly falls for the sound of the space as well, to an unhinged degree, and his bandmates begrudgingly agree to the month-long stay to make musical magic happen.

Recording an album doesn't usually spark The Evil Dead-style murderous mayhem, cursed book and all, but that's Studio 666's gambit. Its Californian abode isn't just stalked by a grisly ghoul with a love of gut-rumbling tracks — it possesses Grohl with the need to craft a killer song, length be damned, and with satanic bloodlust, cannibal cravings and prima-donna rocker behaviour. Is he monstrous about doing whatever it takes to get the tune because he's bedevilled by the house's resident evil, he's on a power trip or both? That's one of the film's big gags, and also a hefty splatter of the kind of sense of humour it's working with. Winking, nudging, satirising, and sending up fame, egos and the all-devouring nature of entertainment stardom: they're all on the movie's menu, alongside as much gleefully cheap-looking viscera as any feature can manage to splash around.

Amid the deaths by cymbal, barbecued faces and projectile-vomited guts — no, what's left of the Foos at the film's end won't be getting their bond back — there's zero doubt that Grohl and company are enjoying themselves. Actors, they aren't, but playfulness has always been part of Foo Fighters' mood. When the band began in 1994, initially as a one-man project by Grohl after Kurt Cobain's suicide the same year, it was instantly perkier and sillier than Nirvana. For the 'Big Me' music video from the group's self-titled first album, they shot an unforgettable Mentos ad parody in Sydney. With the 'Learn to Fly' clip in 1999, they satirised airline flicks — Airplane!, which was already a send-up, plus disaster fare Airport 1975 and Airport '77 — aided by Tenacious D's Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Getting so delightedly bloody might be new, but refusing to take themselves seriously definitely isn't.

Read our full review.

PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME

Will they or won't they? Do they or don't they? Every time that romance and relationships are portrayed on-screen, at least one of these questions always echoes. In the entrancingly moody and astute Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, it's the latter. Whether Hungarian neurosurgeon Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork, Jupiter's Moon) and fellow doctor János (Viktor Bodó, Overnight) will end the film in each other's company still remains a pivotal part of the plot, but if there's ever been anything between them — or if it's all simply in Márta's head — is the far more pressing concern. She's a woman smitten, so much so that she's returned home from a prestigious job in the US just for him. But his behaviour could be called vague, rude or flat-out ghosting, if he even remembers that they've crossed paths before — and, if they ever actually have.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time first introduces Márta as she's unloading her János-sparked romantic woes upon her therapist. What could've been a standard rom-com or romantic drama setup soon twists into something far more alluring and intriguing, however. Indeed, as writer/director Lili Horvát (The Wednesday Child) ponders the role of memory in affairs of the heart, her film just keeps inspiring more trains of thought. How can we ever know how someone else really feels about us? How long will any romantic emotions last, and can they last? Is it ever truly possible to trust whoever our hearts fall or, or our hearts to begin with? And, can we genuinely believe those intense memories of love that implant themselves inside our brains, refuse to leave and inspire life-changing decisions — or is love too subjective, no matter how deep, real, shared and strong that it feels?

These queries all spring from Márta's homecoming, after she meets János at a conference in New Jersey, then pledges to do so again a month later on a Budapest bridge. She shows, but he doesn't. Worse: when she tracks him down at his work afterwards, he says that he doesn't know her. While tinkering with memory is a familiar film and TV concept — see: everything from Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Mulholland Drive and Severance — Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is interested in the emotional fallout from János' claims to have zero knowledge of Márta first and foremost. Confused, unsettled and still wholeheartedly infatuated, she just can't bring herself to return stateside, and also can't get János out of her mind in general. 

Scripted with empathy and precision by Horvát, and also shot and styled like a waking dream, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time isn't easily forgotten either, siding its viewers with Márta over János. This is a haunting and beautifully acted psychological drama that lays bare just how all-encompassing, obsessive, intoxicating and mind-melting love can feel, all as it plays with recollection and its ability to shape our perspectives. The tone is loaded but uncanny — sweet but uncertain, too — and Horvát has fun getting both emotional and cerebral while having her characters cut open brains. The latter happens literally and yes, there aren't many movies quite like this one. Cinema doesn't boast too many performances like the exceptional Stork's, either, which draws viewers into every feeling, question, and pang of both intense affection and shattering uncertainty that flows through Márta.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time screens in Melbourne from February 24, and opens in Sydney and Brisbane from March 17.

