Movies Released December 2, 2022

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.” Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.

Marshall Shepherd has spent five years living with the grief and loss of his wife, and the estrangement that has come from his son Samuel because he chose to forgive the man who killed her. But when Troy, the convict, returns to town, and Troy and Marshall begin an unlikely friendship, Samuel's rage is put to the test, while the town Sheriff investigates a murder that may be related.

When five lovely young girls who hate studying hire part-time tutor Futaro, he guides not only their education but also their hearts. Time spent has brought them all closer, with feelings growing within the girls and Futaro. As they finish their third year of high school and their last school festival approaches, they set their sights on what’s next. Is there a future with one of them and Futaro?

After a high-ranking North Korean official requests asylum, KCIA Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho (LEE Jung Jae) and Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do (JUNG Woo Sung) are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy, known as Donglim, who is deeply embedded within their agency. When the spy begins leaking top secret intel that could jeopardize national security, the two units are each assigned to investigate each other. In this tense situation where if they cannot find the mole, they may be accused themselves, Pyong-ho and Jung-do slowly start to uncover the truth. In the end, they must deal with an unthinkable plot to assassinate the South Korean president…

From documentarian Chris Smith (American Movie) comes a lovingly irreverent portrait of the life, career, and last days of maverick filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., whose rebellious spirit infused decades of counterculture movie-making. “Sr.” widens the lens from Downey's art to the life with which it was deeply intertwined, including an intimate examination of his relationship with son Robert Downey, Jr. Shot over the course of three years, the film truly honors Senior's nonlinear, outlaw-like approach, including capturing his decision to embark on his own concurrent and final film project. Smith’s portrait of a family and an artist is a meditation on life that’s as surreal as it is sentimental, a celebration of making art with no rules that tosses out its own rulebook along the way.

Sheriff Church (Robert de Niro) and Detective Zeppelin strive to keep the peace in their rough town, where residents' only two interests are the church or oxycodone. Newly engaged Shelby John (Jack Huston) and Ruby Red want a fresh start. They decide to have a family together and get clean, with the support of Peter, Ruby's brother-in-law (John Malkovich). However Shelby discovers his beloved Ruby dead on their porch before she could fulfill her final wish: to be baptized in the river and washed away from her past sins. Filled with fiery rage, Shelby embarks on a vengeful killing spree to right all the wrong done to Ruby by every link in the drug dealing chain. Armed with nothing but adrenaline and a nail gun, Shelby picks off dealers and junkies one by one until he gets to the top. Sheriff Church and Detective Zeppelin must race against the clock to put an end to Shelby's vigilante justice before his fight with the crime lord Coyote (Quavo) turns the entire town into a bloodbath.

After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on (an unexpected) journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

Crafted from stark footage and exclusive interviews with people displaced by the enduring conflict, Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom reveals how the spirit of unity strengthens morale even amid the country’s darkest hours.

When Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, its citizens instinctively renewed the survival strategies that sustained them eight years prior during the Maidan Uprising. This companion piece to director Evgeny Afineevsky’s Academy Award nominated documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom explores why a jubilant day on Kyiv’s Maidan square instigated warfare that has lasted the better part of a decade. Broadening his focus from a single city, Afineevsky and his veteran Winter on Fire crew turn their lenses on multiple countries, trailing both the Ukrainians trying to escape and those who have vowed to stay behind.

A sweeping look at a humanitarian crisis, the documentary amplifies the views of children, mothers, soldiers, doctors, artists, volunteers, clergymen, and journalists who are transformed while witnessing ceaseless destruction and bloodshed. Featuring narration from Oscar-winning Dame Helen Mirren, Freedom on Fire is a saga of resilience that challenges the international community to oppose tyranny together.

After suffering a near-death experience as a young girl, Darby Harper (Downs) gains the ability to see dead people. As a result, she becomes introverted and shut off from her high school peers and prefers to spend time counseling lonely spirits who have unfinished business on earth. But all that changes when Capri (Cravalho), the Queen Bee of the school’s most exclusive clique, unexpectedly dies in a freak hair straightening accident, resulting in the obvious cancellation of her upcoming “Sweet 17.” Capri, however, pleads with Darby from the other side to intervene and convince Capri’s friends to proceed with the party as planned. In order to appease the wrath of the undead diva, Darby must emerge from her self-imposed exile and reinvent herself — which along the way allows her to find new joy back in the land of the living.

When Veteran Green Beret Carver (Lee Majors) is murdered by a drug gang controlled by Goram (Louis Mandylor) that has been threatening his daughter (Patsy Kensit), his old Special Forces comrades (Nick Moran, Ian Ogilvy, Billy Murray, Paul Barber) reunite to seek revenge, aided by the enigmatic Sanchez (Danny Trejo). As these Renegades dispense their own brand of justice on the mean streets of London with the police (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) hot on their trail, they must use every trick in their war hero playbook to stay one step ahead of the sinister gang.

The pseudonymous Agnes was a pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender health study conducted at UCLA in the 1960s. Her clever use of the study to gain access to gender-affirming healthcare led to her status as a fascinating and celebrated figure in trans history. In this innovative cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt (No Ordinary Man) uses Agnes’s story, along with others unearthed in long-shelved case files, to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed. Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an all-star cast of trans performers, artists, and thinkers – including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent) – take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans history.

Günter was raised by foster parents after being found abandoned in the woods with no memory as a child. Years later, when a man approaches him on the street and whispers a strange word in his ear, he begins to experience visions from his fractured past that reveal a dark secret, threatening what he thinks he knows about his life and the very nature of his existence. 

After a serious car accident (for which he’s responsible), David decides to care for his best friend Javi at a remote house. It doesn’t take long until the animosity insidiously builds between them. As the two of them begin arguing, the truth about their toxic, homicidal relationship bubbles to the surface, and madness soon takes hold. A journey to the heart of deep, dark, gothic Spain.

Samay, a 9-year-old boy living with his family in a remote village in India discovers films for the first time and is absolutely mesmerized. Against his father’s wishes, he returns to the cinema day after day to watch more films, and even befriends the projectionist, who, in exchange for his lunch box, lets him watch movies for free. He quickly figures out that stories become light, light becomes films, and films become dreams. Samay and his wild gang of friends move heaven and earth to catch and project light to achieve a 35mm film projection. But little do they know that soon they’ll be forced to make heartbreaking choices as an era is approaching to annihilate everything they love about their 35mm dreams…

The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter. Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished county with a vicious history of racist terrorism. In a county that was 80 percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper without power. This isn’t a story of hope but of action. Through first person accounts and searing archival footage, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County.

Dave Stevens was a once-in-a-lifetime artist who created the hit comic book series The Rocketeer that reintroduced the world to ’50s pin-up queen Bettie Page and was adapted into a beloved feature film. Dave carried with him a style born of 1930s American Pop Culture, an era he never experienced firsthand, but lived on in his heart and through his illustrations. His award-winning, 35-year career spanned advertising, comics, animation, movies, and TV working with luminaries like Jack Kirby, Doug Wildey, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Landis, and Joe Johnston. Widely considered one of the best illustrators of his generation, Dave Stevens lived life the way he drew, meticulously pursuing a perfection he saw in his mind. His elegant brush work and iconic imagery continue to attract fans and inspire new generations of artists.

Students Hayley and James are young and in love. After saying goodbye for Christmas at a London train station, they both make the same mad split-second decision to swap trains and surprise each other. Passing each other in the station, they are completely unaware that they have just swapped Christmases. Hayley arrives at a vast mansion in a small village in the Gloucester countryside to find a place where Christmas does not exist, whilst James heads north to a small semi-detached in Macclesfield and steps into the warm and chaotic pandemonium that only a large family Christmas can bring. When the entire country is blanketed in the biggest snowfall on record, our star-crossed lovers are trapped at the most manic time of the year. Christmas traditions are turned on their head, secrets are revealed, and family truths are told with hilarious consequences. The couple realise that there is an awful lot they don’t know about each other. Will they be able to swap back in time for Christmas Day? And will Hayley and James’ fledgling relationship make it through to the New Year?

Set in a richly exaggerated 17th-century England, Peter Greenaway’s witty, stylised, erotic country house murder mystery catapulted him to the forefront of international art cinema. Adorned with intricate wordplay, extravagant costumes and opulent photography, Greenaway’s first narrative feature weaves a labyrinthine mystery around the maxim “draw what you see, not what you know.” An aristocratic wife (Janet Suzman) commissions a young, cocksure draughtsman (Anthony Higgins) to sketch her husband’s property while he is away—in exchange for a fee, room and board, and one sexual favor for each of the twelve drawings. As the draughtsman becomes more entrenched in the devious schemings in this seemingly idyllic country home, curious details emerge in his drawings that may reveal a murder.