From Musicals to Musicology: The Summer’s Best Cinema

Oscar season is upon us – along with outdoor cinema season and the lure of long, warm evenings in a deckchair – and the first tranche of Hollywood hopefuls is hitting Australian screens. From weighty period dramas to savvy comedies and extravagant musical franchises, these are some of the summer’s most anticipated productions.

Plus, until December 31, Mastercard is giving filmgoers the chance to win big prizes – from a year’s worth of coffee and parking to clothes or movies – when you Click to Pay with your Mastercard at participating merchants and by entering the online competition. So, whether you’re rolling out a picnic blanket at the Moonlight Cinema or escaping into the air conditioning of a darkened theatre, your next night at the movies is also a chance to win. 

Sentimental Value

This moving ensemble film, the latest from Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier, took out the 2025 Cannes Grand Prix with its depiction of Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a filmmaker charting a comeback through thorny emotional territory. Gustav tries to cast his estranged daughter, the stage actress Nora (Renate Reinsve), in a new production that he hopes will not only reunite his family but revive his dormant career. Resentful of her father’s neglect, Nora refuses – so Gustav turns to Hollywood starlet Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), sparking fresh recriminations from his daughter. It’s a finely crafted, Bergman-esque drama about history, family and cinema, layered with flashbacks and nested narratives that touch on intergenerational trauma and the Nazi occupation of Norway. Reinsve, who had a breakout role in Trier’s celebrated 2021 romance, The Worst Person in the World, is tremendous as the nerve-jangled Nora, and the screenplay by Trier’s long-time collaborator Eskil Vogt deals with the film’s weighty subject matter with a deft touch and a dash of black humour. In cinemas from December 25, 2025.

Eternity

In this amiable rom-com from Irish writer-director David Freyne and production company A24, the afterlife is personally customisable – as Larry (Miles Teller) discovers when he chokes on a pretzel. He disembarks in limbo, envisioned as a busy train terminal, as a young man – the age at which he was happiest in life – and is met by a salesman-like afterlife consultant (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), ready to guide him to his final destination.

Depending on the deceased’s preferences, the options include Beach World, Casino World, Studio 54 World, Marxist World, Men Free World (these last two are booked out), or even Spice World. Larry is soon joined by his wife, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) – but there’s a hitch. Joan’s first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), a Korean War pilot who died just two years into their marriage, has been waiting for her, tending the bar at the train station tavern. Paradise becomes purgatory as Joan is forced to navigate this excruciating love triangle, choosing between the unfulfilled promise of young love and the dependability of a decades-long marriage. In cinemas from December 4, 2025.

The History of Sound

This polished, restrained drama by South African director Oliver Hermanus – based on two short stories by screenwriter Ben Shattuck and beautifully shot by cinematographer Alexander Dynan – follows the fleeting love affair of David (Josh O’Connor) and Lionel (Paul Mescal), who meet as students at the Boston Conservatory in 1917.

The pair bond briefly over a shared love of folk music – a tradition that falls outside their  syllabus – but are separated when David is conscripted into the Great War. Two years later, they reunite for a research project, travelling on foot through the backwoods of Maine, New England, to collect field recordings of rural folk songs with an Edison phonograph that preserves the music on wax cylinders.

While the film – which premiered at Cannes, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or – is slow-paced, with a heavy patina of melancholy and regret, these stunning excavations of spirituals, love ballads and work songs are worth the price of admission alone. In cinemas from December 18, 2025.

Hamnet

Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Hamnet – the award-winning 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell that delves into the death of William Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son and imagines the playwright sublimating his suffering into the great tragedy Hamlet – seems destined for Oscars glory. In particular, Jessie Buckley – who plays the boy’s mother, and the film’s central character, Agnes – has drawn acclaim for her revelatory performance at the film’s climax.

Zhao is known for finely observed films set in rural America, such as Nomadland and The Rider, that draw heavily on the lives of their casts of non-actors. While this period piece is a new format for the Beijing-born director, it benefits from her keen, empathetic eye as it follows William (another appearance from Paul Mescal) and Agnes from their courtship and early domesticity through to their separate anguish at the loss of a child.

Co-written by Zhao and O’Farrell, and with Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson in supporting roles, the film is less a historical portrait than a meditation on family, grief and the act of artistic creation. In cinemas from January 15, 2026.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Mastercard. Mastercard Click To Pay offers consumers a better checkout experience. From November 24-December 31, 2025, if you make a qualifying Click to Pay with your Mastercard at Event Cinemas or any other participating Click to Pay Merchant, and enter here, you could stand the chance to win a range of exciting prizes, including 20 Event Cinemas Prize Packs for you and a friend valued at $6,250 each - that's a year's worth of movies, popcorn, and choc tops. T&Cs apply. Must be 18+. Ends: 11:59pm AEDT December 31, 2025. Limit one entry per transaction and max one prize per person (excluding SA). Retain proof of purchase (see T&Cs). NSW Authority: TP/03815. ACT Permit No. TP25/ 02825 SA Permit No. T25/ 2143.