Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson surveys each month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.
Top Picks: TV
Ramy: Season 3 (September 30)
It might be returning on the last day of September, but Ramy is first choice viewing on Stan. With co-creator Ramy Youssef in the title role, it’s a comedy both funny and deeply thoughtful that draws its humour from the contradictions and chaos that perpetually shadow Ramy Hassan, a first-generation Muslim-American Jersey bro, observant son, and wayward worker.
Each season of the show has dug down deeper in Ramy’s life, adding illuminating bottle episodes for family members and placing higher stakes at play. The second season ended with him making a mess of his marriage on the day it occurred, setting up these new episodes as life-changing.
Passport to Freedom: Season 1 (October 1)
A ratings hit in Brazil last December, this English-language thriller is based on the historic story of Aracy de Cavalho (Sophie Charlotte). A diplomatic clerk assigned to the passport department of the Brazilian consulate in Hamburg just after the Adolf Hitler’s Nazis came to power in 1930s Germany, Aracy began to issue doctored exit visas to the country’s increasingly trapped Jewish population as systemic discrimination turned into the first stages of the Holocaust. She would save numerous lives, while hiding her actions from colleagues and increasingly suspicious Nazi officials.
Gangs of London: Season 2 (October 20)
It’s the day action aficionados have been waiting for. The first season of this serpentine crime drama, set in present-day London as the ruling crime family is challenged by both the police and multiple adversaries, featured a handful of fight scenes that were as breathtaking and intricate as anything the genre had to offer.
Primary credit went to co-creator Gareth Edwards, the Welsh filmmaker responsible for The Raid movies, his ethos here centred on Sean Wallace (Joe Cole), a son trying to maintain his family’s criminal cartel after the murder of his father. This is bruising viewing.
One Of Us Is Lying: Season 2 (October 21)
We’ve come a long way from The Breakfast Club. Detention truly sucked in the first season of this American high school thriller, where five students went into the classroom and only four came out after the school’s digitally savvy gossip died in mysterious circumstances. The narrative in this American series has morphed—with many twists—from who did it to who knows they did it. Erica Saleh’s show is more serious than many of its contemporaries, opting for a touch of bleakness over blithe misdeeds. Making new episodes sustain the story will be a challenge.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
Mass (October 20)
A chamber-piece drama mostly set in a single room, the directorial debut of actor Fran Kranz (Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods) was one of the best reviewed films at the 2021 Sundance film festival. Set six years after that tragic American staple, the school shooting, it charts the meeting between the parents of the student who killed schoolmates and then himself (Ann Dowd and Reed Birney) and the parents of one of his victims (Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs). The quartet speak about the unspeakable, with a focus on the personal over the political, putting the audience in the hands of an exceptional cast.
The Great Beauty (October 22)
One of the great studies of ennui in Italian cinema, Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 drama follows an ageing columnist, Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), who discovers that the elegantly jaded pleasures of his life can be rattled by the passing of time and memories of youthful loss.
Awake at dawn after another party, Jep wanders the streets of Rome, acknowledging the quiet mysteries he encounters, and the film ignores easy moments of change or scripted turning points. Even as he remembers his early promise, Jep knows that the life he lives will not change, and Sorrentino’s masterful film ruminates on that unspoken stasis to heartfelt effect.
My Brilliant Career (October 26)
Having previously been digitally restored by the National Film and Sound Archive, Gillian Armstrong’s breakthrough 1979 debut feature has not lost any of its cultural relevance or telling insight. With a magnetic energy, Judy Davis plays Sybylla Melvyn, a young woman coming of age in a time and place—Australia at the beginning of the 20th century—where the choices available to her have to be wrestled back from others.
Sybylla’s hopes of a creative career and the courtship of a young man, Harry Beecham (Sam Neill), are finely intertwined, and the film memorably captures a life up for grabs while also blazing a trail for subsequent generations of female filmmakers.
All titles arriving on Stan in October
October 1
Passport to Freedom: Season 1
Deliver By Christmas
Double Holiday
It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas
If I Only Had Christmas
Let It Snow
A Guide to Dating at the End of the World
October 2
Brazil 2002
Invictus
October 3
Haunting In Connecticut
You Came Back
October 4
A Piece of My Heart
The War of the Buttons
October 5
Brooklyn’s Finest
Reflection
October 6
Love Triangle: Season 1 Premiere
The Silence of Water: Season 2
Home Economics: Season 3, Episode 3
Abominable and the Invisible City: Season 1 Premiere
October 7
Walker: Season 3 Premiere
Pixels
Mistletoe Match
The Christmas Retreat
Six Degrees of Santa
A Christmas in Switzerland
A Royal Christmas Match
A Christmas Masquerade
A Candlelit Christmas
Ghosts of Christmas Past
October 8
2012
Other People
October 9
House Of Wax (2005)
October 10
A Perfectly Normal Family
The King’s Choice
October 11
All American: Season 5 Premiere
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Ties
October 12
Taste
October 13
Season Of The Witch
Closeness
October 14
Stuart Little
Stuart Little 2
The Good Doctor: Seasons 1-4
October 15
Aquaman
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Batman Begins
October 16
Mystery of Manon (FKA Presumed Guilty): Season 1 Premiere
October 17
Behind The Candelabra
Just Like Our Parents
October 18
Death At A Funeral (2010)
Silent Night
October 19
Señorita 89: Season 1 Premiere
Dreamcatcher
The Bélier Family
October 20
Gangs of London: Season 2 Premiere
Mass
In & Out
October 21
One Of Us Is Lying: Season 2 Premiere
Terminator Salvation
Lost and Found Music Studios: Season 1
October 22
Rogue (2007)
The Great Beauty
October 23
The Angry Birds Movie
October 24
The Other Side of Hope
God Willing (Se Dio vuole)
October 25
Blair Witch (2016)
Black Souls
October 26
My Brilliant Career
Almost Famous
For Life: Seasons 1-2
October 27
The Inside Game: Season 1 Premiere
October 28
Bride & Prejudice
Charlie’s Angels (2000)
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
October 29
#Unfit: The Psychology Of Donald Trump
Ju-On (The Grudge)
Ju-On 2 (The Grudge 2)
The Dark Crystal
Labyrinth (1986)
October 20
Law Abiding Citizen
A Faithful Man
October 31
Loveling
Tremors
See also
* Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Australia
* Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime
* Best new movies and TV series on Disney+
* All new streaming movies & series
