Elsinore to The Hunger Games: 12 of the best films to watch in November

From an awards-tipped role for Andrew Scott to another Hunger Games prequel, here are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

Cliff Booth was the laidback stuntman played by Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Pitt won a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance, and Tarantino liked the character so much that he has written him a spin-off comedy-thriller. That's surprising enough, given that Tarantino isn't known for sequels – but a bigger surprise is that The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth is directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network). That makes this the first film to be scripted by Tarantino and directed by someone else since From Dusk Till Dawn back in 1996. It's set in 1977, a time when Cliff Booth is employed to clean up Hollywood's messes. His latest clients include a talent agent (Elizabeth Debicki) and a TV actor (Scott Caan) who are mixed up with gangsters. "What was once a fairytale is now a crime story," says the film's official synopsis, "a cocktail of violence, ambition, and desire that could only happen in LA."

Released on 25 November in the UK, the US and Canada

It's been more than a decade since Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen triumphed in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, but audiences are still hungry for more. The first Hunger Games prequel, subtitled The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was a hit in 2023. And now there's a sequel to that prequel, which is set 40 years after Songbirds and Snakes and 24 years before Katniss's adventures. Confused? Us too, but it'll all make sense to anyone who is already a fan of Suzanne Collins's bestselling dystopian novels. Sunrise on the Reaping stars Joseph Zada as a younger version of Woody Harrelson's character from the original films, and Ralph Fiennes as President Snow, who was played by Donald Sutherland. Other younger incarnations include Jesse Plemons as Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Kieran Culkin as Stanley Tucci's, and Elle Fanning as Elizabeth Banks's.

Released on 19 and 20 November internationally

In 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Hamlet at London's National Theatre when the pressure got too much for him, and he walked off the stage. It was his last ever theatre performance. His replacement was Ian Charleson, who had starred in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire a few years earlier. Charleson had Aids, a condition that was fatal at the time, but he was determined to take on the greatest and most demanding stage role of all before he died. In Elsinore, Charleson is played by Andrew Scott, with Olivia Colman as his doctor and Billie Piper as his best friend. Directed by Simon Stone (The Dig) and written by Stephen Beresford (Pride), the film is heart-rending yet joyous – and Scott is sure to be Oscar-nominated. "I wept like a baby," says Nick Howells in The Standard. "This is a performance of a lifetime, and one the Academy voters would need a collective bout of insanity to ignore."

Released on 20 November in the US, 25 November in France and 29 January in the UK and Ireland

Jordan Firstman, the comedian and actor best known as Charlie in HBO's I Love LA, has made one of the most acclaimed films of the year, a festival favourite with a 100% score on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews aggregator site. As well as writing and directing Club Kid, Firstman stars as Peter, a gay club promoter who organises New York's wildest parties with his business partner Sophie (Cara Delevingne). But after a decade of this drug-fuelled lifestyle, Peter is feeling old and jaded. It's then that he meets Arlo (Reggie Absolom), the 10-year-old British son he never knew he had. Wendy Ide in Screen Daily says that Firstman's "joyous, raw comedy drama" is "a crowd-pleasing triumph – an acidic, spikily funny portrait of New York's hedonistic gay scene which celebrates empathy, community and the unconditional love between a father and his son". 

Released on 4 November in France, 6 November in the US and 13 November in Canada

Disney's most recent animated films have been sequels and prequels – Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, Zootopia 2 (aka Zootropolis 2) – but the studio is having another crack at new material with Hexed. Its typically plucky heroine is Billie (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld), a suburban teenager who discovers that she was born with magical powers. She then learns the art of sorcery after she is zapped through a portal to Hogwarts – sorry, Hexe – a mysterious realm of witches and enchanted creatures voiced by Jodie Foster, Tracey Ullman, Stephen Fry and Dan Stevens. Hexed isn't the only cartoon to explore magical worlds this month, either: an animated adaptation of Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat is in cinemas on 5 November.

Released on 25, 26 and 27 November internationally

The Devil Wears Prada 2 was a box-office hit earlier this year. Will another legacy sequel to a 2000s comedy classic have the same appeal? Sixteen years after the third instalment of the Meet the Parents franchise, and 26 years after the first, Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro are back as the neurotic Greg Focker and his disapproving father-in-law, Jack. Three more of the usual suspects are back, too: Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner and Teri Polo as Greg's wife Pam. (Alas, there's no sign of Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, who played Greg's parents in the last two films.) New cast-members include Beanie Feldstein as Greg and Pam's daughter, Skyler Gisondo as their son, and, most importantly, Ariana Grande as their son's fiancée. The twist this time is that Jack welcomes the newcomer into his "circle of trust", while Greg is the one who has his doubts.

