From the third instalment of the Avatar phenomenon to a Timothée Chalamet-starring awards contender – these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

Adapted from a graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg, which was inspired in turn by One Thousand and One Nights, Julia Jackman's new film is a stylishly camp grown-up fairy tale. Maika Monroe plays Cherry, the frustrated wife of a despicable aristocrat (Amir El-Masry). A handsome visitor (Nicholas Galitzine) bets Cherry's husband that he can seduce her within 100 nights – and if the visitor succeeds, she will be executed. Luckily, her suspicious maid (Emma Corrin) is on hand to distract her by telling her stories, including one featuring a woman played by Charli XCX. "Jackman's film is a joyous testament to independence, creativity, and the enduring necessity of stories," says Leila Latif in IndieWire. "It proves that happy endings need not conform to centuries-old formulas, and that love, be it romantic, platonic, queer, or fleeting can be as complex and wondrous as any of the tales we tell."

Released on 5 December in the US

The New Yorker is a venerable institution – a magazine that publishes everything from cartoons to short fiction to hard-hitting book-length investigations: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood ran over four issues in 1965. And at a time when so many magazines are closing, and so many of us turn to our phones for quick hits of entertainment, The New Yorker is still going strong. When its editors were preparing its 100th anniversary issue earlier this year, an Oscar-winning documentarian, Marshall Curry, went behind the scenes to learn its secret. Julianne Moore narrates the resulting film, while Jesse Eisenberg, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jon Hamm are among the fans who are interviewed. "David Remnick, Pulitzer Prize winner and New Yorker editor since 1998, is the documentary's amiable guide on what is a multi-tiered journey through the magazine's past and present," says Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter. The film is "entertaining and justifiably pithy… [but it] should have been a six-hour docuseries. The magazine and its occasionally complicated legacy deserve nothing less."

Released on 5 December on Netflix internationally

After 30 years of acting in films, Kate Winslet has directed one as well. It was scripted by her own son (with Sam Mendes), Joe Anders, and together the Winslets have attracted a staggering cast. Helen Mirren stars as a family's beloved matriarch, who is dying in hospital at Christmastime. It's time for her squabbling daughters, played by Winslet and Andrea Riseborough, to put aside their differences, and for various other family members, played by Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Toni Colette, to say their goodbyes. Baz Bamigboye says in Deadline that Winslet "brings an assured touch" to her weepy comedy drama. "It's about one particular family but I found it to be a universal piece that sublimely echoes a sense of life as it's being lived. There are several moments in Goodbye June that I will forever hold as keepsakes."

Released on 12 December in the US and the UK, and on 24 December on Netflix internationally

In January 2024, a five-year-old Palestinian girl was in a car in Gaza when her cousins, aunt and uncle accompanying her were all killed after coming under fire from Israeli tanks. The Palestine Red Crescent Society managed to speak to Hind Rajab on the phone, and they tried to keep her calm while they arranged for an ambulance to reach her. Recordings of their phone conversations caused outrage when they were released on social media. Now these same recordings are the basis of a uniquely powerful drama directed by Kaouther Ben Hania. It's set entirely in a Red Crescent office, but while the volunteers who speak to Hind Rajab are played by actors, her own voice comes from the actual recordings, which makes the heart-wrenching horror of the situation almost unbearable. "Discomfiting and emotionally devastating in the extreme," says Nick Howells in The Standard, "Tunisian director Kaouther Ben........

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