Close out the year in movies with Spider-Man, The Matrix, and a slew of Oscar hopefuls

The Scary Of Sixty-First

Select theaters December 2

If nothing else, The Scary Of Sixty-First is notable for its brazenness. The story revolves around two fashionably apathetic hipster types who get an amazing deal on an Upper East Side apartment—such a good deal, in fact, that one suspects that the place may be haunted. The twist? As it turns out, the apartment used to be a sex-trafficking hub for Jeffrey Epstein. Aside from its rage-fueled political angle, however, there’s not a lot to distinguish this particular paranoid thriller, aside from director Dasha Nekrasova’s growing popularity as a podcaster and NYC media personality.

Benedetta 

Select theaters December 3; VOD December 21

Originally slated to premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival (it showed up at this year’s edition of the fest after last year’s was canceled), Paul Verhoeven’s Catholic melodrama finally debuts in U.S. theaters just in time for the Christmas season. The movie is already kicking up dust among the devout with its pulpy and audacious true story of a nun (Belgian actress Virginie Efira) whose rise to power at a cloistered convent is accompanied both by ecstatic religious visions and a torrid lesbian affair. The most provocative thing about the film, though, is that it takes faith seriously—although perhaps with less chastity than the church would prefer.

Encounter

Select theaters December 3; Amazon Prime December 10

Cool dad Riz Ahmed is a traumatized Marine veteran who swoops in to save his sons from an invading extraterrestrial force in the second feature from British director Michael Pearce (Beast). Buzz on this science-fiction drama isn’t quite as strong as what greeted Sound Of Metal, which earned Ahmed his first Academy Award nomination earlier this year and was also distributed by Amazon. Nonetheless, Encounter caught solid reviews from Toronto this fall, where critics called it a thoughtful take on space-invader tropes, with good chemistry between Ahmed and his onscreen sons.

The Hand Of God

Select theaters December 3; Netflix December 15

Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) is the latest auteur to get a seemingly blank check from Netflix. He’s cashed it in to tell an autobiographical, Felliniesque story about a teenage outsider in 1980s Naples, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a superstar footballer to the local team and navigating a fraught family life. Sorrentino has said that his goal for this movie was to make something more modest and less overtly constructed than some of his other recent work; critics seem split on whether he succeeded, with some—including our own Leila Latif—calling The Hand Of God uneven, though almost everyone seems to agree it has some terrific scenes.

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

Disney+ December 3

Time comes for us all, wimpy kids included. Though the first Diary Of A Wimpy Kid movie is just over a decade old, the cinematic universe based on the popular Jeff Kinney books has already been rebooted twice: once for a nonstarter of a 2017 live-action film, and now again via animation that re-creates Kinney’s art style via computers that swell his charming line drawings into three disturbing dimensions. Then again, the moral cowardice of striving middle schooler Greg Heffley was singularly unlikable in live-action form. The toon version could only be an improvement.

Silent Night

Select theaters and AMC+ December 3

What does Keira Knightley have against Roland Emmerich? Silent Night is the second apocalypse movie starring the actor, following Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, and neither of them involve buildings falling into giant crevices or meteors striking familiar landmarks. Silent Night appears more tart than Friend, in the tradition of holiday-set comedies that boldly reveal how Christmas can be a time of (get this) conflict and strife. The plot: A family gathers for one last time on the eve of a looming planetary disaster. For her first feature, writer-director Camille Griffin has assembled a formidable cast, with Knightley joined by Matthew Goode, Lucy Punch, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and the little kid from Jojo Rabbit, among others.

Flee

Select theaters December 3

From the Waltz With Bashir school of animated nonfiction comes this moving memoir, in which a thirtysomething refugee recounts his childhood in Afghanistan and his family’s subsequent attempts to escape the country (and later, post-Soviet Russia); the subject’s autobiographical musings are dramatized via a variety of animation techniques, from Rotoscoping to charcoal painting. “Animation, as it turns out, is an ideal tool for capturing the nuisances of memory,” wrote our correspondent from Sundance, where the film won the World Documentary Cinema jury prize in January.

Wolf 

Select theaters December 3

A longtime patient at an austere yet aesthetically pleasing psychiatric facility, Wildcat (Lily Rose-Depp) suffers from “species dysphoria,” a condition that makes her nickname more literal than one might at first assume. 1917’s George MacKay is a fellow patient who considers himself to be a wolf trapped in a human body. The two fall into an unconventional romance that—according to early reviews of this offbeat festival drama—works thanks to the leads’ complete commitment to their animalistic characters.

