Netflix
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Film, US, 2024 – out 3 July
There’s always something a little sad about faded stars trying to shoulder back into the limelight by reprising roles from their heyday. Particularly if, like Eddie Murphy, they’ve already attempted a gazillion comebacks. With 30 years having lapsed since the last Beverly Hills Cop movie, Murphy once again plays cavalier motormouth detective Axel Foley in the oddly titled Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (perhaps they wanted to remind us of the protagonist’s name?).
Plot details are scant, the story of course involving Foley returning to Beverly Hills, the location that gives this franchise a ring of fish-out-of-water comedy. There he’ll assist his in-trouble daughter (Taylour Paige) and “uncover a conspiracy” with the help of old pals Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy (Judge Reinhold).
Exploding Kittens
TV, US, 2024 – out 12 July
In the first episode of this harebrained adult comedy, God is grilled by Heaven’s board members for, among other things, accidentally blowing up “all our unicorns” and allowing the Red Hot Chili Peppers to record a Christmas album. For punishment, he’s squeezed into the body of a cat and banished to Earth.
Many of the jokes – which flow thick and fast, albeit usually far from great – involve errors in his logic and lapses in judgment; for instance God admits to phoning in his design of the woods, calling it “nature’s storage unit”. The tone is chaotic and madcap; I’ve watched the first couple of episodes and the idea of binging it sounds exhausting.
The Decameron
TV, US, 2024 – out 25 July
Netflix’s official marketing materials describe this black comedy – set in 14th century, bubonic plague-riven Italy – as “like Love Island, but back in the day”. Which is a red flag to me but at least everybody in the teaser trailer is having a jolly time dancing, drinking and having random sex. Which makes a pandemic sound fun, but during our own, real-life pandemic lockdown I only did one of those things.
Inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, about how “people can be happy, prosperous and creative even in the worst of times”, the show revolves around nobles and servants in a Florence villa having a grand old time as the rest of society is upended by the Black Death.
Honourable mentions: The Man with 1000 Kids (TV, 3 July), Barbarian (film, 4 July), Desperate Lies (TV, 5 July), Men (film0, 12 July), Titanic (film, 15 July), Cobra Kai season 6 part 1 (TV, 18 July), Find Me Falling (film, 19 July), Tokyo Swindlers (TV, 25 July).
Stan
The Eight Mountains
Film, Italy/Belgium/France, 2022 – out 17 July
One of 2022’s best and most bittersweet films squeezes the might and majesty of the Italian alps into a boxed-in aspect ratio, which first struck me as a crime against cinematic beauty. But I wouldn’t want to change a frame in this sublimely staged drama centred around childhood friends Pietro (Lupo Barbier) and Bruno (Cristiano Sassella), who reunite in adulthood (now played by Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi respectively) to hike across the mountains and work on building a house using materials Pietro’s father left for Bruno.
This construction lends itself to some obvious visual symbolism – ie creating something to stand the test of time; extending and expanding a friendship. But co-directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch don’t put things in highlighter pen and give the story an easy-going flow, the tone moving and melancholic.
The Zone of Interest
Film, Poland/UK/US, 2023 – out 6 July
With so many war films released for so many years, it’s easy to think there’s no room left to innovate. Then along comes Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning masterpiece: a loose adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel of the same name that shockingly evokes the power of unseen images, with no on-screen violence but one hell of an unsettling primary location. Well, technically that location – Auschwitz – is right over the fence.
Much of the film takes place in a spick-and-span modern home next door to the concentration camp, where the Höss family live, and where, from their garden, sounds from over the fence can be heard and a chimney from the gas chamber can be seen. Its patriarch is Christian Friedel’s Rudolf, the commandant of Auschwitz – a real person who really did live next door. This film is tough viewing but it’s superbly made, hitting us in the head before it hits us in the heart.
Shadow
Film, China, 2018 – out 8 July
Many films have wrought visual power from juxtaposing colour and monochrome, but Zhang Yimou’s sumptuously stylised ancient China-set epic is on another level. Inspired by Chinese ink brush paintings, the legendary director shot Shadow in colour but filled it with black and white sets and costumes, which has a strangely beautiful effect, drawing attention to the skin of the actors as well as other elements – brown bamboo, green leaves, oodles of blood.
