Watch List Weekly Recap 11/23/22

A farewell to a filmmaker and five Turkey Day movie suggestions.

Watch List Weekly Recap 11/23/22

This is the Friday Wednesday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”


I’m jumping the gun with the weekend recap only because the weekend starts on Wednesday when Thursday is Thanksgiving. Besides, better you should have some viewing recommendations lined up before the family comes piling through the door.

First, though, an appreciation for Lucia Small (above), a filmmaker and a friend who passed away last Saturday and who I wrote about on Tuesday. If you’re looking for additional film suggestions, Small’s final film, “Girl Talk,” is a sympathetic and smartly subversive study of five young women on the debate team at Newton South High School in Newton, MA, and it’s streaming for free through the end of the month at GBH’s website.

Lucia Small 1963-2022
The last time I saw Lucia Small was in May, at a festival screening of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” at the Coolidge Corner Cinema. I hadn’t seen her in a year or so and was shocked by how gaunt and pale she seemed – a collection of twigs in the shape of a person waiting patiently for a movie to begin. I inquired after her he…

How weird is it that most of the new films opening in theaters or premiering on VOD this family-filled weekend are about the pleasures and pitfalls of family? Ahead of the holidays, I point readers toward “The Fabelmans” (above, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐), “White Noise” (⭐ ⭐ 1/2), “Hold Me Tight” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2), “The Swimmers” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐), and a hair-raising Thanksgiving psychodrama from 2016, “Krisha” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2).

What to Watch, Gravy Boat Edition
A few quick pre-Thanksgiving viewing recommendations, in case the family wants to go sit in the dark of a neighborhood cineplex looking at a screen OR after you’ve fully digested the turkey (or tofurkey, or turducken) and can stay awake long enough to stream something at home together. Ironically (or perhaps not), almost all of the movies debuting this …

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