FORTUNE FAVORS LADY NIKUKO

Japanese animation has given cinema-goers a wealth of gifts, Studio Ghibli's enchanting on-screen magic across nearly four decades sitting atop the pile, and the heartwrenching Your Name and Weathering with You ranking high among them as well. But films that serve up gorgeous snapshots of coastal living and cuisine are finding their own anime niche, too, with Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko following Ride Your Wave — and proving as much of a delight. It isn't quite another romantic tale about matters of the heart, hope and H2O, as Josee, the Tiger and the Fish also was, but only because it focuses on an 11-year-old and her mother. The same swells of emotion still wash through, all in an eye-catchingly animated story set in a northern Japanese harbour town — complete with cooking up a storm, and making illustrated dishes spark hunger pangs.

The film's title refers to the outgoing, happy-go-lucky, houseboat-dwelling Nikuko (voiced by Shinobu Ôtake, Shadowfall), who works as a bar waitress in the sleepy locale she now calls home, and is also never without a smile. But as Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko's introductory sequence explains — adopting a more stylised, less naturalistic type of imagery than the bulk of the movie in the process — her bad romantic luck, including the debts she's amassed from her past loves, has played a large part in her current fate. She still works hard six days a week, never complains, and is instantly recognisable around the village. The whip-smart, serious and introverted Kikuko (model and flutist Cocomi), Nikuko's daughter, doesn't share the same attitude, however, and wants nothing more than to blend in where her single mother stands out.

Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Kanako Nishi, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko keeps its dramas grounded, as Kikuko navigates the usual struggles of school — being forced to pick which classmates to spend lunchtime with, for instance — and the standard preteen experience that is pushing away from your parents. Indeed, no one is spirited away, tasked with saving the world or left communing with water in a grief-stricken state here, but that doesn't make this slow-building film any less resonant. As well as being deeply instep with the woes of adolescence, and of the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, this affecting slice-of-life feature also laps up simply stepping into its characters' lives and their surroundings. Where watching Weathering with You felt like taking a walk through Tokyo, for example, viewing Fortune Favours Lady Nikuko whisks the audience away to its peaceful seaside setting. 

Filmmaker Ayumu Watanabe also directed 2019's Children of the Sea, another recent Japanese gem and fellow Studio 4°C release that proved sweet and smart, and similarly looked a treat —  and he's as skilled at immersing viewers into heartfelt stories rendered through animation as his internationally better-known compatriots. There's also a sense of calm to his films that's both soothing and bewitching, as vibrant as they always look. In fact, the only misstep that Watanabe and screenwriter Satomi Ohshima (Our 30 Minute Sessions) make with Fortune Favours Lady Nikuko stems from the easy jokes made about the movie's namesake's size, which visibly contrasts with her reed-thin daughter but didn't need to also be the butt of several verbal gags. The tone is still loving, and one of the feature's big thematic threads does involve seeing past the obvious — especially given two people who are painted as such opposites sit at its centre — but it's still a rare grey cloud in an otherwise warm anime sky.

If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on October 7, October 14, October 21 and October 28; November 4, November 11, November 18 and November 25; December 2, December 9, December 16 and December 26; January 1, January 6, January 13, January 20 and January 27; and February 3, February 10 and February 17.

You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as The Alpinist, A Fire Inside, Lamb, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Harder They Fall, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, Halloween Kills, Passing, Eternals, The Many Saints of Newark, Julia, No Time to Die, The Power of the Dog, Tick, Tick... Boom!, Zola, Last Night in Soho, Blue Bayou, The Rescue, Titane, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Dune, Encanto, The Card Counter, The Lost Leonardo, The French Dispatch, Don't Look Up, Dear Evan Hansen, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Lost Daughter, The Scary of Sixty-First, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, The Matrix Resurrections, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Worst Person in the World, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, House of Gucci, The King's Man, Red Rocket, Scream, The 355, Gold, King Richard, Limbo, Spencer, Nightmare Alley, Belle, Parallel Mothers, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Belfast, Here Out West, Jackass Forever, Benedetta, Drive My Car, Death on the Nile, C'mon C'mon, Flee, Uncharted and Quo Vadis, Aida?.