Netflix
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire
Film, US, 2023 – out 22 December
Going by the trailer for this two-part film series, this epic-looking sci-fi contains many Star Wars-ish elements such as baddies in cloaks, cool flying vessels, and red and blue lightning. Except it comes from Zack Snyder, which means it will likely be bolder, more adult, more cuckoo and more intensely stylised.
The official synopsis indicates one of those lore-laden narratives loaded with backstories and strange-sounding names. Set in a universe controlled by the Motherland (whatever that is), Sofia Boutella plays Kora, who formerly belonged to the Imperium (ditto) who marshals a force to stand against the villainous Regent Balisarius. It will all become clear, I am sure, or at least clear-ish, given Snyder’s penchant for long and tangled narratives. Fun fact: he directed what I consider the greatest superhero scene of all time.
Talk to Me
Film, Australia, 2023 – out now
The Australian watercooler horror movie of the year, directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, revolves around a haunted ceramic hand. It can summon evil spirits, plonking them inside whoever holds the creepy hand and says “let me in”. Getting possessed becomes a popular pastime within a group of high school thriller-seekers including 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde), who comes to believe it can help her communicate with her late mother.
Viewers might sense where this is broadly going (ie somewhere not good) but the film’s gnarly verve and showmanship takes you by surprise. The directors play with what we can and can’t see, and the actors get to carve out macabre additional layers of performance after they touch that hideous hand. Such a simple premise, so well executed.
Leave the World Behind
Film, US, 2023 – out 8 December
This apocalyptic thriller from Sam Esmail – the creator, writer and director of Mr Robot – is getting some good buzz, for instance described by the Guardian’s Wendy Ide as “sharp-witted, bracingly bleak and immensely enjoyable”.
Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke play an affluent couple who, when in a rental property while holidaying, receive a knock on the door from a father and his daughter (Mahershala Ali and Myha’la Herrold) who claim the house is theirs. Then a series of crises unfold, including, perhaps, the end of the world? It sounds a smidge like M Night Shyamalan’s recent and very impressive Knock at the Cabin. Weirder still, it was executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama.
Honourable mentions: My Life with the Walter Boys (TV, 7 December), The Crown: season 6 part 2 (TV, 14 December), Maestro (film, 20 December), Everything Everywhere All at Once (film, 20 December), Top Gun: Maverick (film, 22 December), Berlin (TV, 29 December).
Stan
The Famous Five
TV, UK/Germany, 2023 – out 10 December
Here’s something completely unexpected: Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn, purveyor of various ultra-violent grotesqueries, turns his focus to adapting an Enid Blyton series. He’s the creator of The Famous Five, not the director, but still, it’s weird.
Like the books, the show focuses on the adventures of four children – Julian (Elliott Rose), Dick (Kit Rakusen), Anne (Flora Jacoby Richardson), George (Diaana Babnicova) – and their dog, Timmy (a border collie named Kip). They get involved in many adventures: a wee bit of treasure hunting here, some busting of criminal activities there.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Film, US, 2023 – out 12 December
Following up his electrifying thriller Cam, about a camgirl whose online identity is stolen by a doppelganger, director Daniel Goldhaber has crafted another impressively tense and twitchy ride. This one follows a group of activists who, despaired by a lack of action on climate change, decide to blow up a Texas oil pipeline.
The premise is obviously topical but Goldhaber doesn’t dive deeply into philosophical or intellectual justifications, instead smashing out a pressure-packed film with a twitchy, volatile energy. I liked, but didn’t love, his matter-of-fact approach to a very interesting premise. All the cast impress and the film is well-crafted.
Bump, season 4
TV, Australia, 2023 – out 26 December
Never, in any of the three seasons so far of Stan’s beloved dramedy, has it taken any effort to be absorbed in this world. It all began when Nathalie Morris’s protagonist Oly gave birth in the first season without even knowing she was pregnant, illustrating what Brigid Delaney described as a “real-life urban myth”. This often quite low-key production has expanded impressively, notwithstanding a disappointing spin-off series. Fans can spend Boxing Day binging on the fourth season.
