There are a lot of movies out right now in the ether that you can choose from, but sometimes, it’s just so hard to pick which ones are worth your time.
Luckily, we’ve watched a lot of movies lately and have picked out five films that you can check out right now that are absolutely worth spending time with as temperatures get colder and being indoors to watch a movie sounds more and more appealing for a night out (or in).
Let’s check out five of these films, which range from some major Oscar contenders to holiday-themed laughs and scares.
The Holdovers
Just everything that’s great about movies, you can find in The Holdovers. It’s one of those movies that you just want to go on forever because you never want to leave. Ths is Paul Giamatti’s finest hour, and Dominic Sessa (!) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph just complete it for easily one of the best films of the decade so far. I’ll be firing this one up at Christmas yearly. It’s a stunner.
Where to Watch: Theaters
Thanksgiving
Stripped largely free of the exploitative immaturity of the 2007 faux-trailer, this has to be Eli Roth’s masterpiece. It’s everything that he’s always been about as a filmmaker, but it’s framed in such a way to where it feels less animus and more welcoming.
Thanksgiving gives Roth’s generational feel for horror violence a purpose, and it unshackles him from his lesser instincts as a filmmaker as a result. It’s a stark jump in maturity for him, and he’s a much better director because of it. Sure, this film is unrelenting in its kills, but it’s more classically rendered and much less impish. You can actually have fun watching this, as it’s not just delighting in serving up its victims on a silver platter. Well, okay, it is, but the way the story sets the stage, it’s so, so, so much more intentional. The brutal murders aren’t even the grossest aspect of this movie, and that’s kind of the genius of it.
Where to Watch: Theaters
Priscilla
A suffocating, isolating study, drawn in with the promise of legend and purposefully undermined with the cruel truths of reality. Sofia Coppola was the perfect person to study Priscilla Presley because she understands how to bring forth the ornate and instantly undercut it with the way she frames it.
The Elvis mythos stands no chance here, even if it gets a logical highlight as it’s impossible to tell this story without reminding us of what we already know and feel about an iconic entertainer that is inseparable with American culture. Baz Luhrmann knew how to bring forth the spectacle of Elvis, the bone-chilling brilliance of his showmanship, like staring into the eyes of God on his heavenly throne. Coppola brushes past that for the toxic masculinity and devastating immaturity and insecurity that plagued the King and enveloped Priscilla in a lonely labyrinth of her choosing.
Coppola doesn’t seek to crucify Elvis as much as underscore his messy humanity, the kind that makes this American love story uncomfortable and his Memphis Mafia, tabloid romantic aura much less endearing and much more loathsome. Priscilla is given the resolve she deserves with her portrayal to make it past the doldrums of her waning marriage, and Cailee Spaeny gives Priscilla the soul that Luhrmann’s Elvis-centric film just didn’t have the bandwidth to afford. Jacob Eldori is sensational as Elvis, mixing in a reserved empathy and a moody danger that only the best portrayals of complicated men can find. There aren’t “bad guys” in this story because that’s now how these stories go, but there is a hero, and she gets her due.
Where to Watch: Theaters
Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon is as searing an epic as Martin Scorsese has made in his career, and if we don’t take this ending very seriously, we’re going to lose the medium. Film won’t be able to survive if we don’t expand opportunities and budgets for diverse filmmakers.
There is no more important issue with film right now than ensuring diverse filmmakers get the resources they need to make the films they want to make. Studios can’t just withhold the big budgets for IP; we need originality – human cinema – from wide arrays of perspectives.
Scorsese’s been rightfully able to work with the resources he’s earned throughout his career to make a true filmography that will last. He uses this film, in part, to plead with the powers that be to quickly spread the wealth to the voices so often denied these grand platforms.
I don’t think the movies so many of us love the most will make it in the ceaseless sea of IP if more diverse filmmakers aren’t given chances to make the films Scorsese has always made. It’s all about money, and it’s past time the industry treated more filmmakers like royalty.
Where to Watch: Theaters
Dumb Money
I think I’ve got a soft spot for a movie like this, one filled with a bunch of great actors doing their thing with a really intriguing story and a director who has done this enough to understand the little things that keep the pace moving and tone grounded. It’s a very rousing “stick it to the man” dramedy, even if I think it captures the righteous thrill of “dumb money” traders and what fuels people to push against the system much better than it does the people who push the big buttons on high and why they’re all full of it.
It’d be a fun double feature with The Big Short, which better spells out how the dominoes fall up top. Dumb Money gets into the underdogs who gamed the system, and it’s hard not to tap into the mood. Anthony Ramos gets a scene at a GameStop with Dane DeHaan at the end that’s such a perfectly orchestrated “crowd cheer” moment that seals the whole thing.
Where to Watch: Video on Demand
