Well, we’ve finally reached the final week of the 2024 movie year, which culminates with three highly anticipated prestige releases on Christmas Day that, in an unsurprising turn, have little or nothing to do with the holiday or its typical messaging. Or do they? Not to be outdone, we also get the winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and a boxing bio that subverts some of the genre’s cliches.

From the moment the casting of Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown was announced, and on through its sometimes clumsy marketing campaign, there’s been a sense that director James Mangold would either paint his masterpiece or just kind of waste our precious time. (And here endeth the effort to salt this review with lyrical references.) Fortunately, the result is much closer to the former than the latter, with Chalamet capturing something of Dylan’s mystique and abetted by an overachieving supporting cast.

The screenplay, by Mangold and Scorsese confidante Jay Cocks, and based on the book Dylan Goes Electric! By Elijah Wald, begins with 19-year-old Bobby Zimmerman’s arrival in New York City in 1961, and (spoiler alert!) culminates with Bob Dylan’s iconoclastic, now iconic, set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It includes his pilgrimage to meet his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), which introduces him to early benefactor and folkie legend Pete Seeger (an excellent Edward Norton). It includes his formative, rocky relationships with Suze Rotolo, here renamed Sylvie Russo and played by Elle Fanning, as well as Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). It includes Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz), Dave Van Ronk (James Austin Johnson), and, most effectively, Johnny Cash (Boy Holbrook).

It was a busy four years, and it’s a challenge for A Complete Unknown to pack so much incident into a 141-minute movie. There are moments where you can feel boxes being checked off, to be sure, but the sheer import of Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame and its impact on music, literature, and American culture gives each milestone moment its own frisson. It’s astonishing to realize, in fact, that a feature-length film about nearly any five-year stretch in Dylan’s life and career could ably serve as the backbone for a feature-length biopic.

The cast, most acutely Chalamet, run the risk of impersonating rather than portraying, but they largely emerge unscathed, except for maybe Holbrook’s cartoonish Cash, which is surprising since Mangold directed Joaquin Phoenix to an Oscar nomination as the Man in Black in Walk the Line. Barbaro, whose previously highest-profile role was in Top Gun: Maverick, delivers a star-making performance as Baez, and Norton’s discriminating taste in roles continues to pay dividends. But it’s Chalamet who takes the biggest swing, not only playing the enigmatic, oft-imitated lead role, but handling all his own guitar-and-vocals work to boot. If he doesn’t end up with a homer, it’s at least a ringing double down the left-field line.

Will A Complete Unknown satisfy the sorts of folks who self-define as Dylanologists? Hard to say, since I’m not one. Despite that fact, I didn’t really learn anything new about Dylan’s early career, but I also know enough not to assume that every jot and tittle comports with lived history. The film’s tweaks and inventions are interesting to excavate, and many will do so. But there’s a reason that Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There will always remain the definitive cinematic portrait of Dylan, namely its subject’s lifelong refusal to be pinned down to one identity, one genre, one biography. The new film presents a literal, linear story about one of Dylan’s first and most explosive such refusals, a paradoxical but fascinating effort that’s more compelling than it has any right to be.

Dylan does ride his motorcycle quite a bit in A Complete Unknown, which sure seems like foreshadowing for a sequel covering his 1966 accident, recuperation, collaborations with The Band, and Nashville Skyline. And in a post-credit scene, Jeff Lynne (Eddie Redmayne) steps out of the shadows and says, “I’d like to talk to you about the Wilbury Initiative.” It could happen.

While A Complete Unknown’s only holiday connection is Dylan’s 2009 album Christmas in the Heart, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu at least has a resurrection-adjacent theme. Eggers, the darling of the “elevated horror” genre behind The Witch and The Lighthouse, travels a well-trod path for his first feature adapted from a pre-existing work. F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, remade by (among others) Werner Herzog, was itself an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which has spawned hundreds of versions of the story of a vampiric count, a hapless real estate agent, the woman they both desire, and a shipload of rats.

