Choice Cut

If you’re going to brave the chill (and the increasingly jaw-dropping price of a movie ticket) this year, you and the family, provided the kids are teens, could hardly do better than The Holdovers. From Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne (whose mastery of adolescence and dysfunction was proven with Election and The Descendants), we get the story of a fortunately unfortunate prepster, Angus Tully, marooned by his parents at his remote New England boarding school over the Christmas holidays under the care of a profoundly curmudgeonly teacher played by Paul Giamatti. With the Vietnam War in the background, and corduroys aplenty, it’s a coming-of-age dramedy carried by its performances and underscored by artfully skewed notions of family, friendship, and what it is that the holidays can sometimes turn out to be.

(From top) Paul Giamatti collaborates again with director Alexandar Payne in The Holdovers; Bill Murray in the classic Christmas comedy Scrooged; the all-star cast of Little Women
From top, photographs courtesy of Focus Features, Everett Collection, and Columbia Pictures

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If traditional Christmas fare is not what whets your appetite, you’re in good company. Laugh it up (perhaps again) with Bill Murray in his prime, as a selfish TV exec visited by three ghosts in Scrooged; take a trip with intercontinental love matches in The Holiday, a romantic comedy with endearing charm (i.e., a cast that is headlined by Cameron Diaz, Jack Black, Kate Winslet, and Jude Law); get the family together for director-of-the-moment Greta Gerwig’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, whose cast features Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, and Emma Watson.

The aptly named Adam Driver brings a charismatically thick Italian accent, and a whole lot of gravitas, to his portrayal of Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which recounts the founder’s passion to win the Mille Miglia—a treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy—to save his company as it teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, on this side of the ocean, Keanu Reeves narrates Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, a miniseries recounting the success of Ross Brawn whose understaffed and underfinanced independent team used innovation, grit, and heart to win the 2009 World Championship.

(From top) Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari and Gianni Agnelli as himself
From top, photographs courtesy of Neon and Max

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Un altro? Check out the biography of Italy’s king of cars, style, and culture in HBO’s documentary Agnelli. Or root, root, root for the home team as American underdogs take on their Italian racing counterparts in Ford v Ferrari. For a more classic bent, there’s Gene Hackman in The French Connection and Steve McQueen in Le Mans or Bullitt—the models for countless motor thrillers since (still fast, but more “cool” than “furious”).

Morgan Freeman could read the phone book, and we’d be game. In Life on Our Planet (produced by Steven Spielberg), the velvet-voiced actor narrates a stunning journey, hundreds of millions of years in the making, of the terrestrial fight for survival, from the first dinosaurs of yore to the cheetahs of today’s Tanzanian plains. In terms of distraction, relaxation, and coming down from the holiday buzz, this is grade A, top-tier, caviar-level escapism.

(From top) A simulation of the Big Bang in Life on Our Planet; a royal scene from Wolf Hall
From top, photographs courtesy of Netflix and PBS

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Also great for a getaway: Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. The Christmas movie we never asked for has a mewling Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken as a bad guy, and rocket-powered penguins; Midnight in Paris is an escape within an escape, as Owen Wilson gets to live out his character’s dreams of being an American in 1920s Paris; The Rumble in the Jungle, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s titanic battle in Zaire, holds a thousand times the suspense, color, and drama of any MMA contest, and all of it is captured in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings; the church, the king, the pope, and an unfortunate number of Henry VIII’s crushes fall under the sway of Mark Rylance’s Cromwell in the PBS costume drama, Wolf Hall.

Imagine the intrigue, infighting, and indomitable egos of Succession but with an entire nation as the stakes. That’s the level of tension (not to mention wit, acting, and writing) you should expect from HBO’s The Regime. Behind the new show is Will Tracy, whose credits include The Menu and Succession, and the star is Kate Winslet who plays the ruler of a European country on the brink of unraveling.

Three different styles of female leadership: (from top) The Regime, Borgen, Veep
From top, photographs courtesy of HBO, DR1, and HBO

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For more politics with panache, there’s the psychodrama Borgen, centered on Denmark’s first female prime minister; the cruelty and cynicism of Veep would not be holiday appropriate if they didn’t reach the level of poetry; go back to the original “-gate” with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men; Tom Hanks brings his A game, and an unflappably louche charm, to Washington in Charlie Wilson’s War. The only thing more outrageous than the political corruption in American Hustle are the haircuts, and maybe a few of Jennifer Lawrence’s dresses, flanked by some equally eye-popping suits on Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, and Jeremy Renner, who round out the ensemble. Bernardo Bertolucci and his collaborator, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, are at the top of their form, displaying the heights of Italian fascist intrigue, in The Conformist; the political biopic takes an epic swing, with help from Sir Ben Kingsley and Candice Bergen, in Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning Gandhi.

We’re not sure why we look to WWII movies during the holidays. Perhaps it’s the easy notion of a binary conflict: two sides; good and evil; right and wrong. Or it could just be that during the holiday season, ensconced in family and creature comforts, we feel acutely placed at the furthest distance from such events, and that makes our gratitude all the more palpable. Whatever the reasons, a new documentary series, World War II: From the Frontlines, narrated by John Boyega, is a dream for dads, with enhanced archival footage bringing the legendary conflict into new focus.

