Little Big Screen has the best of both screens from the year that almost was. First up, five new-release recs sitting and waiting to be streamed on your own little big screen. Then five could-be bests that’ll be making their way to the big, big screen before the year ends.
That adds up to 10 movies. Just like you want from a “best of the year” thing.
The Beast
Directed by Bertrand Bonello
Fear follows two star-crossed lovers across three lifetimes — to find out how many of them a scream can echo through. Each century’s missed connection is given its own genre (gussied-up period piece, incel home-invasion horror, ooey-gooey sci-fi dystopia) in this stupid-big bite at stupid-big themes that never, ever would’ve screened in Iowa without FilmScene and Varsity Cinema. I went in awooga-awooga for Lea Seydoux, as one does, but I left with bulging eyeballs for George MacKay, whose loverboy skitters and inches with a special kind of spinelessness.
Stream it on Criterion Channel. Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Rap World
Directed by Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar
“Some of the best nights of my life were in parking lots.” This found-footage mockumentary about four wannabe rappers is eerie in the exactness of its time (2009), place (small-town Midwest) and type of guy (white). Shot on shitty handycams and edited in iMovie, watching Rap World is like watching a dead body float to the surface of a man-made lake, only to realize, wait, that’s me from 15 years ago.
Stream it on YouTube.
The Substance
Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Power-chord КИНО that’s proven as much pop as punk, playing butts and guts to the tune of $70 million. The Substance is in your face, and all over it, with glue-sniffin’ goods for your last two brain cells. Demi Moore is definitely down in the lead role, as you might’ve heard, but Margaret Qualley is scary-perfect as the movie’s looksmaxxed monster. Also, this is the only time I’ve thought about the Pancheros Burrito Lift in a theater.
Stream it on MUBI. Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Evil Does Not Exist
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
The title, standing tall as a billboard, should tell you how long Hamaguchi’s follow-up to Best Picture nominee Drive My Car will stay in your rearview. And since the whole thing started not with script but with score, your head will hum with images both beautiful and terrible, from the snow-white cosmos at the foot of Mt. Fuji to corporate stooges discussing the downstream spill of piss and shit via Zoom. Evil Does Not Exist is already an all-time dirty water movie.
Stream it on Criterion Channel. Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Love Lies Bleeding
Directed by Rose Glass
Silly but still steamy enough to scald, it’s no mystery why Love Lies Bleeding topped John Waters’ best films of 2024 list. This pulpy, full-body romance — with Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian as different breeds of gym rat — gets its pump, in part, from a great soundtrack. Quivers and shivers of synth saturate the sex and crime scenes with an almost-mythic sheen. And yet, even with so many well-oiled objects of desire, the mush beneath the muscle remains the real flex.
Stream it on Max. Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
The Order
Directed by Justin Kurzel
2024 was the year I had to stop having potato chips at home. Now gas station pitstops have turned into occasions for a tiny bag or two. This trailer — which features Jude Law (British) as a mustachioed member of the FBI and Nicholas Hoult (also British) as a greasy white-trash terrorist — looks like an aisle full of little treats. And the fact that this movie is only playing at the Altoona Cinemark and Coral Ridge Cinema feels too right to ignore.
Opened Dec. 5 on the big, big screen. Showtimes are available at Cedar Rapids Cinema and Coral Ridge Cinema through Dec. 18.
Queer
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Guadagnino’s Challengers was a big old tease and a grand old time back in April. (And his film before that, Bones and All, was dubbed a blue-ribbon peep show in August.) Now Guadagnino’s doubling down with Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes on this William Burroughs adaptation that has Daniel Craig as the legendary junky’s autobiographical anti-hero.
Opened Dec. 13 on the big, big screen. Showtimes are available at FilmScene and Varsity Cinema.
Nosferatu
Directed by Robert Eggers
I couldn’t tell you much about Nosferatu because I stopped watching trailers for Eggers’ movies after his debut, The Witch, made me want to strip naked and forsake god. Can’t decide if I’m going to do the 3:30 or 7 p.m. showing at the Varsity on Christmas Day.
Opens Dec. 25 on the big, big screen. Showtimes are available for Varsity Cinema, The Last Picture House and FilmScene.
Babygirl
Directed by Halina Reijn
The “erotic thriller” really only exists as a marketing okie-doke these days, but I have it on good authority that Babygirl delivers on its promise of ridiculous depravity between two hot people. If you’re worried that watching Nicole Kidman do freaky sex stuff during the holidays will have you wanting more, FilmScene is also showing Eyes Wide Shut on Dec. 21 and 23.
Opens Dec. 25 on the big, big screen. Showtimes are listed at FilmScene and Varsity Cinema.
Oh, Canada
Directed by Paul Schrader
This should probably be too shameful to publish, but when my girlfriend and I moved in together, she listed all of “my guys” on a Post-It note to keep up with the directors I mentioned a little too often considering I do not know them and they do not know me. Paul Schrader was one of those guys. Even if Paul’s not one of yours, maybe you talk a little too much about Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and/or Jacob Elordi.
Opened Dec. 6 on the big, big screen in big, big cities. Iowa showtimes are TBD.
