Sarah Ward

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.