December is the least self-contained month on the cinematic calendar.
Awards hopefuls receive one-week theatrical runs in order to qualify for the Oscars before truly being released in theaters in January, when studios loose no-frills genre fare into multiplexes. It’s a hazy time made more so by the holiday rush, which includes a spate of Christmas Day releases competing for attention and box-office dollars — usually at their own peril. But, as ever, there are always worthwhile offerings if you know which tree to look under.
“Hell is other people,” especially when those people are 12-year-old boys. Ben (Everett Blunck) learns this the hard way at a water polo camp that’s really an updated Lord of the Flies, with a barely-there coach (Joel Edgerton, who also produced) trying and, without exception, failing to prevent the kiddos from devolving into a lawless band of savages. Writer/director Charlie Polinger’s answer to Piggy is Eli, played with gusto by Kenny Rasmussen. It’s he who has the Plague — really a skin condition that may or may not be contagious — and is avoided like it by everyone. Everyone except for Ben, that is, who acts on his conscience in a way none of his peers do. You can guess how that goes for him. Existing in the shaded area of the Well Made/Deeply Unpleasant Venn diagram, The Plague doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know about bullying and social dynamics among preteens so desperate not to be ostracized that they’ll happily do the ostracizing themselves. But it does tell it with the kind of frenetic verve that announces a new filmmaker who, not unlike his protagonist, wants and deserves to be seen on his own terms.
Misery loves company, but it also loves comedy — hence the existence of a documentary examining the link between stand-up and sorrow. Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? extends that idea by having fifty-something Alex (Will Arnett) turn to the stage after separating from his wife Tess (Laura Dern), though he doesn’t plan to; rather, he wanders into an open-mic night after eating a weed cookie and only performs to avoid paying the cover charge. The result is akin to a gender-swapped Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, only Alex isn’t an especially gifted comic — something his new colleagues affectionately tell him early and often.
In a reversal from Cooper’s last two directorial outings, A Star Is Born and Maestro, which felt like they were designed in a lab to win Oscars, Is This Thing On? might ultimately be too modest for its own good. Arnett, who co-wrote the script with Cooper and Mark Chappell, is not unlike a live-action BoJack Horseman here: funny in a sad way and sad in a funny way. Whether or not he’s good is ultimately besides the point: Alex finds comfort and a little bit of solace in his new pastime, and sometimes — maybe even most of the time — the catharsis that comes from his confessional style is enough. Indeed, the funniest line comes not from Alex but from his mother’s reaction to learning of his new hobby: “Oh honey, I had no idea your life was so bad.”
“As one might expect of a miraculous person,” the narrator tells us as the movie begins, Ann Lee was born on February 29th. The founder of the Shakers, a religious movement created in 1747 and known for its rapturous singing and dancing, is given an appropriately musical biopic by Mona Fastvold. A superlative Amanda Seyfried is ecstatic in the title role, embodying Lee as an almost otherworldly figure who gives birth to four separate children that don’t survive a full year; rather than inspire a crisis of faith, these compounding tragedies only make her more fervent in her beliefs. After experiencing a vision, she comes to believe that the only way to restore our once-graceful state is self-denial via celibacy — much to the chagrin of her husband (Christopher Abbott).
With chapter titles like “The Woman Clothed by the Sun with the Moon Under Her Feet” and musical sequences based on actual Shaker hymns, The Testament of Ann Lee is as audacious and bold as any biopic in years. Fastvold co-wrote the script with her creative and romantic partner Brady Corbet, whose The Brutalist she co-wrote last year; with apologies to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the two might be the most compelling pair in Hollywood. The songs aren’t catchy the way Wicked’s are, but they are earworms in their own occasionally unsettling way, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling like a long, cathartic sigh after a prayer.
The Avatar movies are an anomaly. No one seems to think there need to be so many of them, yet everyone sees them anyway. The main reason for their enduring popularity is simple — as pure spectacle, the epic sci-fi franchise is unparalleled — but that alone doesn’t explain the billions of dollars in box office receipts. In this irony-poisoned age of ours, not a second of James Cameron’s now 10-hour epic has been anything less than sincere. Cheesy and mawkish, sure, but never ironic or self-reflexive. Avatar isn’t just a journey to another planet — it’s a nostalgic trip to an earlier style of filmmaking.
Fire and Ash, the third installment in the series, is nevertheless the weakest. The plot, such as it is, feels more like Avatar 2.5 than Avatar 3 — other than an excellent, compelling villain played by Oona Chaplin (granddaughter of Charlie and daughter of Geraldine), the movie is largely treading the same water as 2022’s The Way of Water. The whales with soulful eyes and subtitled dialogue may elicit a stronger emotional reaction than the Na’vi, but such is the nature of a James Cameron screenplay. The gulf in quality between spectacle and storytelling could hardly be wider, but the visuals are once again so arresting that, on balance, it’s still worth seeing Fire and Ash on the most enormous screen possible. Just because these movies don’t need to exist doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be glad they do.
