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Best Movies 2022

It was a long delay for takeoff but Top Gun: Maverick is why we love the blockbuster experience: Exhilirating action with big emotional stakes and an on-your-feet sunset ending. As for the rest of the top 10, writer/director Martin McDonaugh went back to his roots for the stout-dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin , co-starring Colin Farrell (also in The Batman , by the way). In this universe, Everything Everywhere All At Once became the sci-fi/fantasy/action/romance/comedy that could. You couldn’t ask for more diversity in animation, with the high-spirited Turning Red , the dark musical Pinocchio , and the sweet and poignant hybrid Marcel the Shell with Shoes On . And in 2022, love had lots to do with it, from a mother’s grief and crusade ( Till ) to a pregnant teenager facing harrowing choices ( Happening ) and one hot quixotic couple ( Fire of Love ).

The order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2022) after adjustment from our ranking formula, which compensates for variation in the number of reviews when comparing movies or TV shows.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) 96%

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) 96%

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 94%

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) 96%

Turning Red (2022) 95%

Happening (2021) 99%

The Batman (2022) 85%

Fire of Love (2022) 98%

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021) 98%

Till (2022) 96%

The Woman King (2022) 94%

Prey (2022) 94%

The Northman (2022) 90%

X (2022) 94%

The Duke (2020) 97%

The Janes (2022) 100%

Descendant (2022) 100%

No Bears (2022) 99%

Navalny (2022) 97%

All That Breathes (2022) 99%

Official Competition (2021) 96%

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) 94%

Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues (2022) 98%

Nothing compares (2022) 99%.

Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down (2022) 100%

Aftersun (2022) 96%

Decision to Leave (2022) 94%

Free Chol Soo Lee (2022) 100%

Emily the Criminal (2022) 94%

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) 94%

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From big theatrical events like Top Gun: Maverick to a shockingly good year in horror , it’s been a memorable year at the movies.

What makes a movie worth including as one of Polygon’s best? We like many different types of movies here, from genre fare to the kind of stuff that makes you think. If it made us laugh, made us cry, made us ponder, or made us squeal in excitement, it’s probably here.

We asked Polygon’s staffers to submit their favorite movies of the year. Some ranked theirs, some didn’t. Some included 25, some included five. We were able to take that data and translate it into this extremely scientific*, definitive** list of the best movies of the year.

Nobody has had a chance to see everything — we’re publishing this in early December, which meant collecting ballots in November. That means only a select few have seen The Way of Water , and very few people have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio , The Fabelmans, or Glass Onion , to name a few examples. But that’s why we’re a team! With our powers combined, we’ve seen nearly all of the relevant 2022 releases, and we’ve sorted through our feelings to determine which ones are the best — just for you.

Below are Polygon’s top 10 movies of the year, as voted on by our staffers. We’ll also have movies that didn’t make the cut but were worth mentioning, as well as our staffers’ top 10 ballots for your perusal. Just don’t be a jerk about it.

And if you like lists, we’ve got more lists — specifically lists of the best TV , games , anime , and books of the year.

* There was barely any science involved. ** There’s no such thing as a definitive list of the best movies. That’s, like, your opinion.

The top 10 movies of 2022

10. everything everywhere all at once.

Genre: Sci-fi action Run time: 2h 19m Directors: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

People who only know filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert from their tongue-in-cheek 2016 indie-movie parody Swiss Army Man — yes, that’s the one where Daniel Radcliffe spends the whole movie as a vomiting, farting corpse — may be surprised at the sheer scope, scale, and ambition of the writer-directors’ movie Everything Everywhere All at Once , which absolutely lives up to its name. It’s a wild, winning multiverse comedy slash kung-fu epic about a depressed laundromat owner ( Michelle Yeoh ) who’s called on to save billions of alternate universes from evil, but that only scratches the surface of what the Daniels are out to achieve.

Part metaphorical attempt to reckon with the chaos of the internet age, part life-affirming argument against despair, and part reckless absurdist action movie, it’s simultaneously hilarious and touching, an impressive special-effects experiment and a tremendous mental reboot on the order of The Matrix . This is the only movie you’ll see this year (or probably ever) where one man gets beaten to death with oversized floppy dildos, while another changes the world with the Kurt Vonnegut-derived message “Be kinder to each other.” — Tasha Robinson

Everything Everywhere All at Once is available to watch on Showtime, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

9. Ambulance

Genre: Action thriller Run time: 2h 16m Director: Michael Bay Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González

Ambulance follows two brothers who steal an ambulance after a botched bank heist and lead the Los Angeles Police Department on a chase across the city, all with a couple of accidental hostages in the back. The robbers are played by Yahya Abdul Mateen II, who brings a sympathetic presence to the high-stakes chase, and Jake Gyllenhaal at his unhinged best. But it’s action director extraordinaire Michael Bay who is the real star of the show.

After 10 years in the dark dungeons of Transformers sequels, Ambulance is the best version of Michael Bay. The movie has all the hallmarks of Bay’s best work, like The Rock and Bad Boys , mixed with the mastery of new technologies that he’s shown in more recent works like 13 Hours . Drone cameras soar through car chases, handheld shots give us an up-close view of panicked amateur surgery, and every explosion looks incredible. Does every ounce of the story make perfect sense and conform to the laws of reality? No, it absolutely does not. But it is a tremendously fun two-hour-long car chase, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. It feels good to have Bay back at the top of his game. — Austen Goslin

Ambulance is available to watch on Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

8. Aftersun

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 42m Director: Charlotte Wells Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall

The human memory is, famously, unreliable — faulty to the point of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood memories are perhaps the best example of this: Even a small, isolated memory can completely change tone later when seen with the full spectrum of adulthood, filtered through the prism of concern and care that comes with it. It’s a tough concept to wrap your brain around at times. And so Aftersun feels like a small miracle in the ways it not only captures that scope but manages to frame the whole concept with grace.

Young father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on a rare resort vacation, a fading moment captured by her on a clunky camcorder (at least partially; you know what it’s like to hand a kid a video camera). While that plot is simple in construction, the execution of it is far more profound, capturing the wistful vantage points of both Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on holiday with equal, vivid clarity. In Aftersun ’s hands, memory is just as slippery as it’s always been. Sometimes conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; growing up is seeing the full picture of their trip, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its ability to capture that. It’s a testament to the performances at the center of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the film manages to suggest so much without overstating its point. After all, memory may be unreliable, but sometimes memory — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a warm embrace — is all we have. — Zosha Millman

Aftersun is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Genre: Action horror Run time: 1h 24m Director: Jean Luc Herbulot Cast: Yann Gael, Mentor Ba, Roger Sallah

I don’t want to say too much about Saloum , because part of the joy of the movie is the way it dramatically unfurls in surprising directions. A charming group of mercenaries escorting a drug lord from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal have to land their plane unexpectedly early, and then things spiral from there. But I will say this: It’s a joyous genre mashup with gorgeous characterization, terrific lead actors, and a jaw-dropping third act. You won’t regret it.— Pete Volk

Saloum is available to stream on Shudder and AMC Plus through Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu .

Genre: Drama Run time: 2h 38m Director: Todd Field Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant

Todd Field’s first film in nearly two decades stars Cate Blanchett as the eponymous Lydia Tár, a globally renowned (and entirely fictitious) composer-conductor who is faced with a professional and personal reckoning brought upon by her many transgressions and infidelities. Exquisitely well paced, scrupulously detailed, and impeccably performed, Tár marks the return of a director whose small body of work belies a mastery and vision seldom seen in all but the greatest of his contemporaries in their prime.

Field’s film is more ambitious and interesting than any simple screed either against or on behalf of so-called cancel culture. Over the course of its run time, Tár reveals itself as something far more complex and harder to nail down: an incisive exploration of the myriad ways in which the abuse of power, both institutional and personal, manifests, while also a story that attempts to dispel the myth of “genius” and the aura of exonerating virtue in which it is imbued, to probe at the ugly, complicated, and incontrovertibly human truth at its center.

The film accomplishes this by centering on a character who embodies a multitude of contradictions: a woman who is at once unquestionably gifted, indisputably reprehensible, and so coercively charismatic as to nearly, if not outright, elicit reluctant sympathy even when viewed at her worst. Blanchett so thoroughly inhabits the role of Lydia Tár that it feels impossible to even imagine this film existing without her, affording a performance befitting one of the greatest actors of their time. There is more to be said and written about Tár than can comfortably fit in the space of a paragraph, let alone a sentence, but the bottom line is this: Tár is one of the best films of the year, if not the best. — Toussaint Egan

Tár is available to stream on Peacock, or for rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

5. Barbarian

Genre: Horror comedy Run time: 1h 43m Director: Zach Cregger Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long

Perhaps the ultimate “don’t go into the basement” movie, Barbarian follows Tess, a young woman who has the unfortunate fate of getting double-booked at an Airbnb with a strange man in a less-than-ideal part of town. And then things get way worse. And then things get way worse again .

Barbarian is the rare horror movie that manages to keep upping the ante with new and bigger surprises every few minutes, without ever feeling like it’s holding anything back. Just when you think the creepy guy Tess has to stay the night with is going to be trouble, the movie opens up a whole subterranean basement of horrible twists and shocking grossness.

Maybe the most surprising of these twists is how frequently the movie jumps between its gruesomely violent moments and funny jokes, without ever letting either feel out of place and making the whole movie a shockingly fun time. — AG

Barbarian is available to stream on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Google Play, and Vudu .

Genre: Sci-fi horror Run time: 2h 10m Director: Jordan Peele Cast: Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun

Nope is yet another thoughtful and fun sci-fi horror from one of the best filmmakers currently working.

Ostensibly a movie about trying to prove the existence of a UFO, Nope is a profound meditation on the role of cameras and filmmaking not only in our society, but also in the struggle against oppression and racism toward Black people in America. Two siblings on the outskirts of the filmmaking industry (but with deep ties to the history of cinema’s formation) use all the tools at their disposal (and their wits) to capture proof of something they know is true but others will not believe. It is not a big leap to connect their quest to that of the many brave Black Americans who have attempted to document injustices against them on camera, something Peele himself has talked about in the context of this movie. And Peele’s movie goes further, pulling in deeper themes about who gets access to the tools needed to document their stories, what support looks like in times of crisis, Cosmicism, and animal actors , all wrapped within a story of pursuing that one perfect shot.

Nope is also anchored by one of the best sibling relationships I’ve ever seen. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer have an electric chemistry that leaps off the screen, and you instantly believe they’d do anything for each other. It is also Jordan Peele’s ode to the filmmaking style of Steven Spielberg, and thus the most blockbuster-y of his oeuvre to date (with great monster design to boot).

Nope has only grown in my estimation since watching it, as my brain constantly finds itself returning to its powerful images and ideas. Nope serves as further proof of Peele’s mastery of both unforgettable ideas and arresting images, and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next. — PV

Nope is available to watch on Peacock, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin

Genre: Dramedy Run time: 1h 54m Director: Martin McDonagh Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan

The Banshees of Inisherin is a bit of a miracle. Writer and director Martin McDonagh’s previous film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , received many Oscar nominations and took home two acting awards, most memorably for Frances McDormand. It’s an ugly film with a misguided interpretation of bigotry in America, but so was Crash , and that didn’t stop its creator from landing a Bond movie. That’s how things work: When an artist gets this much attention, they usually make the most of producers hoping to re-create similar success. Instead, McDonagh took the longest creative break of his career.

Four years later, McDonagh returns with a film that doubles as a conclusion to a loose trilogy of plays he’d abandoned in the mid-2000s. (Don’t worry, you needn’t have seen off-Broadway favorites like The Lieutenant of Inishmore to appreciate this movie.) The Banshees of Inisherin has a cinematic grace, the camera floating through the hills of a small Irish island. But the story has the premise of a killer play: an older artist (Brendan Gleeson) calls off a lifelong friendship with a farmer (Colin Farrell) with no warning and little explanation. The harder the farmer fights to reunite, the more extreme the artist’s efforts to break ties.

