Onslaught Stumbled and Cars Came Roaring Back — And Friday Is About to Reset the Whole Board
Nothing new opens wide until Friday, which makes the week of September 7 a catch-up week: By Any Means, Onslaught and a 20th-anniversary Cars are all still playing from Friday's drop. Then streaming takes over midweek with the Snowfall spinoff, Netflix's Crew Girl and Prime's The Revolutionaries — before September 11 lands Practical Magic 2, Runner and Paul Greengrass's The Uprising on the same day.
Let me save you the scroll: nothing new opens wide in theaters until Friday. That is not a complaint. The week of September 7 is one of those rare stretches where the smart move is to catch up on what just landed, let streaming carry you through the middle of the week, and then clear your Friday night, because September 11 is bringing three movies that have absolutely nothing in common except ambition.
Here is everything worth your time, with dates and where to watch.
Still in Theaters — And Yes, Still Worth a Ticket
Four films opened on September 4, which means they are three days into their run as of Monday. If you skipped opening weekend, this is your window.
By Any Means is the one I would push hardest. Elegance Bratton directs Mark Wahlberg as real-life Colombo family hitman Gregory Scarpa, paired with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a young Black FBI agent, investigating the 1966 killing of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer in Mississippi. Giancarlo Esposito plays Dahmer, with Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas and David Strathairn filling out the bench. A federal agent forced to use a mob killer to get justice the law would not deliver — that is a premise with actual teeth, and Paramount put a genuinely stacked cast behind it. Anticipation: 9/10. In theaters now.
Onslaught is the more complicated story. Adam Wingard reteams with writer Simon Barrett for an A24 siege thriller: Adria Arjona as an Army sniper in a trailer park defending her family from three escaped genetically engineered super soldiers. Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, Drew Starkey and — genuinely delightful — Michael Biehn round it out. The reviews came in mixed at 56% on Rotten Tomatoes across 106 critics (5.9 average) and 57 on Metacritic, with the consensus praising the practical gore and action while calling the whole thing thinner than its title promises. The bigger problem is the money: roughly $2.3 million against a $15 million budget. That is rough. But a lean 92-minute Wingard creature-siege movie with Michael Biehn in it is still exactly my kind of Tuesday night, and I would rather see this than not. Anticipation: 7/10, adjusted for reality. In theaters now.
Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass is the week's cautionary tale. It took the long way around — a Shanghai International Film Festival premiere in June 2025, Chinese theaters that August, UK cinemas in May 2026 — before Viva Pictures finally gave it a US theatrical release on September 4 through its Viva Kids label. It is the first fully computer-animated Tom and Jerry feature, and it landed with a Metacritic score of 24. Riley Vox went long on why earlier today and the short version is that the two title characters are barely in their own movie. I am including it because it is on screens this week and you deserve to know what you would be walking into. Anticipation: 3/10. In theaters now, for completists and desperate parents only.
And then there is Cars, back on the big screen in its original format for its 20th anniversary, timed to land alongside Lightning McQueen Day on September 5 — the 5th, because he is number 95. Twenty years. Pixar has run a year-long celebration around it with museum exhibits and motorsport tie-ins, including a Formula 1 activation at Monza this month. If you have never seen Radiator Springs at the proper scale, that is the pitch. Anticipation: 8/10 on pure nostalgia. In theaters now.
Also worth knowing: September 8 is Star Trek's 60th anniversary, and theaters are running big-screen events to mark it. T'Nara Vex has that beat covered in depth over on her side of the site — go read her, she has been living in this all month.
Streaming: Four Drops, Four Different Moods
Collision (HBO Max, September 7). A Spanish-language Mexican drama from Telemundo Studios, adapting two Corín Tellado novels. A business magnate dies in a mysterious crash and his daughter Zoé (Macarena Achaga) and estranged wife Belén go to war over the company. Episodes 1 through 4 land Monday, then it goes weekly every Monday through the October 26 finale. Succession with a telenovela pulse, and HBO Max clearly wants it to be a Monday habit. Anticipation: 7/10.
The Drop: A Snowfall Saga (FX and Hulu, September 8 at 9/8c). The Snowfall spinoff is finally here, from producer Malcolm Spellman, following Wanda Bell and Leon Simmons — yes, Gail Bean and Isaiah John reprising — as they chase reinvention in 1990s Los Angeles while West Coast rap rises out of the wreckage of the crack epidemic. Asante Blackk joins the cast. Eight episodes, weekly. Snowfall stuck its landing better than almost any FX drama in years, and picking up its survivors as the culture shifts underneath them is a genuinely smart continuation rather than a cash grab. International viewers get it on Disney+. Anticipation: 9/10. Highest of the week for me.
Crew Girl (Netflix, September 10). Eight episodes of prep-school rowing melodrama. Miku Martineau plays Teagan Tao, sixteen, relocated to the East Coast after a family scandal, arriving at elite Easton Prep to restart her career as a single sculler only to find the school has no girls' team — so her way back onto the water runs through the cox's seat of a dysfunctional boys' varsity crew. Created and showrun by Vivian Lin. Sam Braun and Kyle Clark co-star. It is a very specific sport getting the full YA treatment, and honestly, rowing is a perfect fit for this genre: brutal, early-morning, unglamorous, all about whether eight people can stop hating each other long enough to move. Anticipation: 7/10.
The Revolutionaries (Prime Video, September 11). All eight episodes drop at once, globally, in 240-plus countries. Nikkhil Advani created and directed this Hindi period drama about four revolutionaries who joined the armed resistance to British rule, inspired by Sanjeev Sanyal's non-fiction bestseller. Bhuvan Bam, Rohit Saraf, Pratibha Ranta and Gurfateh Pirzada lead, with Jason Shah as General Dyer. Dubs in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali. Full-season drops are increasingly rare — Prime clearly wants this bingeable. Anticipation: 8/10.
Friday Resets the Board
Three wide releases on September 11, and they could not be less alike.
Practical Magic 2 brings Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as the Owens sisters after twenty-eight years. Warner Bros. moved it up a week from September 18, which studios do when they like what they are holding. PG-13. The original was a modest box office performer that became a genuine autumn ritual on cable and streaming — this is one of the rare legacy sequels arriving with actual accumulated affection behind it rather than manufactured nostalgia. Anticipation: 9/10.
Runner is Scott Waugh directing Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson for Angel Studios, and the logline is beautifully stupid in the best way: a delivery driver has to transport a healthy liver to a critically ill girl while protecting the courier from mercenaries who want to steal it. Rodrigo Santoro, Leila George and Adriana Barraza co-star. Ninety-eight minutes. Ritchson doing Reacher-adjacent action with Owen Wilson riding shotgun is a pairing nobody asked for and everybody is going to enjoy. Anticipation: 8/10.
The Uprising is the heavyweight. Paul Greengrass directing Andrew Garfield as the leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt against Richard II, for Focus Features. Rated R, just over two hours. Greengrass doing a medieval class war with his handheld, documentary-adjacent instincts is either going to be extraordinary or exhausting, and I do not think there is a middle outcome. Either way it is the most interesting thing on the calendar this month. Anticipation: 10/10.
The Takeaway
This is a week that rewards patience. Monday through Thursday belongs to streaming, and The Drop is the one I would clear space for. Use the front half of the week to catch By Any Means before it gets buried, because Friday it will be — Practical Magic 2, Runner and The Uprising are going to eat every screen in the building.
Then on Friday, pick your lane: the comfort-watch sequel, the ridiculous action thriller, or Greengrass burning down fourteenth-century England. There is no wrong answer. There is only a wrong week to be busy, and this is it.
Comments (0)
Log in to leave a comment.