Best new movies and TV series on Stan: February 2025

Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Eliza Janssen surveys the month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

Invisible Boys: Season 1 (February 13)

For most queer people, coming out of the closet is going to be a difficult process no matter what: but try doing it in rural Western Australia. Based on a celebrated novel, this Stan Original follows three young men struggling with their sexuality in an unwelcoming, rigidly heterosexual community. One’s a punk, who gets outed and starts a tumultous relationship with an older man; one’s a high-achieving nerd, who strikes up an unexpected relationship with the third kid, a macho footy player who also happens to be the school bully.

The show should offer some comfort to teen viewers who might be grappling with their own secret identities, and hopefully to parents, too, who should feel protective over these characters as their families and friends fail to support them along the way.

Good Cop/Bad Cop: Season 1 (February 20)

Leighton Meester and Luke Cook play duelling small-town cops in this new crime-comedy. Twist no. 1: they’re brother and sister. So who’s the good cop and who’s the bad cop? Surveying the cheery thumbnail above, Cook’s straitlaced outfit tells me that he might be the by-the-book stickler, while Meester is the renegade maverick wild card one. Twist no. 3: their dad is the police chief they each have to answer to, taking “just wait until your father gets home” to a whole new level.

The great character actor Clancy Brown plays the Dad Cop here, and he’s always a pleasure to see on screen—especially when he gets a bigger role. If you think you’re unfamiliar with him, just listen closely to his deep growly voice: that’s Spongebob’s boss Mr Krabs!

Fargo: Season 5 (February 21)

Noah Hawley’s episodic spin-offs of the classic 1996 Coen Bros comedy has had far more staying power than one might’ve expected, tripping across time periods and noir-ish themes whilst always inflecting its characters with that hilarious, Minnesota Nice dialect. This time around, Juno Temple is our plucky hero as housewife-with-a-dark-and-badass-past Dot. Refusing to be kidnapped a la the original film’s terrified victim, she instead goes Home Alone on the season’s baddies, which include an awful and misogynistic Jon Hamm villain.

I didn’t end up feeling that the season was head-and-shoulders brilliant above the show’s other instalments, particularly the never-bested weirdness of season two. But there are side characters that make the blackly comedic journey worth a jaunt, such as Jennifer Jason Leigh as a manipulative business mogul, and the season’s trademark Creepy Otherworldly Assassin Guy.

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

Talk To Me (February 7)

Hey, do you guys wanna get sloshed and play a chill party game? All you need is the desiccated hand of a psychic and a desire to see into forbidding, undead worlds. From directors the Philippou brothers, this sleeper horror hit from 2023 packs serious scares into its slumber party premise, pitting reckless teens against supernatural evil that haunts them with visions of their lost loved ones.

Our own Steve Newall chatted to the directors a few years back, and learned a bit more about the distinctly Aussie hangout-gone-wrong vibes the pair nailed in the film. “A big kick-off point for me was seeing footage of my neighbour doing a drug and being on the floor convulsing and everyone was just filming him and laughing at him,” Michael Philippou recounted: “And he was having a negative reaction, but no one was taking him seriously.” Sounds like a vibe bro, send the addy!

The Substance (February 15)

One of last year’s hottest, gloopiest, most bonkers movies. Demi Moore might just be on the cusp of earning an Oscar for her work in this revolting body horror blockbuster, playing an aerobics celeb who goes through an experimental process to create her own double: a younger, sexier self who begins to usurp and warp her identity. The movie sets out with big themes of ageism and beauty’s dark mirror, before taking a massive rollercoaster dip into pure prosthetic shenanigans and explosions in its overlong third act. Not a perfect film, but certainly an unforgettable one.

Kneecap (February 25)

The little Irish-rap-biopic that could. As the musician biopic genre gets only more clunky and didactic, this film showed up with boundless energy and a beating political heart, retelling the origins of the titular Irish hip-hop group and their proud quest to make music in their underheard mother tongue. Better yet, the three subjects play themselves, in hilarious and emotive performances that make you wonder if casting professional actors was ever considered for even a moment.

In August, Stephen A Russell got to chat with the lads themselves, learning more about the film’s impact from group member Móglaí Bap: “Rural areas have spoken Irish for a long time, but we’re seeing it resonate with people in the cities a lot more now…That’s a core element of the movie, identity.” The whole interview is well worth a read, before or after you get your tickets to this raucous and rousing show.