West Side Story

Theaters everywhere December 10

For his very first musical, Steven Spielberg takes on one of the towering classics of Broadway and Hollywood: Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein’s star-crossed romance, which transposes Romeo & Juliet to the Upper West Side of the 1950s. Spielberg, working from a new and purportedly more faithful adaptation of the stage show by playwright Tony Kushner, has avoided the whitewashing of the Oscar-winning 1961 screen version by filling out the Sharks side of the ensemble with Latinx actors—including newcomer Rachel Zegler, who plays Maria. The movie arrives this crowded Christmas season embroiled in a different casting controversy: The lead role of Tony is played by Ansel Elgort, who was accused of sexual assault of a minor last summer, after production on the film had wrapped.

Don’t Look Up

Select theaters December 10; Netflix December 24

Since forsaking sublimely silly Will Ferrell comedies for more overtly political (and Oscar-friendly) material, Adam McKay has become a divisive figure among film fans and critics. Among actors, though, he’s only gotten more popular. For this satirical comedy about two scientists attempting, in vain, to warn the world about an approaching meteor with a near-100% chance of annihilating the planet, McKay has recruited Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence to lead a mind-boggling cast that also includes Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, and Ariana Grande. The trailer doesn’t provide many hints as to how the gag of blithely superficial under-reactions to an imminent catastrophe can really support a feature-length film. But some reactions from early screenings have called this the most assured of McKay’s post-Ferrell movies. It has to be better than Vice, right?

Being The Ricardos

Select theaters December 10; Amazon Prime December 21

As the internet has pointed out ad nauseam since the trailer for Being The Ricardos dropped, Nicole Kidman doesn’t look much like Lucille Ball. But she captures some of the intelligence and dry wit of the famed sitcom star in this chronologically condensed biopic about the shitstorm of personal and professional woes swirling around Ball and husband/I Love Lucy costar Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) during a particularly eventful week of their lives. That the film is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, moving back into his behind-the-scenes-of-showbiz wheelhouse after an acclaimed sojourn into his political wheelhouse, should be clear from the moment anyone on screen opens their mouth and the zingers start pouring out.

National Champions

Theaters everywhere December 10

Hollywood usually mines college athletics for inspirational pap. This drama about the debate over paying student athletes looks more like High Flying Bird on steroids. A disgruntled star player (Stephan James) attempts to lead a student-athlete strike hours before a big game, pitting him against his highly paid coach (J.K. Simmons), with an eclectic mix of actors (Timothy Olyphant, Uzo Aduba, Tim Blake Nelson, Lil Rel Howery, David Koechner) joining the fray. Director Ric Roman Waugh has previously specialized in Gerard Butler vehicles. Will his addition to the sports-movie canon be more harder-edged than the usual rah-rah Rudy variation?

Red Rocket

Select theaters December 10

Who had “Simon Rex delivers one of the great performances of the year” on their 2021 bingo card? The one-time rapper, adult-film actor, Scary Movie player, and MTV VJ is deliriously funny as Mikey Saber, a washed-up porn star who retreats to his Texas hometown to crash with his ex-wife (Bree Elrod) and maybe scam his way back to success. Like The Florida Project, the previous film from writer-director Sean Baker, Red Rocket is steeped in the personality and day-to-day details of a certain impoverished corner of the country. But it has a bit less sympathy for its main character, a manipulative (albeit very entertaining) con man of Trump’s America.

France

Select theaters December 10

Is 2021 the year of Léa Seydoux? After spending the fall reprising her role in the James Bond series and balancing precariously over a radiator in The French Dispatch, the in-demand French actor takes a starring role in this strange and sprawling sorta-satire from writer-director Bruno Dumont that played both Cannes and the New York Film Festival. Seydoux plays the auspiciously named France, a famous, glamorous TV journalist brought low by a disconcerting accident. She’s quite good in a movie that asks a lot of her—and of the audience, as it traipses through commentary on fame, the media, guilt, and tragedy.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Theaters everywhere December 17

Shared cinematic universes are so last decade. Having capitalized quite handsomely on that synergistic blockbuster strategy, Marvel now ambitiously attempts to pioneer a new one: combining cinematic universes. The fourth MCU release of the year finds Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange accidentally tearing a hole in the fabric of reality; emerging from it are villains from other continuities, with Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, and Jamie Foxx reprising their respective roles from past Spider-Man movies. Whether Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield swing by too remains to be seen. Either way, something tells us this won’t be as delightful a trip through the Spider Verse as the last one we got.

Nightmare Alley 

Select theaters December 17

William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel Nightmare Alley has been filmed before, but Guillermo del Toro says that his version is a stand-alone adaptation, not a remake of the 1947 movie starring Tyrone Power. Either way, this new take stands out in del Toro’s filmography, given that it’s a straightforward film noir without any of the director’s signature supernatural elements. But the lush Art Deco aesthetics are typical of more recent del Toro productions (including his Best Picture-winning The Shape Of Water), as is the star-studded cast, led by Bradley Cooper as a carnival geek turned sham psychic, alongside Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, and Toni Collette.

