And opening for its full run this week is the Golden Lion winner (Venice Film Festival), the film nominated in virtually every category for the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, the film favored to pick up several Oscar nominations: Yorgos Lanthimos’s electrifying, audacious new movie, Poor Things.  To be sure, it’s a film that, while lavished with praise by most critics, is leaving a few others cold. It certainly isn’t the kind of film that lends itself to lukewarm reviews: they’re either very hot or icy cold. And the discussion can be so vehement, I’ve taken almost as much joy in the negative reviews (e.g. there’s a wonderfully biting one from Angelica Jade Bastien) as I have in the many raves (e.g. Justin Chang’s reviewis a total delight). As such, the film is also justifiably one of the most-discussed of the year, and it will surely have Bellingham viewers talking, too. 

But any critic or viewer will certainly acknowledge, whether hot or cold on Poor Things, that it’s a film that goes all in, on every level. All of the elements -- the fully committed and often wildly weird performances (Emma Stone is just extraordinary), the gloriously detailed and imaginative production design, the varied and inventive cinematography, the most strikingly unusual musical score,  the fantastical beautiful costuming, the wonderfully creative narrative -- add up to an extravaganza, a visual and aural feast. 

And opening on Christmas Day, we have another extravagant cinematic delight: The Color Purple, directed by Blitz Bazawule and starring a powerhouse cast, including Danielle Brooks, Fantasia Barrino, Taraji Henson, Colmon Domingo, and Halle Bailey.  While Steven Spielberg’s 1985 rendering of Alice Walker’s novel is a classic in its own right, this brand new film dazzles, offering much that is new, including song and dance. After the 1985 film made its debut, the story was adapted in 2005 as a Broadway musical, with Oprah Winfrey and Scott Sanders later producing a much-acclaimed revival in 2015.  Then, in 2018, Winfrey and Sanders gained permission from Spielberg (who had the film rights) to adapt their Broadway musical into a new movie, and Spielberg has explained, “I didn’t really know The Color Purple had another movie in it until [Winfrey], and the songwriter, and that cast proved that [the Broadway musical] could stand on its own . . . [it] had its own definition, and [it] was relevant for our time for now, for audiences today.”  

While many may remember some of the painful elements of the original story’s narrative, it is a film that locates its relevance in redemption and joy. As Winfrey notes, her hopes are that the new film will convey to audiences the message that "Redemption is possible” and “joy is forever. This movie is so joyful, and it will uplift you."  And the critics agree.  When I spoke with Seattle film critic Sara Fetters about the film earlier this month, as I was deliberating about which films we should put on Pickford screens as we close out the old year and welcome the new, she noted that The Color Purple would “send people out with a smile. Its triumphant euphoria is undeniable."  

Kate Erbland, too, in her lovely review of the film, describes its joyousness as well as its sense of being fully in the present, offering an immediacy and that newly affirmed relevance that Spielberg spoke about: “The Color Purple ends on a high note, a culmination of joy and pain that is gorgeously rendered by a staggering cast who clearly poured every ounce of their selves — not just their talent, but their own joy and pain — into making something that both honors the work it is adapted from and stands alone as its own accomplishment. Much like [the main character] Celie tells us late in the film, it’s beautiful and it’s here."

“It’s beautiful and it’s here.” That could as well be a wish for us all as we look towards the new year, with hope in our hearts.  

The happiest of holidays to you, friends, and we’ll see you at the movies! 

Melissa