It’s December, which means you’re probably dusting off a comforting classic — Love Actually, Elf, Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life — to celebrate the coming of Christmas. (If you’re looking for more off-beat holiday selections, might I recommend one of these from a list I curated in 2022?)
But if you seek a normal old movie, here are 10 good options for you that are new to their respective stateside streaming services in December.
Cats Don’t Dance, Amazon Prime Video
I’m convinced that Cats Don’t Dance, a soaring love letter to movies aimed at family audiences, is probably one of the reasons I fell in love with them. It’s a celebration of dreams as Danny, the singing cat from Kokomo, heads to Hollywood to light the world on fire. But things are not what he imagined, and he soon finds that life isn’t easy for an animal actor — especially when his co-star is a tyrannical child actor who refuses to be upstaged. He refuses to be crushed, keeping his optimism while bringing together a large group of animals to recapture their dreams. Between the toe-tapping tunes, it’s not shy on moving insights like: “They can smash your cookie, but they can never take your fortune.”
Cedar Rapids, Max
I’ll never understand why comedies are a genre people have stopped feeling deserves the theatrical experience. When I watch them at home, I rarely get a big laugh out of them. So when a movie like Cedar Rapids comes along and makes me bust a gut, I know there’s something great going on. Ed Helms’ Tim Lippe, the insular Wisconsin insurance salesman attending a conference in the titular metropolis representing his company, gets quite a shock top the system upon exposure to the dangers and pleasures of true urban living. Sure, it may be hopelessly pathetic and wallow in endless jokes of naïveté, but it’s actually funny! I laughed! A lot! In bed! Seriously, that doesn’t happen very often at all!
Cheaper by the Dozen, Hulu
The hardest I ever saw my grandma laugh was when we went to see Cheaper by the Dozen on Christmas Day (back when that day was a social SCENE at Edwards Greenway 24 in Houston) and the Baker family dog goes to town on Ashton Kutcher after some of the younger of the 12 kids soak his underwear in meat. I feel like we’re sorely lacking in the early-aughts-style family comedies like these. It’s a fun family movie built around star power and solid gags, not just a retread of tired IP and nostalgia.
Gaucho Gaucho, Jolt
I know you’re probably wondering, “What the heck is Jolt?” In fairness, a week ago, I had to ask the same thing. It’s hard for independent films to make noise on major streaming platforms, especially if the companies themselves don’t buy them. Enter Jolt, a filmmaker-forward platform that aims to spotlight great works in a way that maximizes the creative team’s ability to monetize and learn about their audience. Consider dipping your toes in the water for Gaucho Gaucho, a film that I called “a striking piece of cultural ethnography” out of Sundance earlier this year. That’s “both in the way that the documentarians let the values of this world reveal themselves incidentally … and in the way they insist on framing it through rebellious black-and-white tableaus that recall the outsider visions of Jim Jarmusch.”
Green Room, Amazon Prime Video
Fun fact: the first professional review I was ever commissioned to write was for Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room out of Fantastic Fest 2015! I made a throwaway parenthetical reference to how the white supremacist villains like those in the film were making in-roads with a certain presidential candidate just beginning his run … simpler times. May this story of a punk rock band squaring off against neo-Nazis holding them captive in their green room after a gig be merely fiction and not a survival manual for us. (And: RIP Anton Yelchin, gone far too soon.)
Jackass: The Movie, Criterion Channel
“Millennial men were too busy quoting anchorman and figuring out new, innovative ways to sack tap each other to get radicalized by the far right and I love them for that,” wrote Samantha Ruddy on X last month. Let the intergenerational warfare begin as millennials start to make our claim for the greatest generation, but I do think there’s something special about the homosocial culture that was in the bloodstream as guys currently in their late twenties to early forties experienced. One such trove of masculinity is Jackass: The Movie, which — thanks to the efforts of longtime fans like my friend Hannah Strong — is undergoing a necessary reappraisal. (It’s on the Criterion Channel, for heaven’s sake! )As the shock value of the film’s gonzo stunts fades, what lingers is the group’s enduring support for each other through injury and insult. They debase themselves and fortify the group. Not to mention: it’s just really funny, too!
Kneecap, Netflix
“The late critic Gene Siskel had a rule for evaluating movies about authors that’s easy to extrapolate for musicians. Does this movie about a famous musician make you want to listen to music? If yes, then the film succeeds,” I concluded a review out of Sundance earlier this year. “Chalk up a win for Kneecap, then, based on my recent Spotify listening data alone.” This raucous biopic starring the Irish rap group using the country’s native tongue to reclaim and preserve their heritage from colonialism is a great time. Director Rich Peppiatt gives us time to get to know the group (playing themselves) while also shining a light on the side of Ireland we don’t necessarily see through Ayo Edebiri’s stanning.
The Maltese Falcon, Max
Film noirs and mysteries don’t get much more classic than The Maltese Falcon, a handsomely mounted directorial debut by the great John Huston. It’s got vintage Humphrey Bogart, too, as a private eye on the lookout for a missing bird statuette. You’ve probably seen many, many movies riffing on this basic formula, but it’s time to ensure you’ve seen the true original.
Memento, Criterion Channel
It’s legitimately shocking that I’ve gone over three years without recommending Christopher Nolan’s breakout success Memento, especially because it’s become one of my all-time favorite movies. (Yes, even higher than The Dark Knight.) I find its parallel yet opposite timelines as fascinating to play off each other as they were from the first time I watched the film in 2010, and its message of making your own morality in a world where such strictures seem absent only resonates harder. Or wait … I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?
Ricki and the Flash, Hulu
No subgenre of “deadbeat dad” dramas exists, but Meryl Streep’s Ricki feels like a gender-swapped revision to the stock character. As a rock musician who ditched parenting her three children to entertain a half-full dive bar, she’s called off the bench to get in the family game when her daughter Julie (Streep’s real progeny Mamie Gummer) suffers a breakdown after getting unceremoniously dumped by her husband. There’s such an interesting cross-current of dispositions in Ricki and the Flash that elevates what might otherwise be a fairly standard domestic drama. There’s the script by Juno’s Diablo Cody that features no shortage of well-worded barbs for the characters to toss at one another. But tying it all together is the deep humanism of director Jonathan Demme, for whom this would sadly be his final feature film. This is a work that can make space for all the conflicting feelings we have about those we hold dear, and there’s something special about that.
The Order opens on Friday, and I gave it a positive review for Slant Magazine out of Venice. It’s a sturdy crime thriller if you like those, plus it features the strongest of Nicholas Hoult’s three (!!) great performances this fall.
I also gave a somewhat less enthusiastic review of The Return, a minimalist adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
I can’t find the source, unfortunately, but I’m pretty sure that it was Matt Rogers on the podcast Las Culturistas who broke down the two types of Christmas albums according to (I believe) Jennifer Hudson. There’s red and green (capitalistic Christmas) and white (religious Christmas). I decided to split out some of my seasonal favorites accordingly last year and thought I’d share them with you here.
I hadn’t thought about this trend, but Diego Hadis of The New York Times Magazine makes the excellent point that many movies are putting a human face on robots.
Dana Stevens for T Magazine brings great perspective to the Oscar race with her piece “Why Some of the Year’s Best Performances Are From Actresses Who Say Very Little.”
Now that I’ve seen them both, I can confidently share that Justin Chang’s twinned review of Glicked is a must-read.
Hope to be back to paid subscribers with something fun this weekend!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall