This month in culture: January 2025

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

January 3, Netflix

The panic that gripped the McMorris household in November 2023 was rivaled by that of the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. Greater even, for this crisis could not be solved with a credit card and the willingness to fight hand-to-hand against fellow Costco members. Aardman Animations, the last bearable producer of children’s entertainment, was running out of clay. The sole remaining British factory that produced the stuff behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep had shuttered. Only a pitchfork would suffice. The advent of CGI has fried parental eyeballs with neon ever since Toy Story and only Aardman has resisted the trend, delivering us stop-motion Stan and Ollie routines. The company reassured parents it had enough clay in its stable for one more feature, which hits Netflix nearly twenty years after the last feature film starring that brilliant, idiotic inventor and his silent, put-upon canine partner. The pitchfork remains in the shed for future supply-chain crises.

-Billy McMorris

They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce

January 4, ESPN

In American iconography, it makes no sense that Jason Kelce would be a famous person. He played the most ignominious position in football at center on the offensive line. He is the son of a steel salesman and a regional manager at a local bank in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Yet somehow, against all odds, this bearded millennial who resembles a portrait of Paul Bunyan became an icon of American masculinity. He and his brother Travis, another football player who we’re told has a famous girlfriend with aspirations of being in the music industry, were named the sexiest podcast hosts by People magazine. The fame sometimes seems to overwhelm the flannel-donning Jason, unlike his more celebrity-affiliated brother. But now he has the opportunity not just to put his capacity for entertainment on display, but to show up the so-called professionals at their own job: They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce is the Worldwide Leader’s attempt to find a late-night equivalent of their smash hit with Pat McAfee’s midday program. On the surface, it looks like must-watch television. Why settle for the thinning facial hair and even thinner “comedy” of ABC’s hackish, tired Jimmy Kimmel when you can go for a beer-can-smashing mountain man in Jason Kelce? Let the better JK win.

-Ben Domenech

American Primeval

January 9, Netflix

Thanks to Taylor Sheridan, western dramas and thrillers seem to be having a moment. Add another one to the list, though this seems miles away from the soapy fare found on the latest Paramount+ series. Written by Mark L. Smith, who brought us The Revenant and The Boys in the Boat, among others, and directed by the great Peter Berg, American Primeval is a six-part miniseries about the sometimes-violent settling of the West and the competing clash of interests — from Mormons to Indians to adventuring pioneers. The trailer looks like the best of Berg, known for bringing us great action and drama from projects as varied as Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor. Count me in.

-Zack Christenson

Presence

In theaters January 10

These days, almost everything about a film gets leaked before it comes out. The trailers show too much, on-set shots leak crucial moments, and Twitter gets flooded with spoilers. And yet, Presence releases this month, and there’s little out about it other than that critics love it. Directed by the brilliant and experimental filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, it’s a horror film about a family who move into a haunted house, shot from the perspective of the titular “presence.” In A Violent Nature pulled a similar trick last year for the slasher genre, and it was just incredible, so I can’t wait to see this.

-Ross Anderson

Wolf Man

In theaters January 17

Universal’s big-budget series of monster films took a big hit when the Tom Cruise Mummy picture flopped, but 2020’s Invisible Man, which reworked the idea as a parable about gaslighting, was a massive success. The studio will be hoping for similar rewards from this Julia Garner-starring creature feature, which will boast lycanthropic transformation effects with state-of-the-art nastiness (check out the breaking bones) and, hopefully, a typically thoughtful and affecting performance from Garner. But, let’s face it, at the end of the day you’re watching this for a guy turning into a wolf, nastily.

-Alexander Larman

Better Man

In theaters January 17

The pop star Robbie Williams is a strange phenomenon. In his native Britain, he’s the biggest male solo act of the past thirty years, someone who sells out stadiums without blinking. But in the United States, the man can’t get arrested. This warts-and-all biopic of Williams comes with a unique gimmick: the man is played by a photorealistic CGI chimpanzee. Sound bizarre? It almost certainly will be, but early word has been rapturously strong on Michael “The Greatest Showman” Gracey’s all-singing, all-dancing, all-snorting extravaganza.

-AL

Prime Target

January 22, Apple TV+

You may know him as the chav rent boy from season two of The White Lotus; now Leo Woodall zags in the opposite direction to play a mathematician whose work with prime numbers may unlock every computer in the world. Of course, we know there are corporate and government forces that won’t allow that to happen, so here comes another great-looking Apple TV+ thriller that reveals a deep-state conspiracy. We appear to be in a spy thriller renaissance with new series announced almost monthly — we hope the momentum continues, but more importantly, the quality.

FKA twigs, Eusexua

January 24

Brat summer is over; now, Eusexua winter is upon us. Returning for her third album, her first in over five years, British singer-songwriter FKA twigs is still pushing the envelope. She launched her first offering from this record, a combination of “Drums of Death” and the title track, with a deranged seven-minute-long music video in which a drab office is defiled — and then twigs turns into a tropical fish. It’s an aural cocktail of Massive Attack, Grimes, Kate Bush and Sonique — yet simultaneously it is entirely, wholly FKA twigs. The follow-up “Perfect Stranger” is a bit more accessible, but its video nonetheless feels like being sexually tormented in art school. “EUSEXUA has been my practice for the years that it has been in creation. it is my opus and truly feels like a pin at the center of the core of my artist,” she wrote on Instagram. OK!

-Matt McDonald

Flight Risk

In theaters January 24

When someone mentions Mel Gibson, your first thought isn’t, “Ahh yes, the brilliant auteur director.” And yet Apocalypto is one of the most mad, ambitious action movies I’ve ever seen; The Passion of the Christ is a French-New-Extreme-inspired torture-porn flick; and Hacksaw Ridge is one of the great modern war movies, deftly moving between being inspirational, comedic and horrifying. Any new Mel Gibson movie is a must-see moment, and hopefully Flight Risk is no different. Starring Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace and Mark Wahlberg, it’s about a US marshal escorting a government witness to trial on a small plane, and how things start unraveling as people try to take them down. The script was on the Hollywood “Black List” — of well-liked but unproduced screenplays — so hopefully Gibson can knock it out of the park again.

-RA

Mythic Quest, season four

January 29, Apple TV+

Anything that keeps Rob McElhenney away from Ryan Reynolds is a worthwhile exercise, so welcome the return of his Apple TV+ series Mythic Quest, a sitcom set in a video-game studio. McElhenney’s egomaniacal game creator Ian Grimm is set to return to the company he founded, along with his sparring partner Poppy, played by Charlotte Nicdao. Game on.

-MM

You’re Cordially Invited

January 30, Amazon Prime

Everyone knows the feeling of having your wedding venue double-booked, right? That’s why this one will really hit home for most folks. If you haven’t had this happen, this movie will fill you in. Its version, though, includes Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon to help with the hilarity, with Ferrell as the father of one bride and Witherspoon as the sister of the other, complete with a script written and directed by Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five-Year Engagement fame.

-ZC

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 2025 World edition.