It doesn’t take a close inspection to spot McDonagh’s own questions about the prioritization of art and the artist. But McDonagh is too clever a writer to frame the farmer as some pure, noble good. He can be downright annoying. A troupe of characters fill out the spectrum of views between the farmer and the artist, and by the end, McDonagh has seemingly juiced this scenario for every philosophical and existential question it contains — never taking too clear a stance on any answer.

Banshees is the opposite of Three Billboards : vulnerable, beautiful, and utterly obsessed with the aching complexity of even the most banal life. McDonagh could have made a lot of money or a vanity project. Instead he took a beat, then made this quiet masterpiece. — Chris Plante

The Banshees of Inisherin is available to stream on HBO Max, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

2. Decision to Leave

Genre: Mystery romance Run time: 2h 18m Director: Park Chan-wook Cast: Park Hae-il, Tang Wei

Park Chan-wook’s follow-up to The Handmaiden is a completely different kind of love story: a police procedural about a detective, Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) falling for an insightful, soft-spoken woman he’s investigating for murder. This slow-burn story crosses through so many genres that it may leave viewers a bit baffled about what they’re watching, until, with a series of almost audible clicks, each segment of the puzzle-piece narrative falls together, building to an unforgettable conclusion. It’s the kind of immaculately crafted experience that may leave people wanting to watch it again immediately, just to appreciate the eventual impact of all the tiny details that didn’t add up the first time around. But by the end , it comes into focus as a portrait of obsession, devotion, division, and some very clever scheming. — TR

Decision to Leave is available to stream on Mubi, or for digital rental or purchase on Apple and Amazon.

Genre: Historical action epic Run time: 3h 7m Director: S.S. Rajamouli Cast: N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan

Every cinematic possibility explodes across the screen in S.S. Rajamouli’s three-hour historical action epic. Too much hype? There is no overselling the spectacle of RRR , which reimagines the real-life Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem as superheroic protectors capable of outmaneuvering ferocious beasts, battling battalions of men into submission, and slapping imperialist assholes with motorcycles like Jet Li in The One . Rajamouli, seemingly fueled by 100 years of Eastern and Western classics, drops the film’s thunderous-applause-worthy moments with the precision of the jokes in Airplane ; just when you think dopamine levels might drop after a physics-defying rescue sequence, Rama (Ram Charan) and Bheem (Jr. NTR) hit the dance floor, snap their suspenders, and fight colonialism through the power of footwork. “Dance like a scorpion has bitten you!” they proclaim in Telugu, though their moves speak even louder than words. Every second of RRR is like this.

This may sound familiar in Hollywood’s mega-scale era, and RRR ’s bombast would be fluff if not for its human, melodramatic core. Charan and Jr. NTR, bona fide movie stars, balance ferocity with chumminess as they carry the life-or-death weight of a nation on their backs and ward off a violent British officer (played with mustache-twirling despicableness by Ray Stevenson). The way Rajamouli rewires the past has been rightfully interrogated for riding a fine line between patriotism and propaganda (in a way similar to Top Gun: Maverick ’s military sales pitch), but the director’s tight grasp on emotionality feels like the antidote. Bheem, a hero of India’s Gond tribe in search of an abducted girl, is a vulnerable man, even as he unleashes a wave of wild animals on his Western adversaries. Rama, the rare Indian member of the Imperial police who unknowingly hunts Bheem while also befriending him, is the definition of a compassionate Best Bud, though we know he’s sold his soul. All the complications and self-actualizing make RRR a dimensional work of pop fiction — and the kind you never see at this scale. — Matt Patches

RRR is available to watch on Zee5 , and the Hindi dub is available to watch on Netflix .

The best of the rest

The movies that just missed the cut (or had dedicated fans on staff who made damn sure they were included).

• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 26m Director: Jane Schoenbrun Cast: Anna Cobb

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun has created something truly special: a coming-of-age horror film for the generation that grew up too online. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair communicates the excitement and fear that accompany creating a new self on the internet, as well as the excitement and fear of encountering others online who think they know you.

Casey, an internet-obsessed lonely teenager (Anna Cobb, in an unforgettable feature film debut), stumbles across The World’s Fair Challenge, a horror-themed online challenge that promises physical changes to those who take part. Casey begins to create videos of her participation in the challenge, opening the door to new experiences (and spectators) in her physical and virtual lives.

With effective use of creepypasta aesthetics (including striking collaborations with real YouTube creators), We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an unsettling, immersive internet horror experience that is at once new and familiar to those who have visited these remote corners of the internet. Schoenbrun’s feature debut is one to remember, and they’re a filmmaker to keep an eye on as new projects emerge. — PV

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is available to stream on HBO Max , for free with a library card on Hoopla, or for digital rental on Amazon and Apple .

Genre: Thriller Run time: 1h 39m Director: Romain Gavras Cast: Sami Slimane, Dali Benssalah, Ouassini Embarek

A pure adrenaline shot in cinematic form, celebrated music video director Romain Gavras’ feature debut is an unforgettable concoction of escalating tensions in a small French village. After a young boy is murdered, a community is thrown into turmoil and conflict with the police. Featuring some of the most stunning one-take sequences you’ll ever see, incredible leading performances, and the best title drop of the year, Athena is not one to be missed. Just watch the opening scene — you won’t regret it, and you’ll likely just keep going from there. It’s a shame the movie is exactly one scene too long, but even a bad ending can’t take away the power of this one. — PV

Athena is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Sci-fi Run time: 1h 36m Director: Kogonada Cast: Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min

The latest from Columbus director Kogonada, After Yang is a melancholy science fiction movie that balances the question of how we should think about artificial life with the more intriguing question about how it should think about us. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith star as adoptive parents raising a young Chinese girl, with the help of a “technosapien” — an android programmed as her language tutor, cultural advisor, and big brother. When his systems fail, the family goes through exactly what they’d experience at the death of any family member, with the added question of what his death tells them about their lives and relationships. It’s a small, quiet, meditative film, but it’s visually rich and packed with ideas about prejudice and assumptions, cultural assimilation, and the way everyone is navigating an inner life that would astonish everyone around them . — TR

After Yang is available to watch on Showtime , or for digital rental on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

• Catherine Called Birdy

Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 48m Director: Lena Dunham Cast: Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper

Lena Dunham’s adaptation of middle-grade historical novel Catherine, Called Birdy is the rare film version that strays from the book in a good way. Bella Ramsey stars as headstrong Catherine, a teenage girl in the Middle Ages who is frustrated with her limited options in life. While she wants to enjoy her girlhood and stomp around the mud with the goat boys, as the daughter of the village’s lord, she’s expected to be married off to whoever pays most handsomely for her hand. The book was a diary, focused on Catherine’s spunky voice and sharp observations, and while the movie keeps Catherine’s narration, it also offers a more nuanced look at the world around her. Catherine’s father, Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), for instance, isn’t a greedy and lazy man who treats his daughter and wife as pawns, but a flawed person trying to rectify his mistakes and provide for his family and village. It’s a lovely little look into the daily life of a medieval lady, but also with a more overarching plot throughline than the book. — Petrana Radulovic

Catherine Called Birdy is available to watch on Prime Video.

Genre: Thriller Run time: 2h 7m Director: Asghar Farhadi Cast: Amir Jadidi, Sahar Goldust, Mohsen Tanabandeh

[ Ed. note: Farhadi has been accused of plagiarizing the idea of A Hero by a former student.]

Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi returns with another stunner, painting a beautiful, nuanced picture of a man in crisis. Amir Jadidi is phenomenal as Rahim, a charming man who simply can not get his life together, no matter how much his friends and family love him. When his girlfriend finds an abandoned handbag with gold coins inside, Rahim considers using the money to pay off his debt while out on a brief furlough from debtor’s prison. But after a series of events leads him to return the bag and money to a woman who says she’s the original owner, he becomes the subject of a local media frenzy for his charitable act.

A moving, challenging story about the difficulties of trying to do the right thing in an unjust world, A Hero is also a study of how difficult it is to pin down clear motives or objective truth, especially when facing a story filtered through layers of personal and organizational agendas. Even the truth about your own actions and motivations can be difficult to sort through. And if you do actually find it, is it actually for navigating the world? A Hero is a stirring, unforgettable work that should not be missed. — PV

A Hero is available to watch on Prime Video .

• The Woman King

Genre: Historical action drama Run time: 2h 14m Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood Cast: Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega

Gina Prince-Bythewood takes the next step onward from her pivot to superhero action, Netflix’s The Old Guard , and lays out a historical epic that’s rousing, thrilling, and fierce as hell. Viola Davis stars in The Woman King as General Nanisca, leader of the Agojie, an all-female band of elite warriors charged with protecting the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1820s, as a larger and more powerful neighboring tribe begins kidnapping Dahomey citizens to sell to European slave traders. The Agojie were real — they’re the inspiration for Black Panther ’s Dora Milaje — and Prince-Bythewood drew heavily from their real-life art, music, fashion, weaponry, language, culture, and fighting styles to give the film texture, though in other ways it’s as fictionalized as Braveheart , Gandhi , or any other Hollywood historical epic. The result is a rich and thrilling underdog story with Prince-Bythewood’s usual attention to character-building, relationship-building, and steeping all the big plot beats in believable human emotion. It’s a familiar good-versus-evil story with familiar beats, but told in a way that’s rare for American screens, and with a level of detail, energy, and verve that keeps it engaging and personal through every epic battle. — TR

The Woman King is available to watch on Netflix, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

• Crimes of the Future

Genre: Science fiction Run time: 1h 47m Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

The master of body horror returns with a shockingly prescient script written nearly 30 years ago, tackling subjects as varied as art and the creative process, our relationships to our bodies and governments’ relationships to them, disability and aging, and (as often is the case with his movies) queerness and sexuality at an angle. There’s a lot going on in Crimes of the Future , and it’s all contained within a fascinating sci-fi tale with efficient and evocative world-building, incredible production design (the chairs in this movie!!! Viggo’s coat!!!), and some of the best performances of the year. — PV

Crimes of the Future is available to watch on Hulu.

• The Northman

Genre: Historical epic Run time: 2h 17m Director: Robert Eggers Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman

Few things go better together than Vikings and revenge, and The Northman is the perfect proof. Drawing inspiration from the same Norse myth that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet , director Robert Eggers ( The VVitch , T he Lighthouse ) has created a historical epic of the sort we rarely get to see anymore. The story follows Amleth (Alexander Skarsgaard) as he seeks revenge against his Uncle, who murdered his father and usurped his throne.

The Northman is a brutal movie, but among Amleth’s epic battles and lava-soaked duals, there’s a surprising heart and humanity, giving the character more compelling motivation than most revenge movies manage. Eggers brings this balance to every aspect of the movie, whether it’s the beauty and harshness of the Icelandic landscape, or combining incredibly detailed realism with the more operatic side of Norse cosmology. With this careful symmetry of real and surreal, The Northman is about as close as any movie has come to bringing the fantasy of myths to a live-action film. — AG

The Northman is available to stream on Prime Video , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu .

• Top Gun: Maverick

Genre: Action Run time: 2h 11m Director: Joseph Kosinski Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Glen Powell

“The sequel was so much better than the original” isn’t something movie fans say or hear often, but it’s true in the case of Top Gun: Maverick , a 36-years-later check-in on the high-flying 1986 action movie that gave Tom Cruise the need for speed. Cruise is back as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the Navy test pilot who continually lives up to his name by breaking rules, flouting superiors, and charting his own course.

