Released on 26 November in the US, 28 November in Turkey and Taiwan, and 12 December in the UK and Ireland
Netflix
11. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Daniel Craig puts on his tailored suit and his extravagant Southern accent once again for the third of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out whodunnits. The setting this time is a country church in upstate New York. The new deputy priest (Josh O’Connor) clashes with a fire-and-brimstone preacher (Josh Brolin) and various hostile parishioners, including a church warden (Glenn Close), a loyal groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church) and a struggling author (Andrew Scott). When their disagreements culminate in a mysterious locked-room murder, it’s clearly a job for the world’s best detective, Benoit Blanc. But will Blanc’s staunch rationalism be challenged by the story’s miraculous mysteries? “With its Gothic atmosphere and deeper themes, Wake Up Dead Man has a darker tone than the previous Knives Out films,” says the BBC’s Caryn James. “Yet it is also the funniest and most playful so far… With more assurance than ever, [Johnson] walks a perfectly balanced line as he borrows old tropes and adapts them.”
Released on 26 November in US cinemas, 28 November in UK cinemas, and on 12 December on Netflix internationally
Focus Features
12. Hamnet
William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11 in 1596. Shortly afterwards, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, a powerful exploration of grief with a title that echoes his son’s name. Did the Bard pour his own deepest feelings into the play? This is the premise of Maggie O’Farrell’s extraordinary novel, Hamnet, which has now been made into a drama by Chloe Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland. Jess Buckley plays Agnes – as Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway is addressed in the film – and Paul Mescal plays the ambitious Will. Hamnet is an “emotionally pulverising drama”, says David Ehrlich in IndieWire. “And yet the violent beauty of this film, which rips your soul out of your chest so completely that its seismic grief almost feels like falling in love or becoming a parent, is that it’s as much about the experience of having a child as it is about the experience of losing one.”
Released on 26 November in the US
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