By M. Faust

With one day to go before Christmas, I have things to do, and you have things to do, so I’ll keep this discussion of the three big movies hitting theaters this week brief. 

A Complete Unknown is a movie about the young Bob Dylan. It should not be referred to as a biopic, because it does very little to unravel the mystery that even then was central to Dylan’s still-developing persona. Beginning with his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 and ending with his notorious electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, it proceeds primarily by bouncing Dylan off other notable figures of the folk milieu, including Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy). Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook). The director is James Mangold, who established many of the worst traits of contemporary celebrity biopics with his Walk the Line. Working from a script he co-wrote with Jay Cocks, Mangold never pretends to be offering a comprehensive overview of even this brief sliver of his subject’s life. Its primary virtue is a first rate performance in the lead role by Timothée Chalamet, who humanizes Dylan without dissecting him. The approach shouldn’t offend long-time Dylanologists, while appealing to younger audiences who aren’t exactly sure who this guy was. 

Nosferatu is an attempt at a mainstream for cult director Robert Eggers, who has previously garnered critical praise and a devoted fanbase for his dark oeuvre (The Witch, The Northman, The Lighthouse). It is a generally faithful remake of the 1922 German film by F. W. Murnau, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that was nearly destroyed when Stoker’s widow sued for copyright infringement. It is 40% longer than Murnau’s film, so of course there is a lot more of everything, which does not exactly help the nightmarish mood of the original. Like all of Eggers’ work, it has a magnificently dark surface, so desaturated of color that much of it looks black and white. Aside from the ending, Murnau’s biggest deviation from Stoker, the story runs along the familiar lines that have been retold endless times over the past century, and Eggers never persuaded me that there was any real need for another whack at it, though I did enjoy lines like “We have been blinded by the gaseous light of science!” and “Die, you accursed mis-birth of hell!” The cast features Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlock, Willem Dafoe as the Van Helsing character, Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult.

Babygirl stars Nicole Kidman as a corporate CEO who risks her career and her family for an affair with a new intern (Harris Dickinson). It seems that despite his youth, he has an innate understanding of the power games that she yearns to play. As written and directed by Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies), it will seem provocative, transgressive and possibly even erotic to audiences who are otherwise nurtured on a steady diet of Hallmark Channel romances.