But Top Gun: Maverick walks far enough away from Top Gun ’s testosterone-scented smugness to consider the cost of the Maverick life: namely, reaching a point where a fed-up military is ready to put Mav out to pasture, and he has to settle for teaching a class of up-and-coming fliers, some of whom as are as cocky and off-putting as he used to be. Maverick is an intense action movie where the actors really are flying planes and filming themselves in the cockpits , and even though the ending is a foregone conclusion, director Joe Kosinski pulls off plenty of breathless “Is this where they all die?” action. But the film is more interesting and more satisfying for its emotional elements, which include a tearjerking salute to (and premature goodbye to) visibly ailing Top Gun star Val Kilmer, and Maverick making it clear that he still keenly feels the loss of his wingman Goose more than 30 years later. — TR

Top Gun: Maverick is available on Paramount Plus, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple , and Google Play.

Baby Assassins

Genre: Action comedy Run time: 1h 35m Director: Yugo Sakamoto Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa

A rare action comedy that is equal parts funny and kick-ass, Baby Assassins is an eccentric slice-of-life story about two (extremely) teenage girls who happen to kill people for a living.

Chisato and Mahiro would like nothing more than to perform their killer duties and then just laze around their apartment all day. When they’re asked by their boss to get part-time jobs in an effort to better integrate into society, the two girls struggle to find an alternative means to conflict resolution… outside of murder.

More a fish-out-of-water comedy than pure action movie, the fight choreography in Baby Assassins is nonetheless great. It features exciting hand-to-hand combat and gunplay that works well with the comedy, with many physical punchlines. Gamers, take note: Action director Kensuke Sonomura is a celebrated video game fight choreographer who has done extensive work on the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil series, as well as Vanquish and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots . — PV

Baby Assassins is available to watch on Hi-Yah!, or for digital rental or purchase on Amazon , Apple TV , and Google Play.

• Turning Red

Genre: Family fantasy comedy Run time: 1h 40m Director: Domee Shi Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh

It’s hard to look back fondly at the painfully awkward middle-school years, but Pixar’s Turning Red considers the tumultuous ups and downs of early adolescence without flinching, and with an astonishing amount of love. Domee Shi, who directed 2018’s Pixar short Bao , makes her theatrical debut with this one-of-a-kind movie that envelopes quirky magic, cultural specificity, and most of all, an absolute love for young girlhood in all its messy glory.

Thirteen-year-old Mei discovers that she turns into a gigantic red panda when she’s overwhelmed by strong emotion — a quirk all the women of her family have been burdened with since ancient times. Mei struggles to control the panda just as other family members have, but she also starts to discover her own identity outside of her family, and to embrace that side of herself. The giant-red-panda-sized emotions she feels at the cusp of adulthood translate into giant emotions for the audience, who can look back on that pivotal time of their lives where everything felt like so much all at once. Turning Red balances those deep emotions with some charming humor and genuine sweetness, and it’s one of the best and most unique films in Pixar’s canon. — PR

Turning Red is available to watch on Disney Plus , or for digital purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play and Vudu .

• Bones and All

Genre: Romance/horror Run time: 2h 10m Director: Luca Guadagnino Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance

Bones and All is a beautiful little love story between two teens who just happen to be born with the affliction to crave human flesh. It may sound gross, and at times it can be, but director Luca Guadagnino is a master of using grossness as a vehicle for intimacy, and he’s never been better at it than in Bones and All .

The film follows Maren (played marvelously by Taylor Russell), who’s recently run away from home after her latest incident. After a less-than-fortunate meeting with another “eater,” Maren meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet at his most gaunt, playing a careful mix of vulnerable and defensive), and the movie’s love story gets rolling as the two travel the back roads of America’s heartland in a beat-up truck. Guadagnino shoots the Midwest as if America had never seen a building taller than two stories and turns fields of grass and grain into a massive stage to host and contrast some of Maren and Lee’s most intimate and loving moments.

Thanks to the cannibalism of it all, Bones and All is also a movie that’s almost too easy to reduce to metaphors (for growing up, for falling in love, for being an outsider), but the outstanding performances from Chalamet and Russell keep the movie’s feet planted firmly on the floor of their romance, never letting anything, real or metaphorical, get in its way. Even with the cannibalism, Guadagnino’s tender filmmaking and his two excellent performances make Bones and All one of the sweetest and warmest road trip romances in recent memory. — AG

Bones and All is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Historical fantasy/musical Run time: 1h 38m Director: Masaaki Yuasa Cast: Avu-chan, Mirai Moriyama, Tasuku Emoto

The latest surreal anime movie from Lu Over the Wall , Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! , and Ride Your Wave director Masaaki Yuasa features all his usual elements — wildly bending rubber-band bodies that look like nothing else in anime and energetic musical sequences, both being used to underline and emphasize the powerful emotions on display. But Inu-Oh goes further than usual with both. The story of a spirit-plagued mutant and a cursed biwa-playing monk who band together to revolutionize music in 14th-century Japan is part historical epic, part rock ’n’ roll origin story. There are some deep and painful themes here, about how regimes rewrite and reshape history with no regard for those who lived it, but they’re expressed with a joyful, often manic energy that becomes visually stunning on screen, especially during the extensive concerts that tell the stories of lost battles and lost souls. It’s a unique experience, like all Yuasa’s films, which each play with the range of human emotion in different ways. And like Yuasa’s recent work in general, it stretches the boundaries of anime — of what kind of stories can be told, and how. — TR

Inu-Oh is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

• Fire Island

Genre: Romantic comedy Run time: 1h 45m Director: Andrew Ahn Cast: Joel Kim Booster, Conrad Ricamora, Bowen Yang

This delightful adaptation of Pride and Prejudice brings Jane Austen’s classic story to the gay vacation destination Fire Island. Comedian Joel Kim Booster wrote the movie and stars as Noah, the Elizabeth Bennet of this story. Noah and his friends travel to Fire Island every year to vacation for a week, but this year appears to be the last. Noah’s best friend, Howie (Bowen Yang, playing the Jane Bennet role here), has never been in a relationship, and Noah makes it his mission to get Howie laid this week. When the pair meet a group of rich guys also on vacation, tensions flare as some hit it off and some don’t.

Fire Island is the rare straight-to-streaming movie that doesn’t look like a cheap TV show, and director Andrew Ahn relishes the beauty present in both the people and the scenery. Every member of the cast is hilarious, with Booster and Yang earning the recognition they’ve already received for their particular takes on these long-explored roles. But for me, Conrad Ricamora as the Mr. Darcy of this world steals the show. While the other characters get lines filled with jokes and gags, Ricamora has to bring out the humor and charm in his character from moments of self-seriousness. It’s an impressive feat, and one that easily could have gotten lost under some of the energetic performances he’s acting across. Instead, it’s a star-making role in a lovely 105 minutes. — PV

Fire Island is available to watch on Hulu .

Thirteen Lives

Genre: “True story” thriller Run time: 2h 30min Director: Ron Howard Cast: Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, Joel Edgerton

Thirteen Lives , the adaptation of the true story of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, is a perfect match of director and material. Ron Howard is a deeply sentimental filmmaker who loves inspirational stories — Apollo 13 , Cinderella Man , and his excellent sports drama Rush , for instance — and there are few more inspirational stories in recent memory than this one. It’s also one that’s quite impossible for him to overdramatize, because of how unbelievable the true story is.

An old-school tense, edge-of-your-seat thriller, Thirteen Lives avoids the pitfall of similar Hollywood adaptations by not locating the story as a journey of a singular group of outsider heroes (in this cave, the eccentric specialty cave divers portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell). Instead, the movie effectively showcases how this was a group effort by volunteers from around the world. The heroics of the divers wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of local villagers and other volunteers from around the world, and the movie does not forget it. The diving scenes are electric and incredibly tense, too — Howard and the crew built a gigantic set to replicate the caves, and Mortensen and Farrell shot their own diving sequences. — PV

Thirteen Lives is available to watch on Prime Video .

I Was a Simple Man

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 40m Director: Christopher Makoto Yogi Cast: Steve Iwamoto, Constance Wu

August at Akiko ’s Christopher Makoto Yogi turns this ghost story into a slow-burn meditation on death, memory, and what lives on after we depart. As the elderly patriarch of a fragmented family (Steve Iwamoto, excellent in his first lead feature role) nears the end of his life, he’s visited by family in the present and ghosts from the past, including his long-deceased wife (Constance Wu). Intergenerational tensions arise as the ghosts of past conflicts return, too — squabbles and fights between family members long estranged, and historical conflicts around Hawaii’s path to statehood.

I Was A Simple Man takes us on this journey across different time periods and with evocative use of surrealism and dream aesthetics. A beautiful movie filled with stunning images of Hawaii’s gorgeous landscapes and rich textures, it won the Made in Hawaii Award for Best Feature at the 2021 Hawaii International Film Festival. I Was A Simple Man is an unforgettable experience that ventures to capture the final days of one life on Earth. — PV

I Was A Simple Man is available to watch on the Criterion Channel , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play and Vudu .

• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Genre: Mystery comedy Run time: 2h 19m Director: Rian Johnson Cast: Daniel Craig, approximately every popular actor in the world

It’s certainly true that Rian Johnson’s sequel (and franchise-confirmer) Glass Onion is broader, sillier, and shallower than the film it follows, his 2019 whodunit Knives Out . The latter is as much a commentary on classism and racism as it is a murder mystery, while Glass Onion aims at broader, lighter targets, like skewering influencers, “disruptors,” and the cults built around figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But the lightness actually makes Glass Onion a more agreeably weightless enterprise, where the all-star cast has more freedom in their farcical roles. Daniel Craig seems less exaggerated this time out as world-famous detective Benoit Blanc — or maybe he just feels like a more rational character next to Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Leslie Odom Jr. as a circle of wealthy success stories full of dark secrets. The mystery itself is cunningly constructed, full of verbal and visual gags, but packed with enough twists to feel like the Agatha Christie mysteries Johnson is openly evoking. In a year with even more mocking, scabrous “eat the rich” movies than ever, this one feels like a breath of fresh air — critical but not bitter, observational but not leaden with real-life parallels, and packed with winking surprises. — TR

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller Run time: 1h 40m Director: Dan Trachtenberg Cast: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers

A return to form for a consistently fun sci-fi franchise , Prey dropped on Hulu ( for business reasons ) and quickly became the platform’s biggest success ever. A nice respite from how other franchises have approached world-building and stakes-setting in recent years, Prey relies heavily on the star-making performances of Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers, who shine as Comanche siblings in the Northern Great Plains who are stalked by the Predator.

Midthunder is Naru, a young woman who wants to prove herself as a warrior, despite the mockery of many young men in her tribe. It’s the perfect conflict for the Predator to wade his way into, as a creature whose only concern is challenging himself against the mightiest foes he can find.

A tense, economical thriller from director Dan Trachtenberg ( 10 Cloverfield Lane ), Prey is light on dialogue and high on excitement. — PV

Prey is available to watch on Hulu .

• Confess, Fletch

Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 39m Director: Greg Mottola Cast: Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Kyle MacLachlan

Buried by a bungled release this past September, the revival of author Gregory Mcdonald’s charming rabble rouser I. M. Fletcher stands out as one of the hidden gems of the year, a breezy mystery carried by actors at the top of their games. To fill the shoes of Chevy Chase, who played Fletch twice in the 1980s, writer-director Greg Motolla ( Superbad , The Daytrippers ) turned to Jon Hamm, who finds the rare role than support both his leading man swagger and weirdo comedic instincts.

