Wonder Woman, George Clooney, and Pixar bring the blockbusters home this Christmas

By A.A. Dowd, Katie Rife, William Hughes, Jesse Hassenger, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky | December 3, 2020 | 10:00am

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Wonder Woman, George Clooney, and Pixar bring the blockbusters home this Christmas

Clockwise from left: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Photo: David Lee/Netflix), Soul (Image: Disney/Pixar), Promising Young Woman (Photo: Focus Features), The Midnight Sky (Photo: Philippe Antonello/Netflix), Wonder Woman 1984 (Photo: Clay Enos/DC Comics) Graphic: Natalie Peeples

It’s the final month of 2020, and we’re not much closer than we were all year to getting back to the status quo of normal moviegoing—which is to say, to a time when theaters were open nationwide, most of the major films were headed there first, and dying of an infectious disease was very low on the list of reasons not to spring for the IMAX experience. A few movies are opening on the big screen this holiday season, but most of the biggest ones are either skipping theaters entirely (as Pixar’s Soul is) or offering the smart consumer an alternative way to watch (like catching Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max the same day it hits multiplexes). Anyway, most of what’s dropping this December will be accessible via the safe routes of streaming platforms, digital services, VOD, or virtual theaters. Keep reading to find out what’s coming to a living room—and, yes, some theaters—near you. And before trekking out to see a movie on the big screen, please read up on the health risks.

Mayor

It’s the final month of 2020, and we’re not much closer than we were all year to getting back to the status quo of normal moviegoing—which is to say, to a time when theaters were open nationwide, most of the major films were headed there first, and dying of an infectious disease was very low on the list of reasons not to spring for the IMAX experience. A few movies are opening on the big screen this holiday season, but most of the biggest ones are either skipping theaters entirely (as Pixar’s is) or offering the smart consumer an alternative way to watch (like catching on HBO Max the same day it hits multiplexes). Anyway, most of what’s dropping this December will be accessible via the safe routes of streaming platforms, digital services, VOD, or virtual theaters. Keep reading to find out what’s coming to a living room—and, yes, some theaters—near you. And before trekking out to see a movie on the big screen, please .

Running a major city is never an easy job, but it’s probably especially challenging when the city in question is Ramallah. That’s one big takeaway of , which follows Musa Hadid, second-term mayor of the de facto capital of Palestine, over a hectic, eventful 18 months. Despite the threat of violence posed by a hostile military presence, the film is not a grim geopolitical procedural; from the spring’s True/False Film Festival, “Osit locates some dry humor, taking his cues from the faint exasperation of his subject.” Fans of Palestinian director Elia Suleiman may recognize a touch of his sensibility in the more tragicomic passages.

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Nomadland

Chloé Zhao’s big studio debut, Marvel’s Eternals, has been pushed back to next November. But it’s still a big year for Zhao, who will have to settle for having made the . The writer-director casts Frances McDormand, in one of her best performances in ages, as a widow who flees the economic desolation of small-town Nevada, crossing the country in a camper in search of available work. Adapting a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, Zhao packs the margins of her movie with real nomads, supplying the kind of authenticity of environment and character that distinguished her previous feature, . Don’t take our word for its high quality: The film earned near-universal praise at all of the major fall film festivals—including Venice, where it won the coveted top prize, The Golden Lion.

I’m Your Woman

This 1970s-set crime drama from director and co-writer Julia Hart () stars herself, Rachel Brosnahan, as a woman who must go on the run (with a baby in tow) after her thief husband gets himself in deep trouble. Michael Mann’s is apparently an acknowledged influence; even from the basic premise, one can recognize a revision of that film’s climax from the Tuesday Weld character’s point of view. We’ll have to wait to find out what distinguishes this movie from any number of recent low-key, distaff takes on classic film genres; the trailer isn’t exactly intriguing, and even positive reports from the virtual festival circuit mention an excessively slow pace.

