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Netflix just rolled out its massive movie lineup for the rest of the year and, with so many new titles to keep track of, we decided to break down which new movies are worth checking out each month.

September kicks us off with a bit from every genre — drama, fantasy rom-com, an action-heavy assassin flick with Woody Harrelson on board — and it all looks good. Keep an eye out for big names like Michael Keaton and Melissa McCarthy, whose emotional drama The Starling drops at the end of the month.

Here are the best new movies coming to Netflix this September.

(For the best new shows coming to Netflix this month, head here.)

Afterlife of the Party (streaming 9/2)

Victoria Justice stars in this rom-com fantasy about a young woman whose birthday ends in the worst way possible: with her death. As unlucky as that sounds, she’s also given a second chance to right her wrongs on Earth, make peace with her family and friends, and try to earn a better afterlife than the one originally planned for her.

Worth (streaming 9/3)

Stanley Tucci and Michael Keaton star in this drama based on the true story about a fairly dark time in our nation’s history. Keaton plays an attorney appointed by Congress to mediate financial negotiations for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. It’s his job to figure out how much each life lost during the terrorist attacks is worth, and get the families of the victims to agree on that price tag. The only problem? His “formula” can never really measure the true cost of human life, something Tucci’s character — a community organizer mourning the death of his own wife — tries to teach him. It’s a searing drama with a terrific cast.

Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali (streaming 9/9)

Kenya Barris produces this documentary examining the legendary friendship between two icons of the Civil Rights Movement. Comprised of never-before-seen archival footage and featuring interviews from relatives such as Ali’s younger brother Rahman Ali and Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz, the doc investigates the bond and influence these two men shared.

Kate (streaming 9/10)

Fresh off her kick-ass role in Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays another assassin with a score to settle in this stylized action flick landing on the streaming platform at the beginning of the month. Winstead plays the titular Kate, a preternaturally gifted hitwoman who is poisoned after a job gone bad and has just 24 hours to exact revenge on her killers before she dies. Woody Harrelson plays her mentor of sorts and Miku Martineau plays a young girl she befriends on her mission of vengeance.

The Starling (streaming 9/24)

Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, and Kevin Kline star in this heartbreaking drama about moving on from loss after tragedy strikes. McCarthy and O’Dowd play a married couple who lose a child and cope with their grief in very different ways. As O’Dowd checks into a facility to fight his depression, McCarthy’s character strikes up an unusual friendship with a therapist-turned-veterinarian (Kline) and an even stranger feud-ship with a starling battling for dominion over her garden. Obviously, with McCarthy on board, there’s bound to be humor here, but judging from the trailer, you should probably bring some tissues just in case.

Not long after his spectacular Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year, it was revealed that The Weeknd’s performance would be the subject of a Showtime documentary called The Show. Now, we’ve gotten our first look at the film via a new trailer.

The minute-long video includes footage of and soundbites from people, who are mostly not The Weeknd, working behind the scenes of the production. The Show is set to premiere on September 24.

Todd Kaplan, VP of marketing at Pepsi, previously said of The Show, “The Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show is undoubtedly the world’s biggest stage, producing the most viewed and talked about moment in music every single year. The pressure to deliver an iconic, memorable and entertaining performance is felt well beyond the artist, as there are a number of people — behind the scenes — who are vital to its success. With our new documentary coming to Showtime, we are taking fans on the emotional and thrilling journey of what it takes to make the biggest show of the year — with the added complexity of doing so amidst a global pandemic. With Jesse Collins and a number of super-talented creatives at the helm, The Show chronicles all the drama and hard work that goes into successfully pulling off a show of this magnitude.”

Check out the trailer above.

Pushing back against boundaries has, like it or not, defined how the media treats Halsey. In the past two or three years, descriptors like “Rebel” and “Firebrand” feature prominently in their profile headlines. If they feel in any way misunderstood, Halsey only uses these disconnects to fuel their creative ideations, which are boundless and hugely satisfying on their masterful fourth album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.

