⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Oppenheimer, R (Peacock)
Yes, it was better on Imax, but the Oscar front-runner biopic about the father of the A-bomb also packs a punch on the small screen — and now it’s streaming! The story ricochets through time and space fast as a photon, plotting the arc of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). The left-leaning, womanizing physicist passionately pursues pioneering atomic science. But he can’t live with his baby, the bomb that decimated Hiroshima, ending World War II. The sprawling drama is a dazzling cinematic achievement boosted by muscular performances from Robert Downey Jr., 58, Matt Damon, 53, and Jason Clarke, 54, and a huge cast of characters with complicated collisions. —T.M.A.
Watch it: Oppenheimer on Peacock (also in theaters and on demand)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Taste of Things, PG-13
Not since Babette’s Feast has there been a culinary movie so delicious. In this sensual French period entry for the Oscar, which was overshadowed by the more serious contemporary best picture nominee Anatomy of a Fall, Juliette Binoche, 59, leads the way around a large, rustic kitchen in 1889 France. The actress is graceful, passionate and mysterious as Eugenie, a chef whose culinary talent and skills border on the mystical. Employed for two decades by the famed gourmet Dodin Bouffant (Binoche’s ex-partner Benoît Magimel, 49), the magnificent first act finds her cooking with mouthwatering detail, her hands never still or unsure, her concentration absolute. From this emerge the delicate flavors of her collaboration and consensual no-strings sexual relationship with Bouffant, the nurturing of an apprentice and an appreciation for food preparation as its own genius. The Taste of Things is a yummy version of a life well lived, where dinner isn’t a meal between dusk and dark, but a daily celebration of life for as long as it lasts. —T.M.A.
Watch it: The Taste of Things, in theaters
Don’t miss this: 8 Quick Questions for Juliette Binoche on AARP Members Only Access
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Godzilla Minus One, PG-13
The latest Japanese-produced Godzilla movie from Japan's Toho Studio takes the character back to his roots even as it reinvents him. Set in the late 1940s, it focuses on a group of ordinary citizens, including an ex-navy pilot who rejected a kamikaze mission, and a young woman who takes in an orphaned girl. They embark on a people's crusade against Godzilla, a dinosaur-like creature made gigantic by atomic testing, because the government refuses to take responsibility for dealing with him. Borrowing from an array of classic movies, including the original Jaws, this is a rare giant monster movie where the human relationships are as compelling as the scenes where the big guy stomps and incinerates cities. —Matt Zoller Seitz (M.Z.S.)
Watch it: Godzilla Minus One, in theaters
Don’t miss this: Why ‘Godzilla Minus One’ Is the Biggest Unexpected Hit Since ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ American Fiction, PG-13
Jeffrey Wright, 58, owns 2023. The brilliant actor delivered a mighty profile as Rustin’s Rep. Adam Clayton Powell and now carries Cord Jefferson’s brainy, acerbic comedy as the enraged Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, an academic whose latest erudite novel is a least-seller. When he encounters a Black woman novelist whose breakout debut employs young urban speech, the writer confronts market realities. As Monk attempts to prove that he, too, can write pandering fiction, he gets drawn back into his affluent family’s orbit. Mother Leslie Uggams, 80, and siblings Tracee Ellis Ross, 51, and Sterling K. Brown form a formidable family unit (with their New England beach house, the Ellisons are more seaside lane than city street). Both a family dramedy and a sharp take on publishing’s failures, American Fiction also reflects the concerns of a microcosm of Black artists working in Hollywood, navigating systemic racism while expected to deliver stories with “street cred,” whatever that means — and to whom — on any particular day. —T.M.A.
Watch it: American Fiction, in theaters and on demand
⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Wonka, PG
Timothée Chalamet exudes wide-eyed charm as chocolatier Willy Wonka struggling to set up his first shop as a 20-something orphan. (Curiously, he flashes no hint of the menace or cynicism that Gene Wilder famously brought to the role in the original 1971 film.) This sunshiny Wonka is surrounded by an overstuffed cast that includes a plumped-up Keegan-Michael Key, 52, Olivia Colman (in full camp mode) and Hugh Grant, 63 (who goes all in as a diminutive Oompa Loompa). Paul King, the filmmaker behind the two justly praised live-action Paddington movies, brings a visual flair to the enterprise, which boasts several well-choreographed production numbers and new songs that mesh nicely with classics such as “Pure Imagination.” The candy-colored visuals go a long way to compensate for a script that can be a muddle, stretched taffy-thin by too many villains, subplots and characters who are not given much to do. —T.G.
Watch it: Wonka, in theaters
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Zone of Interest, PG-13
Among the most chilling photographs displayed at Berlin’s Topography of Terror museum is this image: smiling female Auschwitz guards enjoying their day off, steins raised, at a beer garden. Jonathan Glazer, 58, sets his Oscar-bound Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest nearby, at the compound of Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel, Babylon Berlin) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Huller, also in the much-buzzed Anatomy of a Fall). Their happy home, with its lush garden (fertilized with suspicious ash) and playful children, shelters a family striving for a bourgeois life within sniffing distance of the spewing chimneys at the infamous concentration camp. Like the photo at the Topography of Terror, the movie shows the banality of wickedness. For the Höss family, life goes on amid the scurrying, starving prisoner-servants underfoot as the patriarch rises due to his genocidal efficiency. Their prosperous garden of evil, fueled by denial, is an atrocity of complicity, and a timely remembrance. —T.M.A.
