Judged purely on the basis of how many directors I love have something coming out in the next few weeks, December 2021 is one of the most exciting-looking months I have encountered in the 16 years I’ve been writing about movies online. Now, that’s a different thing than “every one of those looks like a slam-dunk great movie”, but quite a few of them actually do, and of the ones I specifically wasn’t anticipating very highly is currently enjoying religious-level praise on social media and in early reviews. So yeah, let’s mark it down, this is the most Tim has ever looked forward to a monthly slate of films in all his days of blogging. Which if nothing else means that I’m still holding out hope that cinema will recover from the grim one-two punch of 2020 and 2021.
3.12.2021
One of those very rare weekends (though the first weekend in December is probably the least-rare place for it to fall) where there’s not a single new wide release in North America – nor, as far as I’m aware, are there even any wide expansions. But we’re hitting that “directors I love” thing pretty hard right of the gate in the limited releases. Paul Verhoeven, one of the most joyous and energetic of our current provocateurs, has come along with a piece of honest-to-God nunsploitation, Benedetta, and while the hype for it isn’t as strong as I hoped it would be when I anointed it my most-anticipated film of the last third of 2021, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s just because most of our current film critic cognoescenti are kind of crummy and perhaps just don’t “get” Verhoeven.
In even more limited release – in that it is a four-walled Netflix release being given a cursory theatrical run for Oscar qualification prior to hitting the streaming service on the 15th – Paolo Sorrentino is coming in with The Hand of God, a story of Neapolitan boyhood that’s apparently at least partially autobiographical. I do love Sorrentino very much, but this one just isn’t quite sparking anything for me; I prefer him in sardonic, political mode, and this appears to be neither. But I still hope for at least a pleasant time.
Completeness’s sake encourages me to also mention Encounter, an upcoming Amazon Prime release getting its own quickie qualifying stint. It’s a fairly generic-looking film about a dogged Marine, and there’d be no real hook at all as far as I can see, except that the Marine is played by Riz Ahmed in his first post-Oscar nomination role.
10.12.2021
The first wide release of the month, and it’s a real big one: after nearly fifty years directing masterpieces, crowdpleasers, and the very rare outright flip, Steven Spielberg finally gets to make the movie musical he’s wanted to make since the 1970s, with a new adaptation of West Side Story that is precently receiving unqualified raves. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to it very much. The trailers make it seem very… heavy, which is fine I guess, it is a tragedy, but I think the urge to make this particular story Say Something About Our Society will be irresistible, and I do tire so movies Saying Something. More to the point, forgive me everybody, but I’m honestly just not that big of a fan of the show. I’m afraid I was persuaded by the late Stephen Sondheim in his collected book of lyrics, Finishing the Hat, that the lyrics are showily sophisticated and a bit precious, and while there are some very good pieces of music, there are also a decent number of songs (“Something’s Coming”, “One Hand, One Heart”, “A Boy Like That”) that just make me impatient and antsy. Ugliest of all, I don’t have that much use for the universally-beloved 1961 film, about which my most generous feeling is that among 1960s stage-to-screen adaptations, it comes a lot closer to sticking the landing than My Fair Lady.
Basically, I guess I’m saying that I wish Spielberg had gone for, like Damn Yankees or The Music Man, if he really needed to do a ’50s musical that already has a good-not-great film adaptation.
In limited release, another auteur I respect, with a film I think I’m still looking forward to: Bruno Dumont’s France, a media satire starring Léa Seydoux. No film with such a grand title as that can be all good, but I’m at least excited to see an bmitious mess, if nothing better. And then two films I’m not looking forward to at all but should be: Sean Baker’s Red Rocket (I’m just not interested in Baker’s “thing”) and Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (his last film, Vice, was utter poison, and and he gets absolutely no benefit of the doubt from me ever again). And then yet another “coming soon to streaming” qualifier (as is Don’t Look Up, for that matter): Being the Ricardos, which I must admit, I have already seen, and thought was pretty okay, a strong script with terrible directing, and that’s a whole lot better than I would have predicted if I was writing this blind.
17.12.2021
Okay, now this feels like me writing a monthly preview: just the very thought of seeing Spider-Man: No Way Home fills me with miserable exhaustion. That looks like homework, not a movie.
