Here are the 12 movies to see this holiday season
The holidays just got real. And no, I’m not talking about Santa Claus.
In a season when cinemas are typically larded with escapist goodies like “Aquaman,” “Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Mary Poppins Returns,” this year is notable for the way the culture wars have invaded the silver screen.
And yes, lately it seems every movie is political, especially at this time on the calendar, when Hollywood’s weightiest, most issue-oriented dramas vie for Oscar’s attention. It’s just that these days, the topicality feels — for better or for worse — more urgent than ever.
These 12 movies grapple with race, war, power, politics, gender and sexuality not with empty rhetoric, but in deeply emotional and even entertaining ways. (Opening dates and ratings are subject to change.)
By one estimate, nearly 700,000 Americans have been subjected to what’s known as conversion therapy, a practice that attempts to change one’s sexual orientation and — without evidence of efficacy — is still legal in 41 states. Based on the 2016 memoir of Garrard Conley, whose parents sent him to such a program as a teenager, the film “Boy Erased” tells the story of Jared, played by Lucas Hedges of “Manchester by the Sea.” Crowe embodies the boy’s Baptist minister father with trademark bluster, but Kidman earns cheers as Jared’s ultimately heroic mother. Joel Edgerton wrote and directed while also playing the “ex-gay” director of the Love in Action ministry. (Nov.9,R)
The late war correspondent Marie Colvin was a rare breed: a woman covering war zones for the Sunday Times of London, alongside mostly male colleagues. In this film by Matthew Heineman, Pike sports Colvin’s signature eye patch, a badge of courage the reporter earned in 2001 after she was injured covering the Tamil Tiger rebel group in Sri Lanka. As much as the movie focuses on the atrocities of war in such places as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, “A Private War” is also about the psychological and emotional toll of Colvin’s job and, arguably, her addiction to its dangers. (Nov.9,R) their desperate widows (Davis, Debicki and Rodriguez) are left in debt — and without a social safety net. They decide to carry out a heist. Directed by Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”), who wrote the screenplay with Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”), “Widows” doesn’t settle for the superficial tropes of most heist flicks, instead grounding what might otherwise have been a lightweight crime caper in themes of class, race, sex and politics. (Nov. 16, R)
Details about this Harry Potter prequel, which takes place a year after the action of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” have been trickling out slowly, generating much excitement among the franchise’s eager fans. Nagini the snake (Claudia Kim) used to be a woman? Dumbledore (Law) as a young man was — there’s no other word for it — hawt? But in the buildup to this 10th installment of the cinematic saga, there has also been controversy. That has to do with the casting of Johnny Depp, who was accused of abuse by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, as the film’s titular villain. If nothing else, the blurring of real life and fiction may complicate a film that already promises to be darker than the “Fantastic Beasts” of 2016.
Two 2017 Oscar nominees — Mortensen for “Captain Fantastic” and Ali, who won for “Moonlight” — team up in this two-hander, which tells the true story of the unlikely friendship between the black classical pianist Don Shirley (Ali) and his Italian-American chauffeur, Tony Lip (Mortensen). Taking place on Shirley’s concert tour during the racially charged 1960s, the film, which won the People’s Choice Award at the recent Toronto Film Festival, takes its name from a guidebook published to aid AfricanAmerican travelers navigating the Jim Crow South.
Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, the writer and director of “Moonlight,” turns his hand to an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel about a young man in New York City who is falsely accused of rape. James, last seen as Olympic runner Jesse Owens in “Race,” plays the imprisoned Fonny, with newcomer Layne as his pregnant fiancee, Tish, who struggles to prove him innocent. Although also a love story, the film’s echoes of today’s systemic racism are all too unmistakable. (Dec. TBD, R)
The rise and fall of Roger Ailes, the late CEO of Fox News who was brought down by a sex scandal, is the stuff of high drama. In fact, a film based on that true story is now in the works, starring John Lithgow as Ailes and Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman as on-air personalities Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, who brought allegations of harassment against him. While we wait for that one to get made, here’s a new documentary to tide us over: “Divide and Conquer” follows the career of the Machiavellian media consultant and political kingmaker with unsettling urgency. (Dec.7,
Robbie (“I, Tonya”) and Ronan (“Lady Bird”) take on the roles of rival monarchs — and first cousins once removed — Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I of England, who saw Mary as a threat, putting her under house arrest (and ultimately beheading her). These are storied roles, which have been filled by the likes of Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. Can it be anything but fun to watch two members of Hollywood royalty tear into this meaty drama of political maneuvering?
Based on the acclaimed documentary “Marwencol,” director Robert Zemeckis’ film stars Steve Carell as Mark Hogancamp, an artist who created a miniature world filled with dolls as World War II characters in an effort to recover psychologically from the trauma of having been beaten by a group of men outside a bar in 2000. It not only features several strong female characters, but there is also a hidden subtext, glossed over in the film’s trailers but prominent in the 2010 documentary, of a gender-based hate crime. (Dec. 21, PG-13)
Christian Bale shaved his head, bleached his eyebrows and put on 40 pounds to play Dick Cheney in the film by Adam McKay (“The Big Short”), which purports to tell the “true” story — with McKay’s patented blend of deadpan humor and deadserious drama — of the former vice president’s role as the power behind the throne of the George W. Bush administration. Rockwell plays a good ol’ boyish Bush, with Carell impersonating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield and Adams playing the former veep’s wife, Lynne. (Dec.25,R)
On the heels of this year’s acclaimed “RBG,” “On the Basis of Sex” dramatizes the inspirational true story of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jones), who, as an ACLU lawyer, argued more than 300 cases on gender discrimination, including six before the Supreme Court. The film marks the return of director Mimi Leder to the big screen after the filmmaker’s 2000 flop “Pay It Forward” derailed what seemed to be a promising career. Let’s hope this film, like some of Ginsburg’s best work, corrects that wrong. (Dec. 25, PG-13)