This month has everything: Eternals, murder, tennis, and Princess Di.
It’s no exaggeration to say that this November is the biggest month for movies not just this year, but in several years, thanks to the pandemic. The reason is mostly logistics: Some movies slated to come out a year ago are finally hitting theaters, and with the Oscar eligibility window closing at the end of December, film distributors are rushing to put their most impressive films and performers in the spotlight. And of course, the holidays — a prime moviegoing season — are coming too.
So the bounty is impressive, from new MCU installments to the buzziest films from the fall festivals to big, wild-looking period pieces. November will be a great month at the movies, so here are the 14 movies to see.
Eternals
Release date: November 5
The latest big-screen addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe zooms out — way out. Eternals tells the story of a group of immortal interstellar beings who are sent to earth to protect the planet and its inhabitants from the Deviants, who are their equivalents, but evil. Directed by Chloé Zhao (whose film Nomadland won Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars earlier this year), Eternals jumps around in time and space, a hugely ambitious epic that never really gels narratively but is worth seeing nonetheless. It’s also got a great cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie play the Eternals.
How to watch it: Eternals will premiere in theaters.
Spencer
Release date: November 5
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in Spencer — or at least, she’s a version of the icon who left a legend in the wake of her tragic 1997 death. Following his imagination-fueled fantasia on Jackie Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie, director Pablo Larrain returns with a similarly speculative dive into the psyche of the famous princess, right as she’s reaching a breaking point. The film follows Diana through the Christmas holidays with the royal family, often filming Stewart in claustrophobic, panicky frames that give Spencer, at times, the feeling of a horror film. It’s a bit less sly about what it’s up to than Jackie was, and suffers from some ploddingly obvious symbolism. But the spell it casts is murky and laced with dread, and it’s hard to shake after the movie ends.
How to watch it: Spencer will premiere in theaters.
Passing
Release date: November 10
Rebecca Hall wrote and directed this adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, which is about two childhood friends who encounter one another again in adulthood. Irene (Tessa Thompson), who goes by Reeny, lives with her doctor husband (André Holland) and their children in a stately Harlem house. Clare (Ruth Negga) is married to a racist businessman (Alexander Skarsgård), who has no idea that his wife is not white. The film feels almost dreamlike, evoking a world in which the lines that separate friendship from desire, love from hate, and white from Black are more permeable than you might expect — a world a lot like today’s.
How to watch it: Passing, which is playing in limited theaters, begins streaming on Netflix on November 10.
Belfast
Release date: November 12
Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s unabashedly sentimental dip into his youthful memories of strife during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is really a family drama told from a small boy’s perspective. The boy’s parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitríona Balfe) are Protestant Belfast natives who watch their Catholic neighbors become the target of violence, struggling to keep their family together as they weigh whether their future lies in Belfast with his grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds) or elsewhere. The boy himself, Branagh’s avatar Buddy (Jude Hill), catches glimpses of the big world outside the family’s corner of Belfast on the TV and at the movies. Belfast is in black and white, but Branagh renders whatever they’re watching, from Star Trek and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in color. The stories we watch on screen, Branagh reminds us, are a vibrant reminder to truly live during dark times.
How to watch it: Belfast will open in theaters on November 12.
Procession
Release date: November 12
Indelible, gutting, and hopeful, Procession is a documentary unlike anything you’ve seen before. The filmmakers, led by director Robert Greene, reached out to six men in the Kansas City, Missouri, area who were abused as boys by Catholic priests and clergy. Rather than proceeding as an exposé, Procession is a collaborative project in healing, as each of the six men creates and films traumatic memories in a drama therapy-informed quest to … well, what, exactly? That’s what they’re exploring: the meaning of healing, the ways we perform to cope and to crack ourselves open, and the possibilities, such as they are, for redemption. It’s a must-see.
How to watch it: Procession will open in limited theaters on November 12 and begin streaming on Netflix on November 19.
Tick, Tick… Boom!
Release date: November 12
Lin-Manuel Miranda steps behind the camera for Tick, Tick… Boom!, a film adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Rent composer Jonathan Larson. Andrew Garfield plays Larson, who is closing in on his 30th birthday and increasingly terrified that he’s running out of time to actually break into the musical theater world. The real Larson wrote Tick, Tick… Boom! a few years before Rent made him famous, and thus only a few years before he died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart condition. That backstory makes Tick, Tick… Boom! all the more poignant — and the film adaptation will likely draw in a new generation of fans.