Based on one of Mcdonald’s more revered stories in the character’s run, Confess, Fletch finds the investigate-reporter-turned-gun-for-hire tracking down a set of missing paintings that his Italian girlfriend Angela (Lorenza Izzo) needs to pay off the ransom for her kidnapped father. Not helping his situation: The day he arrives to Boston to track down the masterpieces, a woman is murdered in his rental home. Hamm matches the high-stakes caper like a dance, weaving in and out of police capture while setting up a series of rouses to solve the ticking-clock mystery. His low-key interrogations range from wild (Kyle MacLachlan’s as a germaphobe art dealer) to wilder (Barb & Star’s Annie Mumolo steals the show as a woman who may burn down her entire block making matzah ball soup), but Hamm and Motolla never let Confess, Fletch descend into sitcom territory. There’s a buttoned up, Negroni-sipping sense of cool from start to finish, even while provoking big laughs. The combination makes Confess, Fletch every bit as classic as Knives Out . — MP

Confess, Fletch is available to stream on Showtime Anytime and FuboTV, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Sports dramedy Run time: 1h 57m Director: Jeremiah Zagar Cast: Adam Sandler, Juancho Hernangomez, Queen Latifah

A love letter to the sport of basketball and one of the better sports movies released in years, Hustle is a terrific display for Adam Sandler’s talents and his love for the sport.

Sandler is Stanley Sugerman, a former college star who is now a veteran NBA scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. He has a close relationship with the team’s owner (Robert Duvall), a father-like figure to Sugerman who sees Stanley’s value as a basketball mind. The owner promotes Sugerman to assistant coach, a position where he can spend more time around his wife (Queen Latifah) and their young daughter. But when tragedy gets in the way of Stanley’s new job, he has to prove himself yet again and find a winning prospect for the team.

That prospect is Bo Cruz (played by real-life NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), who Sugerman spots dominating a local pickup game in Spain. The movie shines as it showcases Sugerman and Cruz’s developing relationship — the two rely on each other, and Hustle delivers a must-have for most sports movies with a terrific training montage sequence, featuring Sugerman repeatedly chasing Cruz up a hill with a car.

Hustle’s performances truly shine. Sandler’s centered, grounded portrayal of a man who loves what he does but would rather have the job he was promised is another terrific, layered role for one of our great modern actors. The cast is also filled with NBA players who deliver memorable performances, led by Hernangómez as the temperamental and talented Cruz and Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards as his trash-talking rival Kermit Wilts, a terrific addition to a long line of sports movie heels.

Bringing in real basketball players for leading and smaller roles lends authenticity to the whole thing, but especially in the scenes where the players actually play basketball. The camera is free to roam as athletes do what they do best, with thrilling basketball sequences that far outdo most sports movies that try to re-create the kineticism of live sports with non-athlete actors. — PV

Hustle is available to watch on Netflix.

Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 29m Director: Mamoru Hosoda Cast: Kaho Nakamura, Ryô Narita, Shôta Sometani

Just when you might think Disney’s permanently locked up the coveted title of “Best Animated Musical Rendition of the Beauty and the Beast Story,” along comes Mamoru Hosada’s Belle , which gives the “tale as old as time” a thrilling futurist spin. This anime feature from the director of Summer Wars , Wolf Children , The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , and Mirai re-imagines the classic fable as a conflict in a virtual-reality wonderland, where everyone’s digital avatars reflect their innermost selves. When withdrawn, mourning high-schooler Suzu enters the VR world, she becomes a beloved pop star, center of an energetic fandom — and equally energetic dismissal and criticism. Then she becomes obsessed with a mystery user whose avatar is a powerful, monstrous beast, and she starts trying to uncover his secrets.

This is a dizzying story that sometimes overreaches — Hosada is trying to take in everything from the addictive but destructive nature of online life to the importance of individual human connection, and there are so many threads (and romances, and secrets) that they aren’t all fully fleshed out. But it’s a heartfelt film full of big emotional beats and stunning animated sequences, and even if it doesn’t answer all the questions it raises, it at least seems determined to bring a familiar story to a bolder, brighter, more ambitious stage. — TR

Belle is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

Orphan: First Kill

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 39m Director: William Brent Bell Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles

Returning to a franchise a decade later to do a prequel with the same lead actor shouldn’t just be a recipe for disaster; it should have been completely impossible. As it turns out, Orphan is a very special series and its lead character/monster, Esther, is a very special child*.

Orphan: First Kill follows a 9-year-old girl named Esther who breaks out of a hospital in Estonia, then scams her way into the good graces of a rich American family in hopes of making off in the night with whatever she can. This setup is nearly identical to the original movie, but the prequel manages to play with those expectations in some very clever ways.

The original Orphan (also great) hinged on a twist revealed late in the film, but the prequel gets the reveal out of the way early in favor of letting audiences feel like they’re in on the secret and the joke that Esther, a 9-year-old, is still played by Isabelle Fuhrman, who is now 25, which the movie uses all kinds of fun tricks to hide. Thankfully, First Kill is in on every single one of its own jokes and manages to perfectly balance its tone between silly and a gruesome, well-made slasher, along with being one of the best “rich people are weird” movies of the last few years. — AG

Orphan: First Kill is available to stream on Paramount Plus , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Musical Run time: 2h 3m Director: Joe Wright Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted for film many times in many ways, including as the modern-day Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah rom-com Roxanne in 1987, and the Toshirô Mifune action-drama Samurai Saga in 1959. As with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , its story about unrequited love (and arguably, complete romantic cowardice) resonates in any age, and crosses cultures easily. But there’s never been a production quite like this lavish movie adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s musical version of the play. Game of Thrones ’ Peter Dinklage stars as Cyrano, a French soldier and poet in love with his childhood friend Roxanne ( Swallow star Haley Bennett), but afraid to tell her because he’s certain she’ll reject him. When she falls for Christian ( Luce ’s Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a handsome newcomer in Cyrano’s regiment, Cyrano agrees to ghost-write Christian’s love letters to her, mostly so he can finally, fully express himself, even if she doesn’t know it’s him.

Joe Wright’s production is lush and glowing, with a soft visual warmth courtesy of his longtime collaborator Seamus McGarvey, cinematographer on his Atonement and Anna Karenina , among other titles. Dinklage’s singing isn’t very strong, but he still feels like he was born to play this pained, passionate swashbuckler, and the central trio all deliver fantastic performances that make this an authentic tearjerker. It’s a big-hearted project, full of outsized emotions that hit home powerfully. Don’t watch this right after a breakup, or after someone you’ve secretly longed for marries someone else. — TR

Cyrano is available to watch on Prime Video, or for digital rental or purchase on Google Play , Amazon , Vudu , and Apple .

Genre: Superhero Run time: 2h 56m Director: Matt Reeves Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano

Matt Reeves’ reboot of the Dark Knight isn’t as bold as it might be, but it sure is stylish. A long, slow-burning mystery in the vein of David Fincher’s Seven , The Batman infuses a familiar story with darkly beautiful imagery and magnetic performances from stars Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz. When it isn’t too enamored with ideas already explored in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy , The Batman lays exciting groundwork for a richer, stranger sort of Batman movie, which will hopefully materialize as a sequel reuniting everyone who made this one such a pleasure to watch. — JR

The Batman is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu.

Genre: Thriller Run time: 1h 29m Director: Steven Soderbergh Cast: Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson

The protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s tech-crime thriller Kimi moves through the world like she’s tapped directly into a power line, and is desperate to burn off all the excess energy. The movie operates at that same level of speed and ferocity. Essentially an internet-age take on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window by way of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (among many other cinematic touchstones), Kimi follows a Seattle tech worker who stumbles across evidence of a crime, and draws some dangerous attention when she tries to report it. Soderbergh and Panic Room screenwriter David Koepp strip that story down to its basics, jumping in and out of the action in a shockingly tight and stylish 89 minutes. The plot is simple and the ethos is go-go-go, which makes the film’s verve contagious and the action breathless. It isn’t deep, but it sure is fun. — TR

Kimi is available to watch on HBO Max , or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon , Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu .

The Long Walk

Genre: Sci-fi Run time: 1h 56m Director: Mattie Do Cast: Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy, Vilouna Phetmany

Laos’ first and only female film director, Mattie Do, makes ghost stories: movies where characters interact with the dead and learn from them, but pay a price for that knowledge. Some of the themes of her debut feature Chanthaly (which she’s posted on YouTube ) and her followup, Dearest Sister ( streaming on Shudder ) get fuller, richer development in The Long Walk , a genre mashup that’s part time-travel story and part serial-killer story, but still keenly involved with the spirits of the dead, and how they both express their desires and enable the desires of living people.

A Lao hermit living in a tech-oriented future periodically travels 50 years into the past and intervenes in events in his own traumatic childhood, with the help of the ghost of a woman who died in the nearby forest when he was a kid. These are bold, striking elements that don’t entirely seem to fit together, but The Long Walk is exquisitely constructed in a way that reveals its puzzlebox methods slowly, building toward an emotional end that ties all its genres, timelines, and threads together in a startling, impressive way. — TR

The Long Walk is available to watch on Shudder , AMC+ through Prime Video for free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental or purchase via Amazon, Apple TV , Google Play, and Vudu.

Also receiving votes:

Three Thousand Years of Longing , The Menu , The Fabelmans , Petite Maman, In Front of Your Face, Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul , Resurrection, Mad God , Lost Bullet 2 , Marcel the Shell With Shoes On , Babylon , Bodies Bodies Bodies , Jackass Forever , Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday , Memoria , Elvis , Benediction , Dual , Emily the Criminal , Fire of Love , Montana Story , Thallumaala, Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe , Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , Moonage Daydream , The Munsters , Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio , The Lost City , Goncharov (1973), The Deer King , The Innocents , The Last Thing Mary Saw , White Noise , Armageddon Time

The ballots

Every staff member who submitted a ballot is listed below, in alphabetical order by last name. While some staff members submitted more than 10 movies, only the top 10 are listed here. Some ballots may change as people catch up with more new releases in December — be sure to check back!

Toussaint Egan

Associate curation editor

• Decision to Leave
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
• Resurrection
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Austen Goslin

Assignment editor, entertainment

Zosha Millman

• Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul

Matt Patches

Deputy editor, entertainment

• The Fabelmans
• Jackass Forever

Chris Plante

Editor-in-chief

• Petite Maman
• Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Petrana Radulovic

Staff writer, entertainment

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Goncharov (1973) remastered
• The Lost City

Joshua Rivera

• Bodies Bodies Bodies
• Three Thousand Years of Longing

Tasha Robinson

Editor, film and streaming

Curation editor

• In Front of Your Face
• White Noise

The best sci-fi movies you can watch at home

The best thrillers to watch on netflix this november, the best christmas movies to watch on netflix, amazon, max, and more right now.

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The 29 Best Movies of 2022

By Taylor Antrim , Liam Hess , Chloe Schama , Radhika Seth , Marley Marius , and Lisa Wong Macabasco

Have we finally entered a post-pandemic moment in our collective movie-going history? While the studios certainly hoped so, the box office  tells a different story, with some of 2022's biggest productions barely scraping by. But let that be no reflection of the eclectic, innovative, and surprising offings that came not only out of Hollywood but also Ireland, Korea, Iran and elsewhere this year. And with the ever expanding ecosystem of streaming platforms, there are more ways to watch than ever before. Here, we present the best films of 2022—roughly in order of the date they came out this year—from block-busting action flicks to cozy dramas. Go forth, and settle in for some good old-fashioned movie magic…no matter how you watch it.

The Worst Person in the World  

Joachim Trier’s latest is a romantic-comedy-drama with the stunning Renate Reinsve (she took home the best actress award at Cannes) starring as Julie, a somewhat directionless young woman involved in a relationship with a more ambitious and directed man 15 years her senior. The setup becomes more complicated when she meets and begins to fall for a man closer to her age. The self-described “European art-house guy” director told the Los Angeles Times that he “went out on a limb” with this surprisingly romantic film. —Chloe Schama 

How to watch: Stream on Hulu .

