Friday Releases: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Migration, Anyone But You, The Color Purple, The Iron Claw, Ferrari, & All Of Us Strangers

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Directed By: James Wan
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

After failing to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences, they join forces to protect their kingdom and save the world from irreversible destruction.

Starring: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Randall Park, Dolph Lundgren, Temuera Morrison, Martin Short, and Nicole Kidman
Genre: Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi
Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi violence and some language)
Country: USA | UK | Canada | Australia | Iceland (English)
Runtime: 124 minutes

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Migration

Directed By: Benjamin Renner
Studio: Illumination + Universal Pictures

This holiday season, Illumination, creators of the blockbuster Minions, Despicable Me, Sing and The Secret Life of Pets comedies, invites you to take flight into the thrill of the unknown with a funny, feathered family vacation like no other in the action-packed new original comedy, Migration.

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Anyone But You

Directed By: Will Gluck
Studio: Columbia Pictures

In the edgy comedy Anyone But You, Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) look like the perfect couple, but after an amazing first date something happens that turns their fiery hot attraction ice cold — until they find themselves unexpectedly thrust together at a destination wedding in Australia. So they do what any two mature adults would do: pretend to be a couple.

Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, and Rachel Griffiths
Genre: Comedy | Romance
Rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content and brief graphic nudity)
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 103 minutes

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The Color Purple

Directed By: Blitz Bazawule
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

A story of love and resilience based on the novel and the Broadway musical, THE COLOR PURPLE is a decades-spanning tale of one woman’s journey to independence. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Halle Bailey, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Fantasia Barrino
Genre: Drama | Musical
Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic content, sexual content, violence and language)
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 140 minutes

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The Iron Claw

Directed By: Sean Durkin
Studio: A24

The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who made history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. Through tragedy and triumph, under the shadow of their domineering father and coach, the brothers seek larger-than-life immortality on the biggest stage in sports.

Starring: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, and Lily James
Genre: Biography | Drama | Sport
Rating: R (for language, suicide, some sexuality and drug use)
Country: USA | UK (English)
Runtime: 130 minutes

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Ferrari

Directed By: Michael Mann
Studio: NEON

Ferrari is set during the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle and danger of 1950’s Formula 1, ex-racer, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for their one son. Ferrari struggles with the acknowledgement of another. His drivers’ lust to win pushes them out to the edge. He wagers all in a roll of the dice on one race, the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the iconic Mille Miglia.

Starring: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey
Genre: Biography | Drama | History
Rating: R (for some violent content/graphic images, sexual content and language)
Country: USA | UK | Italy | China (English)
Runtime: 124 minutes

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All Of Us Strangers

Directed By: Andrew Haigh
Studio: Searchlight Pictures

One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.

Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy
Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Romance
Rating: R (for sexual content, language and some drug use)
Country: USA | UK (English)
Runtime: 105 minutes

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The Boys in the Boat

Directed By: George Clooney
Studio: MGM

The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction novel written by Daniel James Brown. The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.

Starring: Callum Turner and Joel Edgerton
Genre: Biography | Drama | Sport
Rating: PG-13 (for language and smoking)
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 124 minutes

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Society Of The Snow

Directed By: J.A. Bayona
Studio: Netflix

In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to fly a rugby team to Chile, crashed in the heart of the Andes. Only 29 of its 45 passengers survived the accident. Trapped in one of the most hostile and inaccessible environments on the planet, they have to resort to extreme measures to stay alive.

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Memory

Directed By: Michel Franco
Studio: Ketchup Entertainment

Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life: her daughter, her job, her AA meetings. This is blown open when Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the past.

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Merritt Wever, Brooke Timber, Elsie Fisher, Josh Charles and Jessica Harper
Genre: Drama
Rating: R (for some sexual content, language and graphic nudity)
Country: USA | Mexico (English)
Runtime: 100 minutes

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Occupied City

Directed By: Steve McQueen
Studio: A24

The past collides with our precarious present in Steve McQueen’s bravura documentary Occupied City, informed by the book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945) written by Bianca Stigter. McQueen creates two interlocking portraits: a door-to-door excavation of the Nazi occupation that still haunts his adopted city, and a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest. What emerges is both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time, and where we’re headed.

Starring: Melanie Hyams
Genre: Documentary | History | War
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, strong language and sexual material, smoking and brief drug use)
Country: UK | Netherlands | USA (English)
Runtime: 246 minutes

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Freud’s Last Session

Directed By: Matthew Brown
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

On the eve of the Second World War, two of the greatest minds on the twentieth century, C.S. LEWIS and SIGMUND FREUD converge for their own personal battle over the existence of God. FREUD’S LAST SESSION interweaves the lives of Freud and Lewis, past, present, and through fantasy, bursting from the confines of Freud’s study on a dynamic journey.