How to watch it: Tick, Tick… Boom! will open in limited theaters on November 12 and begin streaming on Netflix on November 19.
The Power of the Dog
Release date: November 17
Jane Campion’s first film since 2009’s Bright Star is The Power of the Dog, and it is set, despite its New Zealand shooting location, in the American West. For most of its runtime, The Power of the Dog is confined to the big ranch that Phil and George (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons) own and operate. George marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and brings her there, along with her waifish teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil despises both of the ranch’s new residents. But people’s exteriors rarely match what they’re capable of inside. The Power of the Dog will keep you guessing as it morphs from a Western to a romance to something deliciously dark, a melodrama with an eerie bite and sweeping, craggy vistas.
How to watch it: The Power of the Dog will premiere in theaters on November 17 and begin streaming on Netflix on December 1.
C’mon C’mon
Release date: November 19
Joaquin Phoenix stars in C’mon C’mon, the sensitive and huge-hearted new movie from Mike Mills (whose last film was 20th Century Women). Phoenix is Johnny, an artist interviewing young people around the US about the future: what they hope for, what they dream of, what they fear. But when his semi-estranged sister (Gaby Hoffmann) suddenly has to attend to an emergency, he ends up caring for his precocious and eccentric 9-year-old nephew Jesse (Woody Norman), and both of them learn a lot from one another. The premise of C’mon C’mon could easily swing into way-too-precious territory, but Mills’s steady hand and feeling for story rhythms, along with Phoenix’s performance, keep the ship on course. The result is a warm and winsome meditation on the ties that bind us.
How to watch it: C’mon C’mon will premiere in theaters.
King Richard
Release date: November 19
Will Smith stars in King Richard as Richard Williams, the father of tennis superstars Venus Williams (Demi Singleton) and Serena Williams (Saniyya Sidney). Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, it’s a biopic centering on Richard’s “unconventional” methods in helping two of his daughters reach the top of their game. It’s just the kind of crowd-pleasing, family-friendly sports movie that tends to do well during the holiday season. While the Williams family was involved with the production, it’s still not totally clear why Richard is at the center (rather than, for instance, both parents, who were equally involved in their daughters’ early careers). But with a cast that also includes Aunjanue Ellis as the girls’ mother Oracene Price and Tony Goldwyn and Jon Bernthal as their coaches, it seems destined for the awards-season stage.
How to watch it: King Richard will premiere in theaters and on HBO Max.
Drive My Car
Release date: November 24
Ryusuke Hamaguchi directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Drive My Car, which is based on a Haruki Murakami short story. The film centers on Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theater director who returns home one day to find that his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a TV executive, has died. Then time jumps forward, and Kafuku is directing a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, with each actor performing in their own language. He decides to cast his wife’s lover, Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), in the main role. Through rehearsals and the relationships that develop during the project — including with Misaki (Toko Miura), the quiet young woman hired to drive him to and from the theater — Kafuku starts to understand something that’s nearly ineffable about his past and his future. Drive My Car is a melancholy, meaningful film, occupied with friendships, old wounds, and the task of continuing to live.
How to watch it: Drive My Car will premiere in theaters.
Encanto
Release date: November 24
Encanto is the animated musical tale of the Madrigals, a Colombian family who all have magical powers and live in an enchanted mountain town. Every member of the family has a singular talent except Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), who is pretty frustrated about this state of affairs. Then, one day, she discovers that her family’s magic may be under threat, and she must go on a journey to save both the magic and her family’s home. With additional voice work from John Leguizamo, María Cecilia Botero, Diane Guerrero, Jessica Darrow, Angie Cepeda, Wilmer Valderrama, Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, and Maluma, and songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Encanto seems like the perfect family film for the holiday season.
How to watch it: Encanto will premiere in theaters.
House of Gucci
Release date: November 24
Ridley Scott’s second movie this year (the other was The Last Duel) is House of Gucci, starring Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci, head of the legendary Gucci fashion house, and Lady Gaga as his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. The film follows the murder of Gucci in 1995 and the events that took place afterward, and features — among other things — absolutely fabulous costume design. With Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, and Salma Hayek (who, incidentally, is married to the current head of Gucci) among the cast and a juicy true-crime story at its core, House of Gucci is certain to be, at minimum, a lot of fun at the movies.
How to watch it: House of Gucci will premiere in theaters.