After Yang  

Kogonada, the South Korean–born American filmmaker who made the well-received 2018 indie, Columbus , returns with the quiet, patient After Yang —a cerebral adaptation of a science-fiction short story starring Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith about a household android that malfunctions. Elegant in its production design and searching in its examination of identity and humanity, this was an understated indie gem with Farrell at his understated best. — Taylor Antrim

How to watch: Stream on Showtime , Amazon , Apple TV , or YouTube .

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The opening night film at SXSW, A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Michelle Yeoh as a Chinese American woman who sets off on a mundane task—finishing her taxes—and ends up…traversing the multiverse? The film is the product of the experimental directing duo known as Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and follows their 2016 film, Swiss Army Man. —C.S. 

How to watch: Stream on Amazon , Apple TV , or YouTube .

By Emily Chan

By Chloe Malle

By Hannah Jackson

The subject of Daniel Roher’s film, the Russian dissident and former presidential candidate Alexei Navalny, has been in a Russian prison since January 2021, after a near-fatal poisoning by Moscow security agents in 2020. Navalny is a powerful reminder that Vladimir Putin would like nothing more than to see him killed—and that only Navalny’s celebrity, his social media acumen and charisma on the world stage (which this film powerfully reaffirms), can keep him alive. Navalny is notable for its sheer entertainment value, for the suspense Roher draws from recent history—a story as gripping as a Jason Bourne sequel. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on HBO Max .

Top Gun: Maverick

More than the movie of the summer—which it undoubtedly was— Top Gun: Maverick is now a piece of movie history, the film that got audiences back into theaters in the COVID era. It’s made more than $1 billion (the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise’s career) and is still going strong. Have you submitted to its mix of electrifying flight sequences and utterly embarrassing human drama? What are you waiting for? —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon or Apple TV .

See Elvis for the Prada costumes and for Austin Butler ’s committed, pelvis-thrusting performance. Brace yourself for the length, the maximalism, the onslaught of Baz Luhrmann directorial excess. Elvis is a lot in every sense, but for Luhrmann fans it’s an overwhelming, glittering, rock-and-roll must. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on HBO max .

Fire of Love

Fire of Love is a surprise; a dazzling, seductive, nature-meets-romance documentary that cuts against the current grain for nonfiction films. This is not true-crime, not a deep dive into scandal, not a disposable pop-star autobiography—the three genres du jour. This 90-minute charmer, from the filmmaker Sara Dosa, is a gentle, deeply tasteful portrait of a French couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft, who were celebrity volcanologists in the 1970s and ’80s. Miranda July narrates the proceedings—partly reading from the Kraffts’ own writings, and archly commenting on the way they were aware of their own burgeoning fame (French TV ate them up)—and her casual-whimsical voice adds to the film’s transporting effect. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on Disney+

An award-winning Cannes debut, the darkly escapist Croatian drama Murina is the first feature from writer director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, and it teems with menace. It dramatizes the coming-of-age of 17-year-old Julija, who lives with her parents on an insular island along the country’s Adriatic coastline. The scenery is gorgeous–all craggy rocks and cerulean blue waters and sun–but Julija’s life is frighteningly constrained by her brutal father, and the actress Gracija Filipović perfectly captures her desperate need for escape. When her father’s old friend, Javier, arrives, Julija is seduced and dangerously tempted. The underwater sequences (Julija and her father are adept at spearfishing) are glorious and the movie enthralls you with its Hitchcockian mood. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon or Apple .

This surprise horror hit derives its percussive pleasures from the way it sneaks up on what you expect and delivers something just slightly to the left. Barbarian ’s tone is its greatest feat—writer-director Zach Cregger has made something genuinely scary but also funny, subversive, and irresistibly well-paced. Georgina Campbell plays Tess, who has flown into Detroit for a job interview and booked an inexpensive Airbnb in a dubious neighborhood. When she arrives in the middle of the night, she finds it already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgard), who is half friendly, half creepy. They decide, tentatively, awkwardly, to bunk together for the night. Barbarian taps into the unease of the sharing economy and the forced intimacy of Airbnb—but it doesn’t stop there. All hell breaks loose in Cregger’s movie and in ways you don’t anticipate. Justin Long is brilliantly funny in a role that shouldn't be spoiled. Suffice it to say that Barbarian goes for it, in every which direction, all the way to its gory end. —T.A.

The Woman King

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood ( Love & Basketball ) with a cast that includes Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega, and Thuso Mbedu , this historical saga is set in the West African kingdom of Dahomey (part of present-day Benin), it centers on the general of an all-female military unit. The film far exceeded box office expectations and boasted m uch lauded performances from Davis and Mbedu, both expected to be Awards season contenders. —Radhika Seth

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Moonage Daydream

Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream isn’t a connect-the-dots David Bowie biopic: It is, instead, a gloriously immersive, kaleidoscopic examination not so much of Bowie’s life here on earth, but of the life he lived inside his head and his heart, which led him to create his art. Instead of telling you about Bowie, it puts you in the midst of his world; instead of teaching you things, it makes you feel the world he lived in. The fact that it’s big, loud, fragmented, and occasionally chaotic (and a bit long, at two hours and 20 minutes) is even more cause for celebration. —Corey Seymour

Erudite and ferociously powerful, Tár is a conversation starter of a movie, a gripping provocation about creative brilliance, obsession and sexual manipulation. The staggering performance at its center is from Cate Blanchett as the conductor Lydia Tár, a formidable public figure who emulates Leonard Bernstein (and no other) and who is readying the Berlin Philharmonic to record Mahler’s Symphony no 5. From that high-minded premise comes a drama of jolting power. Tár is slashingly eloquent and self-possessed to everyone who stumbles into her path. She’s convinced of her genius, as are we, even as the film reveals the cruel manipulations she’s engaged in. Writer-director Todd Field—this is his third film and his first in 16 years—has meticulously built a portrait of intelligence and venality that defies our judgments and confounds our sympathies. —T.A.

How to watch: In theaters and on various streaming services like Amazon Prime . 

Nothing Compares

Kathryn Ferguson’s stirring documentary Nothing Compares is an absorbing and thoughtfully constructed examination of Sinead O’Connor’s skyrocketing fame in the late 1980s and early ’90s–and a depiction of what happened at her peak: a very public fall from grace after she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992. Ferguson, who grew up in Belfast listening to O’Connor’s 1987 debut album The Lion and Cobra in her father’s car, performed a fan’s act of reclamation–ignoring recent tabloid stories (nothing about O’Connor’s suicidal tweets, nothing about the tragic death of her son) and giving us instead a close reading of her music and the brutal Ireland that she came out of, and why she had such an electric impact on the culture. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon or Hulu .

Anaïs in Love

You’d be forgiven for finding the premise of Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s Anaïs in Love almost comically French: It centers on a flighty young woman named Anaïs who, after beginning an affair with a married older man, winds up falling for his wife, a writer named Emilie. Yet the film—which somewhat calls to mind another rom-com-dram on this list, The Worst Person in the World , for its focus on the wild stabs at self-determination that tend to come with turning 30—mines more than just sexy intrigue from its unlikely love triangle. As Anaïs moves in on Emilie at a symposium in the countryside (!), and Emilie’s bewilderment relaxes into bemused consent, Anaïs is pushed to finally, finally , stake a claim on what she wants—and find the mettle to hang onto it. —Marley Marius

How to watch: Stream on Hulu.  

Triangle of Sadness

Director Ruben Östlund took home the top prize at Cannes for this unabashedly over the top examination of the excesses of the .0001%. Nominally focused on influencer couple Carl (Harris Dickson) and Yaya (the late, and great, in this role, Charlbi Dean Kriek ), Triangle of Sadness follows them onto a luxury yacht where the haves and the have nots are stacked on top of one another in a not-so-subtle cross section of society, delineated by money and, in the case of Carl and Yaya, a more precarious but no less privileged influence. There is a “ship of merry fools” vibe to the gauche indulgences taking place aboard the vessel, but the party comes to a dramatic halt with a scene of excess gone awry (steer clear if you don't have a strong stomach) and then a shipwreck. Triangle of Sadness is a baggy beast, but it is a highly entertaining one nonetheless. —Chloe Schama 

How to watch: Stream on various platforms, including Apple TV+ . 

All That Breathes

A mesmerizing, unforgettable documentary about so many things: wildness, urban squalor, intimacy, devotion, entropy and heartbreak, All That Breathes is a film that is hard to classify and harder still to shake. Nominally the story of a small wildlife clinic in New Delhi run by two brothers and dedicated to caring for kites–the carnivorous birds of prey that wheel in the skies above the teeming city—this is more of a meditation on human persistence and the blurred lines between civilization and savagery. If that sounds heady, just plunge in, All That Breathes is visually stunning document of a megacity on the edge of chaos and a heart-rending account of two brothers persisting against the odds. Nadeem and Mohammed (and their hilarious sidekick/assistant Salik) are faced with more and more sick birds, as the air quality in Delhi is increasingly inimitable to life, boom and bust funding, and fraternal conflict. And the birds themselves are miraculously strange: bestial and vulnerable, beautiful and terrifying at once. One of the years strangest and most haunting films. —T.A.

How to watch: In select theaters now. 

Aftersun brims with emotional power. Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells’s feature debut is the story of a young, newly single father taking his 11-year-old daughter on an inexpensive holiday in Turkey. Paul Mescal does subtle work as the outwardly genial, inwardly broken Calum, adrift between youth and responsibility, and newcomer Frankie Corio is his daughter Sophie, a brave, expressive girl who desperately needs something from her dad she’ll never get. Vibrant and melancholy, this is a lovely sunlit heartbreak of a film. —T.A. 

How to watch: Stream on Amazon .

Armageddon Time

James Gray’s autobiographical film is a gorgeous, confidently made morality tale set in 1980 Queens with titanic performances from Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and Jeremy Strong as members of a striving Jewish family confronting unpleasantness at the heart of the American dream. Paul is their sixth grader, an incandescently sensitive boy played by newcomer Banks Repeta, who finds the codes of a private school—and the naked racism of his classmates— nearly unbearable. His grandfather (Hopkins, magnificent here) counsels and comforts him as he faces impossible choices between integrity and ambition, friendship and his future. —T.A.

A reminder, as if we needed one, that Florence Pugh is our actress of the moment. This adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel by the Chilean director Sebastián Lelio is a quietly simmering story of religious fervor and fraudulence. Set in 19th-century Ireland it is the story of a 11-year-old girl who seems to be miraculously living without food. An English nurse Lib (Pugh) is called in by local authorities to observe the girl and solve the mystery (or prove the existence of a religious miracle). This she does in a methodical confident way even as her frailties—grief, addiction, sexual need—are revealed. The movie has a strange postmodern framing, but it looks wild and wonderful and Pugh anchors everything with her high seriousness and commitment. —T.A.

How to watch: In theaters and on Netflix .

In Maria Schrader’s rousing drama , Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan play Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, The New York Times reporters who broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual misconduct. This awards-season front-runner asks what happens when the journalists become the story. In a feature published in Vogue the two journalists reflected on the power of the film to go beyond what their reporting had accomplished: “The film’s focus on process and on truth feels just as relevant now—and it serves as a reminder of what journalists and courageous sources can accomplish together. It also may reach people who have never heard these stories before.”

How to watch: In theaters and on Vudu , Amazon , and other platforms. 

