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Dear Wags,

Are you ready for a rundown of holiday pictures? Things aren’t off to a roaring start. It seems Thanksgiving weekend movie audiences liked leftovers.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes wasn’t dislodged by either Disney’s Wish or Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, which leaves us wondering just what can pry people off the couch in December. First up: Godzilla Minus One vs. Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé. Come on, we know who the box office monster in that match up is.

Let’s take a gander at how the awards race (remember that?) is shaping up. The New York Film Critics voted as we expected: Killers of the Flower Moon, their pick for Best Picture, already feels like the front runner. Meanwhile, the critics’ choice for Best Director, Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan — dare we say this?—is close to a lock for an Oscar. Lily Gladstone of Killers, whom we pegged as an Oscar contender back in Cannes, won the Best Actress award —an Oscar category that promises to be hyper-competitive. Todd Haynes May December, the Best Screenplay winner, may finally deliver him an Academy Award in the same category (he was last nominated in 2002, for Far from Heaven). Charles Melton’s Best Supporting Actor award for May December elevates him in a crowded field. Most gratifyingly, Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s win for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers has us feeling like that this could be the season’s Little Movie That Could (Payne has won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Sideways and The Descendants). Lastly, keep the critics’ Best International Film winner, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, on your radar. This one will go all the way, and possibly carry Sandra Hüller to a Best Actress nomination.

What about the rest of December’s movies? When it comes to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Dec. 22) we feel an undertow. Superhero movies have gone soggy, especially when it comes to the DC Extended Universe. Universal/Illumination’s Migration, an animated tale about ducks flying south to Jamaica, is unlikely to soar. Another entrant, Hayao Miyazaki's fantastical The Boy and the Heron, will draw fans of the master of Japanese animation. Netflix has high hopes for the Zac Snyder opus Rebel Moon, starring Sofia Boutella as an intergalactic warrior leading an uprising against something sinister called the Motherworld. Expect dense mythology alongside the explosions.

We round up more notable December releases below, starting with everybody’s favorite Candy Man.

Yours Ever,

Marcello Rubini and Sarah Brown


Wonka (Dec. 15/Theaters). There will never be anybody like Wake Emeritus Gene Wilder. “Oh, you have questions?” he tells the pushy ingrates in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. “Let me drop everything.” His Wonka — deadpan, sarcastic, possibly homicidal — is definitive. But it did not make for a hit.

A half-century later, the movie is beloved by adults who laugh as brats are picked off one by one. At the time of Willy Wonka’s release, it was viewed as disturbing (and way too long). Mel Stuart’s trippy picture was then endlessly screened on television, which turned it into a cult favorite. Its retrospective charm has much to do with its twistedness. Candy is nice, but how sweet it is to watch nasty people get their just deserts. It’s an underage version of Saw.

Hollywood periodically tries to exhume Roald Dahl’s mad invention, but it’s a sticky proposition. Dahl, a nasty man, understood the sadism of children better than cautious producers. Modern adults worry about trauma, so we treat kids in cinema with kid gloves.

Now we have Wonka, a far less cynical extravaganza. Warner Bros. is giddy about the tracking numbers — it's expected to pull in around $40 million when it debuts. Cannily, this is a prequel, which means that Timothée Chalamet, a beanpole like Wilder, can put on the character’s frock coat and top hat without trying to copy his acerbity (the less said about Johnny Depp’s waxy take on the character, the better). The pre-Chocolate Factory Wonka is still eager to take on the world. When Chalamet says “scratch that, reverse it,” he does so with boyish enthusiasm, not a world-weary sigh.

Director Paul King, the brain behind the Paddington films, dreamed up this prologue and co-wrote the screenplay with Simon Farnaby. Paddington was a nimble reinvention of very English I.P., and the wit in Wonka, as well as its technical wizardry, owes much to a podgy Andean Bear. As one would expect from the producers of Harry Potter, the supporting cast is loaded with prestige British actors — Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman, Jim Carter, and Rowan Atkinson among them. The role of The Kid falls to Texan Calah Lane, who, for better and worse, is not a bad egg. There are the usual song and dance numbers in which people spin around lamp posts and twirl parasols.

If not a work of pure imagination, the result will likely be appetizing to little ones and mildly diverting for parents. And if you like a little sourness in your candy, relish Hugh Grant as an oompa loompa. — Robert Salt

Maestro (Theaters; Netflix Dec. 20). Bradley Cooper and that nose star as Leonard Bernstein, alongside Carrie Mulligan and her nose as his patient wife Felicia Montealegre in a classy rendering of a complicated genius. Among the artists are Matt Bomer as clarinettist David Oppenheim, Michael Urie as Jerome Robbins, and Brian Klugman as Aaron Copland. Among the Bernsteins are Maya Hawke, Alexa Swinton, Sam Nivola, and Sarah Silverman.Kiffer Finzi

American Fiction (Limited theaters Dec 15; Wide Dec. 20). Smarty Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut is about a literary novelist (Jeffrey Wright) who decides to pander to publishers hungry for stereotypical depictions of The Black Experience. The result is My Pafology, a parody that those suckers take seriously. It makes for a wicked send-up of earnest race obsession in America, with Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika AlexanderDame Leslie Uggams (!), Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, and Adam Brody. — Bobby Taylor

Ferrari (Theaters, Dec. 25). Adam Driver, who played Maurizio Gucci, returns to Italian moguldom as Enzo Ferrari, father of the flashy sportscar empire in this opus directed by Master of Tension Michael Mann. Penelope Cruz is the wife and Shailene Woodley is the mistress, because this is Italy in the 1960s. —Pete Aron

The Iron Claw (Theaters Dec. 25). A24 delivers a gritty wrestling drama starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons as the Von Erich dynasty, 1980s pro wrestling stars plagued by tragedies outside the ring. Sean Durkin directs the tale behind a famous sports family curse. —Randy Robinson

The Color Purple (Theaters, Dec. 25). Producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg return to familiar ground with an adaptation of the Broadway musical based on the 1985 film, which derived from Alice Walker’s perennial bestseller. Fantasia Barrino is Celie, Taraji P Henson is Shug, and Danielle Brooks is Sofia. Man of the Moment Colman Domingo glowers as Mister.— Harpo Johnson

The Boys in the Boat (Theaters, Dec. 25). Ivy League athletic programs may drop varsity crew, but producer/director George Clooney celebrates the sport in the movie version of Daniel James Brown’s 2013 book. Callum Turner and Joel Edgerton star in a spirit-lifter about the University of Washington eight-oar rowing team, who shook off the Great Depression to beat the Germans at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. —H. Abrahams

Brits

Slow Horses (AppleTV+). “Alright, make this quick. I’ve got underlings to bully,” says our rumpled hero, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) as he picks up his next assignment. In Season 3 of this series based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, Lamb’s team of MI5 misfits track down a group of rogue agents. Things go at a clip from there. Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott-Thomas, and Sophie Okonedo are all part of the intrigue.

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