Released on 25, 26 and 27 November internationally

When Sylvester Stallone was an aspiring actor in the 1970s, he decided to write himself his dream role, so he bashed out the screenplay for Rocky in three-and-a-half days. Studio executives loved it, but they saw it as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson, rather than some unknown wannabe with a mumbly voice. But Stallone wouldn't sell out – which explains the title of this behind-the-scenes drama: I Play Rocky. Anthony Ippolito stars as the young Sly, alongside Matt Dillon as his father, AnnaSophia Robb as his first wife, and Stephan James as Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed in Rocky). Directed by Peter Farrelly (Green Book / Dumb and Dumber), the true-life underdog story is "stirring, inspiring, surprisingly hilarious and easy to love", says Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. "And refreshingly, it's not reverential or museumish, but created in the off-beat, tenacious, can-do spirit of Rocky." 

Released on 6 November in the UK, the US and Canada

Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin was nominated for eight Oscars (including four different acting awards). His new film is tipped to do similarly well, with its star, John Malkovich, being an almost-certain best actor nominee. He and Sam Rockwell play a pair of buffoonish CIA agents having a short holiday on Easter Island. Like the bickering best friends in The Banshees of Inisherin and In Bruges, they share some wonderfully eccentric dialogue and some scenes of explosive violence, but Wild Horse Nine is distinguished by its hard-edged political commentary and by Malkovich's character's regrets. McDonagh's "latest could be the best yet", says Phil de Semlyen in Time Out, "a bittersweet hangout film about lonely, crumpled men facing up to mortality, dealing with the consequences of violence and chewing the fat to outlandishly funny effect."

Released on 4, 5 and 6 November internationally

Siân Heder is the writer-director of Coda, which won the Oscar for best picture in 2022. Her follow-up, Being Heumann, is another inspiring drama featuring disabled actors. It's drawn from the autobiography of Judith Heumann, a US disability rights activist. In 1977, she and a group of protesters occupied the San Francisco Federal Building because equal rights regulations were being ignored. Mark Ruffalo plays the government official who wants to kick her out, and Ruth Madeley, a wheelchair user herself, stars as Heumann. "The remarkable thing about the British actress's performance is that she makes us embrace a character so fiery and flawed and exasperatingly unrelenting," says Steve Pond in The Wrap. "There's no question that [Heder has] pulled off another crowd-pleasing film, but the key to Being Heumann is that its importance goes beyond those audience smiles." 

Released on 6 November in cinemas in the UK, the US and Canada, and on 13 November on Apple TV+

Kate Erbland in IndieWire calls Josephine a "stunning film… [that I will] heartily recommend and never, ever watch again". That's fair enough: Beth de Araújo's drama is gripping, intelligent, groundbreaking and important, but it's not exactly a pleasure to watch. It's the story of an eight-year-old girl (Mason Reeves) who is in a San Francisco park one Sunday morning with her father (a career-best Channing Tatum). They lose sight of each other for a few minutes – and during that time the girl witnesses a brutal sexual assault. The questions now are: How will this horrific experience affect her? How can her father and mother (Gemma Chan) help her? And does she have a responsibility to testify in court? Erbland says that "De Araújo's masterful ability to interrogate tension on every level keeps the film clipping along, each turn both a surprise and an inevitability".

Released on 20 November in the UK, the US and Ireland, and on 27 November in Canada

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car was one of the sensations of the 2022 Academy Awards: it didn't just win the best international feature prize, but was nominated for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay, too. His quirky follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, made less of an impression, but his deeply humane new film, All of a Sudden, is another awards contender. Virginie Efira plays the manager of a care home for the elderly in Paris. Tao Okamoto plays a Japanese theatre director who is visiting the city. The women's friendship deepens over the course of a three-hour drama which is "a gentle and infinitely tender exercise on life and death, full of immersive, philosophical musings that wash over our souls", says Tomris Laffly in Elle. "Patient and tranquil, All of a Sudden feels like a meditation that transforms a viewer into a better version of themselves."

Released on 25 November in the US

Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller are on top form in Paper Tiger, another gritty, New York-based crime drama from James Gray (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night). Echoing events from the writer-director's own childhood, it's set in the borough of Queens in 1986. Johansson and Teller play Hester and Irwin, a happily married, successful-enough couple with two sons. Driver plays Irwin's brother Gary, a flashy ex-cop with political connections and charisma to burn. He brings his brother in on a scheme to clean up a polluted canal for a group of Russian immigrants. What with Irwin's engineering know-how and his own street-smart confidence, Gary reasons, the deal can't go wrong. But, of course, it can go very wrong indeed, what with the Russians being ruthless gangsters. "As with his finest work, Gray strikes a beautiful balance between fraught interpersonal drama and nail-biting thrills," says Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. "Paper Tiger pulsates with heart, rancour, and terror."

Released on 13 November in the US and Canada

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