Bones and All

Some five (!) years after the sensation that was Call Me By Your Name , director Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet are back together again with Bones and All , a very different kind of queer love story. Adapted from Camille DeAngelis’s novel of the same name, it follows Maren ( Waves star Taylor Russell), a wayward young woman (and cannibal) who meets a drifter named Lee (Chalamet) and sets off with him on a road trip to find her estranged mother. For all of the film’s gore—and its powerfully unsettling supporting turns from Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Chloë Sevigny—Guadagnino has insisted it’s one of the most romantic movies he’s ever made. “Of course, there’s the literal aspect of it being a movie about cannibal lovers, which is extreme in many ways,” he told Fantastic Man earlier this year, “but I think the more extreme aspect of the movie is the intensity of the feel­ings that these people go through—the impossibility of love.” —M.M.

How to watch: In theaters

Written and directed by the hotly tipped Sierra Leonean American filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu, Nanny is a masterful horror film that is equally unafraid to tackle weightier themes rarely seen on film—from the immigrant experience to the exploitation of women from the African diaspora in today’s America. With a star-making turn from Anna Diop as a Senegalese nanny navigating the trials of working for a dysfunctional, wealthy Manhattan family while also dealing with demons of her own (expressed through an increasingly terrifying series of nightmares, rooted in West African folklore and explored more deeply in another brilliant turn by Leslie Uggams as her boyfriend’s grandmother), Nanny is as visually striking as it is smart and subversive. —Liam Hess

How to watch: In theaters and on Amazon December 16 .

Holy Spider

This is a haunting and upsetting crime film from Iranian director Ali Abbasi about the real-life serial killings of prostitutes in the Iranian city of Mashhad in 2000 and 2001. Depicting a side of Iranian life I’d never seen on film—drug use, homelessness, and the sex trade—it’s a bracing report from the shadows of a modern theocracy. Mashhad’s police have little interest in the death of female prostitutes so it falls to a visiting journalist Rahimi (played with ferocious intensity by Zar Amir Ebrahimi , who won Best Actress at Cannes 2022) to solve the case and bring the killer to justice (the ending is as devastating as it is believable). Holy Spider made me think of gritty crime films from the 70s, a thriller not afraid to be ugly and forceful. —T.A.

How to watch: In select theaters .

All the Beauty and Bloodshed

The 1980s fuel the triumphant documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed , a collaboration between the director Laura Poitras ( Citizenfour ) and artist Nan Goldin , whose life and activism against the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, are the film’s absorbing subjects. It opens with the series of actions Goldin organized at prominent New York museums, strewing prescription slips and empty pill bottles—symbols of Purdue’s deadly opioids—to shine a hard light on the millions donated by the Sacklers. Rousing as these scenes are, it is the way Poitras burrows deeper into Goldin’s background and art that make the film so profound—charting a narrative of trauma and neglect (and drug abuse), and showing how Goldin found a community in an underground 1980s Manhattan scene that she went on to document in unforgettably gritty photographs. A poised and meticulous film that brims with humanity. —T.A. 

How to watch: In theaters and, eventually, on HBO Max .

The Eternal Daughter

A sophisticated gothic ghost story and family mystery from the great British director Joanna Hogg ( The Souvenir I & II), starring Tilda Swinton , who is dazzling in a double role.  Julie and her mother Rosalind (both played by Swinton) travel to a grand country hotel in Wales for a getaway. Starchy members of the British upper class, these two are hilariously contained in their expressions of feeling, even as they both brim with emotion and things unsaid. The country hotel is wreathed in mist, seemingly abandoned (except for one drolly bad tempered hostess, played by Carly Sophia-Davie) and apparently haunted. Hogg’s clever use of genre tropes includes a genuinely disquieting sequence involving an apparition, and the canny reveal of the film's central, supernatural mystery.—T.A.

How to watch: Stream on various platforms, including Amazon . 

Living couples South African director Oliver Hermanus with Novel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro ( The Remains of the Day ; Never Let Me Go ) for an affecting remake of Ikiru (To Live) , the 1952 drama by Akira Kurosawa. Their version, set in mid-century London, stars Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams, a grizzled bureaucrat who, upon learning that he has only a few months left to live, is determined to make the most of them. First, that means skipping work for a grand night out with a friendly stranger ( The Souvenir ’s Tom Burke); then, spending a string of quiet afternoons with a young woman from his office (a charming Aimee Lou Wood); then using his position in the Public Works department to get a long-deferred project off the ground. Gorgeous to look at, the film proves an especially fine showpiece for Nighy, who is as quietly affecting as you’ve ever seen him. —M.M.

How to watch: In theaters .

Women Talking

Sarah Polley’s arresting ensemble Women Talking is an adaptation of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel, and it plays as an extended debate by a collection of women in a deeply religious community in which sexual violence by men is the shattering norm. After one of these nighttime attacks is publicly revealed, the women gather to decide how to respond: forgive the men, fight them, or flee? Every great female actor of our moment seems to be in this movie, including Frances McDormand (command ing), Claire Foy (ferocious), Jessie Buckley (equally so), and Rooney Mara (strong and delicate at once). A thoughtful exploration of solidarity—what it means, how hard it’s won—Women Talking is a conversation piece, and one of the year’s must-see films. —T.A.

How to watch: Coming to theaters .

A lovely, intensely human film by the great Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda ( Shoplifters ). Set in modern-day Korea, this is a story about orphans and makeshift families and it begins with the unlikeliest of heroes: a mother who abandons her infant at a care center in Busan and the two men who take the baby and seek to profit from its sale. These three band together on a kind of road trip to find the baby new parents, even as police investigating a murder track their movements, and their number swells by an orphan looking for a new home. Heartbreaking in its empathy and lovely to look at,  Broker is a drama that bursts with feeling and fills you with a sense of gratitude and lightness. —T.A.

How to watch: Coming to theaters . 

White Noise

Noah Baumbach’s boisterous, off-kilter fever dream,  White Noise , a strikingly faithful adaptation of Don Delillo’s 1985 novel of consumerism, post-industrial paranoia, and fear of death, is the biggest and highest minded swing of the season. Should such a talky, slantwise book be filmed? Baumbach’s answer is a commanding yes, especially with Adam Driver as his magnetic lead. Driver plays Jack Gladney, a professor at a fictional liberal arts college, and he’s a marvel of comic energy, as personable as he is hilariously puffed-up. Greta Gerwig is his genial, slightly zoned-out wife Babette, with a perm and a secret pill habit. And their four kids are a chorus of pop-cultural erudition. When a chemical spill unleashes an “Airborne Toxic Event” on their small college town–what to call things, how words mask or amplify our anxieties, is a preoccupation of Delillo’s—the family piles into the station wagon, along with seemingly everyone else in their anesthetized college town, to escape it. An antic vision of modern anxieties run amok. —T.A.

How to watch: Stream on Netflix after December 30.

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22 Best Movies New to Streaming in November: ‘Spider-Verse,’ David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ and More

By Zack Sharf

Digital News Director

• Stephen King Doesn’t Care for Marvel Movies but Says ‘Gloating’ Over ‘The Marvels’ Flopping Is ‘Very Unpleasant’: It May Be ‘Adolescent Fanboy Hate’ 15 hours ago
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The holiday movie season kicks off in November, and the streamers are providing no shortage of Christmas movies to subscribers this month. Whether it’s the reemergence of beloved classics (see “Elf” making its way to Hulu) or streamers offering up new originals (Disney+’s “Dashing Through the Snow,” for instance), holiday movie lovers will have plenty of options to help them get into the Christmas spirit this November.

It’s also a big month for Netflix, as the streaming giant debuts several Oscar contenders on streaming after limited theatrical releases last month. Two of Netflix’s biggest acting contenders can be seen in “Nyad” (Annette Bening) and “Rustin” (Colman Domingo), both of which hit streaming before Thanksgiving. Netflix is also launching David Fincher’s “The Killer,” a thriller starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin come undone. But the biggest movie on Netflix this month will undoubtedly be “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the Sony comic book tentpole that is one of the biggest blockbusters of 2023.

Check out the full rundown below of new films coming to streaming this November.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Oct. 31 on Netflix)

Technically, Sony’s exhilarating “Spider-Verse” sequel debuted on Netflix on the final day of October, but that won’t stop it from being the biggest new tentpole on streaming this November. “Across the Spider-Verse” earned critical acclaim and $690 million at the worldwide box office. It was also named  one of the best films of 2023  so far by  Variety:  “Given the pop-art bedazzlement — and the thrilling retro comic-book classicism — of 2018’s ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ what could the makers of the sequel do for an encore? How about go bigger, go trippier, go even more Jack-Kirby-meets-punk-meets-Warhol-coloring-outside-the-lines crazy, all in the service of the rare story that makes good on the promise of the multiverse: that it’s a space as ominous as it is brain-bending. The adventure of Miles Morales deepens, multiplies, and acquires newly urgent stakes. And seriously, when was the last time you could say a comic-book movie did that?”

The Killer (Nov. 10 on Netflix)

David Fincher’s “The Killer” is based on the French graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and adapted by the director’s “Fight Club” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Michael Fassbender as an assassin who finds himself unraveling after a job gone wrong. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard and Sophie Charlotte. The film, backed by Netflix, world premiered at the Venice Film Festival to strong buzz.

From  Variety’s review : “Just watching Fassbender do push-ups in his black rubber gloves wires up the atmosphere. When the killer puts music on his earbuds (the Smiths’ “Well I Wonder”) to get into his groove, it becomes the needle drop as homicidal pop-opera soundtrack. The target arrives, and as we watch him move about the apartment, the film generates the hypnotic tension one remembers from ‘The Day of the Jackal’ or certain moments in Brian De Palma films. We realize that the chemistry of cinema hasn’t just put us in the killer’s shoes — it has put us on his side. We want to see him do the deed.”

Rustin (Nov. 17 on Netflix)

Emmy winner Colman Domingo is a leading candidate for the best actor Oscar thanks to his riveting performance in Netflix’s “Rustin,” which centers on civil rights leader Bayard Rustin’s attempts to plan and execute the historic March on Washington.  Variety  film critic Peter Debruge  called the film  a “career-defining” moment for Domingo, adding: “Most Americans don’t know the name of the man standing over MLK’s shoulder during the March on Washington, but a galvanizing performance and equally compelling script are sure to change that…Directed by George C. Wolfe with the same passion and conviction that defined its subject, ‘Rustin’ reminds that the pursuit for equality has never been and should never be satisfied with the advancement of a single group.”

Nyad (Nov. 3 on Netflix)

Annette Bening is earning Oscar buzz for best actress thanks to her leading turn in Netflix’s biopic “Nyad,” directed by documentary Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin in their narrative feature debut. The film details the quest by American marathon swimmer Diana Nyad (Bening) to complete a 53-hour, 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida through open ocean and without a shark cage. Jodie Foster co-stars.  Variety  film critic Peter Debruge  wrote in his review  that Bening and Foster make a “terrific team,” adding that Bening’s performance “feels every bit as committed as the athlete she’s depicting.” Expect Bening to factor into the upcoming awards season. 

American Symphony (Nov. 29 on Netflix)

Matthew Heineman’s moving “American Symphony” is a bonafide Oscar contender for best documentary feature. The film centers on Grammy-winning music star and Oscar winner Jon Batiste in early 2022 as he finds himself composing an original symphony for a performance at the storied Carnegie Hall in New York City. His career milestone is upended by personal struggle when his life partner, Suleika Jaouad, learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned. From  Variety’s review : “It’s essentially a living-with-cancer drama first and portrait of an artist at work almost secondarily — or at least it’s the only film you’ll see that spends equal amounts of time at Carnegie Hall and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where Jaouad is undergoing bone marrow transplant treatment.”

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (Nov. 3 on Peacock)

Nia Vardalos’ “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” franchise continued this year with a bit of a whimper, as the third installment in the romantic-comedy series only managed $38 million at the worldwide box office. For those who missed the film in theaters, it is now streaming exclusively on Peacock. Vardolos and John Corbett return to lead the franchise, as their couple travels to Greece for the first time with the entire family in tow. From  Variety’s review : “Franchises rarely get better as they go along. Unfortunately, ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ is no exception to the rule, as the expanded saga of the Portokalos family becomes less compelling, introspective and funny the more time we spend with them.”

