On the December Radar…

Coming off of what was probably the single most awkward and regrettable Thanksgiving dinner of our lives, as well as a failed attempt to replicate a lightning-in-a-bottle cultural phenomenon, we have one more month of 2024 theatrical releases to go. These are coming out as the next awards campaign season heats up, but pretty much all of them still have a decent shot at being a presence somewhere despite their late arrivals. And hey, a December release didn’t stop Nomadland or The Shape of Water from going all the way.

So, what is Santa bringing us this Christmas season?

NIGHTBITCH – In Theaters December 6

Directed by Marielle Heller

Starring Amy Adams, with Scoot McNairy and Zoë Chao

What is it about? A woman pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her domesticity takes a surreal turn.

How am I feelin’ about this one? It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Marielle Heller, one of the most interesting filmmakers to have emerged in the last ten years. She only has three features under her belt, but all three of them subverted expectations in thrilling ways; from the most harrowing depiction of teenage sexual discovery I’ve ever seen in The Diary of a Teenage Girl to the centering of Can You Ever Forgive Me? on its poignant relationship between two queer misfits instead of the easier con artist caper its premise suggested to A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’s haunting and supernatural take on Fred Rogers’ legacy through a fascinating star persona deconstruction from Tom Hanks, she has consistently refashioned seemingly straightforward stories into studies of difficult characters finding their humanity.

Nightbitch, an adaptation of a bestselling novel by Rachel Yoder, presents an interesting challenge to her aesthetic signature. Unlike her previous films, this one already has a darkly-funny-but-also-strangely-unnerving, semi-supernatural premise attached to it: a woman who secretly resents her new life as a stay-at-home mom begins to transform into a dog. Or… maybe she’s not transforming into a dog and is just psychologically cracking under the pressure of modern domesticity? It’s not entirely clear based on the trailer, which sort of understandably turned off some viewers for its twee sitcommy tone being at odds with a premise that seemed to be something more in line with psychological / body horror.

Especially frustrating about the rush to judgment over the marketing for the movie, sight unseen, is that it was reportedly a case of blatant false advertising according to those who were at the premiere. Joey was one of those who said so out of the Toronto International Film Festival, as he reported the dark, acerbic character study he saw there was not the lighthearted goofy farce advertised. Now, he does caveat his praise with a belief that Heller’s unnerving energies lose steam near the end of the film, but overall, his takeaway was as much a lament for deceptive trailers as it was a recommendation for the movie itself.

Which is a bummer. Let’s move on to something more lighthearted, like…

THE ORDER – In Theaters December 6

Directed by Justin Kurzel

Starring Jude Law, with Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan

What is it about? In 1983, an FBI agent notices a pattern in a string of recent bank robberies, counterfeiting operations, and armored car heists terrorizing communities across the Pacific Northwest. He sets out to prove these are not the work of a traditional organized crime unit, but a radical white supremacist group with terrifying ambitions.

How am I feelin’ about this one? … Argh, dammit. Okay, so, after crashing and burning hard with the misbegotten attempt to turn the tediously convoluted time-hopping ancestral simulation lore of Assassin’s Creed into a movie franchise, Justin Kurzel has been steadily paroling himself out of Director Jail with the kinds of brutal crime thrillers that initially put him on the map (plus a documentary about conservationists). Now, with The Order, Kurzel is focusing on a place he has never depicted in a feature film before: the United States of America. And what is this Aussie filmmaker wanting to make a movie about in a country all the way on the other side of our flat earth?

Well, what seems to be in much greater supply here than most of us wanted to believe? And are spreading at a terrifyingly rapid rate? That’s right, he is taking on white supremacist groups.

Or, a white supremacist group. From the 1980s. That was brought down by a federal law enforcement agency that hasn’t, historically-speaking, always been the best at confronting and taking down white supremacist organizations. I don’t know if I’m qualified to fully unpack the thorny implications of releasing a movie about this organization in this context, but I can, at least, appreciate that there is finally some mainstream narrative art that confronts just how widespread and sophisticated these extremist organizations are. Those young men with tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us!” were just the tip of a vast iceberg of hate permeating every corner of this country.

