Best Movies New to Streaming in December 2023

“Afire” (dir. Christian Petzold, 2023)

The Criterion Channel’s annual streaming lineup typically peaks with the one-two punch of October horror and November noir, but this year it seems as if the streamer may have saved the best for last, starting with another glorious heaping of noir, this time themed for the holiday season (don’t miss Nicholas Ray’s “They Live by Night”).

And speaking of the holidays, what says “Christmas” more than a comprehensive look back at the films of Alfred Hitchcock? Well, lots of things probably, but that’s no reason not to celebrate a career overview that spans from “The Lodger” in 1927 all the way through “Torn Curtain” in 1966. Anyone in the mood for something a little more festive should enjoy the Chanel’s series on MGM Musicals (which peaks with “The Band Wagon”), while anyone in the mood for something a lot less festive could hardly do better than Abel Gance’s silent masterpiece, “La roue,” a seven-hour epic about a man who falls in love with the baby girl he adopts after she’s orphaned in a train accident. 

Meanwhile, forever it girl Parker Posey, fresh off her unforgettable cameo in “Beau Is Afraid,” gets an overdue retrospective that finally puts “Josie and the Pussycats” alongside the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujiro Ozu where it belongs, while Ozu — a Criterion staple if ever there was one — gets a massive, organized retrospective in celebration of Daniel Raim’s documentary “In Search of Ozu,” and the great Senegalese auteur Ousmane Sembène is spotlighted by a six-film program that starts with his immortal “Black Girl” and continues through 1992’s under-seen “Guelwaar.” 

Similarly under-appreciated (if also considerably easier to find), our pick of the month is Christian Petzold’s “Afire.” It may not stack up against the likes of “Vertigo” or “Late Spring,” but anyone in the business of making best-of-the-year lists owes it to themselves to catch up with this mordantly slow-burning comedy about a petulant writer who goes on a summer getaway and crushes hard on a woman (Paula Beer) who can’t stand his new book. What at first seems a bit lighter and more frivolous than Petzold’s recent fare winds up scarring with the best of them.

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “Late Spring” (12/1)
– “Black Girl” (12/1)
– “Josie and the Pussycats” (12/1)

“Sexual Drive” (dir. Kôta Yoshida, 2021)

An impotent Japanese man who hasn’t slept with his wife in more than five years receives a house call from her secret lover, who tortures — and arouses — the husband with pungent descriptions of his partner’s vaginal secretions, which he lustfully compares to the stink and stringiness of fermented soybeans. A beautiful woman stricken with panic attacks runs over a familiar pedestrian on her way to buy some mapo tofu, only to discover that her masochistic victim might know how to alleviate her anxiety. A handsome executive who’s sick of his mistress receives a phone call that she’s been abducted, and is forced to listen to her captor ramble on about the missing woman’s carnal appetites as he slurps noodles in a ramen bar where talking is strictly forbidden.

Hardcore food porn for (or at least about) sexually repressed people, Kôta Yoshida’s 70-minute “Sexual Drive” serves up an explicit yet tasteful triptych of semi-connected shorts, all of which leverage the visceral pleasures of food in a way that allows frustrated husbands and wives to eat away at their self-denial and satisfy the less socially acceptable cravings that can make someone mad with hunger. It’s the perfect appetizer for anyone who’s salivating in anticipation for “The Taste of Things.”

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “Pushing Hands” (12/15)
– “The Inner Cage” (12/22)
– “Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands” (12/29)

“Blue Jean” (dir. Georgia Oakley, 2023)

There are a few big movies coming to Hulu this month (including “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” on Christmas Day), but we’d be remiss not to highlight Georgia Oakley’s “Blue Jean,” which IndieWire recently named one of the best debut features of 2023. Here’s what Ryan Lattanzio wrote about this excellent drama at the time:

Georgia Oakley’s narrative feature debut, “Blue Jean,” shimmers with the confidence of an already much-heralded filmmaker, suffusing the sort of British 1980s kitchen sink aesthetic we associate with Mike Leigh and Ken Loach with a gritty lyricism worthy of Lynne Ramsay. This cliché-skirting coming-out story also features breakthrough-level work from actress Rosy McEwen, here playing a PE teacher who works and lives in Newcastle in 1988 — a place steeped in homophobia thanks to Margaret Thatcher and the former Prime Minister’s threat of legislation that would outlaw homosexual acts. Jean must walk a line between being out and comfortably queer to her close friends — and live-in girlfriend — and closeted and less butch at work. Until Jean becomes a confidante to a new student, a younger woman played by Lucy Halliday, and that all blows apart. 

But despite the torturous political and internal tensions roiling in Jean’s soul, “Blue Jean” itself is never overly generous with emotion. Instead it delivers an unexpectedly funny story of a painful gay rite of passage. Consider the scene in which Jean finally comes out, and clean, to her sister and brother-in-law; rather than fall apart into tears, she bursts into laughter at her own revelation. Oakley is that kind of unexpected storyteller, and the chemistry she shares with her lead has resulted in one of the most memorable queer film debuts in recent years.