All My Life

When a marriage proposal happens halfway through a movie trailer, you know trouble lies ahead for the imaginary couple. In the based-on-a-true-story romance All My Life, the unlucky lovers are Jessica Rothe and Harry Shum Jr., who pops the question just before finding out he’s got an advanced stage of cancer. They decide not to pause their nuptials, even as he enters treatment. Will this be a paean to true love or to the questionable importance of throwing an expensive wedding no matter what? Marc Meyers, who previously made and , isn’t the director you’d expect to offer either. Maybe he’s summoning something unexpected for this one.

and star Jillian Bell is an aspiring fairy godmother in this comic fantasy bound for Disney+. Determined to prove that young girls still need some magical back-up, she twirls off to contemporary Boston, and ends up pestering (and presumably transforming the life of) a very grown single mother and TV reporter played by Isla Fisher. If nothing else, the lightly diverting Godmothered should tide families over until the long-in-the-works sequel finally comes out—or at least until Christmas, when the Mouse House releases its big holiday movie, Soul, on the streaming platform.

Another Round

If you’ve found yourself hitting the bottle a little more than usual during these long nights cooped up at home, Another Round should give you a lot to think about. Not completely a cautionary tale, the film reunites Mads Mikkelsen with his director Thomas Vinterberg, who casts him as a high school history teacher whose stale marriage and stultifying work life both take a turn when he tries out an unconventional new method of self-improvement: maintaining a 0.05% BAC at all times. It’s a tragicomic look at both alcohol abuse and midlife crises, culminating in the dance sequence of the year.

Black Bear

Aubrey Plaza has built a healthy career from withering deadpan asides and epic eye rolls. But in Black Bear, she both critiques and eventually transcends her regular comic persona as a filmmaker who comes to stay at a secluded cabin in the mountains, only to find herself caught in the middle of a marital crisis of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? proportions—though that’s really just the half of this tricky, bifurcated Sundance drama from writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine. Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon are typically excellent as the imploding couple, but this is Plaza’s show all the way; she delivers what may be her rangiest performance.

Let Them All Talk

It’s been 15 months since the release of —which is to say, a small eternity in Steven Soderbergh years. The prolific Hollywood experimenter is “finally” back with a new film, this one a dramedy featuring Meryl Streep, who starred in his last movie, as a famous author who goes on a cruise while working on a new manuscript; along for the ride are longtime friends played by Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen, as well as son Lucas Hedges. Soderbergh, working from a script by veteran actor and short-story writer Deborah Eisenberg, doesn’t seem like the most natural fit for the material. Then again, is there a genre this director hasn’t made his own?

Wild Mountain Thyme

The accent police will be out in full force to patrol Wild Mountain Thyme: It’s set in Ireland but stars the notably non-Irish Emily Blunt and Christopher Walken, alongside the actually Irish Jamie Dornan. Dornan plays a reluctant farmer whose father (Walken) wants to enlist an American cousin (Jon Hamm) to run the family farm in his place; Blunt plays a neighboring farmer whose not-quite-romantic relationship with Dornan may be threatened by this development. Whatever their vocal (or farming) qualifications, the actors were good enough for acclaimed (American) writer-director John Patrick Shanley, adapting his play Outside Mullingar to the screen, as he did with .

Ryan Murphy’s deal with Netflix apparently affords him not just the opportunity to produce lots of projects but to produce some very Ryan Murphy projects. Case in point: this Murphy-directed adaptation of a Broadway musical wherein four egocentric stage actors with big personalities (Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells, and professional nuisance James Corden) head to an Indiana small town to intervene on behalf of a gay teenager (Jo Ellen Pellman) who has been banned from attending her prom with her girlfriend (Ariana DeBose). Kidman’s past musicals offer some hints at a pathway here—and unfortunately, The Prom is less gloriously over-the-top spectacle (à la ) and more a -style all-star disaster.

