10 of the best films to watch this SeptemberFrom Robert Pattinson in a grim drama about a reality TV show, to witchy sequel Practical Magic 2, starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, here are the films to watch this month.

Primetime to Practical Magic 2: 10 of the best films to watch this September.

Key points

• When someone in the audience leapt on stage and stabbed him 15 times, on 12 August 2022, the author Sir Salman Rushdie was giving a talk in New York state.
• Back in 1998, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock starred in Practical Magic as Gillian and Sally, two sisters who were additionally witches.
• Published on 11 September in the US, the UK and Ireland, and on 18 September in Canada and Australia.
• Published on 9 September in the US, 10 September in Australia and 25 September in the UK.
• From 2004 to 2007, each episode of the programme revolved around sting operations in which men were tricked into thinking that they were session children for sexual encounters.

From Robert Pattinson in a grim drama regarding a reality TV show, to witchy sequel Practical Magic 2, starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, here are the films to watch at the cinema this month.

Zach Cregger's Weapons was one of 2025's most acclaimed films, so in some ways it's a surprise that he's followed it up with a video game spin-off. But the writer-director informed Empire that he has produced "a Zach Cregger movie that just happens to be a Resident Evil movie". Far spookier-looking than the previous Resident Evil films, most of which were directed by Paul WS Anderson, this blood-drenched reboot focuses on a medical courier, Bryan (Austin Abrams). He has the job of delivering an organ to a hospital in the game's main location, Raccoon City – but the city's inhabitants are turning into ravenous zombies. "Bryan is very much an everyman who happens to be burdened with this sacred mission that's going to take him into the heart of everything, " notes Cregger. "It's kind of like Frodo going into Mordor."

Meanwhile, the year of Robert Pattinson continues. As well as appearing in The Odyssey, The Drama and the forthcoming Dune: Part Three, the British actor is starring in Primetime, a fact-based drama regarding a controversial reality television show, To Catch a Predator. From 2004 to 2007, each episode of the programme revolved around sting operations in which men were tricked into thinking that they were session children for sexual encounters. They would then be confronted by the journalist behind the sting, Chris Hansen. Pattinson plays Hansen, and he is already being tipped as an Oscar contender – even if Hansen himself would have chosen a different actor for the role. "Years ago I had crafted a screenplay and thought Denis Leary would be a good guy to play me, " he remarked on the Serialously podcast.

Published on 25 September in the US and Canada.

Ethan Hawke follows his Oscar-nominated turn in Blue Moon with a particularly different kind of period drama. Set in Oregon during the Great Depression, The Weight stars Hawke as a single father who is unfairly sent to a labour camp. If he doesn't obtain home shortly, he will lose custody of his young daughter, but the devilish warden (Russell Crowe) promises to free him on one condition: he and a team of other prisoners have to carry knapsacks full of stolen gold bricks nationwide. "Hawke is mesmerising, " notes Chase Hutchinson in The Wrap. Though it's the way he grounds it that makes you feel every setback, "The action scenes are tense and well-executed. Hawke makes you purchase into every beat, whether haunting or thrilling as the film grows more violent. You can't look away for even a second."

Back in 1998, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock starred in Practical Magic as Gillian and Sally, two sisters who were additionally witches. When the film came out, audiences weren't exactly spellbound, but the dark supernatural romance gradually built a cult after. "I don't know any woman who's watched the movie and not wanted Gillian's red hair, Sally's cosy yet witchy outfits, or the beautiful Victorian house by the ocean that the family lives in, " wrote Tove Danovich in Country Living lately. Now, 28 years after the first film, a sequel is finally here. Once again, it's adapted from a novel by Alice Hoffman, and once again Kidman and Bullock have the lead roles. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest are back as their aunts, and Joey King and Maisie Williams join the cast as Sally's daughters, two young women who learn regarding the family curse: any man they fall in love with will die shortly afterwards.

