From Superman to I Know What You Did Last Summer – these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

Best known as the horror auteur who chilled audiences with Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster moves on to state-of-the-nation satirical comedy with his latest film, Eddington. The title is the name of a small desert town in New Mexico where the sheriff, Joaquin Phoenix, is at loggerheads with the business-minded mayor, Pedro Pascal. Their feud has something to do with the sheriff's wife, Emma Stone, but it spirals out of control in 2020 when the town is hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. Aster "transforms everyday American insanity into one of the most artistically complete and compulsively watchable doom-scrolls of the year", says Tomris Laffly in Elle. "It's insightful, gloriously bonkers, and often very funny… both the definitive Covid movie and a modern-day Western of sorts, culminating into a superbly directed and gradually darkening finale."

Released on 18 July in the US and on 24 July in Australia

What is it about US Presidents becoming action heroes at the moment? In April, Viola Davis was a gun-toting, butt-kicking POTUS in G20. Now, Heads of State has John Cena as a President who used to be a Hollywood actor, and Idris Elba as the UK's Prime Minister. When their plane is shot down over hostile territory, they have to battle their way back to civilisation, with some help from a supporting cast that includes Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jack Quaid and Paddy Considine. Directed by Ilya Naishuller, this action comedy probably won't win many Oscars, but Naishuller's last film, Nobody, had some of the best fight scenes in years, and Cena proved in The Suicide Squad that he knows how to send up his tough-guy image. "This one was pretty much just me getting beat up, and that is my forte," Cena said on ExtraTV. "We have a little introduction as to who these people are, and then once it jumps off, you are on the edge of your seat the whole time. Once it goes, it doesn't stop."

Released on Prime Video on 2 July internationally

Allison Brie and Dave Franco, a real-life married couple, star in this icky horror drama as another couple, Millie and Tim, who may be a little too closely entwined for their own good. They move from Melbourne to the Australian countryside, where Millie is starting a teaching job. After Tim drinks some stagnant water in a mysterious cave, he can't bear to be apart from Millie, but when he touches her, their bodies start to fuse together. Written and directed by Michael Shanks, Together currently has a 100% fresh rating on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews round-up site – but whether it would work as a date movie is open to debate. "This delightfully unhinged spin on the body horror joint… should leave audiences yelping and tittering in equal measure," says Kate Erbland in IndieWire. "It's hard not to get pulled into the spectacle, stuck to the story, really connected to this crowd-pleasing (and -screaming) little ditty of a midnight treat."

Released on 30 July in the US, Canada and the UK, and on 31 July in Australia

The debut film from writer-director RT Thorne is a dystopian survival thriller set in Canada. Animals have been wiped out by a pandemic, and food is scarce, so if you are lucky enough to have your own farm, you might be inclined to build a high fence around it, and do whatever it takes to keep gangs of hungry strangers outside. The farmers on this particular property are people of colour – Danielle Deadwyler plays a matriarch with a military background, and her husband is played by a First Nations actor, Michael........

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