Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video’s New Zealand library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.
See also
* All new movies & series on Prime Video
* All new streaming movies & series
* The 50 best movies on Amazon Prime Video Australia
Top picks: TV
The Girlfriend: Season 1 (September 10)
You’ve heard of ‘boy moms’, right? Mothers who are perhaps a tad too obsessed with their strapping young sons, sometimes taking on more of an Oedipal girlfriend-esque role in their smothering ways. Robin Wright plays just such a matriarch in this psychological drama, based on the novel by Michelle Frances.
When her precious son brings Olivia Cooke’s mysterious Cherry home, Wright is rattled, and begins to suspect this harlot stealing away her kid could be a master manipulator. I can’t wait to see both actors sparring over one guy, and to find out whether this mama bear is just being paranoid, or whether there’s truly something darker afoot.
Top End Bub (September 12)
Co-written by and starring the luminous Miranda Tapsell, rom-com Top End Wedding saw a pair of loved-up city-slickers head up north to tie the knot and reconnect with family. In this episodic follow-up, it turns out you can take the girl outta the NT: but you can’t take the NT outta the girl.
Tapsell’s hotshot lawyer Lauren and her husband Ned (Gwilym Lee) are shocked to be made the guardians of plucky youngster Taya, when Lauren’s sister tragically passes. Back in Darwin and struggling with their sudden parenthood, the pair barely have time to acclimate to their wild new life. A supporting cast of stellar First Nations, national treasure talent and that gorgeous Top End setting will make the bumpy road that bit more smooth, though.
Gen V: Season 2 (September 17)
Going back to school sucks, but it’s worse for the super-powered students of Godolkin U—in the first season of this spin-off of The Boys, a brutal version of the dweebs-vs-jocks dynamic was made apparent, as well as a shadowy conspiracy tied to the same evils that have evil ubermensch Homelander ruling the franchise’s world with an iron fist.
The show’s group of frenemies are split now, with Cate and Sam wrongfully celebrated as heroes and Marie (who has the gnarly ability to manipulate blood) cast as an outsider. Gross, horny and incisive in its understanding of systems of education and oppression, Gen V feels a bit more exciting to watch of late than the supe satire from which it originated.
Top picks: Movies
Poor Things (September 7)
I have a hot take for you, fresh out the oven: Emma Stone is underrated. I know for her young age she’s already (arguably) won too many Best Actress Oscars, I know everyone generally likes her, I know that given her productive muse-auteur collaborations with director Yorgos Lanthimos we’ve seen her freaking out in his films approximately once a year for the past three years in a row. What can I say: I reckon, as an actor and a budding producer, she’s really making moves that might only be properly noticed once she’s years older.
For instance, she is undeniably terrific in Lanthimos’ twisted Frankenstein riff, playing a naif coming to terms with her body and the brutality of a surreal, Victorian-esque world under the (questionable) care of Willem Dafoe’s mad scientist and Mark Ruffalo’s horny aristocrat. We get to watch Stone’s protagonist slowly evolve, from animalistic youth to self-possessed womanhood, and while I didn’t love the film as a whole, her ambitious and dynamic performance is legend-certifying stuff.
The Monkey (September 21)
Life’s a bitch and then you die. If you’re an unfortunate character in Osgood Perkins’ horror-comedy, based upon a short Stephen King story, you might die in a spectacularly bitchy, embarrassing way: sliced up at Teppanyaki, trampled by wild horses while camping, set on fire and impaled by fish hooks.
The film stars double the Theo James, as a pair of brothers still haunted by the titular knick-knack of doom, which claimed both of their parents and can’t seem to stay gone. It’s a shaggy tale with plenty of style, and a nice message of accepting death’s inevitability so you can live life to the fullest.
All titles arriving on Prime Video New Zealand in September
September 1
The Runarounds: Season 1
September 2
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
Hotel Transylvania
Hotel Transylvania 2
Screamboat
The Shallows
September 3
Ice Road: Vengeance
September 5
Gone Girl
September 7
Poor Things
The Radleys
September 9
The Dry
September 10
The Girlfriend: Season 1
September 12
Top End Bub: Season 1
September 14
In the Lost Lands
September 16
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
Jerry Maguire
Joker
September 17
Gen V: Season 2
September 18
The Chosen: Seasons 1-4
September 21
The Monkey
September 22
Can You Keep A Secret
September 24
Hotel Costiera: Season 1
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
September 26
Ghaati
September 30
28 Days Later
The Bodyguard
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Guns Up
Kong: Skull Island
The Meg
The Notebook
Superman Returns
Wonder Woman 1984
