Your holiday preview: What to see (and what to skip) in the theatres

The coming week is filled with must-see movies, though who must see which movie will be the subject of one of those intense white-or-dark-meat, tofurkey-or-latkes, dinner debates.  

We’ll launch with the popular choice, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which reviewer Liam Lacey says, is an event-crowded movie that brings the third (and final?) Star Wars trilogy to a cautiously safe landing.  For a bonus, Bonnie Laufer has an interview with the new Chewbacca, seven-foot tall Finnish basketball player and actor Joonas Suotamo about playing a hairy icon. 

Christmas releases jump into hyperdrive at the theatres this week.

Still on the subject of movies that cater to furry fetishists, Tom Ernst reviews the anticipated/dreaded movie version of the musical, Cats (C) which he says, is far from purr-fect, though it doesn’t entirely hack up a fur ball.

Bombshell  (B-plus) stars Charlize Theron as power flirt news personality Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman as her colleague, Gretchen Carlson,  in the lightly-fictionalized drama about FOX TV’s late Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), his sexual abuses and his hold on the go-to news of the right. Reviewer Kim Hughes describes the result as unambitious but gilded by performances from stylish Malcolm McDowell , Margot Robbie, Connie Britton and Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon. 

Going deeper, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (A-minus) is an ambitious, exalting and challenging experience, says reviewer Liam Lacey. It’s the real-life story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and Catholic martyr who was a conscientious objector to the Nazi regime.  You can measure your own life’s journey against 63 Up (A) the ninth film in Michael Apted’s brilliant documentary series that began in 1964 with a group of British seven-year-olds, as they move into the senior years. Also, in praise of non-rushed journeys, Jim Slotek reviews Werner Herzog’s Nomad: In The Foosteps of Bruce Chatwin (B-plus), a tribute to his friend, the English writer and enthusiastic walker, who died in 1989, in a film that replicates some of Chatwin’s famous journeys and spirit of wonder. 

For those who can’t stand the cold and want to get out of the kitchen, we have Brazil’s Oscar candidate, the tropical melodrama, The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (B-plus), a stylish, soulful feminist lament about two sisters in 1950s Brazil, who are separated by the patriarchy.

Have a happy, safe, fur-ball free, holiday.