Boxing Day movies on to New Year’s Day: here’s what is heading to Australian cinemas and streaming

The summer release slate is an embarrassment of riches — with movies long-delayed by the pandemic finally reaching Australian shores.

We’re talking new features from the idiosyncratic brains of Joel Coen and Aaron Sorkin, franchise blockbusters like the new Matrix and Ghostbusters, plus movies that are already generating deserved Oscars buzz (we see you, Lady Gaga in House of Gucci).

And if you’re not able to venture out to a cinema, there’s a handful of streaming options to tide you over. We’ve got you.

Streaming now:

Don’t Look Up

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• Starring: Leonard DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande
• Director: Adam McKay (Vice; The Big Short; Anchorman)
• Run time: 2h 18m
• Noteworthy because: An epic cast takes on climate change, media and the end of the world.
• See it with: Pretty much anyone on Earth.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: An all-star Hollywood cast goes down swinging in Adam McKay’s scattershot funny but mostly sanctimonious disaster movie, which has its satirical sights set on everything from climate change denial to Trumpism to mass media delusion. DiCaprio and Lawrence are astronomers facing an uphill battle to convince the world it’s ending after they discover a comet on a collision course for Earth, tangling with an idiot President (Streep), bubbly talk show hosts (Blanchett, Perry), and the indifference of a populace more interested in celebrity gossip. McKay’s contempt for pop culture is frequently tiresome, as is his condescension toward the common folk he supposedly champions; he just doesn’t know how to let people enjoy things – even if it is their own destruction.
• Likely to make you: Amused, angry, entertained, roll your eyes – something for everyone!
• Watch it: Netflix.

Being the Ricardos

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• Starring: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy
• Director: Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s Game; The Trial of the Chicago 7)
• Run time: 2h 11m
• Noteworthy because: Oscar buzz is high for Nicole Kidman as the Australian icon transforms into television legend Lucille Ball.
• See it with: Family and friends.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: Australia’s leading redhead meets TV’s most iconic ginger as Nicole Kidman takes on 50s small-screen superstar Lucille Ball, with an exuberant Javier Bardem by her side as Ball’s husband and co-star Desi Arnaz. Aaron Sorkin’s drama goes behind the scenes of I Love Lucy for an almost comically tumultuous week: one in which the star is accused of being a communist, battles conservative suits to include her just-announced pregnancy on the show, and struggles to hold her marriage together. If there’s one thing Sorkin knows it’s the inside of a TV writers’ room, and his third feature film in the director’s chair gives us a curious glimpse at the nuts and bolts of a hit production. Kidman isn’t a physical comedian like Ball, but her interpretation of the star’s interior life gives off dramatic sparks, while Bardem is effortlessly charming – and slippery – as the driven, larger-than-life Arnaz.
• Likely to make you: Entertained, uplifted, thankful you’re not a woman in 50s America.
• Watch it: Amazon Prime Video.

In cinemas from December 26:

West Side Story

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• Starring: Ansel Ensort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Rita Moreno, Mike Faist
• Director: Steven Spielberg (Jaws; Saving Private Ryan)
• Run time: 2h 36m
• Noteworthy because: It’s Spielberg’s take on the classic 1957 musical, with a screenplay from Tony Kushner (Angels in America).
• See it with: Your lover, your gang, street ballerinas.
• Our reviewer Cassie Tongue says: The story, featuring rival gangs – the white Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks – has not aged as well as its musical heartbeat. Enter Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, 64 years after the musical’s Broadway debut, to investigate and invigorate the material with an eye for communicating context and character. The result is a gorgeous, often disarmingly gritty film that offers the best and strongest view of a story that is slowly and rightfully fading from the cultural firmament.
• Likely to make you: Tap your toes with musical delight — even as you dread what’s coming.