The Tender Bar

Select theaters December 17; Amazon Prime January 7

George Clooney’s career as a director has been pretty bumpy, and the first reviews of his follow-up to last year’s maudlin sci-fi movie The Midnight Sky suggest it isn’t getting any smoother. Adapted by William Monahan (The Departed) from the memoir by journalist J.R. Moehringer, this coming-of-age drama follows an aspiring writer—played by Daniel Ranieri as a young boy and by Tye Sheridan as a college student—who’s taken under the wing of his seasoned, Long Island bar-owner uncle (Ben Affleck). The supporting cast includes Lily Rabe, Christopher Lloyd, and Briana Middleton.

The Lost Daughter

Select theaters December 17; Netflix December 31

Based on a novel by Elena Ferrante, the feature directorial debut of Maggie Gyllenhaal stars Olivia Colman as a literature professor lost in memory on a beach vacation. Observing the mother-daughter relationship between two strangers—one of them played by Dakota Johnson—she disappears into her own fraught family history. The Lost Daughter won a screenplay prize when it premiered in Venice this past summer, with critics also reserving praise for Colman and Jessie Buckley, who Gyllenhaal casts as the younger version of the main character in flashbacks. Our own correspondent from Venice called the film an “interesting and sensual psychological thriller.”

Swan Song

Select theaters and Apple TV+ December 17

Benjamin Cleary, who won an Oscar for his short film “Stutterer,” makes his feature debut with this somber-looking sci-fi drama starring two more Oscar nominees, Moonlight alumni Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris. Ali plays a dying man who wants to spare his wife (Harris) and child from sorrow by swapping himself out with a clone. Glenn Close and Awkwafina co-star in a movie that appears equally intriguing and soul-crushingly sad; it is not to be confused for a different film called Swan Song from earlier this year.

The Matrix Resurrections

Theaters everywhere and HBO Max December 22

Eighteen years after blowing up both The Matrix and The Matrix, Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Lana Wachowski return to cinema’s most successful kung-fu cyberpunk head trip. But the questions dogging Neo et. al this time aren’t so blunt or simple as “What is the Matrix?” Now we’re asking things like, “Why is Thomas Anderson suddenly trapped in another false life?” And “Why does Morpheus look like actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II now?” And, most pressingly, “Can The Matrix still grab people the way it did back in 1999, or is it doomed to disappoint audiences as surely as those other sequels did?” All these questions and more—including what the damn thing’s actually about; the IMDB synopsis still reads, “The plot is currently unknown”—will be answered in multiplexes and on HBO Max this Christmas.

The King’s Man

Theaters everywhere December 22

Ralph Fiennes takes over for Colin Firth as Matthew Vaughn’s uber-glib spy franchise goes hunting for a not-especially-earned prequel outing, swapping malevolent 21st-century tech bros for early-20th-century tyrants. (You know you’re in for something exceptionally silly when your comic book-based espionage romp includes credits for both Mata Hari and infamous archduke assassinator Gavrilo Princip.) Harris Dickinson, Gemma Arterton, and Djimon Hounsou round out the cast of do-gooders trying to prevent World War I, while Rhys Ifans and his mascara gear up to chew the scenery as a cartoon version of Russian “holy man” Rasputin. Fun fact: Thanks to COVID and other factors, The King’s Man has been delayed twice as many times as the number of years that have passed since the last installment in the franchise.

Sing 2

Theaters everywhere December 22

Entourage guest star Bono (no last name given) finally grabs the spotlight in Garth Jennings’ follow-up to his 2016 animated jukebox musical. Voicing a reclusive cartoon lion, the U2 frontman joins Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Nick Kroll, Taron Egerton, and more celebrities than you could ever hope to hear semi-belt their way through recycled versions of Coldplay, Ariana Grande, and, yes, U2 songs. For the sequel, Jennings has apparently added a few more actual singers to the mix—Halsey and Pharrell Williams are both on tap—as well as a plot that sees Johansson’s punk-rock porcupine attempt to convince the Bono-lion to come out of retirement in order to appease a sinister lupine music exec (Bobby Cannavale, in what may or may not be the most improbable Vinyl callback ever.) All of those words were in English, we swear.

