Excitement over the arrival of end-of-year art/indie movies with Oscar buzz got underway here in November, with three new and excellent arrivals: The Holdovers, Priscilla and the French Anatomy of a Fall. Holdovers and Priscilla still are in town as of December 1. Check out my November preview column for more about those films.
But now comes the real onslaught, as December traditionally brings more movies with Academy Awards hopes to local screens. Here are some that you can expect to see at the Esquire and Mariemont specialty theaters and often at regional multiplexes as well.
Maestro
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 7 at Mariemont Theatre; will likely play in multiplexes as well.]
Bradley Cooper’s return to serving as a movie’s director, star, and co-writer follows his similar work on 2018’s A Star Is Born, when he played an alcoholic country-rock star while Lady Gaga made waves as a rising singer-songwriter. Maestro features him as the late Leonard Bernstein, the giant of modern American classical music conducting whose storied debut came at age 25 with the New York Philharmonic. The colorful and occasionally controversial Bernstein continued to command attention until he died in 1990 at age 72. The film also explores his complicated relationship with wife Felicia, played by Carey Mulligan in what is reported to be a major role.
Early reviews have been quite strong. “Cooper explores the definition—and brutal toll—of that kind of success with deep sympathy, lushly beautiful wall-to-wall music and great narrative velocity,” writes the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis.
The film’s supporters hope that Maestro will draw big crowds to theaters before Netflix starts streaming it on December 20. It will get a couple weeks of exclusive theatrical play to do that.
Ferrari
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 25 at Mariemont Theatre and Esquire Theatre, Clifton; will likely play in multiplexes as well.]
You really need to like Ferraris if you’re into exciting, cutting-edge filmmaking. Just four years ago we had James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari auto-race drama with Matt Damon and Christian Bale; now comes just plain Ferrari, directed by the masterful Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat, Collateral). It’s an auto-racing film as well, but also much more—a study of the Italian auto-manufacturing magnate Enzo Ferrari in 1957 as he tries to recover from his son’s death while struggling with marital problems. And he’s hoping to have his team win a major race. Adam Driver plays Ferrari; Penélope Cruz is his wife, Laura. The film is based on a 1991 biography by Brock Yates.
Early reviews have been strong; Variety’s Owen Gleiberman says, “It’s like watching Grand Prix fused with The Godfather.” Its national release date is December 25, and it’s scheduled for the Esquire and Mariemont theaters then. Fandango is listing Ferrari for 7 p.m. screenings on December 20 at AMC Newport and West Chester 18. Those could be special screenings, so check ahead for updates.
Poor Things
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 21 at AMC Newport on the Levee, Esquire Theatre, and The Neon in Dayton.]
I feel there’s a close bond between Cincinnati and the deeply unconventional films of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite), since he made one of his films here: The Killing of a Sacred Deer in 2017. Of course, it was one of his toughest films to like, dealing as it did with a murderous spell put on a likeable middle-class family by a mysterious teen. Lanthimos’ subsequent film in 2018, The Favourite, was much more likeable and popular—a lively sex comedy that netted 10 Oscar nominations. Olivia Colman won for Best Actress.
Now he’s reunited with The Favourite writer Tom McNamara and one of its stars, Emma Stone, for Poor Things. It defies easy description—typical of Lanthimos films—but Stone plays a young woman, Bella, brought to life by a mad scientist (Willem Defoe) who then runs off with a questionable lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) for an awakening that reportedly involves learning about sexuality.
The film won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and everyone thinks it’s going to be a major player at the Oscars, no matter how challenging the story sounds. “Stone is so captivating that you heedlessly put your faith in her,” Time says. “When we first meet Bella, she’s just a bouquet of unmitigated impulses, but Stone signals that this freakish science experiment of a girl is going to become so much more—and damned if she doesn’t.”
The Boys in the Boat
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 25 at Mariemont Theatre; will likely play in multiplexes as well.]