Watch it: The Zone of Interest, in theaters and on demand
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Poor Things, R
Emma Stone goes far out on a limb — and then leaps without a net — in her second outrageous collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, 50 (The Favourite). Stone delivers a sexy, physically demanding and outlandish performance that exists in an artistic universe far, far away from the mainstream gloss of Spiderman’s saucy girlfriend Gwen. She plays Bella Baxter, a young suicide given an electric shock at a second life by the compassionate but cray-cray scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (a sublimely ridiculous Willem Dafoe, 68). His bumpy, scarred visage reflects his predilection for self-experimentation, while Bella is his beauty. Mark Ruffalo, 56, flexes his comic chops as a Bella-obsessed gent who has no idea what she’s capable of — or of his own limitations. Part Frankenstein, part Galatea, Bella has a learning curve that’s swift, unexpected and driven by unrestrained appetites. Although Poor Things occasionally careens into extreme whimsy, it’s a gorgeously shot, designed and costumed portrait of an incomparable woman on the verge of a fantastical breakthrough. —T.M.A.
Watch it: Poor Things, in theaters
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Boy and the Heron, PG-13
Long ago, when my two grown kids were little, I adored animation. Then it became something like eating too many hot dogs — I never again craved wieners or hyper cartoons. The major exception is the creations of Japanese genius Hayao Miyazaki, 82. His latest movie is true to form: unhurried, tender and wise. Nearly every frame of this artistic masterpiece inspires awe. His visions of undulating waters, flickering flames and sunlight cracking cloud cover have sublime detail, composition and color. The story itself offers wonder, humor and life lessons that don’t reduce to “Eat your broccoli.” The hero of this feature, which Miyazaki claims to be his last, is a motherless boy. Mahito encounters a heron, a magical creature symbolizing good luck, a fowl capable of moving among three elements: earth, water and air. Together, bird and orphan cross the thin membrane between life and death, encountering strange and marvelous creatures, and inhabiting a visually thrilling story that represents the very best in bold contemporary animation and popular art. —T.M.A.
Watch it: The Boy and The Heron, in theaters
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Holdovers, R
Director Alexander Payne, 62, made actor Paul Giamatti, 56, famous in his 2004 wine-country comedy Sideways. They reunite in an Oscar-touted, record-setting Toronto Film Festival hit about a curmudgeon (Giamatti’s specialty) who teaches at a New England prep school and is stuck on campus to babysit a few students over Christmas break in the early 1970s. He bonds with one chronic misfit kid (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who’s mourning her son, a former student at the school who was accepted at Swarthmore but, cash-poor, was sent to die in Vietnam. It’s a hilarious, poignant movie in a beautiful, character-rich retro-1970s style. It’s a Christmas movie as uplifting as the saddest of Christmas songs, and as full of hope against all odds. —T.A.
Watch it: The Holdovers, in theaters and on demand
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Killers of the Flower Moon, R (Apple TV+)
Lily Gladstone is the beating heart of Martin Scorsese’s historical true-crime drama about the reign of terror in 1920s Osage County, Oklahoma. The wealthy diabetic Mollie Burkhart comes to represent the Osage Nation, who are living in frontier luxury after oil was discovered beneath their communal land. Scorsese, 80, lushly re-creates the oil-rush backwater, with its muddy streets, fancy motorcars and tribal pageantry. However, the director miscasts 48-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio as 28-year-old Ernest Burkhart, Mollie’s white seducer. They wed but the seemingly dutiful husband has divided loyalties, remaining obligated to his uncle, rancher William Hale (quietly terrifying Robert De Niro, 80). Hale architects a murderous conspiracy to profit from the Osage birthright. As the body count rises, including Mollie’s two sisters, coincidence turns to conviction — and the greedy culprits must be brought to justice. The juicy period piece based on the nonfiction bestseller by David Grann gets the Hollywood star treatment, but a multipart series with age-appropriate male stars might have better-served the grim chapter’s complexities. —T.M.A.
Watch it: Killers of the Flower Moon, in theaters, on Apple TV+ and on demand
Don’t miss this: Everything you need to know before watching 'Killers of the Flower Moon'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Anatomy of a Fall, R
Writers Sandra (standout Sandra Hüller) and Vincent (Swann Arlaud) share a remote alpine chalet with their 11-year-old son, Daniel, but their marriage is strained. What makes this elegant, gripping crime thriller (and Cannes Film Festival winner) unusual is that the pot never boils. When an attractive journalist comes to interview the more successful Sandra, an unseen Vincent blasts music to disrupt their conversation. How passive-aggressive — or is his behavior something angrier? Later, he tumbles from the third-floor window, bloodying the snow below. The narrative pivots, becoming a courtroom drama with Sandra in the dock, accused of suspicious death. Her vision-impaired son is the sole material witness. Daniel has knowledge of what occurred in the house — but how reliable is he? Is he loyal to his surviving mother, or to his late father? Did Sandra or didn’t she? If only those chalet walls could talk. —T.M.A.
Watch it: Anatomy of a Fall on demand
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Barbie, PG-13
Hot pink in the summertime: That’s the new Barbie. And, whoopsie, she’s having an existential crisis. When the Mattel doll (a perfectly cast Margot Robbie) leaves her platonic pal Ken (hunky Ryan Gosling) for the real world, she gets a big surprise. Unlike her native Barbieland, a girl-power utopia where plastic playthings are presidents and Supreme Court justices, she confronts the patriarchy. Over at Mattel, the CEO (Will Ferrell, 56) presides over an all-male board that won’t play nice and wants to put her in a box. Throughout, the tone is playfully ironic with a side of preach. The biggest joy is in the endless runway of familiar doll costumes and the cotton candy sets. Robbie makes a genial ringmaster, with a terrific cast that includes Rhea Perlman, 75, America Ferrera and a slew of starry Barbies and Kens. Is Barbie a feminist? The movie replies with a chorus of “yes!” —T.M.A.
Watch it: Barbie, in theaters and on demand
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