The Humans
Release date: November 24
Stephen Karam’s play The Humans won a Tony and was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and it turns out it makes a great movie, too. Karam adapted and directed the film, which stars a terrific cast — Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell (who reprises her Broadway role), Beanie Feldstein, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, and June Squibb — as a family who’ve gathered in one daughter’s rickety new Chinatown apartment for Thanksgiving. Over the course of the evening, conversations start to hint at what’s right about this family and what’s gone very wrong. The film is funny and raw, full of the kinds of things families say to one another at holidays, and Karam’s use of space keeps the adaptation from feeling too much like just a filmed play. It’s haunting, a little hopeful, and very, very honest.
How to watch it: The Humans will premiere in theaters.
Licorice Pizza
Release date: November 26
Paul Thomas Anderson follows up 2017’s Phantom Thread with Licorice Pizza, a romantic coming-of-age story set in 1973 about two young people, played by singer Alana Haim, of the band Haim, and Cooper Hoffman, son of frequent Anderson collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman. Anderson is famously tight-lipped about the details of his plots before his films premiere, but the trailer for Licorice Pizza set the internet ablaze, in part because of its cast: Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Benny Safdie, Maya Rudolph, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Ben Stiller, John C. Reilly, Christine Ebersole, and Bradley Cooper in bombastic mode as a film producer named Jon Peters, who may or may not be based on the real guy. And who doesn’t love a drama about the glories and disappointments of first love?
How to watch it: Licorice Pizza will open in limited theaters on November 26 and widely on December 22.
This lesser-known greenhouse gas will make or break a “decisive decade” for climate change.
From his home office in Arizona, Riley Duren was multitasking, telling me about frighteningly powerful greenhouse gases even as he monitored his team’s aircraft. The plane was flying at 20,000 feet to measure methane spewing from wells in the Permian Basin of Texas. An aerial map on his computer screen brought the measurements to life: Dozens of red zones represented otherwise invisible plumes of methane above oil and gas fields.
“It’s just like watching a firework show. They’re just popping up all over the place,” said Duren, a University of Arizona scientist who leads the nonprofit Carbon Mapper, which has public and private partners including NASA, the state of California, and the company Planet.
In the public conversation about climate change, methane has gotten too little attention for too long. Many people may be unaware that humans have been spewing a greenhouse gas that’s even more potent than carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate not seen in at least 800,000 years. It harms air quality and comes from sources as varied as oil and gas pipelines to landfills and cows. But methane and other greenhouse gases, including hydrofluorocarbons, ozone, nitrogen dioxides, and sulfur oxides, are finally getting the attention they deserve — thanks largely to advances in the science.
Until the past few years, methane’s relative obscurity made sense. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is by far the largest contributor to climate change, and it comes from recognizable fossil fuel sources such as car tailpipes, coal smokestacks, and burning gas and oil. The most troubling part is that it sticks around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, making climate change not just a problem for us now, but generations well into the future.
But the world no longer has the luxury of overlooking methane. And at the 26th international climate conference in Glasgow, which runs until November 12, a major new initiative was launched to address methane head-on. More than 100 countries, representing nearly half of global methane pollution levels, committed to a voluntary Global Methane Pledge of reducing levels by at least 30 percent by the end of the decade. President Joe Biden, who is co-leading the initiative with the European Union, announced a suite of regulatory actions that aim to bring the United States in line with that global target.
Some of the largest methane polluters, including Russia and China, have not joined the global pledge. It’s just one sign that the world still hasn’t fully heeded scientists’ wake-up calls on methane.
Even though methane is not nearly as well understood as carbon dioxide, it’s playing an enormous role in the climate crisis. It’s at least 80 times as effective at trapping heat as carbon dioxide in a 20-year period, but it starts to dissipate in the atmosphere in a matter of years. If this is the “decisive decade” to take action, as the Biden administration has said, then a methane strategy has to be at the center of any policy for tackling global warming.
Methane could mean the difference between a rapidly warming planet changing too quickly and drastically for humanity to handle, and buying the planet some much-needed time to get a handle on the longer-term problem of fossil fuels and carbon pollution.
Methane pollution erases gains from switching off of coal
Drew Shindell, one of the scientists who raised an early alarm about methane, was studying air pollution in the late 2000s when he found a strange trend. Ground-level ozone, the pollutant that forms hazy smog, was rising in the US — which surprised him after decades of progress under the Clean Air Act. He realized the “relentless growth in methane,” which accelerates the formation of ozone near the ground, was to blame. Ever since, he’s been trying to warn the world not to overlook this dangerous pollutant and its costs to both the climate and human health.
