From Nosferatu to The Brutalist: Top picks at the cinema for January 2025
Our film critic, Mark Walsh, looks forward to some exciting new year releases, in this column, sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse. Look out for Mark’s top 50 films of 2024, coming soon.
Nosferatu
Remakes always get a bad rap. If a story’s worth telling, it’s worth telling well; after all, we’ve been reworking Shakespeare for nearly half a millennium.
From The Thing to The Fly, some of the greatest films of all time are horror remakes, and if we can have hope of anyone with experience in the genre to offer a compelling new take on existing material, then it’s surely Robert Eggers. Between The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman he’s shown a love for horror and an ability not only to tap into our psyche but to conjure up imagery that’s both beautiful and disturbing.
This is a remake of a property that borrows from one of the greatest horror stories of them all; the original Nosferatu film, now just over a century old, borrowed heavily from the Dracula story and mythos.
It’s already been remade previously, by Werner Herzog in 1979, but it’s been a passion project for Eggers for a while. He’s reuniting with stars from his previous films: Ralph Ineson and Willem Dafoe have both featured for the director in multiple previous films, but his main star is a relative to his last film: Alexander Skarsgård starred in The Northman and it’s his brother Bill who takes on the role of the Dracula-esque Count Orlak.
Eggers’ tale keeps the period setting and continental location, with Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hout) trying to help Orlak with his real estate concerns, while Orlok has vampiric concerns about Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp).
Meanwhile, Defoe is the Van Helsing-like Eberhart Von Franz and Aaron Taylor-Johnson also plays a vampire hunter but Ellen has more agency here than in previous versions so isn’t left to rely on the men.
Shot with a sensibility inspired by Romantic artworks, Eggers describes it as being if “Merchant Ivory made a Hammer horror movie.” And who wouldn’t want to get their teeth into that?
Nosferatu opens on Wednesday, 1 January.
A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg has been a familiar face on our screens for nearly two decades, as adept and comfortable with comedy as he is with drama. Whether it’s Adventureland, Zombieland, The Social Network, Now You See Me or his role as Lex Luthor, he’s comfortably played both extroverts and introverts on screen.
Here he writes and directs one of each, giving himself the more reserved role while casting Kieran Culkin as the loud-mannered cousin that provides sharp relief.
They play cousins David and Benji, who’ve embarked on a trip to Poland in search of both family history and to do a little family bonding.
Their grandmother has died and they’re in search of their heritage, but their differences leave David wondering how they can be so different: he’s keen to blend into the background before getting back to his wife and family, but Benji is a spontaneous free spirit who’s always causing social awkwardness for David and the rest of their tour group (including Will Sharpe and Jennifer Grey).
David is more frustrated when Benji’s lack of filter and confrontational approach only seem to endear him to the rest of the group.
While their tour visits the Majdanek concentration camp, and Eisenberg make sure that the gravity of history is suitably felt, there’s also a controlled balancing of tones throughout the rest of the film, allowing the cousins’ odd-couple dynamic to come to the fore and to provide a thoughtful exploration of family sprinkled with gentle humour and genuine warmth.
A Real Pain provides an alternative exploration of the impact of the Holocaust, our processing of that horror at several decades’ distance, but also weaves through a present-day family drama that never feels at odds. Eisenberg the director and writer, it seems, is just as talented as the actor.
A Real Pain opens on Wednesday, 8 January.
Babygirl
It’s fascinating to see two actors at different points on their career trajectories working together.
Director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) brings together Nicole Kidman, whose trophy cabinet includes recognition from Oscar, BAFTA, the Emmys and Golden Globes, and Harris Dickinson, whose star is definitely on the rise thanks to Triangle Of Sadness, Scrapper and The Iron Claw.
Reijn also writes and produces the forbidden romance, which still feels unconventional in the ages of its respective leads.
After rescuing her from a dog attack, Samuel (Dickinson) pops up as an intern at the delivery firm of CEO Romy (Kidman). When he starts to become more of a presence in her life, she becomes intrigued by him, eventually allowing him to provoke and challenge her. But the risk of their relationship to Romy’s career seems to feed more arousal than concern, and attempts to resist their multi-faceted attraction only seem to draw them closer.
Reijn is interested in something more than naked physical attraction or simplistic power dynamics, even if there are simplicities such as Antonio Banderas as the husband unable to satisfy his wife.
As Romy and Samuel explore their own boundaries as well as each other’s, Babygirl is a frank, funny and fearless look at sexuality, desire and power dynamics with a pair of supreme performances.
Babygirl previews on Tuesday, 31 December and opens on Friday, 10 January.
Coming Soon: The Brutalist
If, like me, you’re a completist and want to make sure when entering awards season that you can pass an opinion on all of the contenders, then it’s worth drawing your attention now to one of the January releases so that you can circle it in the diary.
Brady Corbet has carved out an acting career that includes Funny Games, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Clouds Of Sils Maria, before turning his hand to directing with 2018’s Vox Lux.
He’s now delivered a three-hour epic about a Hungarian architect who emigrates to the US and his battle to live out the American dream. Corbet contrasts the simplicity of that aspirational fantasy with the reality of the experience of those attempting to make new lives. It’s got a formidable cast, with Adrien Brody supported by Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn and more, and seems certain to draw the attention of both US and UK academies come voting time.
The Brutalist opens on the 24 January.
