Check out what's showing at cinemas across the region...

CAUGHT STEALING CERT tbc
Released Friday 29 August
Starring Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Vincent D’Onofrio, Liev Schreiber
Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

High-school baseball phenomenon Hank Thompson no longer plays the sport he loves, but life is otherwise pretty sweet; he’s got a great girl, tends bar at a New York dive, and his favourite team is making an audacious underdog run at the pennant.

But then things go suddenly and dramatically awry. When his punk-rock neighbour Russ - played by former Dr Who star Matt Smith - asks him to take care of his cat for a few days, Hank suddenly finds himself caught in the middle of a motley crew of threatening gangsters who all want a piece of him. Problem is, he has absolutely no idea why. As Hank attempts to evade their ever-tightening grip, he’s got to use all his hustle to stay alive long enough to find out… 

Based on the 2004 novel by Charlie Huston.

THE ROSES CERT tbc
Released Friday 28 August
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Allison Janney, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon
Directed by Jay Roach

Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. 

But beneath the façade of their seemingly ideal life, a storm is brewing. As Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s flourishes, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment ignites...

The film is based on Warren Adler’s 1981 novel, which was previously adapted for the big screen in 1989 under its actual title of The War Of The Roses. The movie starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the titular couple, with Danny DeVito in a supporting role and also taking the directorial reins.

CHRISTY CERT 15 (135 mins)
Released Friday 5 September
Starring Sydney Sweeney, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry, Ben Foster, Tony Cavalero
Directed by David Michôd

Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney piled on the pounds - more than 30 of them in total - to take on the role of celebrated boxer Christy Martin. Along the way, she also traded her famous blonde locks for Martin’s curly brown hair. 

“The film is about Christy as a young gay woman in small-town West Virginia in the 1990s,” Australian auteur David Michôd, who helms the film, told Deadline. “She came from a relatively conservative family and wasn’t allowed to be who she was, so she used boxing as a vehicle to express herself and her rage. She had to make some dangerous and fundamental compromises in her life, the most important of which was marrying an incredibly dangerous man.”

THE CONJURING: LAST RITES CERT 15 (135 mins)
Released Friday 5 September
Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ben Hardy, Beau Gadsdon, Elliot Cowan, Madison Lawlor
Directed by Michael Chaves

Franchise veteran Michael Chaves here takes the helm for his fourth Conjuring movie. Last Rites is the ninth entry in the series, with Conjuring-universe films having so far brought in a total box-office return in excess of a staggering $2billion.

Based on real events, the new movie sees Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reunite for one last case as real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. 

“It was one of the last cases that [the Warrens] actually did,” Chaves explained to IGN, “so chronologically, we’re staying true to that. And the other reason was that it was just a return to the haunted-house experience, which is something that I was really excited about. Obviously, in the series and the spin-offs, we’ve explored some other things, but the idea that we would be returning to that for the final chapter felt right and really exciting. Beyond that, it’s one of [the Warrens’] most intense cases.” 

HONEY DON'T! CERT 15 (88 mins)
Released Friday 5 September
Starring Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Kristen Connolly, Lena Hall
Directed by Ethan Coen

Having last year directed lesbian road movie Drive-Away Dolls - his first film without the collaboration of brother Joel (excluding a documentary) - Ethan Coen here returns with its sequel. 
Black comedy Honey Don’t! focuses on the character of tough-talking private-eye Honey O’Donahue as she delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church...
The film - the second in Coen’s intended ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy’ - was selected to be shown out of competition in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes earlier this year, receiving a standing ovation. 
The critics have been somewhat less effusive in their reviews, however, in some quarters damning it with faint praise. The general sense is that Honey Don’t! is a movie which they desperately wanted to really, really like, but just couldn’t quite manage to. 

ON SWIFT HORSES CERT 15 (119 mins)
Released Friday 5 September
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, Diego Calva, Sasha Calle, Don Swayze
Directed by Daniel Minahan

Young love, sexuality and identity are among the themes explored by director Daniel Minahan in this reasonably well-received film, set in the American West of the 1950s. 

