“The Matrix Resurrections” Picks Up Where the Trilogy Left Off—Alas

Plus, Christmastime movies to regift to others, and new streaming recommendations.

View in browser | Update your preferences     The Front Row "The Matrix Resurrections" Picks Up Where the Trilogy Left Off—Alas In resuscitating the franchise, Lana Wachowski implants some good ideas and some good actors into the weakest of the series's dramatic frameworks. By Richard Brody   Culture Desk Three Christmastime Movies to Regift to Others "Macbeth," "Spider-Man: No Way Home," and "The Matrix Resurrections," reviewed. By Anthony Lane   The New Yorker Interview How Jonny Greenwood Wrote the Year's Best Film Score The Radiohead guitarist has a singular musical voice. By Alex Ross   Persons of Interest Simon Rex on What Happens When the Party's Over The actor and former MTV v.j., who used to rap about drugs and his dick, plays a washed-up, middle-aged porn star in "Red Rocket," the best performance of his career. By Naomi Fry Now Playing "Cyrano" (in theatrical release): Joe Wright's new film is the latest attempt to drag the fable of Cyrano de Bergerac onto the big screen—the noblest effort, so far, being Fred Schepisi's light-footed "Roxanne" (1987), with Steve Martin. In this new version, shot largely in Sicily and swagged with period details, what distinguishes Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) is not the length of his nose but his lack of height. His heartbreaking mission remains the same: to woo the lady he loves, Roxanne (Haley Bennett), not for his own sake but on behalf of a dashing, though tongue-tied, suitor named Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.). The movie is adapted from a stage musical, and it's a shock, not always pleasant, when the characters start to sing; far from advancing the action, the songs bring it juddering to a halt. Yet Dinklage saves the day, being worldly, wry, and mournfully amused at the cruelties of fate. Even his swordplay has a comic agility; talk about a rapier wit. Read more. "The Dead Girl" (streaming on Starz and Hulu): Karen Moncrieff's harsh yet tender drama, from 2007, set in a desolate West of small houses and cheap motels, resembles a short, sharp novel about wrecked lives and belated redemption. Its five chapters, concerning five women—the titular victim and four others affected by her death—are energized by the intensely focussed, lived-in performances that Moncrieff gets from Toni Collette, as the stranger who finds the body; Mary Beth Hurt, as the killer's wife; Marcia Gay Harden, as the girl's mother; and especially Rose Byrne, who is quietly luminous as a pathologist who studies the corpse. In a final flashback that brings the story full circle, Brittany Murphy plays the girl herself, a young prostitute with a moving dilemma. The finely observed scenes are built from moments of realistic pain that deftly evoke lifetimes of bad memories, but Moncrieff's quasi-literary achievement has a price: the film is visually passive, and the score is portentous. Even so, these lapses don't break the spell of honest feeling or blur the hard-won wisdom that emerges from the experience. Read more. "The Hours and Times" (streaming on the Criterion Channel): In his first feature, from 1991, Christopher Münch boldly dramatizes and analyzes the quasi-universal allure of the Beatles. Like a scientist, he considers the phenomenon in isolation, fictionalizing the four-day jaunt to Barcelona, in 1963, taken by John Lennon (played by Ian Hart) and Brian Epstein (David Angus), the band's manager. The story that unfolds is intimate, but its results are vast, and Münch insightfully and ingeniously reveals both the public and the historic emanations of the film's essentially private moments. Hart's incarnation of John is uncanny; he endows the musician with playful, free-spirited wit, which contrasts with Brian's fine manners and painful wisdom. (The real-life Epstein was gay, and Münch emphasizes that an erotic current passed between the two men.) For that matter, John's personal style—his physical and emotional freedom, his way of talking, walking, dancing—comes off as inseparable from his art. The film offers intellectual archeology, rediscovering states of mind and mood that shook the world; Münch's calm, contemplative, and quietly astonished direction vibrates with the epochal excitement of the time. Read more. More from The New Yorker   2021 in Review The Best Feel-Good and Feel-Bad TV of 2021 Some of these programs relaxed me, made me laugh, or made life feel a little more dumb—in the best way—for an evening or two. The others were great precisely because they reminded me of how shitty things were. By Naomi Fry   2021 in Review Instagram's Favorite New Yorker Cartoons of 2021 As the year winds down, I'm noticing that I encountered several topics that we touched upon in our most popular cartoons. This is all quite suspicious. By Colin Stokes   Medical Dispatch How to Think About the Risks of Omicron The new variant changes the calculus in ways that can seem bewildering—but we have the tools to think it through. By Dhruv Khullar   2021 in Review The Top Twenty-five New Yorker Stories of 2021 The list seems to reflect that we are in an interregnum, a moment of in-betweenness. By Michael Luo You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Movie Club newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.