I am fully in the tank for Paul Thomas Anderson; so the release of any new film from one of the greatest living American filmmakers marks a significant occasion to be celebrated. With that caveat in mind, Licorice Pizza, his deeply romantic tale of young strivers in the Valley, feels like a special holiday delivery with one of those giant novelty bows on it made especially for me. In the contrast to the icy focus of Phantom Thread (which vies for a spot on the summit of my ever-shifting rankings of his oeuvre), he’s returned to the wide-open sprawl of Southern California. Where Boogie Nights and Magnolia reckoned with ambitions hitting their natural limits, Licorice Pizza revels in the boundless optimism of youth. People may quibble about where it ranks in his pantheon, but I’ll happily take a hundred slices of this shaggy story of feeling of infinite possibilities. 

The Matrix Resurrections makes subtext text right from the jump. Lana Wachowski embraces the meta of this new sequel and makes her new film explicitly about the despair of resurrecting the corpse of seemingly long-dead ideas to appease the hunger of a new generation of content producers and consumers. Whether it’s a sneaky scream from deep within an intellectual prison, a rousing successful return to form, or merely an well-intentioned but clumsily realized impulse to revisit old themes is likely to vary substantially by audience expectations and sympathies (or lack thereof). Some may rejoice to follow her and some familiar characters down the rabbit hole once again. Others, like me, may find themselves desperate to eject.

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.

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.

Adapted from Thomas Savage’s novel of the same title, Jane Campion’s latest film is a simmering exploration of cruelty, duty, and revenge. Amid conventions of the Western genre, she nevertheless finds surprising ways to uncover fresh ideas in classic archetypes of masculinity. Filmed against a stunning New Zealand landscape that stands in for 1900s Montana, the intimately personal story showcases Campion’s remarkable grasp of capturing both the grand sweep of natural beauty as well as a keen eye for the insightful details of places and personalities.

Toward the end of C’mon C’mon Joaquin Phoenix’s uncle Johnny asks his nephew: “Are you laughing or are you crying? I can’t tell.” As is the case with most of his filmography, viewers of Mike Mills’s brilliant new film would almost certainly answer with a very enthusiastic “both”.

With House of Gucci, Ridley Scott brings us another story of powerful men, tremendous wealth, and a fashion institution facing decrepitude, all shaken up by one ambitious woman. Without getting into questions of accuracy, it’s an incredibly wild ride powered by the heat of showy performances by a cast crowded with A-listers. It’s a film that’s way too big for just one review, so on the event of it’s wide release, we tried to break down our feelings about it with a little roundtable.

When we first encounter Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson — on a small unadorned stage, hunched behind a piano, in the throes of performing his one-man musical — someone unfamiliar with the real composer/playwright could be forgiven that the actor was overplaying his theatricality. The trademark pile of overgrown curly hair. The twitchy, broad, lightning-quick expressions that play to the last row. A voice and attitude bursting with a self-assuredness to cover a deep longing to be adored. If you don’t buy it right away, grainy video playing over the end credits will confirm to those with no memories of their own of the 1990s that rather than an exaggeration, Garfield’s portrayal is uncannily accurate. It’s an amazingly rich and well studied performance that anchors a movie musical that’s a love letter to a time, place, and an artist with enduring influence.