Songbird

Ah yes, just what everyone was clamoring for: Michael Bay’s take on the COVID-19 crisis! The Transformers honcho produced this brazenly topical thriller, which is advertising itself as the first movie made in Los Angeles during the pandemic. It’s set in the dystopian future of 2023, when the virus has mutated and the world has entered its fourth year of lockdown; KJ Apa and Sofia Carson are the young lovebirds who forge a connection, pesky social-distancing laws be damned. Is it tasteful to wring thrills from a worldwide medical emergency that’s very much not under control? Either way, the mention of “quarantine camps” and shoot-on-sight curfews makes it very clear what audience Bay is courting. It looks like for the reopen-everything-now crowd.

Minari

Following his superb supporting turn in (which really should have netted him an Oscar nomination), alum Steven Yeun nabs the lead in this A24 drama about a Korean-American family that moves to small-town Arkansas in the 1980s to start a farm. Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung strikes a gentle, half-comic tone that recalls the work of Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu; the movie’s modest pleasures and warm-hearted depiction of cultural and generational conflict earned it lots of fans at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the top jury and audience awards.

Babe by way of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. That’s the elevator pitch for this alternately cute and harrowing nature documentary, which wordlessly captures—in crisp, striking black-and-white—the lives of animals on a Norwegian farm, including a flock of almost prehistoric chickens, a herd of staring bovine, and a mother sow with her new litter of piglets. Don’t be fooled by the G rating: Gunda is as unforgiving as we are to farm animals. But anyone searching for a truly immersive nonfiction experience will be in hog heaven. (Paul Thomas Anderson is a fan, too, if you need more incentive to see it.)

Farewell Amor

In writer-director Ekwa Msangi’s debut feature, an Angolan cabbie is reunited with the wife and daughter he left behind; sharing a small New York apartment after 17 years apart, they are in effect strangers. Farewell Amor was warmly received at Sundance, with much praise directed at Msangi’s script, which divides the film into three parts, each focused on a different member of the family. It’s undeniable that our present circumstances have made the familiar themes of distance and dislocation seem timelier than usual. The idea of cramped personal space in a big city now feels like a reminder of a happier age.

Greenland

He’s rescued the president three times, averted war with Russia twice, and saved the Earth from something called a “geostorm.” But can Gerard Butler and his wobbly American accent protect his family from some kind of planetary crisis that involves comets? In Greenland, the scowling one-man-genre reunites with his director, Ric Roman Waugh, for another mystifyingly titled disaster film. Butler action movies have become an annual tradition, and while their quality never rises above diverting mediocrity, it’s good to know that in these uncertain times, there are still some things you can count on (even if you have to enjoy them from home).

In his final performance, Chadwick Boseman stars in this adaptation of August Wilson’s classic 1920s-set play about a headstrong trumpet player who loses everything during a recording session for the early blue star Ma Rainey (Viola Davis, who previously won an Oscar for another Wilson adaptation, ). The A.V. Club’s Shannon Miller was effusive in her , praising Boseman’s performance and director George C. Wolfe’s willingness to embrace the theatricality that girds Wilson’s realism. That such terrific material should prove to be the swan song of the charismatic Boseman is bittersweet.

Caring for a parent with dementia is a common cinematic subject (there was even ), but not too many films approach it from the perspective of the parents themselves. French playwright Florian Zeller does just that with The Father, which he adapted from his own stage show about an elderly man (Anthony Hopkins) who’s begun to lose his grip on memory, reality, and the basic details of his life. Set entirely within a London apartment, the film uses editing and abrupt casting changes to thrust audiences into the character’s disoriented state of mind. Hopkins has never been as vulnerable on screen; recent Oscar winner Olivia Colman also does strong work as his concerned daughter.

The Midnight Sky

George Clooney hasn’t starred in a feature film since 2016’s , and he hasn’t directed one since 2017’s . He returns to both vocations with The Midnight Sky. While the majority of his films as a director take place in the past, this one jumps into a post-apocalyptic future, where a scientist (Clooney) mans an Arctic research station. When a ship’s worth of astronauts (including Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler) approaches Earth unaware of the recent disaster, the scientist attempts to contact and stop them from re-entering a ruined world. Maybe this urgency will help Clooney shake off the period-piece staidness that has come to define his work as a director.