Clearly, the most ambitious project Halsey’s done to date, IICHLIWP is not only a singular look at the manifold feelings around pregnancy and new motherhood, it is a fascinating departure from what their pop peers are doing. Like, say, Billie Eilish and Lorde, who’ve also released new albums this summer, Halsey is happier than ever. They’re a new mom; they’re in a healthy partnership, they’re financially independent and fully established in their career. (“I’m getting arguably, the first break I’ve had in seven years. I’m finally taking care of myself, eating my vegetables and getting sleep and I’m pregnant and everything’s amazing and then out comes this,” they recently said.)

And yet, these personal achievements have not inspired Halsey to adopt an attitude of self-love, a sunnier sound, or vibe around a maypole with the other unplugged proselytizers. Contrarily, Halsey tackles a combination of major life events — pregnancy, partnership, career success — with a clear-eyed refusal to be boxed in by whatever idea of happy endings these things preclude. In other words, Halsey is no pregnant Katy Perry attempting to embody Mother Earth in a field of flowers. What they explore is much more nuanced, and, ultimately, truthful.

Halsey has never been your typical pop-music celebrity. Not that industry types haven’t tried to slot them into the mainstream: since launching seven years ago, Halsey has been paired with tons of zeitgeisty producers, collabs, and movie placements. On their 2014 debut Badlands, Halsey (named for the Brooklyn L stop, which just also happens to be an anagram of their first name, Ashley) worked with buzzy names like Lido, The Futuristics, and Aron Forbes. Their darkened, electropop melodies earned needle-drops on big-franchise features like Fifty Shades Darker and The Huntsman: Winter’s War. Later, their household name status amplified through even higher-profile collabs with The Chainsmokers, Sia, Greg Kurstin, and Benny Blanco.

Despite the lack of Grammy recognition, this is the sort of golden-child career trajectory that, on the surface, would make any music hopeful green with envy. And yet: Halsey is not — and never has been — the sort of unoffensive performer to just show up, do their job, and keep their opinions to themselves. (As many other female pop stars can attest, opinions tend to hurt rather than help a performer’s career; just look at how long it took to Taylor Swift to admit her political leanings.)

One of the things I’ve always admired about Halsey, who answers to she/they pronouns, is that they have an uncompromising interest in feeling heard. (As I noted above, in the entertainment industry, having opinions often translates to “being difficult.”) Last fall, knowing full well the bridge-burning consequences, Halsey called out the alleged insider-trading dynamics within the Grammy nomination process, writing on social media that nominees are selected based on “behind-the-scenes private performances” and other “bribes.”

They’ve openly talked about subjects like their experience with endometriosis, miscarriage, sexuality, wanting to be a mother, and the public judgment they faced around trying to get pregnant in their mid-20s. “I got treated like a teen mom a lot of the time, you know what I mean?” they recently told Zane Lowe about being pregnant at 26. “Where people were like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so young, and you have so much to do in your career, and you’re not married.’” (This dynamic, of course, has had its downsides — Halsey has gotten into trouble in the past for lobbing poorly worded insults at publications who’ve negatively reviewed their work.)

Featuring assistance from Nine Inch Nails production titans Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who imbue IICHLIWP with a focused, industrial punch, Halsey creates an expansive but never cluttered 13-song universe, experimenting with sound and genre while editing with thoughtful precision. Pop, R&B, rock, punk, electronic — all genres are represented across IICHLIWP. Opener “The Tradition” is a cinematic, piano-led ballad about a woman who “got the life that she wanted, but now all she does is cry.” “Girl Is A Gun” is reminiscent of 2012-era Grimes with its high-definition, ultra-slick electronica beat. The rushing, Avril Lavigne-sounding “You Asked For This” is a stunning portrait of the 20-something pop star as a new mother, turning a common victim-blaming phrase on its ear and using it as a framework to discuss coming-of-age confusion.

Will society let a new mother be sexual AND a parent? Will they understand that parents also used to be children themselves, and probably the vast majority of new parents feel childlike terror at becoming somebody else’s parent? “You know I’m still somebody’s daughter, see / I spilled the milk you left for me,” Halsey cries, after namedropping grown-up things like “picket fences/file taxes.”

