There are a lot of movies out right now in the ether that you can choose from, but sometimes, it’s just so hard to pick which ones are worth your time.
Luckily, we’ve watched a lot of movies lately and have picked out five films that you can watch right now that are absolutely worth spending time with as temperatures get colder and being indoors to watch a movie sounds more and more appealing for a night out (or in).
Let’s check out five of these films, which range from a Nicolas Cage flick to the latest take on the apocalypse in a new Netflix adaptation.
Leave the World Behind
Leave The World Behind is a wackadoodle apocalypse movie, both self-serious to a hilarious fault and very in on the joke. It’s a dangerous line to straddle, knowing your film is so daffy in nature but also wanting to have it both ways and really make something out of it.
The script is too fussy and proud of itself, but the direction is pleasantly bonkers and the cast very adept to what tone they’re playing. Filmmaker Sam Esmail so brazenly pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock here that he owes the estate a couple of royalty checks, but the doomsday imagery and deliciously fraught angles and cuts help balance out the lumbering chunks of dialogue that just meander without a lot of purpose and with a lot of over-application.
It’s too stylish and savvy to be trash, but it’s too obsessed with its airport thriller urgency to elevate it past the cheap thrills. However, when you’ve got a movie with those opening credits, that Julia Roberts/Mahershala Ali dancing scene and that beautifully IDC gag of an ending, you’ve got my vote. It’s no Knock at the Cabin, but it is a fun time.
When it comes to directing talky, ridiculous Netflix vanity projects with game casts for television veterans named Sam, Esmail >>> Levinson.
Where to Watch: Netflix
The Zone of Interest
I’ve never experienced a film quite like this before, one that shows how even evil can become so calloused and uninterested in its generational genocide that it becomes background noise to everything else going on with family drama and work demands. Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer doesn’t flinch one single second, but he also doesn’t overstay his welcome with the very singular vision of terror he conjures. The cast does incredibly potent work here, as it just cannot be easy to put yourselves in these people’s shoes with all this unforgivable evil they’re responsible for right at their doorstep.
They just don’t care that they are murdering millions of people. It’s just so routine to them. I’ve never seen a Holocaust film like this, one that makes you stare into the uncaring eye of Hell and hear the screams and torture. I’ll never forget this. Also, this could’ve gone wrong in so many ways, and it doesn’t, and that’s a testament to Glazer.
Where to Watch: Theaters (Dec. 15)
Dream Scenario
This is the most interesting Nic Cage performance of the Cage-aissance, as it invokes the off-putting confidence and stark melancholy that marks a lot of what he did in the 2000s (when he wasn’t doing National Treasure). I missed this version of Cage very much.
You get some wacky moments, sure, but you also get an actor openly grappling with his reputation in the midst of meme-ification. Filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli had to have written this with Cage in mind, if only because it so subtly deals with his career trajectory in a way as it openly deals with the temperamental nature of fame and attention.
A lot of the film is dealing with macro issues, of our societal thirst to have that little special spark get ignited into something we can’t fully reckon with once it’s actually lit. It’s about us as the subject and us as the consumer, so hungry for validation and yet so incapable of seeing past our own noses at the way we cope with ourselves and others. The “cancel culture” commentary is shrewd and has real bite, as it satirizes our definition of judgment just as easily as it lampoons its fiercest critics.
At the end of the day, you get the failure to appreciate what you have and dangerous hunger for greener grass, for recognition and plaudits beyond our wildest dreams… it feels Frank Capra-esque in its desire to teach us a grand lesson about ourselves and our world while sticking with Charlie Kaufman’s point-of-fact morality and abstract absolution, which Cage can sell as well as any.
Cage’s is a tremendous performance that anchors a very good film, a bitter pill chased with a tart cider.
Where to Watch: Theaters
May December
Maybe the most excruciatingly brilliant takedown of method acting since Tropic Thunder?
Todd Haynes is wild for this one. This is all at once a uproariously uncomfortable comedy and an unbelievably sad melodrama about one of those just horrible piles of tabloid crap that still attracts flies multiple decades later. All three leads understand the assignment so perfectly; Natalie Portman a deliriously self-important jackass who’s willing to bulldoze through people for their cheap creative currency, Julianne Moore a painfully obvious wolf in sheep’s clothes who chooses cluelessness as an alibi to keep the blame (and guilt?) for her destructive past anywhere but right where it should be in the mirror.
It’s Charles Melton, however, who steals the movie as the poor man-child stuck in a cocoon not of his choosing, just waiting for the day he can justify just getting the hell out of dodge and seizing a chance to grow up, grow past the ugly foundation he’s had to play along with as the American Dream. Melton has that aloof, fearful demeanor down pat to subvert once he really goes into the character’s confused, shattering emotions, and it’s a grand statement of a performance to share the spotlight so confidently with two titans like Portman and Moore. He’s the film’s moral compass, stuck spinning around in circles and desperate for some sort of arrow pointing anywhere but here.
The ending is perfect because it confirms what we all feel coming: the movie Portman is doing all of this unbelievably unethical character work for is probably going to stink, and her performance is going to be hammy and bad. All of that nasty interrogation, all of that leeching, all of this salacious attention to reassess the garbage of yesterday’s junky headlines for the sake of empty entertainment for the vultures, for naught. Dang. Strike the set and start all over. Same as it ever was.
Netflix should’ve paid for a fake Nora’s Ark trailer to play after the movie. Can you imagine?
Where to Watch: Netflix
American Fiction
This was absolutely wonderful. It strikes such a refreshing balance between the James L. Brooks/Nancy Meyers-ready family drama and the Alexander Payne-fueled social satire.
The brilliance is in that dichotomy, half of it a scathing, frequently hilarious critique of how Black storytellers can be boxed into limited narratives by clueless white audiences who lean into stereotypes to satisfy guilt and champion very basic ideas of representation and inclusion.
On the other hand, it’s also an example of how you actually expand representation, by letting everyone tell whatever stories they want because all people contain all multitudes. The bulk of this film is a Terms of Endearment/As Good As It Gets-style dramedy, and Cord Jefferson nails the nuances and catharsis of that style as well as he zeroes in on the fierce thesis of his sociopolitical satire. It’s delightfully prickly and deeply resonant while also quite moving and involving.
Jefferson structures the screenplay with such a clever contrast, as the crux of the commentary makes you appreciate even more the character-focused side. Just like minority storytellers have the right and should have the platform to tell all kinds of stories, Jefferson doesn’t want to just tell a story about that theme.
He chooses a full canvas to tell a very human story with lots of moving parts, which strengthens the point of the movie in a way that might not have hit as hard if this was just a straight satire. It’s a gamble that Jefferson nails, and you do wonder if people wanting this to just focus on the commentary are missing the point.
The film can’t work without Jeffrey Wright, and he’s rarely been better. Sterling K. Brown is also just a joy whenever he’s on screen. Those two are just undeniably good together.
All about this one. It’s the old-school kind of well-written, well-acted studio comedy crowd-pleaser about normal people going through an unusual situation, but it’s also one of the most interesting, compelling sociopolitical texts in ages.
Where to Watch: Theaters (Dec. 15)