Insidious: The Red Door (Nov. 4 on Netflix)

Patrick Wilson made his feature directorial debut with “Insidious: The Red Door,” the fifth installment in the long-running Blumhouse horror franchise. The film, a summer box office hit with $188 million worldwide, finds the Lambert family still tormented by the trauma created in the original film 10 years prior. They’re forced to put their demons to rest by facing them one last time. From  Variety’s review : “A parallel-reality fear zone. Faces in the dark. The return of repressed family demons. These are the elements that ‘Insidious’ elevated (and that Ari Aster sprung ‘Hereditary’ from), but depending on their design and execution they can be spooky — or banal — as hell. For a first-time director, Patrick Wilson doesn’t do a bad job, but he’s working with tropes that have already been worked to death. It’s time to close this carnival of souls down.”

Leo (Nov. 21 on Netflix)

Adam Sandler’s Netflix run takes an unexpected turn as he provides his voice to the upcoming animated musical comedy “Leo.” Per the official logline, Sandler voices Leo, a class pet who discovers that he only has one year left to live. Faced with the prospect of imminent death, Leo decides to head out and explore the outside world. However, he finds his plans derailed by the students of his classroom and a mean substitute teacher. The comedy boasts an impressive cast, with Bill Burr voicing a fellow class pet and turtle named Squirtle. “Saturday Night Live” alum Cecily Strong, Oscar-nominated “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor Stephanie Hsu and “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander round out the cast, along with Sandler’s own wife, Jackie Sandler, and their two daughters Sunny Sandler and Sadie Sandler (“You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah”).

Quiz Lady (Nov. 3 on Hulu)

Awkwafina and Sandra Oh join forces as mismatched sisters in Hulu’s zany original comedy film “Quiz Show,” launching on the streaming platform this month after a successful world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The two actors play estranged sisters who are forced to cover their mother’s gambling debts. Their bright idea? Set out on a road trip so that Awkwafina’s Anne can participate in her favorite gameshow and win the ultimate cash prize. The film is directed by Jessica Yu, who won the Oscar for best documentary short subject in 1996 for “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien.” Variety wrote in its review that the two stars are “hilarious together,” and their crackling chemistry make “Quiz Lady” worth the watch.

Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (Nov. 17 on Peacock)

Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, the “Saturday Night Live” trio better known as Please Don’t Destroy, are becoming movie stars in their Judd Apatow-produced feature “The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” launching Nov. 17 on Peacock. Here’s the official logline: “John Goodman narrates the adventure of Ben, Martin and John, three childhood friends turned deadbeat co-workers, who fend off hairless bears, desperate park rangers (played by Meg Stalter and X Mayo) and a hypocritical cult leader (Bowen Yang) in the hopes of finding a priceless treasure, only to discover that finding the treasure is the easiest part of their journey. Oh, and Conan O’Brien plays Ben’s dad in it.” The film was originally intended for a theatrical release in August, but Universal pivoted to a streaming release instead.

Now and Then: Last Beatles Song (Nov. 1 on Disney+)

Disney+ served as a hot destination for Beatles fans when it world premiered Peter Jackson’s acclaimed “Get Back” documentary in 2021. Now the streamer will once again be a must-have for fans as it launches the 12-minute documentary “Now and Then,” which chronicles the decades-long construction of the “final” Beatles song of the same name. The single “Now and Then” is being touted as the group’s‘ “last song,” and it includes contributions from all four members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. Written and directed by Oliver Murray, the mini-doc includes behind-the-scenes footage of the track’s making and launches a day before the song gets officially released.

Sly (Nov. 3 on Netflix)

Directed by Thom Zimny (“Springsteen on Broadway,” “Elvis Presley: The Searcher”), “Sly” is described as an “intimate and unexpected look” at the early life of the action star Sylvester Stallone and a reflection on his decade-spanning career. The documentary chronicles Stallone’s rough beginnings as a troubled kid in New York City, where he would distract himself from the outside world by writing movie scripts. His career exploded when “Rocky,” a role he created and had to fight to play, catapulted him to a new level of fame.  Variety  film critic Owen Gleiberman called the documentary “headier than you expect” in  his review , adding that it’s “an infectious and fascinating portrait of Stallone and his movies.”

Elf (Nov. 23 on Hulu)

Will Ferrell’s holiday classic “Elf” arrives on Hulu this month just in time to kick off the holiday movie season on streaming. From  Variety’s review : “Ferrell graduates to his first solo leading role with flying colors in a holiday comedy about a clueless innocent who saves Christmas and fosters a renewed sense of family in his reluctant father. Sweet-natured outsider fantasy neither skimps on nor overplays its sentimentality, which should make it a major family audience draw through the holidays.”

Spider-Man: Far From Home (Nov. 3 on Disney+)

Spider-Man finally web-slinged onto Disney+ in April with the debuts of Tobey Maguire’s trilogy and Andrew Garfield’s “The Amazing Spider-Man.” These films were the first batch of Sony-owned superhero movies to debut on the Disney streamer. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man joined wit the May arrival of “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” followed by the launch of Garfield’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” in August. Now another Tom Holland effort, 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” joins the Disney+ streaming library this month. Holland’s Peter Parker heads overseas with his classmates but is forced to bring Spider-Man with him when a global crisis involving Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes shape. From  Variety’s review : “Tom Holland grows in the role of Peter Parker in a ‘Spider-Man’ sequel that spins a web of illusion, proving the MCU can fly after the Avengers”

Dashing Through the Snow (Nov. 17 on Disney+)

From Disney: “Eddie Garrick (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) is a good-hearted man who has turned his back on Christmas due to a traumatic childhood experience. At the request of his wife Allison Garrick (Teyonah Parris), from whom he is separated, Eddie takes his 8-year-old daughter Charlotte (Madison Skye Validum) out with him on Christmas Eve, where they meet a mysterious man in a red suit named Nick (Lil Rel Howery). Eddie, who is a social worker, thinks the man is delusional and needs professional help, but when he evokes the wrath of a local politician (Oscar Nuñez), he and his daughter are taken on a magical adventure that just might restore his faith in Christmas.” The film is directed by Tim Story (“Barbershop,” “Fantastic Four”) and written by Scott Rosenberg.

“The Hunger Games” Franchise  (Nov. 1 on Peacock)

With $2.9 billion at the worldwide box office, the four-film “Hunger Games” franchise was such a worldwide sensation that it’s no surprise a prequel film, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” is on the way this month. Before “Ballad” hits theaters Nov. 17, all four original “Hunger Games” movies are arriving on Peacock so that fans can catch-up on all the brutal twists and turns of Panem. Jennifer Lawrence was already an Oscar nominee for “Winter’s Bone” when the first Gary Ross-directed “The Hunger Games” debuted and made her an instant worldwide star. 

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (Nov. 11 on Max)

The upcoming HBO documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” chronicles the comedian’s very early work all the way to present day while exploring the evolution of his career and the impact he has had on the world of comedy. Championing Brooks’ influence in the comedy and entertainment world is a host of celebrity interviewees that include Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, Wanda Sykes, Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Steven Spielberg, Sarah Silverman, David Letterman, Larry David, Jonah Hill, Judd Apatow, Sharon Stone, Brian Williams, Anthony Jeselnik, Tiffany Haddish, Alana Haim, Nikki Glaser, James L. Brooks and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Chile 76 (Nov. 1 on Kino Film Collection)

Kino Lorber’s new streaming library launches this month, and one of the first highlights among its offerings is Manuela Martelli’s expertly crafted character study “Chile ’76.” The film, set three years after dictator Augusto Pinochet’s rise, centers on a middle class housewife who reluctantly becomes a nurse to a young man who is fighting in the resistance against Pinochet’s rule. From  Variety’s review : “Martelli’s threading of the personal and the political doesn’t just splinter the story out into her country’s history, but formally toys with genre expectations. What begins as a muted marital melodrama slowly boils into a restrained political thriller, with an ease and skill all the more impressive in a first feature.”

Little Richard: I Am Everything (Nov. 23 on Max)

“Lisa Cortés’s film, in perceiving Little Richard as a wild genius of Black and queer culture, sees him more clearly than ever,” reads  Variety’s review  of “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” which was named a Critic’s Pick out of the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The film uses archival footage and performances to dive deep into the entertainer’s upbringing and music career, while featuring interviews with the likes of Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Billy Porter, Nile Rodgers and John Waters. The review adds: “It’s the enthralling documentary that Little Richard deserves. It’s a movie that understands, from the inside out, what a great and transgressive artist he was, how his starburst brilliance shifted the whole energy of the culture — but also how the astonishing radical nature of what he did got shoved under the rug of the official narrative of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story (Nov. 17 on Prime Video)

Tyler Perry’s historic Hollywood rise gets the documentary treatment in “Maxine’s Baby.” Directed by Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz, the documentary presents a “tender, intimate portrait” of the director, actor and producer, with its title being a nod to his late mother Willie Maxine Perry, who died in 2009. Born Emmitt Perry Jr., he changed his name to Tyler Perry due to his estranged relationship with his abusive father. “I just could not understand how this man could look at me and hate me with such passion,” Perry recalls in the doc. But his father wasn’t his only adversary. Once Perry arrived in Hollywood, he battled other naysayers who couldn’t see the vision for his career. “I had all these people tell me what I would never be. Nobody said what I could be,” Perry adds.

Evil Dead Rise (Nov. 23 on Prime Video)

“Evil Dead Rise” has been available to stream on Max, but it’s now making its Amazon Prime Video debut at no extra cost to subscribers. Halloween may be over, but demons last all year. The latest blood-soaked entry in the “Evil Dead” franchise is set in a single apartment complex as evil spirits possess a single mother and put her three children in harm’s way. From  Variety’s review : “When the lights go out, the body count mounts in Lee Cronin’s effective urban nightmare… A kinda-sorta sequel, it offers incontrovertible evidence that predatory and possessive bogeymen are just as frightful when their hunting ground shifts from a cabin in a dark corner of the woods to a gone-to-seed apartment building in downtown Los Angeles.”

A Good Person (Nov. 28 on Prime Video)

Florence Pugh headlines Zach Braff’s “A Good Person” as an addict trying to overcome personal demons after accidentally causing a tragic accident involving her boyfriend’s family.  Variety  film critic Owen Gleiberman  called the film  a “return to form” for Braff as a director, adding: “It’s an addiction drama that has scenes you can bicker with, a few contrivances, and other peccadilloes. Yet beneath the middlebrow situational conventionality, there’s a core of raw feeling and truth to it. The movie creates a highly specific situation — about its heroine, and about an entire family — that it carries right through. It’s not a melodrama about scraping bottom. It’s a story of lives that have been frozen by tragedy, and of how the unfreezing happens.”

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5 sci-fi movies on Netflix you need to watch in November

Sci-fi films never go out of style. From  Alien  and  Back to the Future  to  Dune  and  Blade Runner , sci-fi films continue to improve thanks to new technology. Many sci-fi films find a home on Netflix and wind up on the streamer’s 10 most popular movies list. Films like  Don’t Look Up , The Adam Project , and  Bird Box are 10 of the most popular English films on Netflix ever.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

The adam project (2022), project power (2020), vivarium (2019).

The Adam Project  is one of our picks for sci-fi movies to watch in November. Other selections include the epic sequel to Godzilla: King of the Monsters , and a sci-fi thriller about a pilot’s fight for survival against the dinosaurs.

It’s the God of the Monsters versus King Kong in the battle for supremacy in Godzilla vs. Kong . Five years after the events of  Godzilla , Kong is living on Skull Island under the watchful eye of Monarch. Meanwhile, Godzilla still lurks underwater, popping up to attack and decimate whatever’s there.