Indeed, just because a pregnant woman wrote and recorded IICHLIWP doesn’t mean they don’t experience love and lust in equal measure. The Dave Grohl-drummed “Honey,” another pop-punk banger, eroticizes another woman (“she stings like she means it / She’s mean and she’s mine”). “Darling,” featuring delicate guitar-work from Lindsey Buckingham, is a heartfelt thank you to their partner, with whom they’ve made a home after “a couple years of living on the road.” Album single and epic standout “I Am Not A Woman, I’m A God” is almost like a spiritual cousin to Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” pointing out at-odds truths that live within them (“I am not a woman, I’m a God / I am not a martyr, I’m a problem / I am not a legend, I’m a fraud”).

Halsey has been very careful not to stamp IICHLIWP as an “empowerment” album. By stamping a limiting, white-feminist-branded term like “empowerment” on here, that automatically makes Halsey’s career-making effort too much like a wellness retreat where they sell vaginal jade eggs. No, IICHLIWP is way more complex than that, artfully parsing out the nuance around pregnancy (feeling scared AND excited AND sexy), fame (“I am not a legend, I’m a fraud”), and loving someone so much, you get sad thinking about how there will never enough time left to spend with them (“Darling, you will bury me before I bury you”). Ideally, Halsey’s everything-can-be-true-at-once narrative isn’t lost on an industry that (still) likes pop stars to show up as simple — and heteronormative — as will fit in a tidy little tweet or a headline. That’s never really what we’ve gotten from Halsey, and we shouldn’t want it any other way.

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is out now via Capitol Records. Get it here.

Mike Lindell is still a multi-millionaire despite sinking an unfathomable amount of money into his pointless crusade to overturn the 2020 election, but he’s not a multi-billionaire. If he was, he wouldn’t have needed to sell his MyPillow plane to reportedly pay for legal fees in the $1.3 billion lawsuit that was filed against him by Dominion Voting Systems.

“Selling a pillow plane to pay for a billion dollar lawsuit,” we’ve all been there.

Salon reports that “Lindell (through his company MyPillow) has recently sold off at least one of his private planes. FAA records indicate that an aircraft registered to MyPillow — a 1993 Dassault-Breguet Falcon 50 with tail number N497SP — was transferred to Clyde Air LLC on July 26, for an undisclosed purchase amount.” A similar plane on the market goes for a cool $2.5 million, so it’s probably around that figure:

Josh Merritt, a former member of Lindell’s “red team” at his August South Dakota event, told Salon the plane was sold to bankroll Lindell’s legal defense in the Dominion suit. The pillow king unloaded the aircraft “because he’s needing money,” Merritt said. “He just started raising money for the lawsuit by Dominion.”

This guy can’t catch a break with planes:

When asked for a comment about the sale, Lindell called a Salon reporter “flying pond scum” and “slime.” See you on Frontier Airlines, Mike!

(Via Salon)

With all the albums scheduled to release this year from the top names in hip-hop like Drake, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar, it’d be easy to overlook a newcomer like Baby Keem — if only his debut album The Melodic Blue wasn’t nearly as heavily anticipated as any of those from the names above. Partly due to a string of enthusiastically received singles including “Orange Soda,” “No Sense,” Durag Activity” with Travis Scott, and the Kendrick Lamar-featuring “Family Ties” and partly due to his inclusion on 2020’s XXL Freshman list, Keem’s The Melodic Blue shot to the upper parts of many fans’ “must-listen” lists for 2021.

Apparently, they won’t have long to wait for the completed project, either. Just yesterday, the social-media-shy Nevada rapper logged in to Twitter to let his followers know, “I just turned the melodic blue in.” Also, in keeping with his fan-pleasing demeanor, he confirmed that his two most attention-grabbing recent singles would be included. “Durag Activity & Family Ties are on the album,” he noted. That knowledge is sure to drive listens to the enigmatic rapper’s debut, as is the goodwill he’s generated with his recent performance at Lyrical Lemonad’s Summer Smash Festival — which you can read more about here via Uproxx’s recap.