The Matrix Resurrections

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• Starring: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Henwick, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith
• Director: Lana Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy; Jupiter Ascending)
• Run time: 1h 53m
• Noteworthy because: It’s a return to one of the most beloved sci-fi worlds of the modern era.
• See it with: Sci-fi fans, teens, stoners.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: What if the Matrix films were, like, part of the matrix itself? The fourth movie in the iconic sci-fi series, written and directed by Lana Wachowski (minus her sibling Lilly), sees Keanu Reeves’s Neo now a game designer whose splintered reality leads him down a rabbit hole and to an all-new (or are they?) crew of humans battling a resurgent threat from humanity-enslaving machines. Guaranteed to fuel late night student philosophy debates and leave plenty of others scratching their heads, this ambitious sequel has lots of wild, dazzling ideas and a tender romance at its core, but the execution is often lacklustre.
• Likely to make you: Intrigued, thrilled, confounded – usually at the same time.

Licorice Pizza

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• Starring: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie
• Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights; Phantom Thread)
• Run time: 2h 13m
• Noteworthy because: It’s Alana Haim (from the indie band Haim) in her first acting role, alongside another first-timer who just so happens to be Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper.
• See it with: Pals, partners, colleagues.
• Our reviewer Keva York says: Like breakout hit Boogie Nights, Licorice Pizza is a kaleidoscopic tribute to 70s-era San Fernando Valley that’s steeped in film industry lore, where the players bounce off one another like cosmically charged molecules in a beaker. In the absence of Anderson’s characteristic brutality and sentimentality (tonal counterweights his work tends to swing wildly between) this exhilarating tale of youthful love and enterprise – ably shouldered by silver screen first-timers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman – showcases the writer-director’s considerable skill at yarn-spinning.
• Likely to make you: Nostalgic.

The Worst Person in the World

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Duration: 20 minutes 12 seconds20m

• Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum
• Director: Joachim Trier (Reprise; Louder Than Bombs)
• Run time: 2h 1m
• Noteworthy because: Reinsve won Best Actress at Cannes this year, and the movie is up for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.
• See it with: Friends, siblings, not mum and dad.
• Our reviewer Annabel Brady-Brown says: Renate Reinsve – the ungovernable lodestone of this shape-shifting character study – is Julie: a well-heeled, wayward 29-year-old whose capacity for reinvention is matched only by her indecisiveness, leaving a trail of discarded careers and lovers in her wake. Julie’s reckless, giddy energy drives the film, which breezes through the years thanks to knockout set pieces and a brashly picaresque 12-part structure. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt transform clichés about millennial angst, meet-cutes and the mess of falling in – and out – of love into something fresh, exciting and magnificently corny.
• Likely to make you: Laugh — and feel a smidge guilty about it.

Sing 2

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• Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Bobby Cannavale, Taron Egerton, Bono, Halsey, Tori Kelly, Pharrell Williams
• Director: Garth Jennings (Sing; Son of Rambow; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• Run time: 1h 52m
• Noteworthy because: 2016’s Sing was a smash hit – and a fave with kids.
• See it with: Young kids, U2 completists.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: The all-singing, all-dancing menagerie and their unlimited music licensing budget are back to put on another razzle-dazzle show against the odds, this time in a candy-coloured, Vegas-like metropolis. To impress a tyrannical music mogul they’ll need to lure a long-in-the-tooth lion rocker (voiced by every under-10s favourite pop star, Bono) out of retirement. As with its predecessor, this is an appealing, high-energy confection that should captivate little kids and keep gen X and millennial parents amused checking off the hits, which cover everything from Taylor Swift to Prince and – in an ego boost for its guest star – versions of U2 classics. There’s also a googly eyed iguana crashing a Lamborghini into a mansion, which seems as good a way to see off 2021 as any.
• Likely to make you: Delighted, hyperactive.

