Johnny Depp's yuletide jeer 🎄 - USA Today
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Johnny Depp is crashing the holiday movie season and bringing the Christmas spirits with him.
The actor stars as elderly miser Ebenezer Scrooge in "Ebenezer," a dark and creepy new take on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." (One infamous icon playing another? Makes sense to me.) We're definitely entering yuletide time, along with a whole bunch of new stuff popping up on your streaming services – like Jessica Chastain's Southern-fried mystery "Heartland." And if you want more horror in addition to Scrooge's supernatural journey, modern scream queen Maika Monroe (of "It Follows" fame) is back in scary mode for the period thriller "Victorian Psycho."
Given his penchant for off-the-wall roles, playing Scrooge and getting visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future seems right on for Johnny Depp. The horror-tinged "Ebenezer" is also a comeback vehicle of sorts for Depp, who in recent years has seen his career derailed by legal issues. His fans still love him but how about Hollywood these days? My colleague Krystie Lee Yandoli did a deep dive on Depp and talked with PR crisis experts about how he laid out a nearly flawless plan to return to everyone's good graces. "Let the work do the talking," says publicist Erica Dumas. "In his case, I think it will."
Speaking of, how does Depp's "Ebenezer" rate alongside a century of "A Christmas Carol" adaptations? I ranked the best screen Scrooges of all time, from Mister Magoo to Sir Patrick Stewart.
I don't know about y'all but I could watch Jessica Chastain solve mysteries all day. The Nashville noir "Heartland" (streaming now on Netflix) casts the Oscar winner as a notorious country-music icon who returns to Music City – two decades after she got run out of town, by the way – to find her missing niece, a rising star in town. Someone team up her foul-mouthed, butt-kicking detective with Alan Ritchson's Reacher, stat. While I anxiously await that Netflix/Prime Video crossover, feel free to watch all the new streaming movies out this week, including the sci-fi thriller "The End of Oak Street" and Tyler Perry's holiday drama "The Gospel of Christmas."
"Heartland" also kicks off a busy holiday season of streaming flicks. Here are exclusive looks at the ones you need to see, from Arnold Schwarzenner's Santa action comedy "The Man With the Bag" to the Oscar best picture contender "La Bola Negra."
If Maika Monroe is in a horror movie, you know it's probably going to be good, seeing how she starred in the terrific "It Follows," as well as "Watcher" and "Longlegs." (We'll forgive you for "Reminders of Him" – everybody makes mistakes sometimes.) The new period thriller "Victorian Psycho" (in theaters now) finds her starring as a homicidal maniac hired as a governess for a wealthy family at a gothic manor.
After usually being on the receiving end of something bad, Monroe found it "much more" enjoyable to play evil than good. "You can really go for it and unleash everything. It was very therapeutic," Monroe told my pal Brendan Morrow when stopping by our New York City studio recently. She also spills on why the paranormal "spooks me" and confesses that she's "nervous" about the upcoming sequel "They Follow" meeting expectations. "It's definitely intimidating."
Got thoughts, questions, ideas, concerns, compliments or maybe even some recs for me? Email btruitt@usatoday.com and follow me on the socials: I'm @briantruitt on Bluesky, Instagram and Threads.