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Jeremy Northam, and Orla Brady
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, some bloody/violent images, sexual material and smoking)
Country: USA | UK (English)
Runtime: 108 minutes

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Breakwater

Directed By: James Rowe
Studio: Vertical

Dovey (Darren Mann), a young, impressionable ex-con breaks his parole to do a solid for his prison mentor, a conniving inmate by the name of Ray Childress (Dermot Mulroney). Dovey crosses state lines to track down Ray’s estranged daughter but soon discovers her past may be more dangerous than anything he ever faced in prison.

Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Darren Mann, Mena Suvari, Don Henderson Baker, and Alyssa Goss
Genre: Thriller
Rating: R (for violence, language and some sexual material)
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 97 minutes

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The Crime Is Mine

Directed By: François Ozon
Studio: Music Box Films

In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless and talentless actress, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Helped by her best friend Pauline, a young unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out.

Starring: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini, Dany Boon, and André Dussollier.
Genre: Comedy | Crime | International
Rating: Not Rated
Country: France (French & Spanish)
Runtime: 102 minutes

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Dr. Death: Cutthroat Conman

Directed By: John Pappas
Studio: Peacock

Dr. Death: Cutthroat Conman reveals the shocking rise and fall of Paolo Macchiarini, the superstar celebrity surgeon who ascended to global fame after performing the world’s first synthetic organ transplant, only to be exposed as an international con man whose web of lies extends decades, ensnared many including those in his personal life and left a trail of devastated patients grappling with a nightmare.

Starring: Paolo Macchiarini
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Not Rated
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 90 minutes

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Farewell, Mr. Haffmann

Directed By: Fred Cavayé
Studio: Menemsha Films

The legendary Daniel Auteuil gives one of his most superlative screen performances in the gripping new historical drama from writer/director Fred Cavayé, based on Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s celebrated, multi Molière Award-winning play. Occupied Paris, 1941: all members of the Jewish community are instructed to come forward and identify themselves to authorities. Dedicated jeweler Joseph Haffmann (Auteuil), fearing the worst, arranges for his family to flee the city and offers his employee François Mercier (Gilles Lellouche) the chance to take over his store until the conflict subsides. But his own attempts to escape are thwarted, and Haffmann is forced to seek his assistant’s protection. It’s a risky proposition for both men, and one that Mercier’s wife Blanche (a wonderful Sara Giraudeau) is skeptical of. As the couple move in to the Haffmann home, the agreement turns into a Faustian bargain, one that will forever change the fate of all…

Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Gilles Lellouche, Sara Giraudeau, Nikolai Kinski, Mathilde Bisson, and Anne Coesens
Genre: Drama | International
Rating: TV-14
Country: France | Belgium (French)
Runtime: 115 minutes

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Noryang: Deadly Sea

Directed By: Kim Han-min
Studio: Well Go USA Entertainment

In 1598, the seven-year Imjin War nears an end as Wae invaders prepare to withdraw from Joseon. Admiral Yi Sun-shin leads an allied fleet of Joseon and Ming ships to annihilate the Wae army. Joseon, Ming, and Wae forces clash at Noryang Strait, the deadly sea where Admiral Yi fights his last valiant battle.

Starring: Jeong Jae-yeong, Yeo Jin-goo, Huh Joon-ho, Ahn Seong-bong, Baek Yoon-Seok, and Kim Yoon-seok
Genre: Action | Biography | History | International | War
Rating: Not Rated
Country: South Korea (Korean)
Runtime: 152 minutes

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Daniel

Directed By: Daniel Northcott
Studio: Max

When Daniel Northcott got a hold of his father’s video camera at the age of seven, a lifetime of documenting the world around him began. Growing up, he focused his lens on his family and close friends, and as a young man, he recorded precious moments with the people and places he encountered on his travels, striving to live a life of love and seek out universal human connection. On a mission to pursue an epic adventure, Daniel visits war zones to sacred sites, including a Mayan burial ground in a cave in Mexico. He would often take a keepsake from each location as a reminder of his connection to the earth. But Daniel’s world travels abruptly end when he must return home to Vancouver because of health reasons. While undergoing treatment, he is haunted by the memory of an ancient Mayan curse and goes on a quest to put things back where they belong before he runs out of time. Crafted from over 1,400 hours of vérité-style footage shot in 42 countries across four continents, DANIEL is an unflinching self-portrait of a young man with an insatiable curiosity and a boundless desire to understand the world and his place in it.

Starring: Daniel Northcott, Saurabh Khanna, Erin Northcott, Storma, and Erickson Wilson
Genre: Documentary | Adventure | Biography
Rating: Not Rated
Country: USA (English)
Runtime: 72 minutes

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