Movies Released December 16, 2022

Steve Williams is considered a pioneer in computer animation. This intimate account examines his life story and events surrounding the historical moment when digital dinosaurs walked onto the silver screen in Jurassic Park. Steve and a chorus of expert witnesses recount a dramatic tale of rebellion and revolution at Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic in the early 1990s-- a time when creating realistic creatures with a computer was considered impossible. Decades later, Steve struggles to reckon with his chaotic past.

In this spellbinding thriller, detectives Jake Doyle (Martin Lawrence) and Mary Kelly (Melissa Roxburgh) seek the help of an incarcerated serial killer named The Artist (John Malkovich) when a copycat killer strikes.

While Mary searches for clues in The Artist’s brilliant but twisted psyche, she and Jake are lured into a diabolical game of cat and mouse, racing against time to stay one step ahead of The Artist and his copycat.

Don Johnson (Knives Out) and Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace). An ex-KGB operative turned chef, Ana (Kurylenko) is targeted by the local mafia in a hit on her new restaurant to collect on her husband’s (Johnson) debt. Now, Ana must rely upon her lethal skills as she goes on a deadly rampage to take out the entire crime syndicate one-by-one to save her restaurant and survive the night.

Rural Ireland. 1981. Nine-year-old Cait is sent away from her overcrowded, dysfunctional family to live with foster parents for the summer. Quietly struggling at school and at home, she has learned to hide in plain sight from those around her. She blossoms in their care, but in this house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth.

In The Apology, twenty years after the disappearance of her daughter, recovering alcoholic Darlene Hagen (Anna Gunn) is preparing to host her family’s Christmas celebration with her best friend Gretchen (Janeane Garofalo). Late Christmas Eve, Darlene’s estranged ex-brother-in-law, Jack (Linus Roache) arrives unannounced, bearing nostalgic gifts and a heavy secret. Soon, Darlene finds herself caught between reason and ruthless instinct. Trapped together by a dangerous storm, a battle of wits escalates to a violent game of revenge.

This extraordinary documentary follows opera singer Nelly Mousset-Vos and writer Nadine Hwang, who met and fell in love while imprisoned in Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp, in 1944. Despite being separated in the last months of the war, they later reunite and spend the rest of their lives together. All that is left of the unlikely love story — kept secret for decades — are photos, letters, and Super-8 film reels kept in boxes. Stumbling upon these years later, Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie begins piecing together Nelly and Nadine’s legacy and uncovering the records of their remarkable love.

In this raunchy romantic comedy, Adam whisks his new bride Sarah (Maria Bakalova) to Venice for a honeymoon. But when Adam brings best friend Bav along for the ride, Bav causes one gross-out disaster after another. When charming gangster Giorgio falls for Sarah, he gets rid of Adam and Bav by sending them across the border on a drug-dealing mission. Can they outrun the Slovenian cops, dodge bullets from the baddies, and get back before Sarah gets a rich new mobster boyfriend?

Mark Pelllngton’s adaptation of Dan Wakefield’s seminal novel about a young man coming of age in the 1950s is a timeless story of freedom and repression, friendship and family, sex and love, and the psychological and spiritual struggle to be true to one’s self even if it means going against society’s expectations.

For Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), it’s always 1999. The face in the mirror is unfamiliar and her partner, Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg), isn’t recognisable to her despite waking up together every day. For Joe (Celyn Jones), his past is coming undone and his partner, Sarah (Rebel Wilson), fears she will be forgotten. A doctor refuses to give up on them, determined not to let them all unravel.

In the tense and gripping documentary feature The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Rory Kennedy tracks the minute-by-minute unfolding of the tragic volcanic eruption off the coast of New Zealand in December of 2019, ultimately claiming 22 lives. During a routine sightseeing day-trip to a remote volcanic island, 47 tourists and guides were trapped in the epicenter of a boiling pyroclastic surge of toxic dust and ash. Both terrifying and inspiring, the film uses first-hand accounts to convey the experience of living through such a lethal eruption.

Offering more than a startling and brutal portrait of mother nature’s profound indifference, The Volcano also serves as testimony to human nature’s innate generosity. Guided by survivors — men and women who were tested in ways they never imagined — as well as the courageous and quick-thinking ordinary citizens who sprang to action that day, the viewer comes to understand the value of our human connection.

In this psychological horror fable of displacement, Aisha (Anna Diop), a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal, is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York City. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S., but becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life. As his arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.

The story of a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker, who returns home and works through an existential crisis as he grapples with his identity, familial relationships, the folly of his memories as well as the past of his country. He seeks answers in his past to reconcile who he is in the present.