Swan Song

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Duration: 54 minutes 8 seconds54m

• Starring: Udo Kier, Jennifer Coolidge, Linda Evans
• Director: Todd Stephens (Another Gay Movie; Gypsy 83)
• Run time: 1h 45m
• Noteworthy because: The prospect of Udo Kier sharing the screen with Jennifer Coolidge is just too much to resist.
• See it with: Your hairdresser, your life partner – or both.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: The great German eccentric Udo Kier, whose career spans everything from Andy Warhol’s Dracula to My Own Private Idaho and the recent Bacurau, gets a rare lead showcase in this indie curio about a retired, once-hotshot hairdresser called upon to do the funeral hair and make-up for a recently deceased former client (yes, that’s Dynasty’s Linda Evans, making for a spectacular corpse). Kier is an endlessly fascinating presence who brings the default weight of his cinematic lifetime to the story, and there’s an unmistakably poignant sense of loss as his flamboyant hairstylist revisits his old haunts (and encounters his former protégé, played by the inimitable Jennifer Coolidge), but the film otherwise struggles to transcend its indie clichés and creaky, would-be-sassy dialogue.
• Likely to make you: Embrace your loved ones; yearn for a cut and colour.

Delicious

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• Starring: Grégory Gadebois, Isabelle Carré, Benjamin Lavernhe
• Director: Éric Besnard (The Sense of Wonder; L’esprit de famille)
• Run time: 1h 52m
• Noteworthy because: It’s the story of France’s very first restaurant – with all the on-screen delectation that entails.
• See it with: Foodies, parents, arthouse aunts, champagne socialists.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: Despite its generic, foodie-baiting title, Éric Besnard’s French historical comedy has more on its mind than mere mouth-watering money shots (though there are plenty of those). Set on the cusp of the French Revolution in 1789, when only the nobility enjoyed fine food and the poor went hungry, it’s the story of a stubborn artisan chef (the bear-like Grégory Gadebois) who gets thrown out of his royal employment and goes into rustic exile, where he rediscovers his pride with the help of an apprentice cook (Isabelle Carré) and accidentally gives birth to the modern French restaurant. This funny, nicely crafted film serves up food as the great social equaliser, cuisine as class revolt.
• Likely to make you: Hungry… for revolution.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

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• Starring: Frances McDormand, Denzel Washington, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Brendan Gleeson
• Director: Joel Coen (Fargo; Burn After Reading)
• Run time: 1h 45m
• Noteworthy because: This Shakespeare guy’s pretty good! Plus it’s the first movie Joel Coen has written and directed without his brother, Ethan.
• See it with: Friends, fiends, your high school English teacher.
• Our reviewer Annabel Brady-Brown says: Something wicked this way comes back to cinema in Coen brother Joel’s spine-tingling take on the Bard, as Denzel Washington dons the Scottish King’s blood-stained robes and Oscar incumbent Frances McDormand takes on Lady Macbeth, prowling the madness-inducing chambers of Dunsinane Castle with glee. The drama feels obsessively crafted, with suggestively artificial staging and moody lighting, while some welcome feral energy is injected by Kathryn Hunter, playing all three Weïrd Sisters.
• Likely to make you: Gasp.
• Watch it: In cinemas from Boxing Day and on Apple TV+ from January 14.

In cinemas from December 30: 

Clifford the Big Red Dog

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• Starring: Darby Camp, Jack Whitehall, Izaac Wang, Tony Hale, John Cleese, David Alan Grier
• Director: Walt Becker (Wild Hogs; Van Wilder)
• Run time: 1h 36m
• Noteworthy because: It’s a 10-foot puppy wreaking havoc in Manhattan, what more do you want from current cinema?
• See it with: Little kids, big dogs.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: Right on time for post-Christmas puppy anxiety, this sweet-natured adaptation of Norman Bridwell’s classic books (which provided the enduring Scholastic logo) bounds into cinemas much like its eponymous pooch: a lot of goofy energy in need of some guidance. In a weirdly gentrified Harlem, 12-year-old loner Emily (Darby Camp) and her fellow outcast redhead Clifford — a tiny runt who magically becomes a 10-foot terror — try to outrun a dastardly tech mogul (Tony Hale) who wants the pooch for his genetic superfood experiments. Clifford the Big Red Dog is less visually inventive than a film about a kaiju-sized canine ought to have been, and saddled with a mechanically delivered theme about embracing difference, but the image of a little girl riding a gigantic puppy across the Manhattan Bridge is as potent as any in 2021’s mainstream cinema – the power of the dog, indeed.
• Likely to make you: Want a puppy (or regret buying your kids one for Christmas).

