Cinema’s ending the year on a festive bang with a holly jolly helping of massive blockbusters, film gems, and everything in between. Get a taste of the 11 biggest films of the month with the montage above, read on for 6 flicks we’re excited to see, head on over to the coming soon page for an extensive list of everything heading to a big screen near you, and be sure to add movies you’re hyped for to your Flicks watchlist—we can notify you when they’re about to release.
NOTE: RELEASE DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Avatar: Fire and Ash
James Cameron introduced us to Pandora in 2009’s Avatar, then expanded the world with the reef clan in 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water. Now we’re getting to know the unfriendly Ash People who are far more aggro than the Na’vi we’re used to, perhaps due to living their lives next to active volcanoes. None of that will matter to the human colonisers trying once again to take over the planet—this time with crab robots.
Cameron told Vanity Fair: “Let’s face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don’t make enough money, there’s not going to be a 4 and 5”. Hopefully he pulls off the box office hat trick—we’re curious to see if he’ll do the full Captain Planet and bring in a wind tribe and heart squad.
The History of Sound
Incendiary actors Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and Josh O’Connor (Challengers) look positively molten in this intimate love story from Oliver Hermanus, director of excellent BAFTA-nominated film Living.
Mescal plays Lionel, a Kentucky farm boy with an ability to visualise sound, who runs into O’Connor’s David, a fellow music student with a privileged background, at a bar in 1917. Though The Great War rumbles in the distance, the two men bond over a shared love for folk music and a duty to record and collect songs throughout New England. Connecting on an intimate level, their intense feelings seem fleetingly tied to the existence of their project.
The Housemaid
If you want to see Amanda Seyfried (The Dropout) square off against Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You) in a deadly game of mindf*ckery, you’ll want ring-side seats to this adaptation of Freida McFadden’s novel by A Simple Favour director Paul Feig.
Hitting the reset button on her life, Sweeney’s Millie takes up a job as a live-in housemaid for elite couple Nina (Seyfried) and Andrew (Brandon Sklenar). Things immediately seem a bit… off… when Nina hires Millie and introduces her to hubby—who appears clueless about the whole living-with-us arrangement. Things promise to spiral from there, with Sweeney’s everywoman contrasting with Seyfried’s gradually unhinging yuppie.
Not Only Fred Dagg But Also John Clarke
Comedy legend John Clarke receives the cinematic celebration he deserves in this documentary directed by and featuring his daughter, Lorin Clarke. The film looks back at Clarke’s illustrious career, filled with sharp reflections of the New Zealand identity and biting satire on political hypocrisy, as well as his home life, aided by a wealth of audio recordings between the two Clarkes.
A comedy veteran in Australia too, the peculiar title of the film is actually two titles split between the two countries with NZIFF calling it Not Only Fred Dagg and MIFF running with the name But Also John Clarke.
Rental Family
Following his Oscar-winning turn in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and memorable bit part in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Brendan Fraser extends his stellar career comeback with something gentler and more uplifting.
Embracing the role of “token white guy,” Fraser plays a down-on-his-luck actor living in Tokyo who takes up a new gig playing characters in actual people’s lives. A father, a husband, a friend… you name it, you can rent them. This may sound preposterous to Westerners, but it’s a very real practice in Japan (Werner Herzog made a film on it back in 2019). Expect a thoughtful and sensitive approach on the subject from filmmaker Hikari, who directed a few episodes of Beef.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Let’s clear something up first: there have been a couple of recent deadly Christmas films called Silent Night (this Kiera Knightley one and this John Woo one), quite a few sinister Santa flicks (featuring maniacs like Art the Clown and Mel Gibson), and a bunch of cruddy Silent Night, Deadly Night sequels. However, this is the first proper remake of the cult classic that turned ol’ Saint Nick into a psychopath.
Is writer-director Mike P Nelson looking to elevate the horror franchise with a refreshing new vision? Doesn’t look like it. Is he taking the story in a completely different direction? Doubt it. Is his killer Kris Kringle gonna deliver some creative Christmas carnage? Looks likely! What more do you actually need?
