Must-Watch Movies for Winter 2023

It’s the season to hide under a blanket, eat cheese and wait for the return of the light — in every sense of the word. Accordingly, ’tis also an excellent time to watch movies.

What you feel like watching can vary from day to day, depending on your emotional state and who your viewing companions are. A lively toddler or aging granny in the mix will influence your choices. It’s a brief period of togetherness, after all.

I’ve assembled a few choice films that will please just about everyone in your life, from cinema-loving children to cantankerous elders.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

In a season rife with remakes, this is a pleasant surprise. This reprise of the sturdy franchise hearkens back to the source material: the 1984 original comics. The style: scratchy and graffiti-esque, summons the spirit of New York City during the early days of hip-hop, complete with street details like cranky taxi drivers and buck-a-slice pizza eaten the proper way, folded in half.

Mutant Mayhem follows the beginning of the saga that became TMNT. The action kicks off with a scientist. Intent on escaping the pain of human rejection, he creates his own mutant animal family. The government ruins everything by staging a raid. In the ensuing chaos, the experimental mutant ooze is accidentally released into the city sewers and finds its way to a rat named Splinter and four young turtles named after the Renaissance artists Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo.

The 2023 narrative includes some nice updates, including the character of would-be journalist April O’Neil, voiced by Ayo Edebiri. Here, she is a teenager who resembles an actual high-schooler, complete with beanie, layered functional clothing and a cheap scooter. The other voice actors are equally top-tier and will delight any millennial or gen-X parents in the audience. A bevy of perfect matchups include Jackie Chan as Splinter, Ice Cube as Superfly, Paul Rudd as Mondo Gecko, John Cena as Rocksteady and Maya Rudolph as Cynthia Utrom, as well as a pack of younger actors to provide genuinely teenage voices and inflections to the titular turtles.

At the centre of the action is some mighty fine writing, animation that ups the ante to exponential proportions, and a lesson about the importance of solidarity between the animal kingdom and the human world. The ringing resolution might just reaffirm one’s faith in community. In a moment when things feel especially doom-laden, this interspecies collectivity is just the tonic one needs, served up by heroes in a half shell. Turtle power forever!

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ is available on a variety of screening platforms, including Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Paramount+.

The Holdovers

Set in a boarding school in the early ’70s, Alexander Payne’s latest offers a trio of sad sacks left behind during the holidays: a cranky teacher, a young smart aleck and a grieving mother. It’s a holy trinity of sorts, but hot damn if these creaky old character conventions don't work a treat.

Paul Hunham (played by Payne stalwart Paul Giamatti) is a curmudgeonly classics professor who is universally loathed by both teachers and staff at Barton Academy, an upscale boys’ school in New England. In an act of petty administrative revenge, Hunham is drafted to stay over the Christmas break to oversee the few students who have been remaindered by their families. Of the disconsolate group of kids, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is perhaps the most difficult. A Grade A jerk with a massive chip on his shoulder, Tully has few friends at Barton, even before he single-handedly gets a makeover exam cancelled for the rest of his classmates. Meanwhile, the school’s head cook, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), is grieving the loss of her only son. The college deferral that would have spared him from the Vietnam War draft didn’t happen because Lamb couldn’t afford the tuition, and he died in the war.

Payne has an easy way with his cast. The balance of light and dark, joy and sorrow is perfectly handled as the story gathers both humour and pathos. By the time the conclusion came staggering into view, I was so invested that I was loath to leave the film and its people. Will the sullen teen learn to open up? Will the aging teacher finally escape the doldrums of Barton? Will the grieving mother find a source of new joy and hope? The answers to all these questions are happily resolved, but there are a few surprises that are best enjoyed when you don’t see them coming.

‘The Holdovers’ is currently playing in theatres.

The Boy and the Heron

One can never go wrong with the work of beloved Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli, house of My Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo and Spirited Away. Director Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make The Boy and the Heron, and he brings the touch of rare genius to the proceedings. More in the vein of earlier Miyazaki works like Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Boy and the Heron has a strong element of autobiography as well as the usual Miyazaki magic.