Muriel and her husband, Lee, are beginning a bright new life in California after he returns from the Korean War. But their newfound stability is upended by the arrival of Lee’s charismatic brother, Julius, a wayward gambler with a secret past. 

A dangerous love triangle quickly emerges. When Julius takes off in search of the young card cheat he’s fallen for, Muriel’s longing for ‘something more’ propels her into a secret life of her own, gambling on racehorses and exploring a love she never dreamed possible.

DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE CERT tbc (119 mins)
Released Friday 12 September
Starring Joanne Froggatt, Paul Giamatti, Joely Richardson, Michelle Dockery, Dominic West, Hugh Bonneville
Directed by Simon Curtis

The well-drawn cast of characters inhabiting everybody’s favourite English stately home make a welcome return in this latest cinematic offering.

The third and final film in the series follows the Crawley family and their staff into a new era. But the decade of the 1930s brings with it a fresh set of problems, as the family faces financial trouble, and the entire household grapples with the prospect of social disgrace. At the centre of it all is Mary, who finds herself caught up in a public scandal caused by her divorce...

By and large, the previous two Downton movies met with a favourable response from film critics and dedicated fans alike - and there’s every reason to imagine that this final entry will receive a similarly positive reaction.

THE LONG WALK CERT 15 (108 mins)
Released Friday 12 September
Starring  Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang
Directed by Francis Lawrence

Fans of Netflix’s South Korean survival drama, Squid Game, may well find plenty to enjoy about this film adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian horror novel. 

With the United States ruled by a totalitarian regime, a group of 100 young men take part in an annual walking contest - and the stakes couldn’t be higher: anybody who fails to maintain a speed of at least four miles per hour risks execution. The contest ends only when a single walker remains alive...

An interesting titbit connected to the original novel: although Stephen King published it (under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) in 1979, he had actually started writing it in the mid-1960s - a fact which makes it his first-written novel, though not his first-published. Carrie, hitting bookshelves in 1974, holds that particular honour.

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY CERT tbc (139 mins)
Released Friday 19 September
Starring Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Hamish Linklater, Lily Rabe
Directed by Kogonada

“It’s kind of a love story, but it’s not a very typical one,” says Colin Farrell, in talking to Collider about his latest film, the romantic fantasy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. “It’s about two people who find themselves at an emotional crossroads, where they’re not living terrible lives, but life hasn’t really worked out for them... And they begin to find that, through each other, as a result of this one night where they go on this fantastical journey... [they] get to take accountability for times where they hurt people.” 

Co-starring Margot Robbie in her first film since the Oscar-winning Barbie, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is helmed by South Korean director Kogonada, who came to the project with two critically acclaimed movies already on his CV: 2017’s Columbus and 2021’s After Yang. 

“This film is really about reckoning with your past in order to find the possibility of love in the present,” he explains to Vanity Fair. “What do you have to reckon with in order to truly connect with other people? And I think as you get older, you realise your past has everything to do with how you understand love in the present.” 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER CERT 12a (170 mins)
Released Friday 26 September
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Chase Infiniti
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Details about One Battle After Another’s storyline are thin on the ground at the time of writing. 
Aiming simultaneously to be an action movie, black comedy and political satire, the film focuses on a group of ex-revolutionaries who reunite to confront the threat of an evil enemy resurfacing after 16 years.
The movie has been very loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, a 1990 novel which One Battle After Another’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson, had at one point considered adapting. Instead - as he admits in Esquire - he “stole the parts that spoke to me and just started running like a thief”...

The film marks Anderson’s first project since 2021’s Licorice Pizza, for which he received three Oscar nominations. It’s also the first time the director has worked with Leonardo DiCaprio, who recently admitted his biggest regret was turning down the chance to star in Anderson’s hit 1997 movie, Boogie Nights.