When Netflix made its bid to buy storied Hollywood studio Warner Bros. late last year, it sparked another round of conjecture about the imminent death of the traditional moviegoing experience.
But I wouldn’t worry, and in fact, that’s my suggested New Year’s resolution for those who still like to leave the house to see a film: Don’t worry. The traditional moviegoing experience may diminish in mainstream American culture, but it will surely survive as a kind of boutique industry— like guitar-based rock music, say, or liberal democracy.
The movie most likely to get me out of the house this month is The Testament of Ann Lee, an ambitious historical drama about the 18th-century founder of the religious sect known as the Shakers. Amanda Seyfried plays the title role as the visionary leader considered by her followers to be nothing less than the female aspect of God.
Developed by the filmmaking team of Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, who brought us 2024’s epic The Brutalist, the new film is earning ecstatic reviews across the board, with ecstatic being the operative term. Click around online, and you can find multiple instances of typically jaded critics describing a movie experience that generates both terror and bliss. The film attempts to evoke the spiritual fervor that gave the Shakers their name—worshippers would dance and shake in whole-body communion with the cosmos—and apparently pulls it off pretty well.
Not coincidentally, the film is also a musical of sorts, with composer Daniel Blumberg providing an experimental soundtrack pivoting off Shaker hymns, and Seyfried losing her mind in the performance of them. If it all sounds a little weird, that’s because it most definitely is. We just don’t see this kind of thing in theaters, which makes me really want to see it in a theater.
Another good option for January: No Other Choice is the latest from celebrated South Korean director Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden). Park is generally acknowledged as one of the great filmmakers in world cinema, and he’s the undisputed king of hard, dark humor.
His new film follows the fortunes of a laid-off paper company executive (Lee Byung-hun) who decides to improve his chances of employment by brutally eliminating his competition. It’s a murder comedy, is what it is, and like 2019’s Parasite, another savage critique of late capitalism from our filmmaking friends in Korea. Park has been trying to get this film made for 20 years, and reports suggest that it’s on the shortlist for several Oscar nominations.
For a more traditional arthouse movie experience, seek out the British historical drama The Choral, starring Ralph Fiennes as a choirmaster in a small English village during World War I. The film makes some swerves and ultimately digs into themes of war, art, sex, and mortality.
But for unrepentant Anglophiles, the selling point here is the combination of screenwriter Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner, frequent collaborators (The Madness of King George) and true giants of old-school British film and theater. Look, if you want good odds on movie night, sometimes it’s best to just go to the pros.
Quick Picks
Daisy Ridley headlines We Bury the Dead, a variant on the zombie apocalypse movie featuring a military biological weapon, a corpse retrieval team, and unfortunate subsequent developments.
This looks fun: Released in France late last year, A Private Life (French: Vie privée) is a dark comedy/thriller with Jodie Foster as a psychiatrist caught up in a murder mystery. Foster, who is fluent in the language, has wanted to headline a French film for years, and she’s getting reluctantly positive reviews from European critics, who are loving this one.
Every year, the NY Dog Film Festivaland the NY Cat Film Festival tour around the country, working with local exhibitors. Pet lovers get 90 minutes of curated short films and mini-docs, and local animal shelters get 10 percent of proceeds. It’s good karma! If, for whatever reason, you don’t get into regular heaven, buying a ticket for one of these gets you into dog heaven or cat heaven, depending. So choose wisely.
A couple of special local screenings to note: On January 12 at 7 pm, the Chelsea Theater in Chapel Hill will present Rising Above Helene, a documentary by filmmaker Chris Baucom on post-hurricane recovery efforts in the mountain communities of western North Carolina. It’s the pre-fest kickoff event for the Carrboro Film Festival, unspooling January 23-25.
Also, on January 19 at 5 pm, the Carolina Theatre in Durham will premiere its documentary Breaking the Booth, about Civil Rights era youth protesters who fought to desegregate the Carolina Theatre and other facilities in the city. The free Martin Luther King Jr. Day event will also feature a post-screening community panel discussion.
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