RELATED: The Best Horror Movie of 2021 So Far, According to Critics. If you want to throw on something that will get the whole family in the holiday spirit, A Boy Called Christmas should be your first pick this weekend. Based on the children’s book of the same name, it follows a boy named Nikolas (Henry Lawfull) who sets off on a journey—along with his talking mouse friend—to find a magical elf village in order to bring his kingdom hope. All action heroes in their own right, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, and Dwayne Johnson team up for the new original heist flick, Red Notice. Johnson, who’s usually the law onscreen, is an FBI agent who has to partner up with Reynolds’ international art thief to catch a new criminal on the scene, played by Gadot. Plenty of sexual tension, stylish fight scenes, and witty one-liners ensue. Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson star in this festival hit. Passing, set in the ’20s and based on a 1929 novel, follows two Black women who grew up together—one of whom is married to a white man and “passing” as white in society. The black-and-white film’s two leads have received loads of critical acclaim for their performances, as has first-time feature director Rebecca Hall. There’s already Oscar buzz about this Brazilian trafficking thriller. Westworld star Rodrigo Santoro as the overseer of a group of men, including 18-year-old Mateus (Christian Malheiros), who’ve been lured from the homes with the prospect of travel and good jobs, only to find themselves sleeping on filthy mattresses and being worked to the bone. 7 Prisoners pans out to show the whole crooked system that exploits people like Mateus, making it a relevant but heartbreaking watch. Vampire Diaries alum Nina Dobrev leads one of Netflix’s handful of new holiday-themed rom-coms as Natalie, a Californian who travels east to meet her dating app soulmate, only to discover that she’s been catfished. Never Have I Ever actor Darren Barnet plays the classically handsome face on the account, while comedian Jimmy O. Yang plays the real person behind the messages. Guess who Natalie ends up actually falling for… For more recommendations sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. A Western with an absolutely stacked cast, The Harder They Fall reinterprets real cowboys, sheriffs, and criminals from American history and drops them into an original adventure. As for that cast? Idris Elba, Regina King, Lakeith Stanfield, Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, and Delroy Lindo are only a few of the names in the credits. One of the scariest and most innovative horror films of the last 10 years, It Follows imagines a sexually transmitted paranormal threat. After Jay (Maika Monroe) is set up by her desperate boyfriend, she is the one being followed by…well, whatever it is—wherever she goes. The entity manifests as various people, of all ages and genders, in its relentless pursuit of Jay, meaning that the audience is always on its toes. In this pastiche of ’80s and ’90s blockbuster action flicks, a lonely, movie-loving kid (Austin O’Brien) is magically transported into the fictional world of his favorite onscreen hero, Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Despite being a box office disappointment in 1993, Last Action Hero has built up a lot of goodwill and won over a lot of fans over time. Self-aware and totally ludicrous, 2006’s Snakes on a Plane is a feature film version of those modern disaster B movies that air on Syfy in the middle of the night. As for what it’s about, you can probably guess: dozens of deadly snakes crate chaos mid-air on a passenger flight—the work of a criminal trying to kill the witness who can send him to prison in the most extra way possible.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb Nominated for six Oscars, Moneyball tells the true story of the managers of the 2002 Oakland Athletics Major League baseball team, who put together a winning squad on a bargain-basement budget using math and statistical analysis. Not the usual route for a sports movie—those usually champion unquantifiable qualities like “heart” and “drive”—but Moneyball was a hit with fantasy baseball players and non-sports fans alike. While satires, modern takes, and sharp-toothed teen romances abound, fans of the old school of vampire storytelling can always turn to Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992. Francis Ford Coppola directs Gary Oldman as the bloodsucker himself, Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, and Winona Ryder as Mina in this baroque and blessedly over-the-top interpretation of the horror novel. Bill Murray had a lock on lovable louse characters back in the day, and his character in the 1981 comedy Stripes is no different. Murray plays John Winger, a loser joins the Army as a last resort after losing his job and his girlfriend. He somehow ropes his best friend into joining up with him too; co-star Harold Ramis also co-wrote the hilarious script. A much less serious reimagining of the ’80s TV series, 21 Jump Street brilliantly pairs Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as two cops who are assigned to go undercover at a local high school to get to the source of a new party drug. There, they find their roles reversed, with a handsome, dim jock like Tatum’s Jenko out of favor and Hill’s Schmidt easily falling in with the popular kids. 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