Time gets ever more precious around holiday time, requiring you to be a bit more discerning about what you watch. So we’re trying to make it easier for you with a power ranking of 10 unmissable 2025 releases, with a bonus list of some older films totally worth watching. Here’s our roundup. “Hamnet”: Chloé Zhao’s fifth feature rips your heart out. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel a book club favorite it succeeds on two levels. First, by illustrating how a tragedy changed forever the lives of Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), and second, relating how that devastating event served as the cathartic inspiration for one of the most legendary dramatic works of all time. The performances overwhelm you. Buckley makes you feel her incessant pain and grief while Mescal effortlessly captures a man able to communicate not through speech but through his written words. Jacobi Jupe, as Agnes and William’s son Hamnet, gives a performance that’s wise beyond his years. Max Richter’s score including the use of his well-known “On the Nature of Daylight” enhances the experience as does Łukasz Żal’s mood-setting cinematography. The finale overstates its hand but still packs an emotional punch. Details: 3½ stars out of 4; in theaters Nov. 26. “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”: Rian Johnson’s third stab at paying tribute to Agatha Christie and, this time, John Dickson Carr, absolutely kills it, sharpening the rough edges from the previous “Knives Out” offering and delivering a creepy, locked-door mystery that is not only a stumper but full of ideas. The film ponders the almighty and faith, the line between real vs. phony and authoritative abuses of power. It’s his best-plotted homage yet with clever lines that snap like a rubber band and it features another outstanding performance from Josh O’Connor. The versatile actor is ever so endearing as boxer-turned-priest Jud Duplenticy, a guy whose fists and hot temper confine him over to a small countryside parish overseen by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a brusque tea-spilling brute. Everyone has a motive to off Wicks, and someone does just that. Enter dapper Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, conjuring that old Southern charm) as he and prime suspect Jud sift through a legacy of lies and suspects, played with the appropriate scene chewing by Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church and Cailee Spaeny. All are terrific, but it is the amiable pairing of Craig and O’Connor that make this such a crime to remember. Details: 3½ stars; opens Nov. 26 in select theaters; streams Dec. 12 on Netflix. “Eternity”: Sweet, soulful and unpretentious, David Freyne’s heart-melting sentimental romance asks a tough question: Who, if you could pick, would spend your afterlife with and where would you spend it? That is the dilemma placed before Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who is torn between the affections of two departed lovers: Larry (Miles Tiller), her pretzel-loving husband for decades, or Luke (Callum Turner), her swoonable first husband who died all too soon. But instead of stacking the deck in favor of one suitor as many would Patrick Cunnane’s deft script avoids it, drafting up two lovers with attributes and faults, just like Joan herself. What’s also so “Heaven Can Wait” charming about “Eternity” is its imagining of what that extra-busy afterlife waiting station would be like (production designers have great fun with it). And the comedic support from Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph and from John Early as afterlife coordinators is icing on the cake. If you’re sweet on romantic dramas, this will sate your appetite. Details: 3 stars; in theaters now. “Come See Me in the Good Light”: Is it possible for a documentary that intimately peers into the lives of a couple poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley as they grapple with the reality that one of them (Gibson) as terminal cancer to wind up being filled with life and joy and tears? Their story is in the caring hands of director Ryan White (“Good Night Oppy,” “Pamela, a Love Story”) and results in a beautiful tribute to a steadfast, caring love and to a talented woman whose poetry strikes chords in the soul. It’s one of the best documentaries of 2025. Details: 4 stars; available now on Apple TV+. “Left-Handed Girl”: It’s easy to spot “Anora’s” Sean Baker fingerprints all over director/co-screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou’s