Joey was engaged throughout this intense police procedural when he saw it at TIFF, noting the undercurrent of this real-life ordeal seemingly sucking the life out of the characters being an unexpectedly hard-hitting element of the film. He was especially impressed by Nicholas Hoult as the leader of this anti-government race war cult funding its ambitious operation through high-risk heists across the Pacific Northwest. According to Joey, he depicts Robert Jay Mathews as a charismatic, articulate, cunning young man fully in control of his actions who absorbed all the hateful literature and propaganda from Neo-Nazis and just… took them to their logical conclusion.

A lot of these hate-peddlers don’t actually believe what they’re spewing and are just regurgitating lazy reactionary culture war grievances and stereotypes for easy money… but every now and then, you’ll get someone who listens to that contemptuous crap and thinks, “So let’s do something about it.”

THE BRUTALIST – In Theaters December 20

Directed by Brady Corbet

Starring Adrien Brody, with Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce

What is it about? A massive two-part epic about a visionary architect who flees post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild his legacy with the help of a mysterious wealthy client.

How am I feelin’ about this one? Is it just me, or did this gargantuan-length, old-fashioned epic about the trials and tribulations of an immigrant architect in postwar America sort of come out of nowhere? I mean, it probably is just me, since this project was announced almost immediately after the release of his last feature, the somewhat divisive musical drama Vox Lux, and has been languishing in development hell for the last six years.

Now that we know more about the film, and it’s been steadily building up a substantial amount of pre-release buzz on the way to its theatrical debut, I can see why: 2018 had to have been the worst possible time to begin work on a decades-spanning period piece exploring the eternal conflict between artistic integrity and the mercenary whims of the elite. That was when America was still drunk on late-stage capitalist Hollywood churning out cynical franchise extensions and mainstream audiences murdering large-scale adult dramas on the altar of IP familiarity, when four-hour-long film ideas were being expanded to six hours and dumped onto a streaming service to chase an inscrutable line go up metric instead of being given a proper theatrical release, and just before the COVID-19 pandemic threw the entertainment industry into permanent disarray.

You do not make a movie like this, at this moment in time, unless you are willing to call in tons of favors and accept a certain degree of poverty for more than a few years for something you passionately believe in. Which is apparently exactly what Corbet did in his years-long journey to make this project a reality. His substantial personal investment seems to be paying off — on top of winning rave reviews and the Silver Lion for Best Direction at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, The Brutalist has been pegged as a major contender for multiple Oscars this season: Joey currently has it in his top five predictions for Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Production Design, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Original Score. And Joey wasn’t even that big a fan of the movie (though he did give it a positive review overall and granted that it had plenty of room to improve in his eyes over time).

I am personally pretty intrigued, but I have to also admit that I am not what you’d call a huge fan of Brady Corbet and that running time sure is daunt-WAIT ARE YOU SERIOUS HE INCLUDED A MID-FILM INTERMISSION OH MY GOD THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THAT’S ALL I’VE BEEN ASKING FOR WITH THESE LONG-ASSED MOVIES PLEASE JUST GIVE ME A FEW MINUTES TO STRETCH MY LEGS AND PEE GOD BLESS YOU!!!

BABYGIRL – In Theaters December 25

Directed by Halina Reijn

Starring Nicole Kidman, with Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas

What is it about? A powerful CEO girlbosses too close to the sun when she falls into a passionate love affair with a significantly younger intern.

How am I feelin’ about this one? One of the things I like to observe, because it’s a reminder of the fascinating idiosyncrasies of art and pop culture, is that The Twilight Saga were uniformly bad movies whose influence on pop culture was almost uniformly positive. Yes, they were dramatically inert. And boring. And full of shockingly retrograde attitudes towards women, marriage, and sex. And a werewolf fell in love with a baby. But they also supercharged the careers of two of the most interesting screen performers of the Millennial generation, kickstarted a lot of genuinely thought-provoking discussions about women, marriage, and sex, and also inspired quite a few filmmakers to make better movies about vampires. Let the Right One In (and its better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be American remake Let Me In), Thirst, Only Lovers Left Alive, and What We Do in the Shadows are unquestionably better movies than Twilight, but they might not have been able to be made without the popularity of Twilight putting wind in their sails. Say what you will about sparkly vampires, their introduction to the world gave us a lot of great things.

