Feuding households, warring kingdoms and vengeful gangsters – 2019’s slate of autumn films explores worlds in disorder. A frenetic trip from the Middle Ages to modern-day Massachusetts, it’s also an auteur-heavy line-up, as new films from Messrs Martin Scorsese, David Michôd, Rian Johnson, Taika Waititi and Noah Baumbach toss their hats into the Oscar ring. Here, MR PORTER unpicks the genre-defying highlights of the coming months, making your nightly Netflix trawl that much easier.

Call it a swansong, a renaissance or something like a greatest hits (in every sense of the word), Mr Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is a mournful, swaggering gangster epic, spanning decades and forming a fitting coda to his career. Clocking in at 210 minutes and tracing the rise and fall of union leader Mr Jimmy Hoffa, it provides career-best roles for Messrs Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, de-aged by revolutionary CGI to inhabit their younger counterparts in 1950s New York. Mr Scorsese revisits his favourite themes: machismo, conflict, Catholic guilt. As a bingo scoresheet for Scorsese tropes, The Irishman ticks each box in a bold, bloody red.

In cinemas now; on Netflix from 27 November

Marriage Story starts at the end. Mr Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical relationship drama chronicles the splintering between Charlie (Mr Adam Driver) and Nicole (Ms Scarlett Johansson), flipping between the heyday of their happy marriage and the stale drama of the divorce courtroom. This spectacle of a mutually assured destruction hardly seems rich ground for comedy, but the film isn’t light on laughs; tragicomic tightrope walks are Mr Baumbach’s forte and the whiplash back-and-forth narrative of Marriage Story allows for this in spades. Sweet and soulful, it might just be the love story of 2019.

In cinemas now; on Netflix from 6 December

Dubbed an “anti-hate satire”, Mr Taika Waititi’s follow-up to Thor: Ragnarok is an absurdist comedy, charting a 10-year-old’s coming-of-age in Nazi Germany. With his trademark quick-cut, off-kilter tone, Mr Waititi neatly balances his slapstick parody of the time against a warm, humanist tale of young love and the loss of innocence. Warm, witty and profound, Jojo Rabbit won the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, often used as an early predictor of Oscars glory. Its success is in no small part due to the charming young leads – newcomer Mr Roman Griffin Davis, as Jojo, and breakout star Ms Thomasin McKenzie. Accompanied by an A-list cast including Ms Scarlett Johansson, Mr Sam Rockwell, Ms Rebel Wilson and Mr Waititi himself (as the boy’s imaginary friend, um, Adolf Hitler), it’s a touching fable.

In cinemas from 3 January (UK)

From a galaxy far, far, away, to the yellow-tinged paperbacks of Ms Agatha Christie, The Last Jedi maestro Mr Rian Johnson chews the British pulp fiction of the early 20th century and spits it back out for us as an early Christmas treat. Stab-happy, witty and gory, Knives Out sees Mr Daniel Craig step out of Bond’s shoes and into Southern brogues to deliver 2019’s purest adrenaline jolt. With critics comparing its satirical tone to Mr Jordan Peele’s Get Out, it’s a tongue-in-cheek look at the world of a privileged, white family under scrutiny. The pieces are familiar (elderly patriarch, stately home, cast of suspicious strangers), but the players are new (Mr Christopher Plummer, Ms Toni Colette, Mr Lakeith Stanfield and Mr Chris Evans), as the murder of Ms Christie-esque crime author Harlan Thrombey (Mr Plummer) sparks in motion a hunt for the killer, as if torn straight from the pages of his own novel. Knives Out hurls the whodunnit tropes into a new jukebox – by setting it in the present day, presenting clear Trumpian overtones and a metafictional spin – with sleuths as you’ve never seen them before, and an A-list cast clearly having fun in the process.

In cinemas from 29 November

Following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, The King’s trailer teased Mr Timothée Chalamet’s era-specific bowl cut, becoming the hairstyle that launched a thousand memes. Nonetheless, Mr Chalamet is a regal fit for The King, Mr David Michôd’s expressionistic take on Mr William Shakespeare’s Henriad plays. Having ascended to the throne of Hollywood royalty already following his Oscar nomination for Call Me By Your Name, Mr Chalamet steps away from the sweet angst of his breakout role into the gilded armour of King Henry V. The film explores the personal and political costs of bloody-minded tyranny, and the way the sins of the father are revisited upon their sons. With Mr Robert Pattinson, passing over the mantle of millennial matinée idol to Mr Chalamet, in a scene-stealing performance as The Dauphin, The King is a gripping take on the blood-soaked period.

In cinemas and on Netflix now