A little over two years ago, Netflix scored the rights to Seinfeld after winning an all-out bidding war with multiple streaming outlets including Hulu where the show had lived since 2015. But while the Hulu deal ended on June 23, 2021, Seinfeld has yet to arrive on Netflix leaving fans without any way to watch the show. So much for the Summer of George.

Fortunately, that’s about to change very soon. According to a new announcement video shared on the Netflix Is A Joke Twitter account, Seinfeld will make its Netflix debut on October 1, and the streamer is jokingly calling it “This Fall’s Hottest TV Show.”

Netflix is really having fun with this, via a press release:

Netflix will launch 180 episodes of a situational comedy called ‘Seinfeld,’ created by rising New York comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who wrote for Saturday Night Live for a single season.

The show completed production in May (of 1998) and is slated for release on the Netflix platform in its entirety on October 1, 2021.

Bookended by Seinfeld’s stand-up material, the 180 episodes of the sitcom explore the minutiae of the comic’s everyday life as he navigates his relationships with a talented ensemble cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Troll, Family Ties), Michael Richards (UHF, Fridays) and Jason Alexander (Pretty Woman).

“This is the first time we’ve taken a risk of this nature, going all in on 9 seasons at the jump,” said Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos. “But Jerry has created something special with this sitcom that nobody has ever done. I truly think he and Mr. David have enormous futures ahead of them and I’m thrilled Netflix could be the home for them to grow their fanbases.”

While Seinfeld hasn’t been off the air, that hasn’t stopped it from making headlines. After thirty years, the classic comedy is still a pop culture powerhouse, and almost every recognizes it’s iconic slap bass theme song, which almost never saw the light of day. In a recent interview, Seinfeld composer Jonathan Wolff revealed that NBC hated the show’s theme music because it was “annoying” and almost had it killed. However, this did not sit well with Seinfeld creator Larry David who loved the theme for exactly that reason, of course.

“Larry, he loves annoying!” Wolff told Yahoo. “He lives for annoying! That’s his primary goal in life.”

Seinfeld starts streaming on Netflix on October 1, 2021.

(Via Netflix Is A Joke on Twitter)

If Joel Embiid has his way, the Philadelphia 76ers will run things back next season. One day after a report came out saying that Ben Simmons told Sixers coach Doc Rivers and a collection of folks in the team’s front office that he would like a trade and does not plan on reporting to training camp, Embiid took to Twitter to indicate that he would prefer that does not happen.

Embiid made it a point to respond to a USA Today Sports report that there’s a growing rift between himself and Simmons. The 2020-21 NBA MVP runner-up stressed that he believes he is being used “to push people’s agendas” before diving into his relationship with Simmons and how he believes that the team’s inability to make it out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs this past season was “on me personally.”

While he was critical of Simmons passing up a dunk in the team’s Game 7 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, Embiid hasn’t spoken out about the goings on with Simmons this offseason. He did take to Twitter in the aftermath of the report of his running mate’s desire to leave Philly, he was more interested in trying to suss out what his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, was going to do as the transfer window in Europe came to a close.

The cover art of Halsey’s new album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power certainly generated a lot of attention upon its reveal, largely because it’s so revealing, specifically as it pertains to Halsey’s body. Now it has drawn a bit of criticism, as there’s at least one writer who views the art as cultural appropriation of the Catholic church.

A piece written by Portia Berry-Kilby for The Spectator lays out the accusations, reading in part:

“The American singer’s album was released last week and the cover depicts her and a baby in a pose resembling Fouquet’s Virgin And Child, bare boob and all. Aside from the grandiose nature of this gesture — to put oneself in the place of the Mother of God requires some hubris — such role play is not, in and of itself, first-degree blasphemy. Of course, girls and women worldwide play the role of Mary — just think of the school hall Christmas nativity. But such performances usually communicate the beauty of the Incarnation. Halsey, however, isn’t interested in such innocent symbolism. […]

Halsey exemplifies the disregard that today’s pop culture shows towards the core tenets of Catholicism. Yes, Jesus died for us all. But he didn’t die for us so that we could all free the nipple and strike a pose as His Blessed Virgin Mother.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for high art filtering into low culture. I’m not, however, so keen on a constant dumbing down of The Good Stuff so as to cater to the crass tastes of the day. And when it comes to Halsey’s latest album cover, the end result is not so much artistic fusion as it is a flagrant appropriation of the sacred.”