• 3 sci-fi movies on Peacock you need to watch in November
• 3 action movies on Prime Video you need to watch in November
• 3 action movies on Hulu you need to watch in November

Now that Titans have been unleashed on the world, Apex CEO Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) recruits Dr. Nathan Lind to lead an expedition to find a power source located in Hollow Earth that can control the monsters. To find Hollow Earth, the scientists need Kong to be their navigator. If only it were that easy, as Godzilla has other plans, attacking Kong and going toe-to-toe with the beast.

Stream Godzilla vs. Kong on Netflix.

We need more dinosaur movies besides Jurassic Park . Thankfully, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods made dinosaurs the star of 65 , a simple, bare-bones sci-fi thriller . Set 65 million years ago, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) from the planet Somaris signs up for a two-year expedition to earn money to treat his daughter’s illness. During the trip, Mills’ ship crash lands on an unknown planet, which turns out to be Earth.

All of the passengers on board die, besides Mills and a young girl named Koa ( Barbie ‘s Ariana Greenblatt). Their only chance to escape is to find an escape pod at the top of a mountain 15 kilometers away. Mills and Koa quickly learn that dinosaurs, not humans, are the dominant species on the planet, and these creatures will do everything to stop the humans from reaching their destination.

Stream 65  on Netflix.

The Adam Project is a time-traveling adventure inspired by Back to the Future . As the film progresses, it becomes a surprisingly effective family drama. Pay attention because there are a lot of timelines. In 2050, fighter pilot Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) steals a time jet to travel back to 2018 to save his wife, Laura (Zoe Saldaña). During the trip, Adam crash lands in 2022 and meets his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell).

Young Adam is struggling to cope with the death of his father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), and grows apart from his mother, Ellie (Jennifer Garner). Due to his injuries, future Adam must bring young Adam with him back in time. However, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), who monopolized time travel and became the most powerful leader in the future world, is out to stop the Adams from altering the past.

Stream The Adam Project on Netflix.

Would you sign up for superpowers without knowing the result? That’s the dilemma faced in Project Power . Set in a future New Orleans, a mysterious pill called “Power” is sweeping the streets. Upon consumption, the pill gives people superpowers for five minutes. However, what superpowers you will get and how they will affect your body is unknown. It’s a risk that many are willing to take for a taste of invincibility.

The distribution of Power is getting out of control as crime increases and more people start dying from overdoses. Detective Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teams with Robin (Dominique Fishback), a young drug dealer, and Art (Jamie Foxx), a former solder, to track down the source of Power’s distribution. To reach their goal, however, they may have to ingest the drug they’re trying to shut down.

Stream Project Power  on Netflix.

The definition of vivarium reads: “A terrarium used especially for small animals.” Vivariums are made to confine animals. There is no getting out. Using this knowledge, you can deduce the basis of  Varium , a 2019 horror from Lorcan Finnegan starring Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg.

Gemma (Poots) and Tom (Eisenberg) are a young couple looking to buy their first home. Against their better judgment, they follow Martin (Jonathan Aris), a peculiar real estate agent, to a suburban neighborhood with identical green-colored houses called Yonder. As Gemma and Tom explore the area, Martin disappears. When the couple tries to leave, it becomes a maze as they always end up back at the house. Trapped, Gemma and Tom search for a way out, but the presence of an infant complicates matters in this enigmatic sci-fi mystery.

Stream Vivarium on Netflix.

Editors' Recommendations

• 3 action movies on Netflix you need to watch in November
• 3 sci-fi movies on Hulu you need to watch in November
• 3 underrated shows on Netflix you need to watch in November
• 3 sci-fi movies on Tubi you need to watch in November
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• Streaming Services

Are you looking for something new to watch on Hulu? Although the streamer is better known for its movie library, Hulu also has a great lineup of TV series and classic shows that just didn't get the accolades they deserved the first time.

This month, we're throwing the spotlight on one of the all-time great TV romantic comedy/drama/mystery series that has only recently gotten a streaming debut. We're also taking a look at the resurrection of a horror franchise, and a quirky Hulu original series by way of Canada. These are the three underrated shows on Hulu that you need to watch in November. Moonlighting (1985-1989)

By the 1980s, science fiction had become a much less niche proposition. Several major movies had proven that it was possible to make popular versions of these stories, and TV followed suit shortly after that.

While there were several immensely popular sci-fi series airing during this period, a few also fell under the radar. These three shows are perfect examples of why sci-fi storytelling became much more popular in the 1980s across a wide array of different formats, whether it was in the U.S. or the U.K. Red Dwarf (1988) Red Dwarf - Series 1 Trailer

Sci-fi is one of those genres that is fun to watch any time, with movies that skew toward everything from comedy to horror, drama, suspense, and more. When it comes to Amazon Freevee, there’s a wide selection of sci-fi movies you can watch for free, with ads.

Along with high-profile titles from the past (you won’t find new releases here), and underrated action movies on Amazon Freevee, as well as other genres, there are a few underrated sci-fi movies on Amazon Freevee you should watch in November, too. They’re all critically acclaimed, come from various decades, and feature top-notch casts. The Pink Cloud (2021) The Pink Cloud- Official Trailer- Sundance Selection

25 Best New Christmas Movies in 2023 That Are Full of Cheer

If you need us, we'll be watching these movies all holiday season long.

If you're a Christmas movie fanatic like us, you may have seen that Hallmark released its 2023 Countdown to Christmas schedule . (It's a win for fans of cheesy, wholesome movies!) You might have also noticed that Lifetime's Christmas movie lineup is up and ready to view as well. (Sometimes we want something a little mysterious!) Well, you can bet that some of those movies have made this list. Though, a brief scroll will show you that there are plenty of Netflix Christmas movies and Amazon Prime Christmas movies , too!

Beware: Reading these movie descriptions might persuade you to clear your entire holiday itinerary so you can make room to watch each and every one of these as they premiere!

A Heidelberg Holiday

Premieres : Sunday, November 12

Where: Hallmark Channel

Plot: Heidi is filled with joy when she's offered the chance to sell her self-crafted glass ornaments at the iconic Heidelberg Christmas Market over in Germany. It's already going well when she meets Lukas, a local who sweeps her off her feet, making the experience even better.

Best. Christmas. Ever!

Premieres : Thursday, November 16

Where: Netflix

Plot: Charlotte and Jackie are old friends with some slight tension. They haven't really connected with each other in years, both having families of their own now. So, you could imagine their shock when the two randomly reunite on Christmas! This is when Charlotte begins to realize Jackie's "perfect" life isn't as good as she has always made it seem.

HOW TO WATCH

Premieres : Friday, November 17

Where: Amazon Freevee

Plot: No one wants to imagine what spending Christmas with an ex would be like. That horrific nightmare becomes a reality for Graham, when his family invites Ali—his ex-fiancée—over for the holidays, not knowing he would be coming home.

Dashing Through the Snow

Where: Disney+

Plot: Eddie Garrick is a loving father, but doesn't really believe in "Christmas magic" after a difficult childhood and hard divorce. His perspective may change when he meets a nice, but rather peculiar man named Nick.

A Merry Scottish Christmas

Premieres : Saturday, November 18

Plot: Lacey is getting ready to spend the holidays with her mom. She has no idea what's in store for her: Untold family secrets, lots of drama, and (obviously) a bit of romance!

Country Hearts Christmas

Premieres : Sunday, November 19

Where: UPtv

Plot: Say what you want about the Jameson Family, but that won't stop them from finding success in their personal and professional lives! Being busy has drifted them apart over the years, but something brings them all back together for the holiday this year, showing them what's really important.

Premieres : Wednesday, November 22

Where: Peacock

Plot: Bernard is down on his luck this holiday. His job, family, and personal life issues all seem to be at a low point. He's offered a chance to fix it all when he accidentally summons Flora (Melissa McCarthy), a genie who has all the necessary magic, but hasn't quite mastered how to use it.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Premieres : Wednesday, November 22 Where: Apple TV+

Plot: If you've read the book as a child, then you know how special this story is! It follows a young boy and the stuffed animal he receives on Christmas, which turns out to be part of a beautiful, spellbinding world.

The Naughty Nine

Where: Disney Channel (Available for streaming on Disney+ on Thanksgiving Day.)

Plot: When you punish a defiant 5th-grader during the holidays, it only makes him more rebellious. It doesn't matter if you're Santa! In fact, it'll just inspire him to gather a crew of other unruly children on the naughty list, and head to Santa's Village with a devious plan in mind.

Christmas at the Chalet

Premieres : Saturday, November 25

Where: Lifetime

Plot: Christmas vacations are supposed to be fun. For Lex, her trip to the a luxury ski resort is anything but that. She faces a major problem when she gets word that her ex-husband and his new girlfriend will be joining her and her son, forcing her to lay low and take a job at the local chalet. She makes sure to document it all on social media, seeing her become an internet sensation.

Christmas in Notting Hill

Plot: Graham is a talented soccer player who has has it all, with the exception of a love life. Coming home to Notting Hill for the holidays, he meets Georgia, an American visiting his hometown. Safe to say that sparks fly.

A Biltmore Christmas

Premieres : Sunday, November 26

Plot: Lucy is a screenwriter with a vision, and it doesn't involve a happy ending! This doesn't sit right with the studio that's funding the remake of a 1947 movie she's working on, which has them sending her to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, where the movie was originally filmed. She goes, not expecting to be transported back in time.

Mistletoe Connection

Plot: Kate and Mark couldn't be any different. She's a local-business owner in a small town, and he's a developer at a big-named company who wants to take over her shop. The one thing they have in common is their shared-love of Christmas. Will that be enough to bring the two both of them to sort out their differences?

Family Switch

Premieres : Thursday, November 30

Plot: Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms play overwhelmed parents with two rebellious teenaged kids and a toddler who only knows havoc. With nothing going right this holiday, fate decides to step in—causing the parents to swap bodies with their children. This is where the chaos truly begins!

The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday

Plot: This crew of unruly, talking animals may be deemed as the "bad guys" in town, but that doesn't mean that they can't spread some Christmas magic! Watch the devious tasks they get into in order to complete their holiday mission.

A Royal Christmas Surprise

Where: BET+

Plot: Riley is from Kentucky, while Mandla (her husband-to-be) is from a South African royal family. Riley invites Mandla's family over to her parent's home for the holidays, not knowing that it would fuel a season full of feuds.

Time for Her to Come Home for Christmas

Premieres : Thursday, November 30,

Where: Hallmark Movies & Mysteries

Plot: Carly drops everything to move to a small town where she'll lead the local church choir on Christmas. This is the only thing on her mind, so when she meets Matthew, a mysterious, but charming veteran home for the holidays, she gets thrown for a doozy.

Candy Cane Lane

Premieres : Friday, December 1

Where: Amazon Prime Video

Plot: Eddie Murphy plays a man named Chris, a husband and father of three, who wants nothing more than to win the local Christmas decorating contest. It's clear that there's no measure he wouldn't take, even if it means making a deal with a secretly naughty elf.

Never Alone for Christmas

Premieres : Thursday, December 7

Plot: Lauren and Miles were a couple going strong, until they randomly called the wedding off just days before. Fast forward to the holidays, and they're both miraculously on the same Christmas vacation. Was it meant to be all along?

Rescuing Christmas

Where: Hallmark Movies Now

Plot: Chuck and Debbie may appear to be regular people, but they're actually two of Santa's elves! They head down to Earth, where they meet Erin, a woman with no Christmas spirit whatsoever. Maybe granting her three wishes will change her mind!

Josiah Soto is the assistant editor of news and social for The Pioneer Woman. He helps manage the website’s social channels, in addition to writing high-performing news and entertainment content daily. 

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