After the death of his mother in a hospital fire, 12-year-old Mahito and his father move from Tokyo to the countryside. His father has remarried his late mother’s younger sister Natsuko, who is pregnant and somewhat fragile. The household is run by a collective of elderly servants, who are mostly interested in smoking and accessing better food in times of government rationing and scarcity. But the strangest resident of Mahito’s new home is a mysterious grey heron with the power of speech.

In good Ghibli fashion, the more curious elements of other worlds have a way of wending their way into this one. The plunge into another fully realized world begins when Natsuko disappears into the nearby forest and Mahito, trailed by one of the elderly maids named Kiriko, goes after her.

It’s a deep dive, brimming over with wonderfully embroidered details from a young, tough sea captain also named Kiriko to a mysterious young girl named Himi with the power to control fire. The joy of the film is the pure transportive power of imagination unleashed.

This alternate reality is so rich and lovingly envisioned, one could easily disappear inside it. In some ways, the plot isn’t the main point. There are giant carnivorous parakeets, a plague of frogs, floating bubble babies and always glorious clouds, sky and ocean. It is this last trio of offerings, present in almost all of Miyazaki’s greatest works, that lingers with a singular combination of beauty and melancholy.

‘The Boy and the Heron’ is currently playing in theatres.

Barbie

I missed the film when it was the centre of the Barbenheimer tornado this past summer. Now that the dust has settled a bit, it is interesting to look at it from a slight distance. I’m still not quite sure what to make of all the pink sound and fury surrounding the film, except to say that a resolutely cheerful blast of optimism might have been part of the attraction in a moment that often feels unrelentingly dark. A family yuletide viewing of Barbie might also offer a way into thorny discussions about gender, patriarchy and feminism, although not so much the corporate masters behind it all.

Now that the summer sizzle of the film has faded to the driving rain of December, it’s interesting to revisit the role of the men in a film ostensibly about women. A bravura bring-down-the-house musical number showcases Ryan Gosling’s comic timing as Ken and his solid pipes. Think of it as a neon-pink tribute to the late musical choreographer Busby Berkeley. Ken’s emancipation showstopper will leave you feeling better in no time.

‘Barbie’ is on a variety of streaming platforms.

Dumb Money

This is a film to watch with teenagers who can probably happily explain the nuances and intricacies of the GameStop drama, as well as the many internet memes and Reddit types that pop up throughout. In keeping with earlier films like Adam McKay’s The Big Short, Dumb Money dives into the ongoing drama that is the U.S. financial system and the stock market. But the story of pipsqueaks against multibillionaires is really what’s at stake.

The true story of the GameStop stocks has already been told in other films including the Netflix documentary Eat the Rich. In short: In the early months of 2021, shares in the beleaguered video game store GameStop began surging. The intention behind this buy-in was to trigger a short squeeze, force the company into bankruptcy and suck up all the remaining profits as the shares fell in price. What Wall Street did not expect was that the little guys would fight back by inflating the value of the stock into the stratosphere.

In this fictional retelling of the saga, the early days of the pandemic are recalled with people in ill-fitting fabric masks and the rise of DoorDash delivery workers. But the story of what really happened is more complicated than what is depicted onscreen.

In this version, the poor folks are a saintly bunch, all committed to sticking it to the man while they toil and strain in their terrible day jobs. Meanwhile in billionaire world, the rich build tennis courts and lie their faces off when finally forced to account for their profiteering ways. The standoff between the obscenely wealthy and everyone else makes for riveting stuff, even if the film flattens the complexities into a good guys versus bad guys scenario.

‘Dumb Money’ is on a variety of streaming platforms.

Wonka

Wonka, starring the flavour of the moment that is Timothée Chalamet, is surprisingly light on its feet. It’s a sweet glide into the holiday season with a nice sprinkling of catchy tunes and a smattering of toothsome performances from Hugh Grant, Rowan Atkinson and Sally Hawkins. The experience of watching the film can be akin to that of a sugar high or an incredible edible, and that’s OK. You don’t have to be hard core and serious all the time. After all, it’s the holidays!

‘Wonka’ opens in theatres on Dec. 15.