Parallel Mothers

Select theaters December 24

The eponymous characters of Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie are two expectant mothers giving birth almost side by side in the same hospital. One, played by Almodóvar’s sometimes muse Penélope Cruz, is older and content. The other, played by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, is much younger and anxious about the impending, momentous change to her teenage life. Parallel Mothers opened this year’s Venice Film Festival and earned a rapturous reception, even by the respective standards of its collaborating star and director. As our own Leila Latif put it, “Every queue for a waterbus, espresso, or Prosecco was filled with debates over whether this was Cruz’s best, Almodovar’s, or both.”

The Tragedy Of Macbeth

Select theaters December 25; Apple TV+ January 14

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a solo album and a covers project: Joel Coen directs his first movie apart from his brother, Ethan, adapting a famous Shakespearean tragedy. (Joel was the sole credited director on all of the Coens’ features before 2004, but they had always collaborated closely on writing, directing, and producing.) Denzel Washington steps into the title role and Frances McDormand plays Lady Macbeth, both characters made more desperate by a more advanced age than many productions depict. As detailed in our NYFF review from Vikram Murthi, Coen has remained faithful to the original text while taking a “stripped-down, expressionistic” visual approach, including gorgeous, ghostly black-and-white cinematography. Shakespeare and Coen adherents alike will find plenty to love.

A Journal For Jordan

Select theaters December 25

The same day his starring role as Macbeth hits theaters, Denzel Washington will also release a new directorial effort, this one an apparent multi-pronged attack on audiences’ tear ducts. Michael B. Jordan stars in the true story of a military sergeant deployed to Iraq who writes a series of journal entries to his wife, Dana (Chanté Adams), and their infant son. Mudbound screenwriter Virgil Williams adapted the screenplay from Dana Canedy’s real-life memoir. Judging from the trailer, one should expect sad piano music, meaningful stares, and not a dry eye in the multiplex house.

American Underdog

Theaters everywhere December 25

If National Champions isn’t generic enough as a title, try American Underdog, which would sound lazy as a spoof, nevermind the genuine article. Directors Jon and Andrew Erwin specialize in lacquering religiosity over cliché-laden genres; after giving the music biopic a pious makeover with I Can Only Imagine, they appear to have turned their sights on bland sports uplift personified by Kurt Warner, a long-undrafted football player who went on to win the Super Bowl. Warner is played here by Zachary Levi and joined by Anna Paquin and Erwin mainstay Dennis Quaid; all together, it’s a higher-caliber cast (and higher-profile release date) than usual for the faith-based market.

Memoria

Select roadshow screenings December 26

Neon is taking an unusual (and some would say exclusionary) approach to the release of the new movie from celebrated Thai filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives). Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton as a woman plagued by mysterious sounds, will roll out one city at a time, playing a few days at a single venue and then moving on to the next; if the distributor is to be believed, the film will never be available to watch from home—it’s being treated as a fleeting, solely theatrical experience. Setting aside appropriate conversations about accessibility (especially during an ongoing global pandemic), the film has to be considered one of the arthouse events of the season; at the New York Film Festival, our own Vikram Murthi called it “magnificent” and “a celebration of singularly cinematic possibilities from one of its finest working practitioners.”

Jockey

Select theaters December 29

Veteran character actor Clifton Collins Jr. secures a rare, deserved starring role as an aging jockey who finds his last-ditch bid for a championship complicated by the arrival of a rookie contender (Moises Arias) claiming to be his son. At Sundance, where the film premiered, critics described a somewhat familiar indie drama, elevated by a poignant lead performance and by director Clint Bentley’s genuine interest in the details of his horse-racing milieu. (The supporting cast is made up largely of real jockeys.)

Plus

British stop-motion studio Aardman once again reaches into its apparently limitless bucket of charm for the half-hour Christmas special Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (Netflix 12/3). Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins go looking for loot stashed in a luxury high-rise scheduled for demolition in Castle Falls (select theaters, digital platforms, and VOD 12/3). Sundance documentary Try Harder! (select theaters 12/3) goes behind the walls of one of the highest-ranked public high schools in the country. The climbing doc renaissance continues unabated with National Geographic’s Torn (select theaters 12/3). Like an American companion piece to last year’s 76 Days, The First Wave (Hulu 12/5) goes inside a New York hospital during the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. If Benedetta doesn’t fully whet your appetite for nunsploitation, look to Agnes (select theaters and VOD 12/10), the latest genre exercise from cult filmmaker Mickey Reece. Mother/Android (Hulu 12/17) turns up the romantic side of The Terminator, with Chloë Grace Moretz and Algee Smith as young lovers looking for a place to raise their newborn child during a war with the machines. To the school of psychodramas about obsessive students one can now add The Novice (select theaters and digital services 12/17), starring Orphan’s Isabelle Fuhrman as a driven row-squad hopeful. And the award-winning documentary President (select theaters 12/17) chronicles Zimbabwe’s first “free and fair” elections.