12 of the best films to watch this December

From a steamy age-gap thriller starring Nicole Kidman to a Bob Dylan biopic that includes Timothée Chalamet, these are the movies to stream and watch on the cinema this month.

It was in February 1964 that the US succumbed to Beatlemania. The Fab 4 spent three weeks within the nation that had influenced them a lot, and their go to included an look on The Ed Sullivan Present, which was seen by 73 million individuals, in addition to their first US live performance in Washington DC. Beatles ’64 is an intimate chronicle of these whirlwind weeks, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi. There are new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, together with such friends as Smokey Robinson and Ronnie Spector (who died in 2022), however the movie’s major attraction is the hardly ever seen footage shot on the time by two legendary documentary-makers, Albert and David Maysles. “The Maysles brothers had been pioneers of direct cinema, as they known as it,” Tedeschi said in Rolling Stone. “In that footage, you possibly can see that the Beatles are very relaxed. They’ve a lot charisma on digital camera. However even the followers, these younger girls in entrance of the Plaza Lodge, or what we name the Sullivan Theater now – in addition they have a lot charisma. There’s one thing concerning the vitality of Al and David that relaxed individuals, and allowed them to mission one thing on movie.”

Launched on 29 November on Disney+

Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche starred in The English Patient collectively in 1996, they usually’re reunited in The Return, one other epic drama concerning the psychological and bodily scars left by warfare. Co-written and directed by Uberto Pasolini, this swords-and-sandals saga is predicated on the final part of Homer’s The Odyssey, during which Odysseus (Fiennes) comes again to Ithaca after a decade of battling Trojans and one other decade of battling big monsters. His affected person spouse Penelope (Binoche) has been busy heading off the numerous suitors who’re eager to assert his fortune, however Odysseus could also be too badly bruised to step in earlier than it is too late. “It is gritty and soiled and ultimately smeared with blood, however it takes its time and weighs each phrase,” says Steve Pond in The Wrap. “Fiennes is magnificent as Odysseus, his face a map of troubles and his voice a virtuoso instrument.”

Launched on 6 December within the US

Robbie Williams discovered fame as a member of a British boy band, Take That, earlier than changing into a phenomenally profitable however scandal-prone solo artist. He is a great candidate, then, for a pop-star biopic. However Higher Man, directed by Michael Gracey (The Biggest Showman), is extra distinctive than that may recommend. Not solely is it unusually open about Williams’s flaws, it options one daring and weird innovation: Williams himself is represented as a CGI chimpanzee, as performed by Jonno Davies in a performance-capture bodysuit. “The result’s a movie that feels grandiose, outrageous, deeply private and joltingly relatable,” says Kristy Puchko in Mashable. “It is Billy Elliot meets Rocketman meets Planet of the Apes. And it is a lot extra. Wealthy in vibrant emotion, body-rocking musical numbers, daring performances and a scorching tenderness, Higher Man greater than rocks. It guidelines.”

Launched on 25 December within the US and Sweden, and on 26 December within the UK, Eire and Australia

Tailored from Rachel Yoder’s novel, and directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), the boldly titled Nightbitch is a horror comedy that stars Amy Adams because the exhausted and exasperated stay-at-home mom of an toddler son. She feels that she has misplaced her identification as an artist, she does not slot in along with her fellow suburban moms and her husband (Scoot McNairy) does not admire what she goes by. It is at this level that the movie shifts from observational comedy to twisted physique horror: she believes that she is rising fur and fangs, and turning right into a canine. “Adams is having a blast because the mom, taking centre stage with renewed vitality and vigour,” says Jourdain Searles in Little White Lies. “McNairy is in prime comedic kind because the clueless husband who thinks of elevating his personal son as babysitting. There isn’t any denying the common truths behind the narrative… Nightbitch is a couple of mom’s have to be free.”

Launched on 6 December within the US, Canada, the UK and Eire

Final yr, Dimitri Rassam’s French manufacturing firm, Chapter 2, launched two lavish epics tailored from Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. As if that weren’t sufficient, the corporate has now accomplished one other Dumas adaptation, a three-hour romp by his traditional novel of vengeance, disguise and swashbuckling swordplay, The Rely of Monte-Cristo. Pierre Niney stars as Edmond Dantès, a younger sailor who’s wrongly accused of treason within the early Nineteenth Century. He’s locked in an island jail for years, however a fellow inmate tells him of a secret stash of treasure, and he ultimately enacts his meticulous revenge. This “masterful adaptation stands as among the finest renditions of Dumas’ work so far, says Linda Marric in HeyUGuys. “Each twist and switch of the plot is delivered with most influence, [but] the movie’s takeaway is a haunting reflection on the price of revenge and the perils of letting obsession dictate one’s life.”

Launched on 20 December within the US

It has been a comparatively quiet yr for superhero movies, however there have already been two set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, ie they revolve round supporting characters from Marvel’s Spider-Man comics, however they do not characteristic Spidey himself. Neither Madame Web nor Venom: The Final Dance was precisely a triumph, thoughts you, however perhaps this yr’s third SSMU movie, Kraven the Hunter, will hit the mark. Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as a Russian big-game hunter with enhanced energy and heightened senses. Ariana DeBose is his love curiosity, Russell Crowe is his gangster father, and Alessandro Nivola is one other Spider-Man villain, the Rhino. Extra intriguingly, the director, JC Chandor, is thought for downbeat dramas (Margin Name, All is Misplaced, A Most Violent Yr), and he has instructed that Kraven the Hunter might be one other of these. “Sony most likely does not need me to steer with this,” Chandor said in Esquire, “however the story is a tragedy. When the ultimate credit roll on this movie, in the event you’ve been paying consideration, you will not have the sensation that that is all going to finish nice.”

