San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Don’t let these eight fall through the cracks
One of the phrases you often see in movie reviews around this time of year is “Don’t overlook ...” Every holiday season comes packed with movies everyone is talking about, but very often it’s the ones that nobody is talking about — or that, at least, comparatively few are talking about — that are among the most worth seeing.
If the 2022 holiday season runs true to form, at least some of the films on the following list will be in that category. A few will be great. One or two will be awful, but that’s OK. We expect that. The important thing is not to overlook the ones worthy of our attention.
Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this, but the movie I’m most looking forward to is “Violent Night,” because the premise is irresistible. (A close second in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”) But every single title on this list is at least interesting and worth keeping on your radar.
‘White Noise’
Noah Baumbach’s movies (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Marriage Story”), though praised for their emotion, are often cold and disdainful; and he has trouble finding a compelling story. But for this movie, he can lean on Dan DeLillo’s novel of the same name — a weird tale about a college professor (Adam Driver) with an extreme fear of death. And he has his real-life wife, Sacramento-born Greta Gerwig, who brought heart to his 2012 film “Frances Ha,” in the cast (as the professor’s wife). So, there’s hope.
In select theaters Dec. 2. Available to stream on Netflix starting Dec. 30.
‘Women Talking’
As a director, Sarah Polley
has made two good features (“Away From Her,” “Take This Waltz”) and a bad documentary (“Stories We Tell”). Her latest isn’t a documentary (good so
far), and it’s based on a novel by Miriam Toews.
Inspired by true events, it concerns women in a modernday religious colony, who are
still living as though it were the 19th century. The women are getting drugged and raped, presumably by the men in the colony, and the movie seems to be about how they decide to take action. The cast looks great, headlined by Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and Frances McDormand. Sounds a little like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” meets “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In select theaters starting Dec. 2, expands Dec. 25.
‘Violent Night’
People often ask, “Was ‘Die Hard’ a Christmas movie?” Soon, they may ask if “Violent Night” is a “Die Hard” movie. Santa Claus (David Harbour) is making his Christmas night rounds, when he arrives in a house where a family is being taken hostage. What apparently follows is an action movie, with catchphrases (“Time for some season’s beatings”) and references
to the bad guys being on Santa’s “naughty list.”
The concept for this one sounds like so much fun they’d have to work hard to blow it.
In theaters only starting Dec. 2.
‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’
The most impressive directorial debut of 2019 was that of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “The Mustang,” a fictional tale about prisoners assigned to work with the taming of horses. Clermont-Tonnerre’s extraordinary talent was evident and undeniable within, at most, a minute of screen time. Anything she chooses to do as a follow-up is worthy of our attention, and her upcoming film looks especially promising.
Emma Corrin (Princess Diana on “The Crown”), plays the heroine of this adaptation of the once-scandalous D.H. Lawrence novel, about an upperclass married woman who
discovers love and sexual awakening with the man who tends her horses.
Available to stream on Netflix starting Dec. 2.
‘The Whale’
Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”) directs this story about a severely obese English teacher (Brendan Fraser, in prosthetics to make him look heavier), who has an estranged teenage daughter (Sadie Sink). The movie seems to be about his attempt to reconnect with the daughter and, in a sense, reconnect with life.
So far, the word on this film has been mostly positive, with special praise being heaped on Fraser, who is due for a comeback.
In select theaters starting Dec. 9, expands Dec. 21.
‘Empire of Light’
Set in a coastal town in England in the 1980s, this is a love story that takes place in and around an old movie palace. It stars Olivia Colman as a lonely, depressed woman whose zest for life is sparked when she has an affair with a much younger man (Micheal Ward). The director is Sam Mendes, and any Mendes production, based on his track record (“Revolutionary Road,” “Road to Perdition”), must be taken seriously. And the cinematography is by Roger Deakins, who did a magnificent job with Mendes’ “1917.”
In theaters only starting Dec. 9.
‘Corsage’
The trailer for this film is highly promising. It’s a German language movie starring Vicky Krieps as Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, a noted figure to this day, the subject of a number of previous movies and still an object of affection in Austria. Sometimes known as
“Sisi,” she was loved for her great beauty, in her younger years, and mourned for her assassination many years later in 1898 at age 60. The movie is a fictional account in which the famously unconventional, somewhat neurotic and compulsively
informal Sisi turns 40 and finds herself expected to act like an old lady. Needless to say, she refuses. From the coming attractions, Krieps really seems to make a meal out of this role.
In theaters only starting Dec. 23.
‘Living’
Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” was an inspiration for Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” about a starched London bureaucrat who finds out he has only a year to live and decides to use the time he has left to find meaning in his life. “Living” is the English language remake of “Ikiru” (1952), with Bill Nighy in the role of the bureaucrat.
Interestingly and probably wisely, writer-director Oscar Hermanus sets the film in the same era as “Ikiru,” the early 1950s. U.K. fans have had a chance to see the film since early November, and the advance word is good.
Coming to Bay Area theaters Jan. 6.