Available to stream December 14.

Other highlights:

– “The Bling Ring” (12/7)
– “The Matrix Resurrections” (12/10)
– “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (12/25)

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (dir. James Mangold, 2023)

Listen, this critic and known “Crystal Skull” defender was not a big fan of the latest — and hopefully last — “Indiana Jones” sequel. As I wrote at the top of my review in May: “Not only is ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ an almost complete waste of time, it’s also a belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong. If only any previous entries in this series had taken great pains to point that out.” But the purpose of this column is to highlight the movies that define each of the major streaming platforms, and where “best” doesn’t suffice, “biggest” will have to do. And some people liked this one! Maybe Cannes wasn’t the best place to watch it for the first time; some films simply weren’t designed to be seen in a tuxedo, and I only wear those at home when I’m watching a Blu-ray. 

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights: 

– “We Bought a Zoo” (12/1)
– “The Mission” (12/8)

“The Souvenir” (dir. Joanna Hogg, 2019)

Max is all about the dad movies this December, as the streamer is inducting a mess of James Bond and Jack Ryan movies into its library. If those aren’t your cup of tea, there’s always Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” — back in the news! — and Richard Kelly’s “The Box,” which some people swear is a secret masterpiece.

But the real standout here is Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir.” Max might be a strange home for such arthouse fare (the pre-roll hyping season two of “House of Dragons” will never seem more out of place), but there’s no bad way to watch this immaculate auto-drama about a young woman struggling to make sense of her world during a tumultuous semester at a London film school in the 1980s.

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “The Box” (12/1)
– “The Color Purple” (12/1)
– “Skyfall” (12/1)

“Personal Shopper” (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)

Fingers crossed the folks at MUBI sell a lot of new subscriptions this holiday season, because the platform’s December absurdly stacked lineup is undeniable proof that it offers one of the best streaming libraries on the planet (and serves them up on the most elegant app in the game, to boot). As has increasingly become the case with MUBI’s programming, the streamer’s latest release slate is a well-curated mix of essential catalog titles and first-run new releases. 

In the first category, new highlights include a wide array of Lars von Trier’s most love-it-or-loathe-it provocations (including “The Element of Crime” and “The House that Jack Built”), a trio of later-career masterpieces from Olivier Assayas (led, as ever, by “Personal Shopper”), all-time one-offs from Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg (“The Age of Innocence” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” respectively), and a handful of S-tier Shaw Brothers classics like “The One-Armed Swordsman” and “The Five Deadly Venoms.”

Looking for something a bit more seasonal? Arnaud Desplechin’s “A Christmas Tale” is just begging to become your latest holiday tradition. Look for something a bit more awards seasonal? Check out Lily Gladstone in “Certain Women” and “The Unknown Country” to understand why her imminent Oscar feels so overdue. Rodrigo Moreno’s “The Delinquents” might not be quite as destined to bring home a little gold man, but Argentina’s submission to the Best International Feature category — a dreamlike three-hour heist movie about two bank employees who try to steal back a measure of their own freedom — is one of the year’s major standouts all the same.

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “The Delinquents” (12/15)
– “Certain Women” (12/15)
– “The Five Deadly Venoms” (12/22)

“May December” (dir. Todd Haynes, 2023)

This was supposed to be the month of “Maestro,”  but Netflix’s would-be awards season juggernaut has just run into an unexpected roadblock: It turns out the streamer has another — much stronger and more exciting — horse in its stable. That might be a headache for Netflix’s Oscar strategists, but it’s already been a blessing for the company’s subscribers, as Todd Haynes’ “May December” rocketed up the charts as soon as it launched on the platform and still feels like the only streaming movie that people are talking about, for better or worse (the discourse has been… interesting, but it’s never a bad thing when everyone is obsessing about a bold and brilliant new work from one of our greatest living filmmakers).

While that might change when the first half of Zack Snyder’s five-hour sci-fi “Seven Samurai” remake drops later this month (for worse), let’s all savor this magical stretch of time when the algorithm wanted everyone in America to know about a troubled woman who’s deathly afraid that she didn’t buy enough hot dogs. 

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “Blockers” (12/1)
– “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” (12/15)
– “Maestro” (12/20)

“Little Sister” (dir. Zach Clark, 2016)

So many low-budget American indies are about stunted twentysomethings who return to their childhood homes in order to achieve some great personal catharsis, but so few of them understand what home really means, or know how to find it. It’s been almost two decades since “Garden State” enshrined that template for a new generation of filmmakers, yet Zach Clark‘s weird, winsome, and wonderful “Little Sister” is one of the few movies that has used it to tell a story that feels indivisibly true to itself. 