Honourable mentions: Noah (film, 3 December), Django Unchained (film, 7 December), Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1 and 2 (film, 9 December), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (film, 15 December), Touching the Void (film, 17 December), Spencer (film, 18 December), Léon: The Professional (film, 19 December), Down with Love (film, 23 December), Scrapper (film, 28 December), Natural Born Killers (film, 31 December).
ABC iView
Whitney
Film, US/UK, 2018 – out 27 December
Structurally speaking this is a fairly standard documentary, loaded with talking heads, archival footage and photographs. However, there was nothing standard about Whitney Houston, the late and great performer who had that astonishing, spine-tingling voice, like a fire-breathing angel – so amazingly rousing and beautiful. Kevin Macdonald’s film has a good flow and plenty of interesting titbits that fans will adore, plus of course Houston’s music, which helps bring it to life.
For an authorised documentary, featuring interviews with many key figures such as Houston’s brothers and mother, it’s also impressively pointed, delving into dark aspects of her family’s influence and history.
Honourable mentions: Prosecuting Evil (film, 13 December), Barry Humphries In His Own Words (TV, 15 December), Living With Devils (TV, 17 December), The Yearly With Charlie Pickering (TV, 20 December), The King’s Speech (film, 24 December).
SBS on Demand
Foxcatcher
Film, US, 2014 – out 27 December
In Bennett Miller’s eerie drama, inspired by true events, an almost unrecognisable Steve Carell plays eccentric millionaire John du Pont, who entices Channing Tatum’s gold medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz into moving into his estate and training for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. This provides a narrative entry point into a slow-burning true crime story that doubles as a bleak rumination on the American dream (“I am a patriot and I want to see this country soar again,” says Du Pont, in proto-Trumpian language).
Crafted in a cold, steely colour scheme care of Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser, the film is a class act, with its slowly rising tensions and gradual reveals.
Everyone Else Burns
TV, UK, 2023 – out 7 December
Ah, the old doomsday sect – always fertile ground for drama and comedy. This series from creators Dillon Mapletoft and Oliver Taylor is the latter. It’s set in Manchester and follows a family who belong to the Order of the Divine Rod, led by a man, David (Simon Bird), who’s convinced that Armageddon is happening right about now.
The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan says the jokes “come thick, fast and funny”, while Time’s Judy Berman says they are delivered “with the signature British dryness that even the most accomplished American comedy actors never manage to master”.
Honourable mentions: Heathers (film, 1 December), Weekend at Bernie’s (film, 1 December), Snowpiercer (film, 6 December), The Doll Factory (TV, 7 December), Prisoner (TV, 7 December), Bring it On (film, 8 December), The Bling Ring (film, 8 December), Foxcatcher (film, 27 December), The Cinderella Murder (TV, 28 December).
Binge
Reality
Film, US, 2023 – out 9 December
Sydney Sweeney, who is best-known for playing Olivia Mossbacher in the first season of The White Lotus, delivers a highly impactful yet understated performance as former NSA contractor-cum-whistleblower Reality Winner in this engrossing crime drama directed by Tina Satter. It’s essentially one great big conversation between Winner and FBI agents, who confront her about the leaking of a classified report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
The film has a very interesting central gimmick, which makes it perhaps the most unusual crime film of 2023. All the dialogue is entirely drawn from FBI transcripts of the interrogation that took place at Winner’s home, grounding the film in a mostly single setting and giving it an unusual verbal authenticity.
Christmess
Film, Australia, 2023 – out 15 December
Writer-director Heath Davis’s tenderly crafted drama about a recovering alcoholic, Steve Le Marquand’s Chris, who tries to turn over a new leaf and reunite with his estranged daughter doesn’t take any of the easy routes. It deeply invests in characters and performances and resists neat moral messaging. And it’s not some highfalutin kitchen sink drama: rather, a widely accessible film that immerses viewers into its world and makes you feel for its characters – particularly Chris, a well-known actor brought to life very skilfully by La Marquand.