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If you want less doc and more drama, look to The Tin Drum, a careful and concise adaptation of Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass’ novel; similarly, the nearly impossibly emotional texture of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day makes it to the screen with help from Anthony Hopkins’ and Emma Thompson’s heartrending performances. Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas test the limits of wartime love in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, gorgeously adapted from Michael Ondaatje’s poetic novel; Ethan Hawke and his band of exhausted, war-torn compatriots find common ground one Christmas Eve with their similarly harried enemy in A Midnight Clear; the austerity, terror, rigor, and passion of the French Resistance fighters is absolutely gripping in Army of Shadows, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, who actively participated in his nation’s underground movement against the Nazis; and Gary Oldman gives up Gotham and provides a rousing take on Churchill during the crisis of Dunkirk in Darkest Hour.

American Fiction is one of this season’s most anticipated satires; it’s the Tár of 2023. Spicy, caustic, and riddled with humor, the movie stars Jeffrey Wright as Monk, an unsuccessful novelist frustrated with his fellow Black writers and the establishment profiting from offensive stereotypes, a predicament that reaches back to debates that Langston Hughes and James Baldwin had. After writing a novel as a gag in protest, Monk has to live with its unexpected success in a story that has an intriguing, hilarious, cringe-inducing take on the tangled web of today’s life among the culturati.

(Top two photographs) Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Leslie Uggams in American Fiction; Nora Ephron in Everything Is Copy
From top, photographs courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios and HBO

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The British period romantic drama has perhaps never had a finer outing than in the Oscar-winning interpretation of E.M. Forster’s Howards End; James McAvoy trembles and stiffens as a doctor during Idi Amin’s murderous reign in The Last King of Scotland; Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller are hilarious, or ’ilarious as Eliza Doolittle might say, in the 1938 version of Pygmalion; Academia, writers, college crushes, and cozy college towns are all vulnerable to Michael Chabon’s pen, and then Curtis Hanson’s camera, in the wickedly funny Wonder Boys, starring Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, and Robert Downey Jr.; Everything Is Copy to Nora Ephron, in this touching, funny documentary of her life made by her son; Robin Williams and Glenn Close help explore the limits, and dangers, of storytelling in the remarkable 1982 adaptation of John Irving’s The World According to Garp; and after the kids are in bed, what better way to end the night than with Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour?

In the world of comedy, there are fewer and fewer true giants, which is why we’re thankful for Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only. This documentary follows the two masters of the mic over a week in New York as they prepare for a major show at Madison Square Garden, looking back at the struggles and successes from their early careers to the present, as the two men forged an unbreakable bond. Much more than just biographical, the documentary explores the nitty-gritty of the form, and then pulls back, so that we come to a personal understanding of how a joke is constructed to the role of comedy itself. But don’t worry, it’s funny, too.

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Empathize with every poor schlub who ever had to encounter in-laws, and vice versa, with Meet the Parents, far and away Robert De Niro’s funniest turn; the family sitcom is given a touching and surprising renaissance as Pamela Adlon raises her three daughters in Better Things; the infinitely charming Bill Murray gets another chance to get it right, and another, and another, in Groundhog Day; the screwball romantic comedy might have reached its apotheosis with The Philadelphia Story, starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart (what else do you need?); the après-ski set and Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau made their first, fabulous appearance in the delightful slapstick caper The Pink Panther; if pratfalls are your thing, catch Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Kid (and get the backstory on the greatest of the silent era comic actors with Chaplin vs. America, available this month in bookstores).

Looking for something a little closer to real life? Sit back and howl with the endlessly entertaining Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, a reflection by Rob Reiner on the comic and director’s career, with commentary from David Letterman, Steven Spielberg, Jon Stewart, Larry David, and more. Or relive the birth of The New Journalism, and gloriously large lapels and white suits, with Radical Wolfe, a look at the career of Tom Wolfe, the modern epic’s Master of the Universe, with readings by Jon Hamm. Finally, the series Archie brings the true-life story of Archibald Leach, better known as Cary Grant, to the small screen.

(From top) Albert Brooks defends his life; Tom Wolfe gets radical; Steve Carell finds the truth
From top, photographs courtesy of ITV, Getty Images, and Paramount Pictures

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Chic was never more radical than when Studio 54 ruled clubland—and it’s rise and fall is told with gripping detail in Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary of the same name; a darker New York rise and fall—that of drug kingpin Frank Lucas—comes alive with incredible panache—Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington!—in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster; the rise and fall of another party scene, and its great 18th-century patron, get Sofia Coppola’s sensitive, sensual treatment in Marie Antoinette; buckle in for Warren Beatty’s epic story of journalist John Reed and Louise Bryant’s left-wing political aspirations and disillusionment, aided by more than a little romance, in Reds; Mozart, the original rock star, drinks and plays his way around Vienna with aplomb, to the chagrin of an envious rival, in Miloš Forman’s sumptuous Amadeus; the 2008 financial crisis is explained, and dramatized, in The Big Short; and Johnny Cash gets the rarely well-crafted biopic treatment in Walk the Line.