Launched on 12 December in cinemas internationally

A decade on from the final big-screen Tolkien adaptation – Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the 5 Armies – it is time for one more movie set in Center Earth. Jackson is the manager producer, and his standard co-writer, Philippa Boyens, is the producer. However The Warfare of the Rohirrim is totally different from their earlier work. Set two centuries earlier than Jackson’s movies, it takes its story from an appendix on the finish of Tolkien’s novel, so its major characters have not been seen on display screen earlier than. It additionally has a Japanese director, Kenji Kamiyama, who has made a cartoon within the Japanese anime fashion. “After they instructed anime, that is when my mind actually began whirring,” Boyens said in Entertainment Weekly. “Instantly, the thought of telling this story got here to me… I felt that it will work for anime as a result of it is so character-based and likewise contained inside its personal world. It speaks to sure issues that work very well with Japanese storytelling.” 

Launched on 11 December in cinemas internationally

The Lion King has been an enormous hit as a cartoon, a stage musical and a photorealistic remake of the cartoon, and now the franchise comes roaring again with Mufasa: The Lion King, which is a prequel to the photorealistic remake. It tells the story of how Simba’s orphaned father, Mufasa, made his perilous journey to the Pleasure Lands, soundtracked with new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Probably the most stunning a part of the movie is its director, Barry Jenkins, who’s finest recognized for his Oscar-winning drama, Moonlight. He has been criticised for taking up a Disney prequel, however he has mentioned that Jeff Nathanson’s script satisfied him that the mission was proper for him. “I discovered the story extremely transferring,” Jenkins said in The New York Times. “There’s this character who we all know of as inherently nice or inherently royal, and we get to actually go in and discover how this particular person got here to be. We’re additionally taking a look at what makes some individuals good and others evil, and the way individuals aren’t essentially one or the opposite.”

Launched on 18 December in cinemas internationally

FW Murnau’s unofficial Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu, got here out greater than a 100 years in the past, however it nonetheless stands as cinema’s creepiest ever vampire film. Robert Eggers, the director of The Witch and The Lighthouse, is such an obsessive fan of the movie that he staged it as a college play when he was 17 years previous, and now he is written and directed his personal remake starring Invoice Skarsgård because the undead Rely Orlok, Nicholas Hoult because the hapless property agent who visits him at his Transylvanian citadel, Lily-Rose Depp as the girl who falls beneath Orlok’s spell and Willem Dafoe as an professional on vampire lore. Eggers told Anthony Breznican in Vanity Fair that his Nosferatu boasts an genuine Nineteenth-Century setting – and an genuine Nineteenth-Century vampire, too. “This Orlok is extra of a folks vampire than another movie model. Which means he is a lifeless particular person… For the primary time in a Dracula or Nosferatu story, this man seems like a lifeless Transylvanian nobleman. Each single factor he is sporting right down to the heels on his footwear is what he would’ve worn. That is by no means been completed.”

Launched on 25 December within the US, Canada, Mexico and Spain

A number of intertwining tales set over a picture-perfect festive season in England? A bashful boy who will get tongue-tied in entrance of the lady he adores? That Christmas could also be a cartoon, however it’s simple to guess that it was co-written by Richard Curtis, the romantic softy who scripted and directed Love Truly. Impressed by three kids’s image books, which had been additionally written by Curtis, it is a cosy animation set in a quaint Suffolk seaside village. Santa Claus (voiced by Brian Cox) is coming to city, however a heavy snowfall there may cease the residents from spending the large day collectively. This “pleasant vacation characteristic affords one thing for everybody, particularly the individuals who get mushy about shiny tales about human connection,” says Kate Erbland in IndieWire. “The previous chestnuts maintain true for this one, the goofy vacation puns: it is a reward effectively value unwrapping and sharing with those you like most.”

Launched on 6 December on Netflix internationally

Bob Dylan has had such a protracted and trailblazing profession that it will be unimaginable to sum up its twists and turns in a single standard biopic: when Todd Haynes made I am Not There, he resorted to casting six totally different actors (together with Cate Blanchett) to play him in six totally different storylines. James Mangold’s strategy in A Full Unknown is to stay to Dylan’s early years, specifically his rise to fame as a folks singer in New York’s Greenwich Village, and his controversial pivot to electrical guitar-driven rock’n’roll in 1965. Timothée Chalamet has the starring function, and is already being tipped for an Oscar nomination. “Oscar voters cannot resist a biopic,” says the BBC’s Caryn James. “Think about this: A Full Unknown was directed by James Mangold, who directed one other awards-bait musical biopic, Stroll the Line (2005). Reese Witherspoon received the very best actress Oscar for her efficiency in that movie as June Carter Money and Joaquin Phoenix earned a finest actor nomination as Johnny Money. If nothing else, A Full Unknown could effectively deliver Chalamet his second nomination, after Call Me By Your Name.”

Launched on 25 December within the US

Author-director Halina Reijn (Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies) takes the erotic thriller into the post-Me Too period with Babygirl, a movie that brings complexity and realism to the sort of titillating premise that will have excited Adrian Lyne and Paul Verhoeven within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. Nicole Kidman’s character is the much-admired CEO of a New York tech agency, to not point out the glamorous spouse of a feted theatre director (Antonio Banderas). However she has secret, unfulfilled needs that are woke up by a slippery younger intern performed by Harris Dickinson. Will she threat all the pieces by embarking on an affair with an worker who’s half her age? “Not often is that office taboo as scintillating as it’s in Babygirl, a fascinating psychological drama,” says Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post. “It is laborious to think about audiences being extra glued to a different film this yr, so horny and stirring the story is from begin to end.”

Launched on 25 December within the US