The holidays are traditionally a time for reflection, wish fulfillment, gluttony, and reliance on the tremendous power of nostalgia to paper over the messier parts of reuniting with friends and family after time spent apart. So it’s likely in that spirit that I came away from my viewing of Spider-Man: No Way Home in a jubilant fog of appreciation for what might be characterized as an over-stuffed buffet of fan service. Based on the rampant speculation in the lead-up to the film’s release, had this latest installment in the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe been nothing but a live-action version of that Spider-Man GIF, Dayenu. But it was so much more and I loved almost every minute of its excess. 

Paolo Sorrentino’s feverish work in Il Divo and both The Young (and New) Pope have utterly dazzled me; so at first  The Hand of God at first felt like a huge change of scale. Dialing back from the recent operatics, he confronts the other end of the lifespan from his Oscar-winning La grande bellezza, to give us a closely-observed family drama that’s also a tender ode to his cinematic influences. It may seem smaller than the grand sweep of the Italian mafia or the vast questions of faith and power at the head of the Catholic Church. But reflection, I suppose there is no bigger story than the one about how you became who you are.

Even as it may not see the director make use of monsters or creatures, Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is characteristically strong work from the auteur that revels in the darkness of its noir origins.

Where other directors might try to compress a sprawling novel into a feature film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three hour long adaptation of a short story is the definition of patience rewarded. For me, nothing has better replicated the feeling of being completely enveloped by Haruki Murakami’s (translated) prose quite like Drive My Car, with the substantial benefit that his rendering comes without the unpleasant surprise of the squicky and ghosty elements that the novelist is so fond of exploring. I admit to being wary of the long running time when I queued up the screener, but by the end I began to worry that each minute would be the last.

Sean Baker’s enduring interest in the frequently-overlooked lives of ordinary struggling Americans, especially those who make ends meet with sex work, continues with Red Rocket. But here, he drops a golden god and his giant schlong among them as an instigating agent of mischief. Simon Rex returns from his long slumber as Mikey, the physically “blessed” anti-hero who long ago left Texas City for the bright lights of Los Angeles’s adult film scene. It turns out that his pledge to “leave and never look back” has an expiration date. After decades away during which he ascende the heights to an award-winning (“Best Oral”) film career, he, like so many stars before him, has been chewed-up, spit-out, and returned to the life he once fled.