funny-sad family drama, her debut solo feature. But don’t be fooled by his co-writing and editing credit. Tsou’s fractured family portrait of a harried single mom (Janel Tsai) setting up a noodle shop in Taipei while tending to two very different people rebellious, often bored teen I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and adorable and precious child I-Jing (Nina Ye) is unique on its own terms. Filmed often from the perspective of I-Jing, “Left-Handed Girl” tangles with numerous issues as this trio reckons with the past and the present and also with each other. Details: 3½ stars; available Nov. 28 on Netflix. “Nouvelle Vague”: Richard Linklater’s love song to both the crazy act of filmmaking and Jean Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic “Breathless” all but twinkles and is as light as a feather. While it isn’t as fulfilling as one might hope when documenting the making of this iconic film, it is more often than not irresistible. Linklater stays true to the iconic 1960 film’s off-the-cuff tone and style, including filming it in B&W. There are numerous touches that will make you smile in particular how Linklater introduces key collaborators and New Wave figures along with Zoey Deutch as French superstar Jean Seberg and newcomer Guillaume Marbeck as Godard. Details: 3 stars; now streaming on Netflix. “Palm Royale Season 2”: This campy soap opera with Kristen Wiig, Ricky Martin, Allison Janey, Leslie Bibb and the great Carol Burnett dropped the ball its first season, being more flat than fizzy. Season 2 rebounds and embraces its kitschy self and is all the better for it. Burnett finally gets her chance to shine (and speak first season she was mum), Martin gets to pine for a good romance in unwelcome times for being gay and Wiig hits her stride as ‘60s era country club climber Maxine Dellacorte. The cast is to die for, with Janey sparring with, well, everyone, including a younger lover, while Bibb is so good she deserves her own series. There’s a dead body or two, a frothy song and dance number and absurd plot twists aplenty. What more could you want? Details: 3 stars; streaming on Apple TV+. “Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper!”: Should you be stuck with a serious case of the bah humbugs this season, you can chipper up with this yuletide confection, which could probably make Scrooge crack a smile. The reason for that? Star/co-writer Robert Buckley. You can’t help but be thoroughly charmed by his affable presence as an upbeat but accident-prone weatherman who bumbles his way back to his hometown of Lackawanna where he runs into you guessed it! his old crush (Kimberley Sustad). The plot is warm-blanket-comforting stuff, but the leads are delightful and the situations a holiday escape room, a Christmas costume party can perk up a bad mood. Details: 3 stars; streaming now on Hallmark Channel. “Hundreds of Beavers”: Made on the cheap (reportedly a $150,000 budget), this 2022 black nd white silent film from the tag team of director/editor Mike Cheslik and star/cowriter Ryland Brickson Cole Tews strikes pure comedic gold. Reminiscent of both a Buster Keaton classic and a Road Runner/Bugs Bunny cartoon, it wipes out any care you might have as a determined 19th-century furrier and a colony of pesky beavers (actors in costume) square off and try to outwit the other. It’s a cult classic in the making that will indeed make you laugh till it hurts. Details: 3½ stars; streaming on Amazon Prime now. “The Disinvited”: There’s a real thrill when stumbling upon a gutsy, low-budget indie with talent to spare. Such is the case with this genre-defiant quasi-thriller, in which a handsome but borderline unhinged Southern Californian guy (Sam Daly) becomes ostracized and kicked to the curb by his friends, and then goes on a road trip. The sometimes funny, sometimes unsettling second feature from director/co-screenwriter Devin Lawrence is full of surprises and shocks. Lawrence and co-screenwriter Matthew Mourgides take big swings, and more often than not hit it out of the park. Details: 3 stars; available to rent on several streaming platforms. And keep in mind: “Train Dreams” (Netflix), “Rental Family” (theaters), “Death By Lightning” (Netflix), “The Beast in Me” (Netflix), “The Running Man” (theaters), “It Was Just an Accident” (theaters). Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail. com.
https://www.marinij.com/2025/11/26/what-to-watch-hamnet-is-perfect-viewing-for-thanksgiving-weekend/
What to watch: ‘Hamnet’ is perfect viewing for Thanksgiving weekend
