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.

1. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth

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

2. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

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........

© BBC