Movie Reviews: BABYGIRL, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, NOSFERATU 

• A24 Films
• Babygirl

Babygirl
Writer/director Halina Reijn is hardly the first filmmaker to address characters exploring a submissive kink—Secretary and Phantom Thread, among others, beat her to that punch—but she's still able to find a couple of unique angles in the psychology of desire. Her protagonist is Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), a corporate CEO with a husband (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters who finds herself drawn to new intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) when he provides her with the chance to release her inner bottom. That's obviously tricky territory to cover without exploitation, and Reijn is careful to make it clear both that Samuel is no dangerous sadist and that Romy's sexual needs can co-exist with being a woman in a position of power. Reijn is also unafraid of nakedness both of a literal and psychological variety, serving up steamy sex scenes as well as showcases for Kidman to wrestle with feeling that her preferences mark her as somehow broken. Most interestingly, it contends with the barriers to true marital intimacy when you fear that your partner won't be able to deal with the thing that turns you on. There's a bit of redundancy in the narrative arc, and Samuel feels a bit to sketchily drawn to emerge as a vital character in his own right. Still, it's satisfying any time a storyteller recognizes the messy complexity of who we are in public relative to who we want to be when the lights are out. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (R)

• Searchlight Pictures
• A Complete Unknown

A Complete Unknown
James Mangold has had 17 years to live with the knowledge that his previous musical biopic—2005's Walk the Line—in part inspired Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to skewer the cliches of its genre. So how did he respond when deciding to profile Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet)? By learning a few lessons, but not enough of them. Wisely, he focuses on a narrow timespan, beginning with 20-year-old Dylan's 1961 arrival in New York to meet his ailing idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), through his rise to fame and infamous performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Along the way, we also meet Dylan's first New York girlfriend (Elle Fanning), Pete Seeger (Edward Nordon) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro)—all impressive performances, but also often relegated to Mangold zooming in on their faces expressing awe at being in the presence of Dylan's genius. Those moments are pretty crucial, since Mangold and co-screenwriter Jay Cocks take their chosen title literally, emphasizing Dylan as a musically adventurous enigma blasting through the lives of those around him, rather than trying to plumb psychological depths. Yes, Chalamet impressively mimics Dylan, and he's anchoring a sturdy, often satisfying story of what it's like to be in the orbit of a magnetic talent. But even knowing there had already been a genre-busting cinematic exploration of Dylan—Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, released the same year as Walk Hard—Mangold mostly opted for convention. Which is certainly one way to show what you've learned in 17 years. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (R)

• Focus Features
• Nosferatu

Nosferatu
I'm not convinced that Robert Eggers has anything new to contribute to the Dracula mythos aside from his own particular cinematic aesthetic—but man, that is one hell of an aesthetic. He takes as his foundation F. W. Murnau's famous/infamous 1922 ripoff of Bram Stoker's story, set in 1838 Germany and concerning a young woman named Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), her new husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) who threatens to bring a supernatural terror to their lives. Vampire stories have been used as metaphor for many things over the years, and it sometimes feels like Eggers is trying to play catch-up by packing several into one movie: freeing women to express their agency and sexuality; the collision between modernity and ancient evil; vampirism as communicable disease, perhaps inspired by our own recent pandemic. It's a thematic jumble, made more awkward still by Eggers' use of archaic diction—and fortunately, there are so many amazing things to look at that it's easy not to care very much. Indelible images appear at regular intervals, from a driverless coach appearing at a crossroads, to the shadows that appear without any apparent source, to the firelit inn captured by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. Throw in the wheezing menace and distinctive visual design of Skarsgård's demonic presence, and you've got a creepy feast for the eyes, even if it offers relatively little for the mind. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (R)