Never Gonna Snow Again

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• Starring: Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszewska, Weronika Rosati, Agata Kulesza
• Director: Małgorzata Szumowska (Elles; Body; Mug), Michał Englert
• Run time: 1h 53m
• Noteworthy because: This enigmatic Polish fable has garnered critical acclaim.
• See it with: Arthouse fans.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: Finally, the Eastern European fable featuring a telekinetic masseuse that you’ve been waiting for. Set in a gated community of McMansions that sits like a surrealist mirage outside dour Warsaw, this unusual comedy-drama follows the mysterious Zhenia (Stranger Things’s Dr Alexei, Alec Utgoff), a Chernobyl-born personal masseuse who treks from his bleak Eastern Bloc flat to lay his healing hands upon middle-aged widowers, frustrated wives, and even horny, flatulent bulldogs. Sociopolitical metaphors abound (it’s a Polish movie, duh), as do explicit references to Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), en route to a cryptically satisfying ending that lingers.
• Likely to make you: Intrigued; strangely calm; moved to practice Tarkovsky mind-tricks.

Streaming from December 31: 

The Lost Daughter

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• Starring: Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, Ed Harris
• Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Run time: 2h 1m
• Noteworthy because: Hollywood actor Maggie Gyllenhaal impresses with her directorial debut. Her screenplay picked up the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival too.
• See it with: Other Elena Ferrante diehards – or better yet, on your own and relish the peace.
• Our reviewer Annabel Brady-Brown says: Oscar winner Olivia Colman plays a literary professor on what should be a blissful Greek island vacation in this refreshingly honest take on motherhood and its discontents – an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2008 novel of the same name. With top performances across the board, Gyllenhaal’s slow-burn psychodrama intensifies after an encounter with a young mother from Queens (Dakota Johnson) sends Colman hurtling back through old memories, reliving pains and pleasures of the past.
• Likely to make you: Call your mum.
• Watch it: Netflix from December 31.

In cinemas from January 1: 

House of Gucci

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• Starring: Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek
• Director: Ridley Scott (Alien; Thelma & Louise)
• Run time: 2h 38m
• Noteworthy because: It’s generating Oscars buzz — especially for Lady Gaga, who has already won a New York Film Critics Circle award and is nominated for a Golden Globe.
• See it with: Friends but not your partner or family.
• Our reviewer Keva York says: Lady Gaga captivates as the glamorous femme fatale at House of Gucci’s centre: the real-life Patrizia Reggiani is infamous for ordering the hit on ex-husband Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) that would see him gunned down outside his Milan office on March 27, 1995. The film, which squeezes nearly two decades of slightly fudged history into its 158 minutes, edges deliciously close to camp. But the pacing and the periodisation sometimes feel off; the choice of music ranges from uninspired to distracting. With some minor alterations, House of Gucci could’ve been a showstopper.
• Likely to make you: Suspicious.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

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• Starring: Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Celeste O’Connor
• Director: Jason Reitman (Young Adult; Juno; Up in the Air)
• Run time: 2h 4m
• Noteworthy because: This much-anticipated sequel follows events from the original Ghostbusters films.
• See it with: Young kids, families, diehard fans.
• Our reviewer Luke Goodsell says: Jason Reitman’s belated sequel to his dad Ivan’s Ghostbusters films forgets much of what made those 80s comedies so great, ditching the offbeat humour and apocalyptic dread for imitation Spielberg Americana and family-focused sentimentality. Likeably deadpan Mckenna Grace is the tween science nerd who inherits grandpa’s ghostbusting legacy when her family (including teenage bro Finn Wolfhard and mum Carrie Coon) move to Nowheresville, USA, and – wouldn’t you know it – there’s somethin’ strange in the neighbourhood. The first half is a cute, Paul Rudd-enhanced Amblin adventure but the back stretch is some of the most shameless copy-and-pasting in all of franchise cinema, while the now-customary legacy cameos feel more lifeless than any of the film’s undead.
• Likely to make you: Nostalgic for the original Ghostbusters.