The story involves a struggling king (Ryan Zheng) and a military commander (Deng Chao) conspiring against him, with one epic secret weapon up his sleeve: a doppelganger or “shadow” who is pretending to be him while the real commander hides in a cave, recovering from injuries.
Arcadian
Film, US/Ireland/Canada, 2024 – out 20 July
Every Nicolas Cage movie is a cultural event. Having written about every single one of them (and there’s more than 100!), I will not accept any opinions to the contrary. In his latest the great actor dials back his signature outre style and delivers a restrained and carefully modulated performance as Paul, the father of twin boys (Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins) who live on a farm in a post-apocalyptic US, monstered by terrible creatures. The tone is A Quiet Place-lite.
Honourable mentions: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (TV, 1 July), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (film, 1 July), The Florida Project (film, 3 July), The Killing Kind (TV, 5 July), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective 1 and 2 (film, 5 July), He Died With a Felafel in His Hand (film, 10 July), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (film, 12 July), A League of Their Own (film, 13 July), Field of Dreams (film, 16 July), A Few Good Men (film, 20 July), Robot Dreams (film, 25 July), Jerry Maguire (film, 27 July), Bend it Like Beckham (film, 28 July).
Amazon Prime Video
Those About to Die
TV, US, 2024 – out 19 July
Amazon is trying to market this ancient Rome-set series as the year’s must-watch swords-and-sandals epic, splashed with crowd-roaring spectacle and political jiggery-pokery. Which sounds exciting but I found the first episode dull and convoluted, bogged down with backstories and incessant context-setting.
The big chariot race in the first episode should’ve been all killer, no filler, but it was quite fake-looking and unexceptionally staged by director Roland Emmerich. Even Anthony Hopkins fails to impress; he plays the Roman emperor Vespasian, wheeled out to deliver lines such as “Control of our emotions is paramount” and “Friends close, enemies closer”.
Love Lies Bleeding
Film, 2024, UK/US – out 9 July
In-over-their-head crime films are rarely as spunky and sassy as Rose Glass’s love story with a twist, centred around a steamy romantic relationship between Kristen Stewart’s gym manager Lou and Katy O’Brian’s bodybuilder Jackie. A noir-ish story springs forward when Lou mentions how she wants to kill her shockingly violent and abusive brother-in-law (Dave Franco).
You might guess one of the first major plot points but you’ll never predict the wild places Glass barrels into, including a batshit crazy ending that’s one for the ages.
Twister
Film, US, 1996 – out 1 July
This 90s classic about a daring mission undertaken by a storm-chasing meteorologist (Helen Hunt) and her weatherman ex-husband (Bill Paxton) isn’t a great film. But there’s something ancient and mystical about a disaster movie in which characters look up, into the sky, knowing the air is changing and something big is coming. Here they run towards the danger rather than away from it, often with entertaining results, including the famous flying cows scene. The film has a (very) belated sequel, Twisters, that arrives in cinemas this month.
Honourable mentions: Robocop 1-3 (film, 1 July), Blow Out (film, 1 July), Tank Girl (film, 1 July), 21 Jump Street (film, 1 July), 22 Jump Street (film, 2 July), Space Cadet (film, 4 July), Creed 1-3 (film, 9 July), Rocky 1-5 (film, 9 July), Rocky Balboa (film, 9 July), Sausage Party: Foodtopia (film, 11 July), The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (film, 12 July), The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (film, 25 July).
ABC iView
I Was Actually There
TV, Australia, 2024 – out 9 July
The makers of You Can’t Ask That will be hoping they have another conceptually simplistic hit on their hands with their new show, which revisits key historic events entirely from first-hand testimony and documentary footage. The opening episode examines the Port Arthur massacre while the second unpacks the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people.
The format works well; it’s one of those shows that really comes together in the editing room. Like You Can’t Ask That, the presence of the film-makers is pushed aside and everything about this show emphasises the subjects.
The Last Daughter
Film, Australia, 2022 – out 6 July
The first memories of Brenda Matthews, a Wiradjuri woman and member of the stolen generations, were of growing up in a white family, having been placed in their custody for five years when she was a child. As an adult, she set out to investigate what happened to this family and why they ceased being part of her life.
