1
Parallel Mothers
(Opens Friday, December 24)
Late-career Almodóvar is just as good as early career and mid-career; his best work continues to thrill and even astonish.
2
The Matrix: Resurrections
(Opens Wednesday, December 22)
It’s a family: writer-director-producer Lana Wachowski brings on novelist-co-writers Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell, as well as Tom Tykwer and Johnny Klimek (“Sense8”) as composers of a fourth “Matrix,” which has to be swell to have elicited a blockbuster budget in our era of waning corporate ambition and scale.
3
Red Rocket
(Opens Friday, December 3)
Another portrait from the other side of town from one of America’s greatest and most consistent mid-career directors, Sean Baker.
4
The Tragedy of Macbeth
(Opens Saturday, December 25)
Coen brother Joel directs alone in a highly stylized black-and-white adaptation of the Scottish play, with Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Corey Hawkins, Brendan Gleeson and Harry Melling.
5
Nightmare Alley
(Opens Friday, December 17)
Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan adapt the William Lindsay Gresham novel (1946) that was made into a harrowing 1947 noir; geeks beware.