Identifying the millions of sources of methane around the globe isn’t so simple. Cattle release methane, and so does decomposing organic material. All the food waste that goes into landfills release methane. And natural gas is almost entirely methane.
If you’ve heard politicians call natural gas a “bridge fuel,” what they mean is that natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal. It’s wrong to call it clean, because burning methane still releases carbon — and methane that escapes without burning is a powerful warmer.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-The oil and gas industry has argued that it isn’t to blame for methane pollution, but advocates and scientists have shown otherwise. The Environmental Defense Fund, which has commissioned flights to monitor methane over Texas oil and gas fields, has found that oil fields in the US are leaking 60 percent more methane than the Environmental Protection Agency estimates. University of Michigan scientist Eric Kort found methane spewing from offshore wells at far higher rates than previously understood. The environmental group Earthworks, using expensive, on-the-ground camera equipment, helped track down some sites that were repeat offenders of venting methane into the atmosphere.
The scientific papers have mounted: Since 2013, at least 45 scientific papers have highlighted the disproportionate role of oil and gas operations, according to a review by the advocacy group Climate Nexus. Scientists like Duren have also produced vivid images of methane that a layperson can understand, just like the imagery below from April this year.
According to Duren, Carbon Mapper has detected over 3,000 methane plumes in the Permian Basin with its airborne surveys, all coming from a range of oil and gas infrastructure, including wells, tank batteries, compressor stations, pipelines, and more.
Together, these findings suggest a grim outlook for the minimal progress made so far in tackling carbon pollution: Rising methane pollution effectively erases some of the progress the US has made by cleaning up the coal-fired power sector.
Methane has been rapidly climbing since 2007, driven by a mix of agriculture (from East and West Asia, Brazil, and northern Africa) and fossil fuels, specifically from North America. In other words, scientists are confident that humans are the main cause of increasing methane pollution.
Still, the data needs to get better. The Biden administration is essentially starting from scratch with proposed EPA rules that require oil companies to monitor and fix their own leaks. The Trump administration wasted critical years by scrapping rules that targeted new wells and set basic standards for self-reporting practices.
For the world to tackle methane, countries still have to better understand what sectors and sources it is coming from. Few major economies even measure methane. China has launched a carbon-trading market to tackle carbon dioxide emissions, but has done less to control methane, which comes not just from gas but coal as well.
Scientists know a lot about CO2 and much less about other gases
For the first time in August, the IPCC devoted substantial attention to the major role of gases other than CO2. The UN’s sixth assessment of the science of climate change, which finds that the evidence of man-made warming is “unequivocal” and many climate impacts will be irreversible, dedicates a full chapter of the report to “short-lived pollutants” such as methane. One of their most common sources is fossil fuels.
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UN Global Methane Assessment, 2021
Since these gases are such a tiny part of the atmosphere compared to how much carbon dioxide we’re pumping in the air, methane is “always No. 2” in discussions of climate change, said Shindell, who chaired the world’s first United Nations Global Methane Assessment released this year. It’s fallen “between the cracks” in global research thus far, Shindell said.
Until now, methane has literally fallen between the cracks: Some of it leaks out of the ground in places like oil fields and permafrost, and scientists are still trying to understand where it all comes from. The IPCC report reflects these uncertainties. The report authors, for example, do not name the dominant source of human-caused methane emissions, whether fossil fuels or agriculture. But what we now know represents one of the greatest evolutions in climate research since the last IPCC assessment came out in 2013. The work of scientists like Duren helps the world understand the biggest culprits of the methane crisis, in the hope that governments and corporations take urgent action.
There are other greenhouse gases out there besides CO2 and methane. Nitrogen dioxides, black carbon, and halogenated gases (a category that includes chemicals used for refrigerants, hydrofluorocarbons) are other contributors to climate change.
A graphic from the IPCC’s summary for policymakers makes sense of how all these gases interact to add up to at least 1.1 degrees Celsius of average global warming since the 1850s. As the below graphic shows, CO2 and methane make up most of the warming, but other pollutants leave their mark too. Some aerosols from fossil fuels, like sulfur dioxide, actually have a cooling effect (but are dangerous to our lungs).
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IPCC AR6 Summary for Policymakers
There’s good news and bad news when it comes to the second-worst cause of global warming.
First the bad: Methane is rising, and there’s plenty we don’t know about it. Even if we pinpointed the worst offenders in oil and gas, its other sources would still require sweeping societal change, like a reduction in the number of cows raised for food. (There’s been some experimentation with feed for cattle to reduce methane, or more wackily, fart-collecting backpacks for cows).