Honestly, this is the weekend that looks worst all month. The big limited releases are The Tender Bar, an Amazon original (expanding on the 22nd and hitting streaming in January) where George Clooney tries once again to pretend he can direct, The Lost Daughter, a Netflix original (hitting streaming on the 31st) where Maggie Gyllenhaal willl attempt to demonstrate for the first time that she can direct, and Nightmare Alley, where Guillermo Del Toro is going to have to overcome my disdain for The Shape of Water. Which is too bad, because in principle I want to be someone who roots for Del Toro. But a two-and-a-half-hour remake of a really bitter and wiry 1940s film noir, and my all-time favorite Tyrone Power movie? Maybe not the way he’s going to do it.
22.12.2021
Three big tentpoles all fighting for whatever scraps Spider-Man leaves over, and hoping to position themselves well for the impending Christmas holiday. The obvious “third one” is The King’s Man, a prequel to a dead franchise that really needed for there to not be a pandemic in 2020 if it was going to find its way to an audience, I think. Then is Sing 2, the film I am least looking forward to out of all the ones I mention anywhere in this post. And lastly, The Matrix Resurrections, which I’m actually super excited for, and I’m genuinely pissed off at Warners that they’ve decided to throw it out into the December wastelands to die. But basically, something it turns out that I really, really want is a Matrix sequel by one of the directors of Cloud Atlas, and I’ll be damned but it looks like that might be exactly what I’m getting.
24.12.2021
Sometimes, nothing more needs to be said than “the new film by Pedro Almodóvar”, and in this case its name is Parallel Mothers. I cannot imagine something in any given week making me more excited-
25.12.2021
-except for the phrase “the new film by Joel Coen”, and here comes The Tragedy of Macbeth to make the season bright. Obviously, there’s ample reason for trepidation: a Coen-directed Shakespeare movie, not even taking the story and doing something with it, just actually filming the play, is weird, right? The Coen brothers are, first and foremost, yarn-spinners, using their extraordinary gift for dialogue to build entire universes, and well, Macbeth is pre-built. Also, this isn’t the Coen brothers, it’s just Joel, for the very first time ever (Ethan has retired from cinema – nobody is committing to saying that it’s not permanent – to work in theater), and that’s nerve-wracking. But exciting! But nerve-wracking. That all being said, if you tell me “Denzel Washington is Macbeth and Frances McDormand is Lady Macbeth”, and show me just one of the gauzy black-and-white images from the trailer, I start cleaning off space in my year-end top 5 right now. The biggest point of suspense for me, right now, is whether or not I’ll have a chance to see this on a movie theater screen, or if that will be a privilege reserved for Angelinos and New Yorkers, and the rest of us poor fuckers have to wait until January 14th for to hit everybody’s sixth-favorite streaming service, Apple TV+.
There are wide releases! Both of them inspirational true stories! A Journal for Jordan (directed by Denzel Washington, as it so happens), and American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story. I cannot fathom what might cause somebody to be actively interested in either one of them.
26.12.2021
Think we can make it three consecutive days with the new critically-adored film by one of world cinema’s foremost directors? Apichatpong Weerasethakul says hi, here’s Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton.
And in this case, at least, there can be no doubt: we’re all poor fuckers who don’t live in New York, since for reasons that I cannot start to comprehend on any level other than blind hatred for basic human decency and a belief that there’s not enough elitism in the world, Apichatpong and U.S. distributor Neon have whipped up a real warped release pattern. There will be, forever and always, one screen in the whole country showing Memoria at a time; it will go to a city for a week, maybe two (it’s staying in New York for two, and as far as I know we still don’t have the rest of the schedule yet), and then to a different city, and so one until if you live in place with around 250,000 human souls and no real art theaters, like me, maybe you can count on seeing in 2023. God forbid anybody who lives in, like, a rural town might enjoy art cinema, I guess. Oh, and it will never be released on streaming or physical home media in the States, though it will be in other countries, and there will be so much piracy going on when that happens. Now, maybe this turns out to be some kind of esoteteric prank, and it in fact just gets a routine platform release starting in a couple of months. And I admit that, in my capacity as the guy who runs this website and is a member of an awards-granting body, I actually have a theoretically non-existent DVD of Memoria sitting in my house. So good for me (I mean, SD-level good, but I’ll take it) but that’s still pretty shitty to you who are reading this, and I’m genuinely disturbed that any distributor, let alone one I’ve admired as much as Neon, would think this was a reasonable thing to do. Turning cinema into Mad King Ludwig’s private opera house isn’t what’s going to save it, guys.
Anyway, that’s a sour note to end on, sorry about that. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year?