This neo-Nosferatu is impeccably cast, staged, shot, and edited. Nicholas Hoult brings feckless sincerity as Thomas Hutter, a lackey who travels from England to the castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) hoping only to engage in some Transylvanian land speculation but ending up under the spell of the undead monster. Obsessed with Thomas’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), Orlok invades her mind and soul from a distance, giving Depp a chance to engage in a truly disturbing physical performance, before traveling by sea to claim her for himself. It wouldn’t be a vampire flick without a Van Helsing figure, and it wouldn’t be a Robert Eggers movie without Willem Dafoe, whose maniacal certainty is perfect for Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz. Hoult and Dafoe, at least, are veterans of this stuff, the former having played the titular Renfield opposite Nicolas Cage’s Dracula and the latter having played the star of Murnau’s film in the offbeat 2000 Shadow of the Vampire.

Eggers doesn’t alter the basic story, but he does his level best to seduce the viewer into a 19th-century fever dream. There isn’t an ironic bone in the director’s body, and without a sure touch, the proceedings could easily descend into camp (as portions of The Lighthouse threatened to do). But everyone’s pulling in the same direction here, which makes it easier to surrender to the phantasmal, sepulchral tone, in which the tentative rationality of the Edwardian era felt legitimately threatened by the primal dark of Europe’s forests and fens. (And vice versa.)

That said, Eggers’s Nosferatu feels less like an auteurist vision of a new frontier in horror than a bold take on familiar terrors, in the same vein as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Because Focus Features did not hold any early theatrical press screenings for the Portland market, however, it’s impossible to assess how much more immersive the experience might be in a proper environment. For that, dedicated horror fans will have to tear themselves away from Yuletide treats and venture into the darkness of (shudder) the cinema. (Opens Wed., Dec. 25, wide.)

At least part of Babygirl takes place over the holidays, but despite that fact it’s hard to imagine this ludicrous, ostensibly erotic thriller earning a place alongside Elf and Die Hard as a modern holiday classic. Star Nicole Kidman has drawn attention for, like Demi Moore in The Substance and Pamela Anderson in the upcoming The Last Showgirl, tackling a sexually provocative but narratively empowering role as a woman of a certain age. One difference, of course, is that Kidman hasn’t had to endure the disrespect that Moore and Anderson experienced at times. Another is that this is anything but a comeback for Kidman, whose ubiquity on glossy, prestige, streaming melodramas has become a running joke.

But I digress. Romy (Kidman) is the prototypical woman who has it all: a loving, attentive husband (Antonio Banderas, sporting a suave grey beard); a pair of wonderfully typical daughters; and a high-profile job as the CEO of a corporation that makes warehouse equipment for e-retailers. But she’s been storing away some emotional merchandise of her own, as first hinted when she sneaks out of bed after sex to furtively watch porn on a laptop.

Things get exponentially more intense when one of the new batch interns at Romy’s office turns out to be the cocky, handsome, young Samuel (Harris Dickinson, Triangle of Sadness), who, before you can say “human resources,” has Romy under his thumb. The spice Babygirl promises is in the nature of the dom-sub relationship between the pair, but, like most Hollywood movies threatening us with a good time, it knows exactly how to toe the line without depicting anything truly challenging, either carnally or psychologically. Take away the bits where Romy licks milk off a saucer at Samuel’s command, or groans in 7.1 channel sound at his touch, and you’ve got something pretty close to the roundly mocked 1996 reverse-sexual-harassment male grievance fantasy Disclosure, in which that self-same Demi Moore turned the tables on corporate rival Michael Douglas.

Writer-director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) and cinematographer Jasper Wolf capture Babygirl’s sleek environments well enough, and there are interesting issues to be mined from flipping the script on the cliché about the high number of powerful male executives who employ the services of dominatrices. But the movie mostly tries to do some sort of twelve-dimensional feminism in which it’s actually progressive for a woman to desire subjugation because she’s just so damn good at being in charge of everything else in her life. There’s an undeveloped story thread about Romy’s childhood spent in some sort of cult, and there are scenes where she attends some sort of weird light therapy. But these aren’t fleshed out enough to make Romy more than about a 1.5-dimensional character.

