Best new movies and TV series on Neon: July 2023

Neon continues to bring in a convoy of quality shows and films. See our handpicked highlights below followed by the full release schedule.

Top picks: TV

Everyone Else Burns (July 5)

What’s it like to be ‘coming-of-age’ when your family believes the world’s going to end before you reach adulthood? This new British comedy takes a warm, winking look at puritanical religious paranoia. Dad wants to climb the ranks of the fam’s Christian sect: Mum has trouble reconciling her strict moral compass with the secular world she sees around her: and the kids yearn to make friends and go to university, despite their parents’ doomsday beliefs. Expect awkward, fish-out-of-water comedy mixed with serious existential musings.

Full Circle (July 14)

Director Steven Soderbergh never misses, and the cast of his latest thriller series only further suggest that we’re in for something great. Claire Danes, Timothy Olyphant, Dennis Quaid and Zazie Beetz (fresh off probably the worst episode of Black Mirror ever) star in this NYC saga of a kidnapping gone horribly wrong. Scripted by Ed Solomon, one of the most popular screenwriters in the biz, the two-episode series will have us hooked with gritty, finely-tuned performances and a plot that intricately binds those characters together.

What We Do In The Shadows: Season 5 (July 16)

I don’t know if anyone expected a vampire mockumentary spin-off of a Taika Waititi film to show this much staying power, but having the best cast in TV comedy right now seems to have paid off. New episodes will see Nandor worrying about his once-devoted familiar Guillermo slipping out of his grasp, and energy vampire Colin Robinson running for political office. Each new season hysterically expands on the lore of this bizarre Staten Island found family of freaks, with impressive, ooky production value and a quotable gag a minute.

Top picks: Movies

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (July 8)

We reviewed this comic mockumentary as “a hopelessly sweet film that feels satisfyingly complete: not a string of Marcel the Shell shorts episodically strung into 90 minutes, nor a bloated “Cute Beloved Thing: The Movie” adaptation”. Dinky, tear-jerking, and low-stakes, it’s the perfect, gentle viewing experience to enjoy with little ones or simply other adults who wanna go “awwww” for about 100 minutes. Comedian Jenny Slate voices the stop-motion shell as he searches for the big (yet very little, in stature) family he’s been separated from, with a lonely filmmaker helping him grow to viral popularity.

The Drover’s Wife (July 9)

A (very white) Australian bush legend is brought roaring to life in Leah Purcell’s revisionist western epic. Writing, directing, and starring as the Indigenous frontierswoman whose family is threatened by fauna and corrupt men, Purcell more than lives up to the beloved Henry Lawson poem her mother used to read her in bed as a youngun. Our review by Travis Johnson praised the film for its “pleasing and intriguing thematic complexity that refuses to allow space for pat answers and neat interpretations”.

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (July 29)

Without a stinky green ogre in sight, this zingy fairytale sequel might be the best Shrek movie ever made—sorry, purists. Antonio Banderas lends us his suave, grizzly vocals again in Puss in Boots’ standalone midlife-crises episode: feeling old beyond his nine lives, the heroic kitty must voyage through a video-game-esque quest to defeat death and return to his swashbuckling best. The animation style here borrows from the Spider-Verse‘s exaggerated visuals, and the action sequences are eye-explodingly entertaining. Special shout-out to Florence Pugh as Goldilocks and her heartwarming arc with her adopted family of three bears.