Adapted from her memoir of the same name, Matthews and co-director Nathaniel Schmidt’s film is an elegant example of the “personal detective story” documentary, with revelations by turn warming and melancholic. In one touching scene, Matthews speaks to her well-intentioned white foster parents, one tearfully reflecting that “we thought we were the heroes … but we ended up being the villains”.
Honourable mentions: Troppo season 2 (TV, 5 July), Little J and Big Cuz season 4 (TV, 8 July), Breeders (TV, 16 July), Fifteen Love (TV, 28 July).
SBS on Demand
We Are Still Here
Film, Australia/New Zealand, 2022 – out 1 July
Timed as a response to the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, this anthology film combines eight strands from 10 directors, contemplating past, present and future. In one chapter, we’re taken to the trenches of Gallipoli to witness a bond forged between two soldiers from competing sides; in another, we’re whisked forward to a slummy, climate crisis-ravaged world, with many other pit stops and time periods in between.
As I wrote in my review, at its peak We Are Still Here “combines meditative qualities and universe-hopping scale and ambition: the Indigenous dance movie Spear crossed with the Wachowski sisters’ Cloud Atlas”.
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown seasons 1–12
TV, US, 2013-2018 – out 1 July
There’s never been a foodie like the great Anthony Bourdain, and never travel shows like the ones he helmed – this long-running series being the production he was working on when he died in 2018. The premise is predicated on Bourdain visiting places that are unknown, or in some way off the beaten track, although that concept proved flexible, mixing in adventures to far-flung locations such as those in the Congo, Madagascar and Brazil with more frequented destinations such as Scotland, Copenhagen and a tonne of US cities.
The show’s magic comes from Bourdain’s very gonzo framing, mixing personal insights with anthropological observations. And food; lots of food.
Honourable mentions: Ten Canoes (film, 1 July), Under the Banner of Heaven (TV, 3 July), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (film, 5 July), Welcome to the Dollhouse (film, 12 July) The Marvelous Mrs Maisel seasons 1 -4 (TV, 18 July), The Last Movie (film, 26 July), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (film, 29 July).
Binge
Faye
Film, US, 2024 – out 14 July
This Steven Spielberg-produced documentary about Faye Dunaway opens with the now-octogenarian actor reminiscing about her Oscar win for 1976’s Network. The director, Laurent Bouzereau, then rolls out an assortment of family, experts and acting colleagues (including Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke) to cover off on the expected talking points. You know the kind: the subject’s early years, rise to fame, most notable performances, turbulent aspects of their personal life, et cetera.
The tone is celebratory and the structure cookie-cut but the film does have an element of candidness (largely thanks to Dunaway) and, while unremarkable, explores a great career quite entertainingly.
Honourable mentions: The Day of the Jackal (film, 2 July), Blow (film, 7 July), Secrets of the Hells Angels (TV, 7 July), Relax, I’m From the Future (TV, 10 July), The Twelve season 2 (TV, 11 July), Emperor of Ocean Park (TV, 15 July), Miller’s Girl (film, 15 July).
Disney+
Brats
Film, US, 2024 – out 5 July
The term “Brat pack” refers to a consortium of US actors who reached their fame in the 1980s (a choice period for teen movies) and by the common definition starred in either The Breakfast Club or St Elmo’s Fire, both released in 1985. Think Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy. The latter directs this documentary about the group, featuring many of the Brat Packers themselves, contemplating their cultural impact and coming to terms with a label that had a damaging effect on their careers.
The New York Times critic Lisa Kennedy described the film as having a “through-line of woundedness” that’s “by turns touching, irritating and occasionally illuminating”.
Honourable mentions: Descendants: The Rise of Red (film, 12 July), Futurama season 12 (TV, 29 July).
AppleTV+
Lady in the Lake
TV, US, 2024 – out 19 July
Natalie Portman makes her debut as a TV series lead with this adaptation of Laura Lippman’s bestselling novel, described by the Independent as a “fascinating, unforgiving dive into sixties Baltimore” and “a great newspaper novel”. Portman’s Maddie reinvents herself as an investigative journalist and becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of Moses Ingram’s Cleo. I haven’t read the book but I’m aware it has a big plot development which Stephen King described as a “totally cool double twist” that he “never saw coming”.
Honourable mentions: Sunny (TV, 10 July), Fly Me to the Moon (film, 11 July), Time Bandits (TV, 24 July), Women in Blue (TV, 31 July).