It’s notable that the film also shows Romy getting Botox treatments and being criticized for them by her older daughter. Kidman has, fairly or not, come under discussion regarding whether and how much she has used that or other cosmetic procedures to retain such a glowing visage. That minor plot point is a compelling allegory for the ways corporate (and American in general) culture forces people, especially women, to unnaturally present themselves as serene, impenetrable robots instead of squishy, flawed human beings. And that may be the best message in Babygirl. (Opens Wed., Dec. 25, wide)

ALSO OPENING

All We Imagine as Light: If you’re going to empty one cinematic stocking this week, do yourself a favor and check out one of the most acclaimed films of the year. A universe away from the Bollywood films that come most readily to mind when you think about modern Indian cinema, Payal Kapadia’s masterful second feature centers on three women who work at a Mumbai women’s clinic.

Nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) lives a life of quiet desperation. Her husband from an arranged marriage left to work in Germany shortly after their wedding, and at this point hasn’t called her in over a year. Her younger colleague and roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha), is carrying on a furtive affair with a Muslim boy she knows her parents would surely reject as a suitor. And the widowed Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is being threatened with eviction by the developers who have purchased the apartment building where she lives.

In each case, antiquated attitudes and patriarchal institutions stand in the way of a woman and her happiness. Prabha parries the attentions of a doctor at the clinic who writes poetry about her; Anu develops a reputation as a loose woman because she’s forced to sneak around in order to spend time with the person she loves rather than the men forwarded to her by her parents from a dating app. And Parvaty is unable to prove her legal residency in her apartment because all of the paperwork was in her husband’s name.

Kapadia’s vision of Mumbai is neither a bangle-burdened Orientalist fantasia nor a heart-tugging chronicle of slum life. Rather, she’s clear-eyed about both the everyday bustle and alienation of urban life and the moments of sublime beauty that coexist. The opening shots of produce vendors setting up as the sun begins to rise are a perfect example.

The second half of All We Imagine as Light, however, leaves the city behind as Prabha and Anu accompany Parvaty back to the rural hamlet where she grew up and that she has decided to move back to. Outside their usual environment, the three gradually reveal themselves to each other, leading to a sublime final episode that provides a small catharsis and a glimmer of hope.

This isn’t a political film, but a strongly humanist one that speaks to a number of larger concerns related to gloablization: the migrations of untold millions from the countryside to the cities on developing nations; the obstacles faced by women trying to climb the economic ladder in traditional societies; the turmoil left behind in the wake of modernization. But mostly it’s a beautifully acted, sensitively directed window into the lives of three people who have more in common than expected. (Opens Friday, Dec. 20, at Living Room Theaters)

The Fire Inside: Claressa “T-Rex” Shields overcame a disadvantaged childhood in Flint, Michigan, as well as the prejudices of others, to become the only American boxer to ever win gold medals at consecutive Olympic Games, and to do it the first two times the Olympics included women’s boxing events. Hers is an inspiring story, even if you find the idea of a sport in which people punch each other rather retrograde, but if covered, it would be one more forgettable sports dramas about an underdog with a dedicated coach whose grit paid off in the end.