Wonder Woman 1984

The DC cinematic universe’s continues to distance itself from any wider franchise ambitions with this neon-colored period sequel, which sends Gal Gadot’s princess of Themyscira deep into the heart of the American shopping mall to battle the evils that lurk within. Chris Pine returns as an apparently resurrected Steve Trevor (now pulling his own fish-out-of-water duties), while Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig antagonize as DC Comics business baddie Maxwell Lord and classic Wonder Woman villain Cheetah, respectively. Helmed by returning writer-director Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984 is also likely destined to become another data point in the ongoing COVID-19 cinema response, as Warner Bros. tests out a hybrid release strategy that will see it launch in theaters in many markets one week, and on streaming and in multiplexes here in the States the next.

Headed to Disney+ without any -style fees, Pixar’s latest bookends a pandemic year for the animation studio; its was one of the last theatrical releases before the March movie theater shutdown. Soul is a more metaphysical fantasy: When an accident befalls Joe (Jamie Foxx), a music teacher and aspiring jazz musician, his spirit travels to a netherworld where nascent souls develop their individual personalities. No surprise that this conceptual headiness comes from director Pete Docter; there’s a bit of that film, and a few other Pixar offerings, in Soul’s mild, familiar fun.

News Of The World

Tom Hanks loves to play captains. For his second captain movie of the year (after the enjoyably sturdy ), the comforting voice of America’s better moments reunites with shaky camerawork popularizer Paul Greengrass, who previously helmed the definitive Hanks-as-captain movie, . This time, Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kidd, a Civil War veteran who agrees to travel across Texas to deliver an orphan to her aunt. We like to think of this as another step toward the cycle’s ultimate form, in which Hanks will become the first person to make a movie in a country that’s actually ruled by captains: .

Monster Hunter

Paul W.S. Anderson, the video game adaptation auteur behind , has found a new console property to call home. Milla Jovovich, the director’s longtime muse (and offscreen spouse), plays the leader of a group of Army Rangers who get sucked through some kind of portal into a fantasy world that has a serious problem with megafauna. What does any of this have to do with the Monster Hunter series? Not much! Anderson isn’t known for his ; this is presumably just another sandbox for his B-movie values and preoccupations with squads, death traps, countdown timers, military-industrial tech, and Alice In Wonderland references.

Pinocchio

Eighteen years after he played the puppet with aspirations to real boyhood, Oscar-winning seat-climber Roberto Benigni has aged into the role of the elderly woodcarver Geppetto. Directed by Matteo Garrone, who dabbled in fairy-tale magic of a much more adult nature in , this new adaptation of the classic story premiered to mostly positive reviews at the Berlin International Film Festival back in February; in a blatant and probably misguided appeal for the theatrical market American studios are mostly avoiding this holiday season, an English-language cut will hit a few thousand U.S. theaters on Christmas. At the very least, it has to be better than Benigni’s —or, for that matter, the forthcoming Robert Zemeckis version for Disney.

Promising Young Woman

One of the most controversial movies to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival finally makes it to theaters, months after its original release date and just in time for Christmas! Carey Mulligan is the title character, who works as a barista by day but spends her nights entrapping sexual predators who prey on intoxicated women at bars. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell—who took over showrunner duties for the second season of —Promising Young Woman is a genuinely discomfiting blend of drama, thriller, and dark comedy that never takes the easy route to revenge-movie catharsis. It’s sure to be as divisive in general release as it was in Park City.

The premise of One Night In Miami… sounds like the setup to a joke: “Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Malcolm X walk into a Miami hotel room…” But while director Regina King, working from Kemp Powers’ adaptation of his own stage play, does give these real-life friends their moments of levity, ultimately the film has bigger issues on its mind. Many are related to the civil rights movement, an especially pertinent theme given that the film is set in February 1964; the nuances and tensions of all four men’s varying degrees of involvement with the cause are laid out in this dialogue-driven ensemble piece, which premiered to acclaim at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Sylvie’s Love

Scooped up by Amazon after its Sundance premiere, this period romance casts Tessa Thompson as a young would-be TV producer who meets an aspiring jazz star (cornerback-turned-actor Nnamdi Asomugha) in 1950s New York. Life paths take them in separate directions, but Eugene Ashe’s script (which he also directs) ends up pushing the two back into each other’s orbits. Alano Miller co-stars as the guy Thompson probably shouldn’t have married, while Eva Longoria, Jemima Kirke, and Lance Reddick all appear in supporting roles.

