Reviews of six December movies: 'Nightbitch,' 'The End,' 'Day of the Fight,' 'The Order,' 'Hard Truths' and 'Oh, Canada'

A half-dozen movies of varying degrees of quality.

Reviews of six new movies, all out this Friday, in different degrees of wide and not-so-wide release:

Nightbitch

Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch has a thunderingly obvious central metaphor, and… that’s about all it has.

Working from Rachel Yoder’s novel of the same name, the film stars Amy Adams as an overwhelmed stay-at-home mom of a toddler. Unable to handle the rage of those circumstances, Adams’ character — who has no name except for “Mother” — transforms at night into a dog, werewolf-style.

And… that’s about it. The film makes its point very early on, and then just coasts from that point on, before wrapping up with an ending that’s way too tidy and happy.

A movie with that promise should go harder and should be crazier. The fall’s other big feminist statement film, The Substance, had a bonkers premise in the first act that got about ten times more batshit in the third; Nightbitch could have used an ending like that.

I appreciated the needle drop of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid,” but… it’s not a great sign if a Weird Al needle drop should be one of the highlights of a movie.

The film is also heavily overreliant on that device - familiar to fans of the old HBO show Six Feet Under - in which Adams has a meltdown in public but then it turns out she didn’t really, she just wanted to. It’s a good performance by her, but the writing does her no favors.

Scoot McNairy, playing only the second most worthless husband he’s played this year. In the Speak No Evil remake, he was much less effective, although in that movie he at least got some depth. His performance in A Complete Unknown, as a mute, disease-stricken Woody Guthrie, is better than either.

Heller directed the outstanding Can You Ever Forgive Me, as well as the above-average Mr. Rogers biopic with Tom Hanks. But Nightbitch is a misfire.

The End

The best movie musical of 2024 is not Wicked; it is The End, the feature directorial debut of Joshua Oppenheimer, who made the very best documentary of the current century, The Act of Killing, back in 2013. The last time Oppenheimer directed scenes of theatricality, he was dealing with notorious Indonesian war criminals, so directing Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon must have been a breeze.

The premise: The apocalypse is upon us, and one family (parents Shannon and Swinton, their son George McKay, and friends/employees played by Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny, and Lennie James) are living together in an underground bunker. Shannon’s father character is a former energy CEO who may be personally responsible for the disaster. Eventually, a young woman (Moses Ingram) arrives and threatens to throw off the fragile equilibrium.

Yes, there are musical numbers, that are Broadway-caliber, despite none of the performers being especially strong singers. They perform a perfect contrast with the dramatic scenes, which show both bleakness and flashes of pure evil.

The End, which didn’t make much of an impression at the fall festivals, is going to make about a buck and a half at the box office, and a tiny, tiny fraction of the audience that saw Wicked will ever even hear of it. But if Emilia Perez is this year’s big musical swing that didn’t connect creativity, The End is the one that did.

Day of the Fight

Here’s one of those unheralded, bottom-of-the-screener-pile movies that I was blown away by. The directorial debut of Boardwalk Empire actor Jack Huston — whose grandfather, John Huston, directed a notable film or two — Day of the Fight sounds from its plot description like a parade of cliches, and it certainly is that.

But everything about the filmmaking is first-rate- the black and white cinematography, the lighting, the music, and the small performances, from a parade of Huston’s former co-stars.

Day of the Fight is the story of a boxer named Mike Flannigan, recently out of prison, who visits and makes peace with various friends, family members and acquaitance, before he returns to the ring that night. He’s played by Michael Pitt, also from Boardwalk Empire, taking the well-worn path from pretty-boy young actor to believable middle-aged tough guy.

He has single scenes with several outstanding actors — Steve Buscemi, Ron Perlman, John Magaro, Nicolette Robinson and, in one shocking scene, Joe Pesci. Was this a director calling in favors to famous friends? I’m sure it was- but he made the most of it.

Of this year’s two straight lifts of The Wrestler, I preferred Day of the Fight to The Last Showgirl, nothing particularly against the latter film.

The Order

Is it bad that I found this movie had its heart in the right place, telling an important story, with a talented cast, but at the same time it’s just way too boring?

Directed by Justin Kurzel, it tells the story of an FBI agent (Jude Law) investigating the titular white supremacist gang in the 1980s led by Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult). They were most notorious for their antisemitic murder of talk show host Alan Berg (Marc Maron), who was also the inspiration for Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio.

Yes, the film is certainly timely, especially at a time when we thought guys like them were gone, but now they’re on everyone’s For You page. The Order is more realistic than Spike Lee’s similar BlacKKKlansman, but not nearly as propulsive.

I watched The Order in October during the Philadelphia Film Festival and zoned out then, and when I tried again this week, I zoned out again.

Hard Truths

Mike Leigh’s latest Britain-set film has one big thing going for it: The single-greatest acting performance of the year.

That would be Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s turn as Patsy, quite possibly the meanest, most abrasive movie character you’ve ever seen in your life. She yells at her family, she snaps at doctors, and much worse. And yes, of course, we get into her backstory and how she got the way she did- with the film ultimately granting her much empathy.

Leigh, reuniting with Jean-Baptiste after she starred in his 1996 Secrets and Lies, is 81 years old, one of this year’s many still-active octogenarian directors. The film is well-told, but really- give Jean-Baptiste every award there is.

Oh, Canada

Speaking of older directors reuniting with long-ago collaborators, Oh, Canada is the latest chapter in 78-year-old Paul Schrader’s late-career renaissance, this time starring his American Gigolo leading man Richard Gere.

In this adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel, Gere plays Leonard Fife, a dying documentary filmmaker who has turned subject with his former student (Michael Imperioli) taking this last opportunity to make a movie about this life. This is told in flashbacks, with a younger (and half a foot taller) Jacob Elordi standing in for tales of Leonard’s womanizing and draft-dodging.

This is all fertile subject matter, although the storytelling gets a bit muddled at times. Still, Gere, who we don’t see nearly enough of these days, is outstanding.

It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to imply that Schrader sees something of himself in Fife, another veteran filmmaker in the twilight of life, especially after Schrader suffered a big health scare a couple of years ago. And while Paul may not have ever fled to Canada, he has had an exile or two over the years.

Still, First Reformed was great, and Schrader’s movies since, Oh, Canada included have been merely good.