Halsey caught wind of this on Twitter and made her silent argument by sharing a childhood photo of herself. Based on her outfit and apparent age in the photo, it appears the photo is from Halsey’s first communion or confirmation, two sacraments of initiation in the Catholic church. The implication being made, it would seem, is that Halsey doesn’t believe she is appropriating Catholicism, since she herself had a Catholic upbringing.

Meanwhile, Halsey recently expressed annoyance at how some in the music industry handled her pregnancy.

Anya Taylor-Joy made her film debut six short years ago, but she’s already worked with some of the most talented directors around, including Robert Eggers, M. Night Shyamalan, and Edgar Wright. Next up is David O. Russell (along with Margot Robbie, Christian Bale, Taylor Swift, John David Washington, and Zoe Saldana) and George Miller. Taylor-Joy will play the younger version of Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa in a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best movies of the 2010s.

Miller cast The Queen’s Gambit actress after seeing an early cut of Wright’s Last Night in Soho (out October 29), where she plays a stylish 1960s singer.

“I’d known about Anya but I’d never seen her in a film until I saw her in Soho,” he told Wright in a discussion for Empire. “And I remember thinking, ‘Gee, she’s interesting.’ I started to say to you, ‘I’m looking for someone to cast as Furiosa,’ and I barely got the sentence out before you said, ‘Don’t go any further, she’s great, she’s gonna be huge. She’s fantastic to work with.’ You were so emphatic about it.” Miller and Taylor-Joy still haven’t met in person due to the pandemic (“We’ve spoken many, many times now”), but he knew she was the one after she nailed her audition:

“I said to her, ‘I’d like you to do a very simple test, which is read something to camera.’ And it was the speech from Network. The ‘I’m mad as hell’ speech. Apart from the brilliance of the writing, it’s a piece that can be done to camera. It doesn’t need an acting partner. Anya did one version, which was really good. Then I gave her just a couple of simple notes about intention and she just absolutely nailed [it]. I think it was done on an iPhone. I sent it to the studio. I explained why I thought she was right for the role. I said I was really happy to talk about it but it was so persuasive that we didn’t need to talk. The studio said, ‘Tick.’”

That’s all well and good, but George, c’mon, you really need to see The Witch. You’ll never be able to live deliciously without it.

(Via Empire)

Mike Richards’ tenure at Jeopardy! is now officially (and fully) over, not only as new host but as executive producer. That decision followed not too far behind an exhaustive report from Claire McNear (of The Ringer) that detailed Richards’ history of troubling (often sexist and bigoted) comments. In the aftermath of the latest Richards announcement, plenty of people celebrated the news, but perhaps no one was happier than Jeopardy! champ James Holzhauer.

Holzhauer, of course, has already been quite vocal on the Richards controversy, with him initially calling out how the show disregarded “the three obvious candidates” before deciding that Richards was “the winner.” Well, Richards isn’t winning any longer, and once he heard the news, Holzhauer immediately tweeted a “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” GIF. No subtlety there!

He added, in tribute to Claire McNear, a spin on a popular meme: “My Fall Plans/The McNear Variant.” Oh boy.

Later, though, and after some users asked him to explain why he felt so strongly that Richards wasn’t the right choice for the gig. The champ tweeted that although many people have judged Richards based upon McNear’s report and “formed a negative opinion” about his podcast comments, Holzhauer’s feelings were based upon personal experience. “I judged him by the way he treated people backstage at Jeopardy and formed a much stronger negative opinion,” explained Holzhauer. Fair enough.