For context, the latest cartoon from DreamWorks Animation (The Wild Robot, Dog Man) is a psychedelic fantasy adventure – but it's additionally the first major Hollywood film to draw on Filipino folklore. Grammy-winning singer H.E.R. And Liza Soberano provide the voices of Jo and Raissa, two schoolgirls who become best friends in the Philippines in the 1990s. Years afterwards, Raissa is concerning to emigrate to the US, but before she can go, the two girls fall through a portal into a magical world of demons, witches and monsters. And if they stay there too long, their memories of each other will fade away. "So many times, young girls in movies and TV are portrayed as always talking about boys, or they're princesses, " the film's co-director, Joel Crawford, remarked in Variety. "I want my daughters to see themselves up on the screen, whether it's in terms of culture, in terms of ethnicity, but also how they are as people."

Michael Biehn co-starred in The Terminator and Aliens, two classic science-fiction thrillers in which a rugged heroine fought an almost indestructible foe. And now he's appearing in a film which he notes deserves to be compared to them. Published by A24, and directed by Adam Wingard (The Guest, Godzilla vs Kong), Onslaught stars Adria Arjona as a single mother who lives in a desert trailer park with her daughter. When three genetically modified super soldiers escape from a local secret research facility, her experience as an army sniper comes in handy. "I'm telling you without a doubt, this is the best movie I've been in since Aliens, " remarked Biehn in Daily Dead. "This is going to blow the doors off of any expectations of what anybody has seen on the major screen in a long time. This is like pedal-to-the-metal action, horror, violence. It is particularly, highly exciting, and it's fast and furious."

Good news for fans of wilderness survival adventures: there are two of them in cinemas this September. As well as The Weight, there is Heart of the Beast, starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Ayer. Pitt plays a wounded Special Forces veteran who has to trek back to civilisation after a plane crash in a remote Alaskan forest. Luckily for him, he is accompanied by his faithful military dog, Odin. Ayer remarked in GQ that Pitt is on career-best form: "A constant theme from people who have seen the film is just how raw and believable and profound his performance is." But Uber, the mountain-rescue dog who plays Odin, may be even better. "The one spoiler I'll forward right now is, don't worry, the dog lives, " reveals Ayer. Regardless, he notes "I've shown the film to a few of my roughneck, tough-guy friends, and they're crying at the end of this. I've never had a film move an audience so powerfully."

8. Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie.

When someone in the audience leapt on stage and stabbed him 15 times, on 12 August 2022, the author Sir Salman Rushdie was giving a talk in New York state. But Sir Salman wouldn't be silenced. He wrote a memoir regarding the horrific attack and his recovery, and now the book has been turned into a documentary by Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side). Using intimate footage shot by Sir Salman's wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Gibney looks back at the ordeal, explores the author's life and philosophy, and recalls how the publication of his 1988 novel, Satanic Verses, led to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini calling on him to be killed. "Throughout the film, three things stand out, " notes Amber Wilkinson in Screen International, "the love between Rushdie and Griffiths; the resilience they had in the face of his catastrophic injuries; and the author's humanistic attitude and sly sense of humour, which have categorically survived intact."

Published on 17 September in the US and 30 September in the UK.

Step aside, Robin Hood. The Uprising is a medieval epic regarding English rebels fighting back against the greedy aristocracy, but rather than rehashing old myths and legends, Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips, The Bourne Supremacy) has dramatised the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381. Andrew Garfield plays the Robin Hood-alike hero, a poverty-stricken farmer known only as Ploughman. After his family is wiped out by the plague, he leads a resistance movement against the soldiers of the teenage King Richard II (Woody Norman). "It was sort of the first moment in our history when the common man and woman took centre stage, " remarked Greengrass in Residents, "and history was no longer going to be regarding kings and queens and the rich and powerful. It was going to be regarding what ordinary folk wanted and their grievances and their dreams and hopes."

Hope is this year's must-see monster movie – although it's additionally a gritty western, a grisly horror film, a gonzo action comedy, and a cosmic science-fiction saga. Written and directed by Na Hong-jin, it features Hwang Jung-min as the tough sheriff of a small Korean coastal town. Within minutes of the opening scene, he is on the trail of a giant ogre which is laying waste to everything in its path. And the chaos doesn't let up for another two and a half hours. Hope is "a full-on, unapologetic action movie packed with breathtaking and breathless car chases, horse chases, foot-chases and monster chases", notes John Bleasdale in Sight and Sound. "Brilliantly crafted and beautifully shot, we can only hope this wild film gets the follow-up it so richly deserves."

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