Elderly men who make their living unearthing rare truffles in the woods of Italy doesn’t sound like the most exciting topic for a documentary. But directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw dig up some treasures of their own in the eccentric personalities of their subjects, while also capturing some truly breathtaking footage of the wilderness. The film’s formal pleasures are probably one reason nearly every major festival this year—from Sundance to Toronto to the cancelled Cannes—made room for The Truffle Hunters.

Fans of long, elaborate shots should keep their eyes peeled for Pieces Of A Woman, the English-language debut of Hungarian director and keep-the-camera-running enthusiast Kornél Mundruczó (). The film’s claim to fame is an extended sequence—unfolding in real time and via a single, unbroken take—of Vanessa Kirby simulating a home birth. Her performance, along with those of Shia LaBeouf and Ellen Burstyn, is probably the best reason for everyone else to check out this overwrought domestic drama, which plays constantly to the cheap seats even during the scenes with cuts.

Plus:

The documentary (virtual theaters December 4) looks at the beginning at the COVID pandemic, zeroing in on an overwhelmed hospital in Wuhan. Anthony Hopkins does double duty this month in dramas about the treachery of the mind, appearing in not just The Father but also Elyse (select theaters and VOD 12/4). Mexican movie star Luis Gerardo Méndez headlines the road trip comedy Half Brothers (select theaters 12/4). From regular Adam Sandler collaborator Dennis Dugan comes the ensemble comedy of Love, Weddings & Other Disasters (select theaters and VOD 12/4), starring Diane Keaton, Maggie Grace, and Jeremy Irons. Christmas arrives early with Dear Santa (select theaters, VOD, and digital platforms 12/4), which takes a close look at the U.S. Postal Service’s “Operation Santa” program. Though the title is pretty close to a certain Robert Zemeckis thriller, What Lies Below (VOD and digital platforms 12/4) sounds more like a remake of The Stepfather. It’s a solid month for music documentaries, given the same-day release of both the Billie Holiday profile Billie (select theaters and VOD 12/4) and Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan (select theaters and VOD 12/4), about the frontman of The Pogues. The documentary Deep In Vogue (VOD 12/8) looks back at the vogue culture of Manchester and New York City. Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy (Netflix 12/10) follows a young man’s sexual awakening against the Sri Lanka of the ’70s and ’80s. The Rudy/Brian’s Song pigskin tearjerker canon grows with Safety (Disney+ 12/11). In Wander Darkly (select theaters and VOD 12/11), Sienna Miller and Diego Luna play new parents grappling with their past. Ip Man: Kung Fu Master (select theaters and VOD 12/11) dramatizes yet another chapter in the life of the martial-arts legend. Assassins (select theaters 12/11; VOD 1/15) recounts the bizarre true story of the two women who killed Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia’s international airport. From Kartemquin Films, a.k.a. the house that built , comes the missing-person documentary Finding Yingying (virtual theaters 12/11). In Sundance jury prizewinner Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness (virtual theaters 12/11), a woman convicted of murdering her husband atones on live television. Skylines (select theaters and VOD 12/18) wraps up the sci-fi trilogy that began with Skyline and continued with its more well-regarded DTV sequel, Beyond Skyline. Speaking of alien invasions, Bruce Willis continues his sad slide into B-action anonymity with the Saban sci-fi thriller Breach (select theaters, VOD, and digital platforms 12/18). Alicia Silverstone tries to destroy her brother’s destination wedding in the comedy (?) Sister Of The Groom (select theaters, VOD, and digital platforms 12/18). And Hunter Hunter (select theaters, VOD, and digital platforms 12/18) pits a family of fur trappers against a lone wolf and maybe something more dangerous lurking in the woods.