So I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised to see a novel straight-up plagiarized from heavily inspired by the premise and scènes à faire of the Twilight series pleasedontsuemefordefamationE.L.James would also turn into a movie that’s pretty bad but also received way more hate than it actually deserved, and… well, I guess the jury’s still out on whether or not Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan have the same kind of “juice” that the stars of Twilight have proven they possess as actors, but Fifty Shades of Grey has absolutely inspired a similar number of better movies centering the same basic milieu. Just swap out vampires for BDSM and you have Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, Love and Leashes, Sanctuary, and coming soon to rock the “Hey, what if we made a good movie with BDSM themes?” subgenre, Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who decides to risk everything she has ever worked hard for to be a young intern’s secret submissive bedroom slave.

The film itself has received quite a bit of praise. Most critics call it sexy and suspenseful, but most of the hosannahs have been directed at its leading lady. Kidman has been enjoying some of the best reviews of her long career for reportedly her fearless embodiment of a self-destructive cougar completely in over her head. She won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for Babygirl, and there is a very real chance this could be the second consecutive Best Lead Actress Oscar awarded to a performance in a Weird Sex Movie.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN – In Theaters December 25

Directed by James Mangold

Starring Timothée Chalamet, with Edward Norton and Elle Fanning

What is it about? Bob Dylan, already one of the most renowned singer-songwriters of the American folk music revival, faces harsh fan and industry backlash in the summer of 1965 when he performs with electrically amplified instruments for the first time in his career.

How am I feelin’ about this one? “Give him a moment, son… Bob Dylan needs to think about his entire life before he plays.”

NOSFERATU – In Theaters December 25

Directed by Robert Eggers

Starring Bill Skarsgård, with Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp

What is it about? A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her.

How am I feelin’ about this one? What a treat for us horror fans: an ambitious and (relatively) large-scale horror feature! Releasing on Christmas Day, no less! One of the reasons why horror movies are such consistent profit machines is because of their relatively low cost and reliable box office returns; the most expensive installment of the Saw franchise so far is Spiral, which was less than one-tenth the budget of The Flash. But even though Spiral ended up being the lowest-grossing movie in the series so far, taking in only $40 million at the box office, The Flash made history as one of the most embarrassing bombs of the post-COVID era despite raking in $271 million. Moviemaking is still a business at the end of the day, and you can’t do business successfully if you’re spending more than you’re making (and you’re not a nepo baby failson who can afford to throw away money for years until your company just wins on attrition).

But while there is a consistent base of pop culture consumers who seek out being scared, they are less consistent on a large scale. For every Smile or It that unexpectedly put up superhero movie numbers at the box office, there are plenty more like Annihilation and The Thing prequel that could not make back their more substantial budgets. Though the budget for Nosferatu has not been officially disclosed yet, Czech tax credit data suggests something along the lines of $35-45 million… about as high as those two aforementioned bombs. To add to the risk profile, director Robert Eggers is no stranger to box office disappointments. His last feature, The Northman, lost a ton of money in theaters, though it later turned a profit on VOD which probably explains how Eggers bounced back so quickly and secured the keys to remaking one of the all-time – and earliest – classics of horror cinema.

Which is the other testament to this director’s massive stones: the original Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is not only one of the most enduring and influential silent films ever made, but also left an indelible impression on the vampire genre of all mediums that is still felt to this day. You would think such a classic could never be remade successfully… except this one was! In 1979, the madman auteur Werner Herzog managed to make Nosferatu the Vampyre his own unique cinematic nightmare, flexing the addition of color and sound to result in something more sardonic, fatalist, bleak.

Why in the world would any filmmaker want to roll the dice a third time? What are the odds of three different horror masterpieces being made from the same template generations apart from each other? But most importantly, will there be more onscreen rats in this than in Herzog’s version?

What are the most misleading trailers you remember? Do you think The Brutalist will live up to the hype as the next Great American Epic™? Why are we even bothering with another Bob Dylan movie when I’m Not There exists? Let us know in the comments.