Food waste, which releases methane as it decomposes, is a problem too. Across the world, the richest economies are throwing out half their food. Landfills may be able to capture some of the methane, but that too is an energy-intensive process.
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Patricia Monteiro/Bloomberg via Getty Images
That leaves oil, coal, and gas. Coal is the worst offender; it leaches both carbon dioxide as well as methane, making it the number one priority to phase out. Oil production is a big problem too, in part because producers don’t face much regulatory or economic pressure to recapture the extra gas. Even when industry is trying to capture and sell natural gas, producers lose methane throughout its extraction and transportation. It leaks out as producers pipe the gas to compressor stations, process it for shipment, ship it hundreds of miles by pipeline to a refinery, and transport it to the consumer in the form of liquefied natural gas, plastic, petrochemicals, or the gas that lights up ovens in homes and apartments.
The whole system is extremely leaky, but the leakiest parts are not totally clear. “It’s just been really hard to put our finger on exactly the source, and be able to attribute it to the granularity that would enable us to solve it,” said Fran Reuland, a researcher on methane in the oil and gas industry at the think tank RMI. “Because it’s happening over such a large area, wrapping your mind around just how much is coming out is one of the main problems.”
Another frustrating challenge is that methane emissions fluctuate. Carbon Mapper pieced together a time series of a section of the Permian Basin in the southwestern US, in which the dots correspond with methane emissions. About half the time, Duren estimates, some of the worst offenders may be venting methane directly into the atmosphere to relieve pressure, while the other half probably represent persistent leaks and malfunctions.
Environmentalists argue we must transition off coal, gas, and oil as quickly as possible — but stopping the pollution can’t wait for the transition to play out. A coalition of 134 environmental and health groups have rallied around a certain target — cutting 65 percent of the oil and gas industry’s methane pollution by 2025 — and have pressured the Biden administration to adopt the same goal by using existing technology.
The gains from containing methane will be critical as the world continues to gamble with its climate. A study from EDF scientists published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters found that tackling methane emissions across multiple sectors, including oil and gas, agriculture, and landfills, can slow the current rate of runaway warming by a staggering 30 percent. One-quarter of one degree Celsius by 2050 might not sound like a lot, but small changes to global averages contain a range of extreme impacts that will worsen across the globe.
There’s the good news: The world doesn’t need to wait around for better science. Action is feasible now.
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UN Global Methane Assessment, 2021
Here’s what can be done about methane emissions now
When the IPCC report came out on August 9, Lisa DeVille, a member of the Dakota Resource Council who lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, was encouraged to hear scientists “echoing what most of us can see with our own eyes,” based on what she sees on the front lines of oil production in North Dakota.
“The land near my home is crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines, literally littered with drilling rigs,” DeVille said in a call with reporters. She said her home has been ravaged by unusually high rainfall and flooding, and she and her husband have had to breathe in smoke from wildfires. “I live less than a mile away from well pads that vent and flare methane and choke our atmosphere, making local people like my husband and I sick. This means the land that is part of my identity as an Indigenous woman has been turned into a pollution-filled industrial zone.”
Under pressure from climate advocates, the EPA proposed a new set of methane rules in November. Once finalized, the rules would require oil and gas companies to monitor and address methane leaks from existing and future wells, using sensors and regular equipment checks. The administration says the new rule covers 75 percent of all methane emissions in the US.
The proposal is just the first step in a long road ahead to seeing serious methane cuts from oil and gas. The regulations may face long delays as the EPA gathers public comment and opponents launch lawsuits. They are also at risk of reversal if a Republican takes the White House in the next two elections.
There’s widespread agreement, even from some in the fossil fuel industry, that the place to start is tackling leaks. This will get easier as scientists gather better data about where methane is leaking. From the industry’s perspective, companies are losing product and dollars. For activists, plugging leaks is one step on the road to permanently phasing out gas.
For all the industry’s talk of reining in methane leaks, oil companies remain one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of tougher methane restrictions in the US. An important part of the proposed Build Back Better bill Congress is debating would place a fee on methane emissions, not only ensuring better monitoring for methane but financially swaying oil producers to fix the worst problem areas. The oil industry lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, has formally opposed the measure that counts as one of the most impactful climate policies still on the table in the Build Back Better agenda.
The problem that underlies all climate action is that humanity has to trade short-term profit for long-term benefit. Carbon dioxide affects the world for the long haul, and methane is making the crisis significantly worse in the near term.
