New movies: quick links
With less than half the movie-going year left, we take a look at the biggest films still waiting in the wings for your popcorn-fed delight.
Lesbian Space Princess/Went Up the Hill (11 September)
We’re making like Together and splicing these two Australian movies into one, simply because they deserve the Barbenheimer portmanteau treatment, #Lesbianupthehill. Obvs the correct watch order is Sydney-based filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven’s haunted tale featuring a possessed Dacre Montgomery and Viky Krieps first, for the serious chills, then spill into Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs’ gloriously silly queer romp.
Kangaroo (18 September)
One week later, this gorgeous family-focused Australian film opens. Directed by Kate Woods of Looking for Alibrandi fame, it’s based on a true story and casts Holding the Man star Ryan Corr as a disgraced TV presenter who finds his feet in the Red Centre when a First Nations girl (newcomer Lily Whiteley) recruits his help rescuing orphaned joeys. The stacked cast also includes Deborah Mailman, Rachel House and Wayne Blair.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (25 September)
Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary featuring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as hapless heavy metal rockers crowns pretty much every list celebrating the faux documentary sub-genre, rightly so. Joining 28 Years Later in the ranks of long-delayed sequels, it reunites the original gang (minus Mick), promising to do for ageing rocker reunion gigs what the original did for possibly impending breakups.
Him (2 October)
While it’s unclear if this film exists in a cinematic universe shared by Alex Garland’s Men, it is a creepy horror movie skewering toxic masculinity. Directed and co-written by Justin Tipping, it casts I Know What You Did Last Summer’s Tyriq Withers as an aspiring footy player who heads to a remote compound to train under Scary Movie star Marlon Wayans’ legendary quarterback. Also look out for Presence actor Julia Fox.
The Smashing Machine (2 October)
Debuting at the Venice Film Festival in September, this one sees Wayne Johnson, AKA the Rock, tackle larger-than-life wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Previously the subject of a 2002 doco, this time he’s given the biopic treatment by writer/director Benny Safdie, one half of the sibling duo who stressed us the fuck out with Uncut Gems. This won’t be an easy ride, either, but Devil Wears Prada diva Emily Blunt is along for the ride.
Tron Ares (9 October)
Speaking of long-delayed sequels, Steven Lisberger’s original computer game-world-bound dystopia, Tron, came out in 1982. Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner returned 28 years later – spooky – for Tron: Legacy. This belated trilogy finale (??) is much speedier, a mere 15 years on. Bridges is back, Boxleitner is not, but Gillian Anderson softens the blow. We just want to know if it’s wise to bring the action out of the game into our world, with Jared Leto involved?
Anemone (16 October)
In the great tradition of film folks awkwardly returning after needlessly announcing their ‘retirement’, Phantom Thread star and three-time Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis is back a zippy eight years later to front his son Ronan’s debut directorial feature. Co-written with his dad, he casts the older Day-Lewis as a soldier with PTSD who suddenly reappears at his brother’s house (Sean Bean) after going off-grid in the Irish wilderness.
After the Hunt (16 October)
I’ll get shot for saying I thought both Challengers and Queer were absolute rot, but let’s just say the increasingly prolific Luca Guadagnino has reeled me back in with a cast that includes Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Chloë Sevigny and Ayo Edebiri. Also debuting at Venice, the psychological drama casts the Pretty Woman star as a college professor accused of sexual abuse.
Bugonia (30 October)
Also coasting into Venice, nothing can stop Greek Weird Wave king Yorgos Lanthimos. Muse Emma Stone, who nabbed an Oscar for her turn in Poor Things as well as appearing in The Favourite and Kinds of Kindness, plays a CEO kidnapped by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis in this conspiracy theory comedy, loosely inspired by Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet, that may or may not involve an alien invasion.
Die, My Love (6 November)
Unlike Luca and Yorgos, Scottish queen Lynne Ramsay does not rush films. With only 2019 short Brigitte to satiate us, it’s been eight long years since her last feature, the Palme d’Or-nominated You Were Never Really Here. This latest one stars Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and The Batman’s Robert Pattinson as a young couple who move to rural Montana to raise a family, only for motherhood to drive her to the edge.
Jimpa (6 November)
You can catch South Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde’s Sundance-debuting drama Jimpa early, as the opening gala of the Adelaide Film Festival in October. Drawing from Hyde’s own story, it casts Olivia Coleman as a mother not unlike her own, who takes her non-binary teen (played by Hyde’s real-life child, Aud Mason-Hyde) to meet her gay father in Amsterdam, in the process stirring up unfinished business.
Wicked for Good (20 November)
Did it have to be split into two parts, both longer than the musical based on Gregory Maguire’s book, in turn based on L. Frank Baum’s fairy tale and MGM’s 1939 film adaptation? Remains to be seen, but director Jon M. Chu’s opening chapter was magical, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande flying high. Here’s hoping some of the show’s icky ableist stuff has been retconned, as Marissa Bode’s Nessarose deserves better.
Avatar: Fire and Ash (18 December)
At this stage, any grumbling that James Cameron’s highest-grossing film of all time had no cultural impact is null and void. A supposedly unlucky 13 years later, and folks flooded in to see The Way of Water all over again, securing the third all-time box office spot. They’re already burning up for the threequel, Fire and Ash, which once again turns homegrown hero Sam Worthington into a big blue warrior alongside Zoe Saldaña.
The History of Sound (18 December)
Finally washing up on our shores after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival way back in May, South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus’ swooning film is set in the aftermath of the Great War and brings two of the internet’s most shipped boyfriends together. Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor play music students who meet at the Boston Conservatory, fall into a situationship and traverse New England, recording folk songs for posterity
Sirât (25 December)
If you missed this capital letters CINEMATIC epic at the Sydney or Melbourne film festivals, then trust us, Óliver Laxe’s Moroccan desert-set trial is exactly what you need to destroy Christmas cheer in the very best, bone-crunching, soul-torturing, astounding visions way. The gist? A father and his young son look for their missing daughter/sister at a rave as the world teeters on the edge. It does not go well, but maybe hope remains?