Colleen Lunsford (a note-perfect Addison Timlin) isn’t a struggling actor or a recently fired shoe designer, she’s a young nun in New York City, a virgin on the verge of taking her first vows. She’s also a bright-eyed former goth who’s full of social grace, and her supervisor at the convent (horror icon Barbara Crampton) is growing concerned that the girl hasn’t fully divested herself from the outside world. Summoned south by her depressive mother (Ally Sheedy), Colleen hits the road, driving down memory lane until the road ends outside her old stomping grounds in the woods of Asheville, North Carolina. It’s natural to feel like a tourist the first time you revisit your childhood home as an adult, but Colleen might as well be seeing her past reflected to her through a funhouse mirror.

For all of its horror-metal leanings — iced with an indelible scene in which Colleen destroys a plastic baby doll while lip syncing to Gwar’s “Have You Seen Me?” — the movie skips along with a degree of semi-historical sensitivity that gives it the feeling of a good Sufjan Stevens song. The brunt of its power comes from Timlin’s unforgettable performance; she inhabits Colleen with the guarded grace of someone who’s trying to figure out if she can go with God without leaving a big part of herself behind. It’s a subtly demanding characterization, but her Colleen is funny when you least expect it, sharp when you think she might go soft, and ineffably true to the better angels of her nature until the bitter end.

Available to stream December 8.

Other highlights:

– “Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film” (12/1)
– “The Hole Story” (12/5)

“The Shining” (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

Here’s what IndieWire’s Christian Zilko wrote about “The Shining” when IndieWire named it one of the 100 best movies of the 1980s:

Few of Stanley Kubrick’s myriad achievements are as impressive as the fact that he turned a glorified airport novel into his generation’s most haunting adult fairy tale. From the moment Jack Torrance signs the Faustian contract that seals his family in a hotel famous for making men kill their families, there’s only one possible way the tragedy can end (to the extent it ever does). Yet Kubrick treats his pulpy premise with the same obsessive craftsmanship he brought to his “highbrow” fare, creating a study of the darkness in the human soul that’s as hard to define as the layout of the Overlook Hotel.

Few horror movies before or since have been executed on the scale of “The Shining,” and the film is an enduring reminder of what the genre is capable of when treated with the seriousness it deserves. From the deliberately disorienting set design and meticulous Steadicam shots to the religious and literary symbolism oozing out of every frame, Kubrick immerses audiences in the a world that seems like it emerged fully formed long before mankind set foot in Colorado.

The craftsmanship is matched by a career-defining performance from Jack Nicholson, whose command of subtle mannerisms turns an objectively predictable descent into madness into something that never ceases to be thrilling. He embodies the character with a lethal combination of machismo and insecurity, terrorizing his family with his mood swings for so long that it’s hard to gauge the exact moment when his jackassery is replaced by good old-fashioned insanity. His piercing stare is an image that — much like the ghosts at the Overlook Hotel, and the very presence of evil itself — seems to have been haunting us since time immemorial.

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “Face/Off” (12/1)
– “The Hours” (12/1)
– “Rosemary’s Baby” (12/1)

“Asteroid City” (dir. Wes Anderson, 2023)

Like any movie by Wes Anderson, “Asteroid City” is the epitome of a Wes Anderson movie. A film about a television program about a play within a play “about infinity and I don’t know what else” (as one character describes it), this delightfully profound desert charmer — by far the director’s best effort since “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and in some respects the most poignant thing he’s ever made — boasts all of his usual hallmarks and then some.

A multi-tiered framing device, diorama-esque shot design, and Tilda Swinton affectlessly saying things like “I never had children, but sometimes I wonder if I wish I should have” are just some of the many signature flourishes that you might recognize from Anderson’s previous work and/or the endless parade of A.I.-generated TikToks that imitate his style.

Let’s just say that all of the people in Asteroid City will be more directly confronted with the unknown than anyone in a Wes Anderson film has been before. Imagine if Mr. Fox’s encounter with the wolf on the hill came at the end of the first act instead of the end of the third, or if Steve Zissou came face-to-face with the jaguar shark that ate his friend just a few minutes after the jaguar shark ate his friend. Imagine if any of Anderson’s most resolute yet vulnerable characters — all of whom have devised intricate systems of living in order to impose some degree of control over a chaotic universe — were forced to reckon with their own helplessness right from the start.

Available to stream December 12.

Other highlights:

– “In the Heat of the Night” (12/1)
– “The Ring” (12/1)
– “The Magnificent Seven” (12/1)

“The Gingerdead Man” (dir. Charles Band, 2005)

Shudder is keeping pretty quiet this month as it recovers from the spooky season and gears up for a big 2024. IndieWire critic Alison Foreman didn’t care much for the streamer’s most high-profile new exclusive, “It’s a Wonderful Knife,” and “Devil’s Pass” isn’t exactly peak Renny Harlin, but Larry Fessenden’s “Wendigo” is always a good time. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen “The Gingerdead Man,” in which Gary Busey stars as a monster created from a blend of gingerbread spice mix and the ashes of a deceased serial killer, but sometimes a movie’s logline is so good that actually watching it feels like it would spoil the fun.

Available to stream December 1.

Other highlights:

– “Wendigo” (12/11)
– “Devil’s. Pass” (12/11)