1 Phantom Thread (Christmas) Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis rub up against dramatic weft and weave in a based-on-life roundelay of womanizing and thundercrack romance in the high-end fashion world of 1950s England.
2 The Shape of Water (December 8) The amniotic wash of fairytale and fancy finds Guillermo del Toro in fine, sometimes bawdy, sexually physicalized fettle: let all the dreaminess wash over you.
3 Darkest Hour (December 8) Gary Oldman is the funny Churchill. Gary Oldman is the twinkly Churchill… No… Gary Oldman is the human Churchill. A funny wonder of a drama from director Joe Wright, which incidentally dovetails with Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.”
4 Call Me By Your Name (December 15) Luca Guadagnino charts the course of sudden sunny summery love to the strains of Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way.”
5 The Disaster Artist (Music Box, December 1) James Franco’s welter of little-seen productions about artists and poets finds comic balance in the unlikely tale of the making of “The Room” and the squirmy dreams of its poète maudit, Tommy Wiseau.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Film Top 5: December 2023 The latest from Chicago's very own operatic auteur Michael Mann, plus more good-to-great films from this year and prior than you can begin to see.
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