Winter Movie Preview 2024

Wicked (in theaters Nov. 27)

Michelle Yeoh, 62, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, 72, and Peter Dinklage, 55, star in the film of the smash Broadway musical about The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West.

Maria (in limited theaters Nov. 27, on Netflix Dec. 11)

Angelina Jolie, 49, whose wild private life sometimes made it hard for her to get her due as an actress, is a leading contender for an Oscar in this biopic about the tumultuous last days of the opera soprano Maria Callas.

September 5 (in limited theaters Nov. 29, wide release December 13)

Steven Spielberg’s 2005 Munich dramatized the hunt for the terrorists who struck the 1972 Munich Olympics, but this riveting pulse-pounder puts you in the hearts and minds of the ABC Sports news crew who had to show it to the world, making split-second decisions without getting more people killed. It’s a leading contender for the Best Picture Oscar.

Unstoppable (In theaters Dec. 1)

Jennifer Lopez, 55, Bobby Cannavale, 54, and Don Cheadle, 60, star in the true story of Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome), born with one leg, who won the national college wrestling championship. 

The Six Triple Eight (In theaters Dec. 6, on Netflix Dec. 20)

Kerry Washington, Oprah Winfrey, 70, and Sam Waterston, 83, star in the story of the first (and only) Women’s Army Corps unit of color stationed overseas in World War II. 

Nightbitch (in theaters Dec. 6)

A married artist (Amy Adams, 50) tending her towheaded toddler discovers that it’s not just sleep deprivation that’s slowing her roll — she’s actually turning canine. Her sense of smell becomes acute. She begins to grow odd hairs, furry patches and extra nipples on her belly. She goes from feeling powerless as a stay-at-home mom to embracing her inner dog, connecting with the neighborhood pooch pack and finding her power in the world. Brilliant as movie and metaphor.

The Order (in theaters Dec. 6)

Jude Law, 51, plays a rugged, seen-it-all G-man confronting a self-righteous white supremacist rebel leader (Nicholas Hoult) in a war for America’s soul. Based on the real-life violence of the Aryan Nation spinoff The Order and its 1980s bank robberies, bombings and assassination of an outspoken Jewish radio host, the drama is relentless. As antagonists, Law and Hoult are powerful yet restrained in committed performances that propel the film toward its inevitable combustible climax. In a fact-based story ripped from 1980s headlines, Law plays a haunted FBI agent who moves to the remote Pacific Northwest to relax, and finds himself on the trail of a terrifying neo-Nazi gang.

Nickel Boys (in limited theaters Dec. 13)

Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, 55, plays a hotel housekeeper whose beloved grandson (Ethan Herisse) is unjustly imprisoned in a barbaric Jim Crow–era reformatory. Peabody Award winner and Emmy and Oscar nominee RaMell Ross directs this very long, extremely arty adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning, based-on-true-life bestseller by Colson Whitehead, 55.

The Room Next Door (in theaters Dec. 20)

In the first English-language feature by Pedro Almodóvar, onetime New York magazine colleagues Martha (Tilda Swinton, 63) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore, 63) reunite after many years when Martha confronts cancer and asks Martha to help her die with dignity.

The Brutalist (in theaters Dec. 20)

Adrien Brody, 51, plays a visionary Hungarian architect and haunted Holocaust survivor who flees to America to build his masterpiece for an imperious millionaire (Guy Pearce, 57) who sees it as a monument to himself. The film is a monumental, three and a half hour-long Oscar contender (with a 15-minute intermission).

Nosferatu (in theaters Dec. 25)

Willem Dafoe, 69, plays a mad professor who hunts Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), the vampire who’s obsessed with a pious young German girl (Lily-Rose Depp, 25, daughter of Johnny Depp, 61).

 A Complete Unknown (in theaters Dec. 25)

Director James Mangold, 60, immortalized the music rebel Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, and now he’s brought Cash’s young pal Bob Dylan back, along with the 1960s scene his songs chronicled. Timothee Chalamet plays the young Dylan as he’s possessed by genius and goes electric, in a film that will electrify some fans and outrage others.

Babygirl (in theaters Dec. 25)

Is anybody more daring than Nicole Kidman, 57? She plays a CEO with an adoring husband (Antonio Banderas, 64) who does not ring her erotic bell, so she inadvisably but exhilaratingly risks everything for a sizzling fling with a twentysomething intern (Harris Dickinson).