Cincinnati also has a close bond with George Clooney, since he’s the son of former local television personality Nick Clooney and his wife, Nina. And 2011’s The Ides of March, which he directed and starred in, was filmed here. So there should be keen local interest when a new film he directed, an adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s best-selling The Boys in the Boat, arrives on December 25. It’s the true story of members of the University of Washington rowing crew who won a Gold Medal at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany.
The Color Purple
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 25 at Esquire Theatre, AMC Newport on the Levee, and Cinemark Oakley Station.]
Based on the acclaimed 1982 novel by Alice Walker that won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction, The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a young and poor African American girl in the rural South who must struggle with a hard life that includes abuse from men. Steven Spielberg turned the book into a well-respected 1985 dramatic movie. A musical adaptation played Broadway from 2005-2008 and a 2015-2017 return won a Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.
Now comes the film adaptation of the musical, directed by the Ghana-born Blitz Bazawule—who was a co-director of Beyoncé’s 2020 film Black Is King—and starring Fantasia Barrino as Celie.
Renaissance
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 1 at Esquire Theatre, Kenwood Theatre, and various multiplexes.]
All these new Oscar contenders somewhat take attention away from a growing trend of high-profile documentary films featuring popular music performers. The smashing success of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film (Variety says it “is minting money”) means the biggest and most spectacular pop stars will want to have their concert films distributed like first-run movies rather than special theatrical events.
Beyoncé is the next to try it with her Renaissance film, which chronicles all aspects of her recent world tour—behind-the-scenes as well as on stage—that drew some 2.7 million fans to shows from Scandinavia to Kansas City. At least one early review makes it seem very promising. “This year will go down in cinema history for Barbenheimer but 2023 has also been the year of ‘Tayloncé,’ ” writes the The Guardian’s Steve Rose. “Just as Barbie and Oppenheimer joined forces to rejuvenate cinema, so Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have cemented their status as joint queens of pop this year.”
Immediate Family
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. December 12 at Esquire Theatre.]
Meanwhile, a music doc playing here for just one night, Immediate Family, is stirring up plenty of interest among boomer-age rock fans. Directed by Denny Tedesco, whose 2008 Wrecking Crew doc about Los Angeles’ crucial session musicians of the 1960s has become a classic music doc, Immediate Family introduces the session musicians responsible for providing the tastefully rockin’ accompaniment on recordings by the stars of the 1970s (and beyond) singer-songwriter movement.
The “family” members Tadesco profiles include Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Waddy Wachtel, and Steve Postell. Many stars (and their producers) are in the film: Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Asher, and more. This film should do particularly well in Cincinnati, since WEBN-FM really favored playing singer-songwriters in the 1970s.
Waitress: The Musical
[Watch the trailer. Opens December 7 at various multiplexes in the area.]
The much-admired singer songwriter and pianist Sara Bareilles found praise for being the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical Waitress. Based on a dramatic indie film of the same name, it’s about a small-town waitress, Jenna, whose home-baked pies are so good many want her to enter contests. Her husband, however, is not one of them.
Barielles stepped into the role of Jenna in addition to her other contributions and has helped make the musical popular. A live production came to Cincinnati in 2018 as part of the Broadway Across America series, but it did not feature Bareilles in the lead role. Now Fathom Events, which provides special-event programming to movie theaters, is offering a filmed version of the musical with the composer in the starring role.
Farewell My Concubine
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. December 11 at Woodward Theater, Over-the-Rhine.]
A special screening of Chinese director Chen Kaige’s legendary Farewell My Concubine chronicles the lives of two boys undergoing training at the Peking Opera Academy. As they grow up, the gravitate toward different types of operatic characters—one plays female roles, the other masculine warlords. The film also is about how their personal lives fit into their careers.
For this year’s 30th anniversary of the 1993 release, Film Movement Classics has created a new 4K restoration that inserts 20 minutes of scenes that had originally been left out. This will be a real treat.
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