What the screenplay from Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) does, however is a bit more radical. Shields (Ryan Destiny) beats the odds and makes the U.S. Olympic team in 2012 at the age of 17. She then squeaks out a gold medal victory, at which point the movie’s only half over. It turns out Shields’ real triumph wasn’t against her ring opponents or her upbringing, but against a system that, even after her win, failed to reward her for her efforts. At one point, a potential sponsor asks Shields what she’s after: “Is it respect? Is it money?” “Money IS respect!” she replies in exasperation. It’s a reminder that America’s Olympic heroes, especially those who don’t conform to societal expectations, are too often quickly forgotten. (Opens Wed., Dec. 25, wide)

STREAMING PICK

Juror #2: If you follow such things, you probably know that Warner Brothers, the movie studio that Clint Eastwood has been turning profits for over the last several decades but which is now run by the decidedly non-nostalgic David Zaslav, dumped the 94-year-old’s latest effort into a smattering of theaters a few weeks back. Well, it has now quickly and inevitably shown up on Max, which at least means people can see it, especially [puts on Zaslav hat] the old people who don’t go to theaters and are the only possible audience for a movie starring Nicholas Hoult (Nosferatu) and J. K. Simmons (Red One).

I didn’t love it as much as many others seemed to, but it’s yet another competently made late-period effort from Eastwood, directing from a screenplay by Jonathan A. Abrams that has a compelling concept but a flawed execution. Hoult is a new father and recovering alcoholic who gets called for jury duty in the trial of a local dude accused of murdering his girlfriend. Turns out, however, that Juror #2 himself may have been responsible for the young woman’s death: it was dark and raining, he thought he’d hit a deer with his car, but, well, he didn’t. Hoult now has to figure out a way to get the defendant exonerated without exposing himself to criminal liability. Frankly, Abrams’s script makes this far more complicated than it probably would need to be. Our protagonist had no ill intent, he wasn’t driving drunk, and he made an innocent mistake. It’s hard to believe he would get in that much trouble if he simply fessed up. Nevertheless, he persists, even as a fellow juror (Simmons) who’s an ex-cop develops his own suspicions and the ambitious DA (Toni Collette) drives for a conviction.

To say that Juror #2 will play fine on a decent home entertainment setup is not to excuse Warner’s disloyal and disgraceful decision to treat possibly the last film from an American filmmaking titan like something on the bottom of their shoe. But, who knows, maybe it’ll piss the old coot off just enough that he’ll crank another one out, maybe this time for A24 or Neon? (Streaming on Max as of Friday, Dec. 20)

ALSO OPENING

Mufasa: The Lion King: The uncanny valley travels to the Serengeti plains for this photorealistic CGI prequel to the photorealistic CGI remake of the Disney animated classic The Lion King. The young Mufasa and the cub who will become the baddie Scar meet as adoptive brothers, and director Barry Jenkins (yes, the same one who wrote The Fire Inside) tells the story of how they became enemies. As IP-saturated media content continues to eat its own tail, we should expect more of these authorized fanfic pieces relating the origin stories of iconic villains. Speaking of… (Opens Friday, Dec. 20, wide)

Sonic the Hedgehog 3: The third entry in the anime-style, video-game-inspired franchise introduces a sort of Dark Hedgehog, voiced by Keanu Reeves, who has a tragic backstory as the victim of government-sponsored experiments back in the 1950s. He’s the Joker to Sonic’s Batman, the Bizarro to his Superman, the Scar to his Simba. One assumes. (opens Friday, Dec. 20, wide)

FRIDAY

• A Christmas Story [1983] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• I, Tonya [2017] (Tomorrow Theater)
• It’s a Wonderful Life [1946] (Kiggins Theatre, through Tuesday; Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Miracle on 34th Street [1947] (Kiggins Theatre, through Tuesday)
• Santa with Muscles [1996] (Cinemagic)
• The Shining [1980] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Sleepy Hollow [1999] (Hollywood Theatre)

SATURDAY

• Animated Christmas 12 (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Big Lebowski [1998] (Clinton St. Theater, through Sunday, Dec. 28)
• Black Christmas [1974] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also Sunday)
• Die Hard [1988] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also Monday)
• It’s a Wonderful Life [1946] (Hollywood Theatre, also Sunday)
• Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special [1988] (Tomorrow Theater, also Sunday)
• Stop Making Sense [1984] (Hollywood Theatre)

TUESDAY

• A Muppet Christmas Carol [1992] (Cinemagic)