12 movies to look forward to this season

I WOULDN'T BE an awards season without a few last-minute gifts under the tree, set to sweep the table clear. This year, those include everything from Timothée Chalamet's cosmic ping-pong epic “Marty Supreme” to a new “Avatar” sequel from James Cameron, whom we've learned to never count out on Oscar night.

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Familiar faces in "Five Nights at Freddy's 2," from top left; Amanda Seyfried vents in "The Housemaid"; Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal wring hearts in "Hamnet."

Focus Features

We're also looking forward to the kind of dumb counter-programming that Christmas miracles are built on. A new “Anaconda” awaits, a prospect that can’t be ignored. Leave room in your movie diet for candy that’s semi-bad for you. One can’t feast on tearjerkers alone.

WEDNESDAY

HAMNET

Since its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, Chloé Zhao’s aching story of love and loss has won audience awards at festivals around the world: London, San Diego, Toronto, Spain. If Telluride had such a prize, it would have won there too as it left moviegoers openly weeping as they waited in line for the restrooms afterward. Perhaps the prospect of this kind of emotional devastation gives you pause. Would it help if I told you that the first part of the movie, detailing the courtship of a young Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) in love, is primal and electric? And that Jessie Buckley, playing the Bard’s future wife, is so extraordinary that she'll go on to win more honors than the movie itself? Just go see it. There's no better place to cry than in the darkness of a movie theater. — Glenn Whipp

Lionsgate

WEDNESDAY

THE SECRET AGENT