Recovering from the past and starting again is never, as the script acknowledges, a straight trajectory reaching upwards; life is full of scrambles and setbacks. The film’s bittersweet final act is a fine example of how audiences can leave satisfied, without feeling as if they’ve been mollycoddled or condescended to.
A Savage Christmas
Film, Australia, 2023 – out 15 December
Christmas brings together all sorts of families, including of course highly dysfunctional ones. Madeleine Dyer’s dramedy relies on drawing latent tensions to the surface, here involving a trans daughter (Thea Raveneau) coming home for the first time in three years; a roughed-up son (Ryan Morgan) who owes money to a gangster; another daughter (Rekha Ryan) who has drug and alcohol problems; an at times outrageously rude mother (Helen Thomson); and a father (David Roberts) who might be concealing money issues.
The protracted setup is pretty good, establishing a degree of awkwardness and drama, with the knowledge there’ll be much more where that came from. Darren Gilshenan is also very funny as the rambunctious uncle. However this is one of those films that scales up its final act by flicking a switch that suddenly escalates the drama, undoing some of the good work.
Honourable mentions: Strife (TV, 6 December), Found (TV, 11 December), Smothered (TV, 7 December), Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (film, 29 December).
Disney+
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Film, US, 2023 – out now
I had a blast with the latest and, hopefully, last Indiana Jones movie, given Harrison Ford is now in his 80s and no amount of playful dialogue alluding to his age can justify another crack of the whip. The screenwriters wisely made the plot instigator Jones’s goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who sets old mate Indy off on a globetrotting adventure to find the titular device which, according to legend, can locate fissures in time and be used to jump the temporal plane. Mads Mikkelsen, playing a Nazi named Jürgen Voller, wants to get his grubby mitts on it so he can change the outcome of the second world war.
Honourable mentions: Doctor Who: Specials (TV, 3 December, 10 December and 26 December), Theater Camp (film, 6 December), Percy Jackson and the Olympians (TV, 20 December).
Amazon Prime Video
Candy Cane Lane
Film, US, 2023 – out now
What’s the silly season without a bunch of crappy Christmas movies? Look: I haven’t seen Candy Cane Lane yet, so I must and will reserve judgment – even if the word around Eddie Murphy’s latest film – in which he competes to win an annual Christmas home decoration contest – hasn’t been good. However, if it is a stinker, it could be a valuable reminder to keep your expectations of the festive season very low.
Honourable mentions: Prisoner’s Daughter (film, 5 December), Merry Little Batman (film, 8 December), Los Farad (TV, 12 December), Hypnotic (film, 26 December).
Apple TV+
John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial
TV, UK, 2023 – out 6 December
“Incredibly, for a crime of this magnitude, the case never went to trial,” says narrator Kiefer Sutherland in this three-part documentary series about the death of John Lennon and the man who murdered him – Mark David Chapman. It’s one of those shows that has a heavy, revelatory tone, implying it’s loaded full of gamechanging new information, only for it to turn out pretty light when it comes to fresh epiphanies. Still, for people who weren’t alive when Lennon was killed in 1980 – or were too young to absorb the details – it does contain many insights and is strung together in a reasonably engaging (if a little sensationalist) style.
Honourable mentions: Spirited sing-along version (film, 1 December), The Family Plan (film, 15 December).
Paramount+
Big Boys
TV, UK, 2022 – out 15 December
This British comedy series centred around a friendship between two male university students, one gay and the other straight, arrives heaped with praise, including from this very masthead. Lucy Mangan gave it four stars, describing it as a show with a “careful, tender tone”. Oh, and in the Guardian’s list of the Top 50 TV shows from 2022, it landed in sixth place, Hollie Richardson reflecting on how “television doesn’t get much more special than this”. Sold!
Honourable mentions: Heist 88 (film, 1 December), Thriller 40 (film, 2 December), Paper Dolls (TV, 3 December), The Lady and the Legend (film, 13 December), 80 for Brady (film, 14 December), Finestkind (film, 16 December).
This article was amended on 5 December 2023 to remove a link and reference to the 2023 US film Big Boys, which the article mistook for the 2022 British TV series of the same name.
