Frankenstein is the new Guillermo del Toro film his fans have been waiting for and I’m among them. I was able to watch it myself in all of its big screen glory last month at the Toronto Film Festival, and it looks simply gorgeous on the big screen -- sweeping vistas, stunning colors, lush production design. And so while some viewers may decide to wait until it drops on streaming, the happiest viewers will be those who experience it in the theater with the biggest visuals and the biggest sound. 

One of the things I deeply love about this film is that even though it’s a quite faithful adaptation of the novel and it joins a long line of famous movie adaptations, it's very much a Del Toro film, too. I adore Mary Shelley's novel, and I love James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, but I always appreciate it when a filmmaker brings their personal stamp to an adaptation. Here, Del Toro remains true to the novel's characterization of the creature, developing the story of a being who is highly intelligent and, eventually, even erudite and well-read (much different from the James Whale version), and he also develops our sense of the hubris of powerful men, especially men at the forefront of science, technology, and exploration. In the novel, Dr. Frankenstein is a brilliant scientist but also an obsessive egomaniac whose arrogance and lack of compassion and empathy lead to his own demise. Del Toro understands that and depicts it beautifully in his film. 

But, leaning into his own ideas and emotions, Del Toro as a filmmaker goes even further than the novel in his sympathy for the creature, especially as that relates to Elizabeth, the love interest in the original novel, and played here by Mia Goth. And while I don't want to give away too much, if you know Del Toro, you'll know that his "monsters" are always the most interesting and most lovable characters in his films (see, for example, The Shape of Water, Hellboy), and it’s the humans who are more often monstrous. And the pathos of the creature here, as embodied by a quite brilliant Jacob Elordi, is exquisite.  

Perhaps you all, like me, remember watching (and loving) Crazy Heart, Scott Cooper’s film about a faded country music singer starring Jeff Bridges at the Pickford back in 2009, and so you’ve also been happily anticipating Cooper’s newest film about a musician, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Cooper's new film, in many ways, is akin to Crazy Heart, leaning into the personal and the intimate, particularly as that’s related to song-writing. 

Here, following Walter Zane’s book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, the film is a refreshing departure from the typically sweeping music biopic, focusing on just the period when Springsteen created his album Nebraska, which he famously recorded alone in his bedroom on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder, and a period in which Springsteen struggled with his mental health.  Springsteen composed “Born in the U.S.A.” during the same period, and while the movie touches on this song as well (offering audiences a show-stopping, heartpounding musical scene when the song is recorded), Cooper chooses to primarily confine the film to the creation of Nebraska and to the contemplative, personal intimacy of Springsteen’s life as he reflects on his family, his personal past, and his relationships and as he attempts to convey to his supportive but often baffled manager and producer (played by a terrific Jeremy Strong) what he wants Nebraska to be. 

Those looking for a film delving into the rich political commentary of Springsteen’s work will, I think, be disappointed; it’s a film composed more of the small, inward moments more than the broadly socio-political. And I would certainly like to see a film someday that encompasses more of the pungent ethos of Springsteen’s work, but for those who can embrace Cooper’s film as it is and what it aspires to be, rather than what it isn’t, the reward is a rich one.

Jeremy Allen White’s performance, too, is alone worth the price of admission. He looks very little like The Boss, and perhaps that dissonance will trip some viewers up, particularly those familiar with White’s character in The Bear, but it’s a performance that feels so lived in, I think every audience member will soon forget it’s a performance at all. White does his own singing, too, and it’s so very good, some may even believe the singing was dubbed. But it is, in fact, a fully live performance  -- all Jeremy Allen White -- and thus deeply impressive. Few actors can pull off such a recognizable voice. Timothy Chalamet did it last year as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, and I think White does it here, too, as Springsteen.

And speaking of towering performances. If there is any justice in the world, Rose Byrne’s performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will be on all the year-end “best-of” lists.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is from writer-director Mary Bronstein, and Byrne, who stars, won the Silver Bear at Berlin for her accomplishment. It's a brilliant film in the vein of Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch in its examination of motherhood and probably most akin to We Need to Talk About Kevin in its psychological complexity, but it's also nothing like those two films in its approach to the subject matter, making it a wholly unique experience. 

Byrne plays Linda, a therapist by profession and a mother to a child who has an unexplained illness and an inability to eat food, a child who requires constant attention and a nighttime feeding tube. It’s a state of things made worse by a husband (Christian Slater) whose job means he's absent from home most of the time, and Linda must be the full-time care giver. 

It’s a bit hard to explain how much I loved this movie on a visceral level. Very few films depict motherhood in this way, without tipping into making either mother or child a monster. It is also a wonderfully relentless film but not without moments of keenly observed comedy, and Conan O’Brien even plays a significant role as Linda’s co-worker and therapist. But it’s the immersive nature of the film that is particularly noteworthy.  Scott Tobias described the experience beautifully in his review for The Reveal: 

"If I Had Legs I’d Kick You doesn’t stop until it stops. You are trapped within it until its writer-director, Mary Bronstein, decides to give you a blessed reprieve, partly as an act of mercy but mostly because all movies have to come to an end. For her visceral, darkly comic and at times absurd treatment of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Bronstein refuses to let the audience take a breath, lest the grim spell that she casts be broken."

Just a terrific movie with a terrific central performance. And for me, it’s one of the movies of the year.