Despite the relatively light release year, a welcome spread of films this holiday season brings us good tidings and cheer. From indies to majors, from talking lions to dog-women, there’s variety under the tree this year, offering a mix of blockbuster studio baubles, idiosyncratic character-driven Hanukkah presents, and new stocking-stuffers from stalwart filmmakers. They even got Count Orlok and his bestie Sonic The Hedgehog in for the holidays. It will be a cold winter, so warm up with a new Pedro Almodóvar; you’ve earned it. Let’s unwrap what’s hitting screens next month in our December film preview:
Amy Adams is Nightbitch. There’s not much more we need to hear than that. A title like that will get people to fork over the $18 to see Amy Adams go feral on her maternal duties, transforming from your typical suburban mom into…the Nightbitch. With a great title, a strong premise, and one of Hollywood’s best actors playing a lycanthropic stay-at-home mom, it’s hard to resist rolling over for filmmaker Marielle Heller’s latest.
Ralph Fiennes is coming home in Uberto Pasolini’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The Return situates itself, specifically, with Odysseus (Fiennes) returning to his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) after 20 years off fighting the Trojan War. As he washes ashore, ripped and tanned, he begins the final leg of his journey as the suitors asking Penelope’s hand in marriage come knocking at her door. The exiled king finds himself among the impoverished as he begins the battle to reclaim the throne and his queen.
Saturday Night Live’s Kyle Mooney makes his directorial debut with Y2K, which looks very much like a movie Kyle Mooney would make. In Y2K, a night of teen debauchery turns deadly when midnight strikes, and the Y2K bug reveals itself as a real killer. Caked in nu-metal nostalgia, late-90s fashion, and a Hot Topic-inspired soundtrack, this turn-of-the-millennium teen-horror-comedy (with plenty of murderous Tamagotchis attacking Rachel Zegler), Y2K looks like Gremlins meets Superbad. Let’s hope it’s every bit as good as that sounds.
As far as Paul Schrader movies go, his latest, Oh, Canada, teases a sentimental detour from his current string of violent diarist dramas. Perhaps it’s because it’s his reunion with his American Gigolo star, Richard Gere, in a story about a terminally ill filmmaker reckoning with his past in a final interview. Gere and Jacob Elordi play filmmaker Leonard Fife in different eras, with Elordi dramatizing the fractured memories Gere shares in a life-exit interview conducted by Uma Thurman.
Typically a documentary filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer is still taking artistic swings. We’d expect nothing less of the director behind The Act Of Killing and The Look Of Silence. His first fictional narrative movie, The End is an old-fashioned musical set against the end of the world, treading the boards in a bomb shelter far below the Earth’s crust. Unlike some other films in its genre, this one isn’t shy about its musicality, showing off the pipes of its cast and the painted backdrops of its beautiful production design. It looks risky, but the cast he’s collected for doomsday looks well-prepped.
We have no idea why this is getting a theatrical run, but Warner Bros.’ anime-inspired prequel to Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy is lighting up the screen this holiday season. The War Of The Rohirrim takes viewers back to the elder days of Rohan’s war against the Dunlendings, and there’s also a Ring element for some reason. Maybe it’s Warner Bros. filling a hole in the schedule, but a different kind of Lord Of The Rings adaptation sounds like a Secret Santa present we’d gladly open.
The latest in Sony’s Spider-Man-less Spider-Verse, the long-delayed Kraven The Hunter comes after an up-and-down year for Sony’s weird cinematic universe of supporting players. Putting whatever was going on in Madame Web and Venom 3 aside, J.C. Chandor is an exciting director, coming off A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier. Truth be told, on paper, Kraven seems like a bad idea, but it’s got a strong cast and a stupid premise; maybe the third time’s the charm for Sony.
With a name like Sonic, we shouldn’t be surprised that Paramount pumped out three of these (four if you count the Knuckles miniseries) in four years. Even wilder to consider that the Sonic with teeth almost cratered the first movie before it began. But here we are, four years and two Trumps later, and Sonic Hedgehog 3 is speeding into theaters to collect even more rings. What’s this one about? Sonic has to fight Shadow Hedgehog and eat chili dogs.
The long-awaited(?) “live-action” prequel to The Lion King, Mufasa sees Moonlight filmmaker Barry Jenkins diving into big-budget, special effects-driven studio filmmaking. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Jenkins hasn’t directed since his masterful adaptation of The Underground Railroad, and it’s hard to imagine his voice rising above the ones and zeroes that make up his cast. Who knows? Maybe the fact that this isn’t a direct remake will give Jenkins the room to make this something unique—at the very least, hopefully, more memorable than the rest of these things.
Directed by Brady Corbet, one of those creeps from the American Funny Games, The Brutalist rode the festival circuit on a wave of hype. The trailer certainly gives off the vibe of “staggering genius.” Corbet’s epic follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to America. Preloaded with austere period-piece trimmings and critical praise, The Brutalist aims to tell the story of America through the eyes of a man looking to remake it.
A new movie from Pedro Almodóvar is always a reason to get the theater, and this Golden Lion winner (the first Spanish film to do so) is no exception. Billed as his first movie in English, The Room Next Door follows Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, playing age-old friends who reconnect in a beautiful and colorful minimalist home. It’s safe to assume the movie will be crushing, but the vibes appear immaculate.
In the second half of Nicole Kidman’s 2024 “Dating a Younger Man” duology (who could forget A Family Affair?), Babygirl is a more lurid and sexy affair than Netflix’s offering. Kidman plays Romy, a powerful CEO who finds herself in a dairy-based sub-dom relationship with a young intern (Harris Dickinson). The pair kick off a horny game of control that could blow up her perfect work-life balance. We would like to see that happen.
There is rarely a match between film and filmmaker as perfect as Nosferatu and Robert Eggers. Though that thinking has blown up in our faces before (we’re looking at you, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland), Eggers’ old-school touches and commitment to authenticity make his take on cinema’s second-most famous vampire look very appealing. His star Bill Skarsgård is already experienced with pancake-flour makeup, but the Vampyre is a different beast than Pennywise and possibly a scarier one. Better pack your own garlic.
Making his triumphant return to musical biopics, filmmaker James Mangold hopes to do for Bob Dylan what he did for Johnny Cash. But whereas Joaquin Phoenix’s singing voice was close enough for jazz, Timothée Chalamet’s rusty pipes are a dead ringer for Dylan’s. It’s his imitation of Dylan’s singing voice that is driving a lot of interest here, but we shouldn’t discount how much people love the music of Dylan and how many are simply excited about hearing “Like A Rolling Stone” on speakers they can feel. As is typically the case with this genre, regardless of the film’s overall quality, the soundtrack will rock.
December 6
The Order
Unstoppable
December 13
Carry-On
December 20
The Six Triple Eight
