The New Yorker - 11.11.2019

18 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019

ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON LANDREIN

This season of Oscar hopefuls offers a
batch of stories spotlighting misunder-
stood heroes and antiheroes, including
“Uncut Gems” (Dec. 13), starring Adam
Sandler, in a frenzied dramatic role, as
a jewelry dealer in New York’s diamond
district whose effort to sell smuggled
goods is both sparked and complicated
by his heavy sports-gambling debts. His
desperate quest to raise funds involves
his wife (Idina Menzel), his girlfriend
( Julia Fox), a ruthless mobster (Eric Bo-
gosian), and the pro basketball player

Kevin Garnett (playing himself ); the

script, co-written by Ronald Bronstein

and the film’s directors, the brothers Josh

and Benny Safdie, daringly intertwines

the drama with real-life sporting events.

In Marielle Heller’s drama “A Beautiful

Day in the Neighborhood” (Nov. 22),

Tom Hanks plays the children’s-tele-

vision luminary Fred Rogers, who is

being profiled by a skeptical journalist

(Matthew Rhys); the story is based on

the journalist Tom Junod’s acquaintance

with Rogers. Kristen Stewart plays the

title role in “Seberg” (Dec. 13), a drama,

directed by Benedict Andrews, about the

persecution of Jean Seberg—the Amer-

ican actress who became a French New

Wave icon—by the F.B.I., in the late

nineteen-sixties, as a result of her polit-

ical activism. Clint Eastwood directed

“Richard Jewell” (Dec. 13), based on the

true story of a security guard at the 1996

Summer Olympics, in Atlanta, who was

falsely accused of involvement in a ter-

rorist bombing that he in fact tried to

prevent. Paul Walter Hauser plays Jewell;

Kathy Bates co-stars as Jewell’s mother,

and Sam Rockwell plays his attorney.

A series of ambitious remakes begins

with “Charlie’s Angels” (Nov. 15), writ-

ten and directed by Elizabeth Banks, in

which the three secret agents (Kristen

Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska)

are joined by three detectives named

Bosley (Banks, Djimon Hounsou, and

Patrick Stewart). Sophia Takal directed

and co-wrote, with April Wolfe, a new

version of the 1974 horror film “Black

Christmas” (Dec. 13), starring Imogen

Poots, Lily Donoghue, and Aleyse Shan-

non, about a group of female college

students who are being menaced by a

stalker and, having no confidence in the

authorities, fight back. Greta Gerwig

wrote and directed a new, nonlinear ad-

aptation of “Little Women” (Dec. 25),

starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh,

Meryl Streep, Emma Watson, Laura

Dern, and Timothée Chalamet.

Tales of political resistance are at

the fore this season, including Terrence

Malick’s historical drama “A Hidden

Life” (Dec. 13), based on the true story

of Franz Jägerstätter (played by August

Diehl), an Austrian man who refused

to serve in the German Army during

the Second World War. “Clemency”

(Dec. 27), directed by Chinonye Chukwu,

stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden

who comes to question the practice of

capital punishment. In “Just Mercy”

(Dec. 25), Michael B. Jordan plays Bryan

Stevenson, a defense attorney who takes

the case of a death-row inmate ( Jamie

Foxx) who has been wrongly convicted of

murder. Destin Daniel Cretton directed

and co-wrote the script with Andrew Lan-

ham, based on a memoir by Stevenson.

—Richard Brody

MOVIES

WINTER PREVIEW

Lonely Battles, Fervent Ideals