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
Last Light
Lost’s leading man, Matthew Fox, returns to the screen for this near future thriller, where he plays a scientist who becomes enmeshed in a global crisis when sudden failings in the international oil supply leads to society’s collapse.
Directed by Dennie Gordon (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), the limited series co-stars Joanne Froggatt (Downtown Abbey) as the wife of Fox’s character, who must keep their ailing son safe when his desperate investigation separates them, and Tom Wlaschiha (Game of Thrones, Stranger Things) as a British spy also seeking to avert the end of the world.
American Gigolo
“Exploit existing I.P.” is definitely a Hollywood mantra, but who had a streaming sequel to Paul Schrader’s coolly oblique 1980 thriller about a male escort (Richard Gere) who slowly realises that he’s being framed for murder on their 2022 bingo card? Ray Donovan showrunner David Hollander is behind the limited series, but the real cause for optimism is the casting of Jon Bernthal as the now released Julian Kaye, who returns to a radically different Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.
The character actor just gave one of the performances of the year in Binge’s We Own This City, playing a charismatic and corrupt Baltimore cop, and right now you’d back him to the hilt to pull off any role he takes on.
The Serpent Queen: Season 1
Fresh from Harlots and Tales of the Walking Dead, the gifted English actor Samantha Morton plays Catherine de Medici in this serpentine period drama, which will map out the improbable rise to power of the Italian noblewoman who married into France’s royal family in 1533 (her uncle was Pope at the time). She overcame a husband who ignored her and considerable adversity to become the country’s unofficial monarch and guiding voice. The international co-production’s supporting cast includes Game of Thrones alumni Amrita Acharia and Enzo Cilenti, in what shapes up as a story of intrigue, female agency, and court diplomacy.
Bali 2002
Just over 200 people, including 88 Australians, tragically died in a series of terrorist bombings that shattered the familiar tourist veneer of Indonesia’s Bali Island in October 2002. Stan’s new original limited series charts both the bloody attacks and the official response that followed, as well as the enduring grief and personal crises that fell upon the survivors.
The ensemble cast includes Richard Roxburgh (Rake), Rachel Griffiths (Total Control), and Sean Keenan (Barons), but perhaps the most notable inclusion are storylines and actors that add the equally important experience of the local community to the show. Telling the fact-based story through a different lens gives it a chance to encompass more than just the Australian experience.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Rightfully nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Academy Awards, Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic’s coruscating drama is dedicated to, “the women of Srebrenica and their 8,372 killed sons, fathers, husbands, brothers, cousins, neighbours…”
With Jasna Duricic as the titular translator, who is torn between responsibility and terror, alerting the world and not averting her own gaze, the film recreates the events that led to the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, when Serbian troops murdered Bosnian men and boys supposedly under the protection of United Nations peacekeepers. It is a taut, chilling, anguished verdict—difficult to watch, impossible to forget.
Layer Cake
In retrospect it was an auspicious collaboration: British producer-turned-filmmaker Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class, Kingsman: The Secret Service) made his directorial debut with this adaptation of a hardboiled London crime novel, and in the lead role as a calculating drug dealer looking to get out of the tainted trade alive he cast the fast-rising Daniel Craig, who was a few years shy of gaining the James Bond mantle. With Sienna Miller as a femme fatale, the film is stylish but emotionally bleak—a bloody cosmic joke where you have to fight your way to the top so you can actually step aside.
Zodiac
Based on the case of the still-unknown serial killer whose horrific murders terrified San Francisco in the late 1960s and 1970s, David Fincher’s magisterial thriller is a study of obsession as a force so strong it warps those trying to solve the case.
Told with chilling, stark minimalism, the narrative follows a newspaper crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), and, as his unofficial sidekick, cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose efforts to decode the Zodiac Killer’s letters are mirrored by the investigation of two police detectives, Inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). An immaculately recreated period piece, the movie is a procedural where the trail goes cold, but those who’ve gazed on the crime scenes and read the letters can only keep going.
All titles arriving on Stan in September
September 1
Trauma: Season 1
Blind Ambition
TikTok, Boom: Season 1
Love You Like That
Darklands
Beat
September 2
The Mighty Ones: Season 2 Premiere
Tag
Littlest Pet Shop: Season 4
Scooby-Doo! Shaggy’s Showdown
My Girl (1991)
My Girl 2
September 3
Hitch (2005)
Snatch: Seasons 1-2
Snatch (2000)
September 4
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: The Flash
September 5
The Nun
Games People Play
September 6
Weight of Gold: Premiere
Wild Things
September 7
The Dark Knight Rises
The Predators
September 8
Last Light: Season 1
Floodland: Season 1 Premiere
The Next Step: Season 6 & 7
The Next Step Live: The Movie
Taking the Next Step: Season 1 & 2
September 9
Get Smart
Smallfoot
Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright
The Smurfs 2
The Smurfs
Smurfs: The Lost Village
September 10
American Gigolo: Season 1 Premiere
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game Of Shadows
Batman: Hush
September 11
The Serpent Queen: Season 1 Premiere
Lego DC Shazam!: Magic And Monsters
September 12
Vladimir Putin: Power, Greed, Obsession
Quo Vadis, Aida?
A Gun In Each Hand
You’re Killing Me Susana
September 13
The Queen Of Versailles
Layer Cake
Three Floors
A Horrible Woman
September 14
Shooter: Seasons 1-3
Supernatural: The Animation: Season 1
September 15
Flee
Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon 2
Lethal Weapon 3
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies
Justice League Vs. Teen Titans
Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
September 16
The Sect: Season 1
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019): Season 1
A Life In Ten Pictures: Season 1
17 Again
Lego Scooby-Doo!: Haunted Hollywood
Hotel Transylvania
Hotel Transylvania 2
September 17
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
National Lampoon’s European Vacation
Batman Vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
September 18
A Gentle Creature
What Will People Say
September 19
David Beckham: Infamous
Zodiac
Angels Wear White
A Woman’s Name
September 20
When We Were Kings (1996)
The Shallows
Any Day Now
Like A Cat On A Highway
September 21
New Amsterdam: Season 5
Licence To Wed
September 22
Home Economics: Season 3
Pan
Bad Santa
Maid In Manhattan
September 23
A Star Is Born
Earth To Echo
I Promise You Anarchy
September 24
Crazy Rich Asians
Batman: The Killing Joke
September 25
Bali 2002: Premiere
The Third Murder
Rosemari (Framing Mom)
September 26
Nascar: Lead Legacy
Daddy Day Care
Casablanca Beats
Made In Italy (2018)
September 27
Machete (2010)
Cocaine Cowboys
Sparrows
September 28
Ghosts: Season 3
My Son
September 29
Amsterdam Undercover: Season 2
Home Economics: Season 3, Episode 2
Elysium
September 30
Ramy: Season 3 Premiere
Paddles The Huggable Polar Bear: Season 1 Premiere
We Hunt Together: Season 1
The Legend Of Tarzan (2016)
The To Do List
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
