December streaming highlights

Luca Fontana

1/12/2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

New month, new streaming recommendations. From Netflix to Prime Video, Disney+, Sky Show and Apple TV+, these are our series and movie picks on streaming services this December.

How much do you think Santa’s sleigh costs? Nothing – it’s on the house! Do you know what else is free? My December movie and series highlights.

Troll 2 is the sequel to the surprisingly successful hit from 2021 – basically what «Godzilla» was for Japan, just in Norwegian and with a lot more boulders. The first instalment completely passed me by at the time. I knew of it, but I guess you could say I wasn’t really interested.

Now the second part’s here, and the trailer shoots me straight back to the era of Godzilla: King of the Monsters: big creatures, big explosions and a big appetite for popcorn. And yes, The Guardian thinks the movie sucks. But to be honest, in kaiju films this is sometimes even a sign of quality.

Starts: 4 December

The Abandons (series)

When Netflix orders a western, it’s not a well-behaved Sunday afternoon series, but one by Kurt Sutter. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Sutter’s the guy behind Sons of Anarchy. He’s the kind of storyteller who turns outlaw families into Greek tragedies – raw, dirty and morally wonderfully complicated. It’s precisely this flair he’s now bringing to the Wild West.

The Abandons is set in Oregon in the 1850s, where outcast families have to stick together because greedy land barons literally take the ground from under their feet. Violence, loyalty, secrets – everything boils over when two matriarchs (played by Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson) fight for land, power and their people.

Starts: 4 December

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (movie)

Benoit Blanc is back – and honestly, I have no idea how Daniel Craig has managed to pull off the look of a Southern gentleman and someone who hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in three movies. Wake Up Dead Man is the third part of the Knives Out instalments, this time with priests, intrigue and a murder case that’s supposed to be so «perfectly impossible» that even Blanc stares into space for a moment.

Rian Johnson’s back doing exactly what he does best: building a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle and then throwing a cast at it with the «Avengers» equivalent of character actors – Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner and Mila Kunis. Everyone’s suspicious. Suspiciously good.

Starts: 12 December

Back to the wasteland. Fallout is entering its second round, and this time the series is heading to the place fans have been eagerly awaiting since the season 1 finale: New Vegas. Lucy and the Ghoul trudge side by side through the sand, somewhere between buddy road trip, trauma processing and completely escalating civil war. What you can expect: more factions, more monsters (yes, Deathclaws are waiting in the wings) and the question of who is actually corrupting whom.

What I find really fascinating is how much season 2 plays with moral dilemmas. Does Lucy get tougher the longer she stays out? Is the Ghoul becoming more human? Or do the two meet somewhere in that gloriously depraved middle ground where the Fallout universe is at its strongest? And then there’s Macaulay Culkin who’s perfectly casted as «crazy genius».

Starts: 17 December

Merv (movie)

A feel-good movie about a dog who becomes depressed because his owners (played by Zooey Deschanel & Charlie Cox) have separated. Great. Now I’m crying. Thanks for nothing, Amazon.

Starts: 10 December

Ok, I admit it, my memories of the old «Percy Jackson» movies are… to put it kindly «mixed». The idea was strong, the execution less so. I was all the more surprised by the series adaptation, launched on Disney+ in 2023. Suddenly Percy didn’t seem like a rushed blockbuster import, but like what the books actually are: a warm-hearted, funny coming-of-age with chaotic gods.

So it’s no wonder that season 2’s coming – with this adaptation of The Sea of Monsters. Grover is in a Cyclops mess, the camp’s under threat, and Percy has to paddle through the divine Bermuda Triangle. What’s new? Tyson, his Cyclops half-brother, Thalia, daughter of Zeus, and a noticeably darker tonality. Looks like a season that finally shows how much heart there is in this world.

Starts: 10 December

The End of an Era (documentary series)

Personally, I’m not a Taylor Swift fan. By no means. But when perhaps the current biggest pop star in the world opens the doors behind one of the most gigantic tours in music history, even I’m intrigued. The End of an Era accompanies Swift from the rehearsal room to the last show, including previously unreleased material – whether it’s intimate moments with Travis Kelce, backstage chaos with Sabrina Carpenter or little everyday moments that would otherwise never get out.

The view of the engine room behind the Eras Tour is particularly exciting: a billion-euro project that works like clockwork and at the same time rests entirely on a single person. The trailer shows an artist dissecting her own phenomenon and at the same time trying to capture the emotional impact of this chapter before the light goes out.

Anyone who loves Swift will be over the moon with this. And if, like me, you’re more on the fence, you might still be surprised at how fascinating it can be to peek behind the scenes.

Starts: 12 December

Mozart versus Salieri – a duel that’s lived in our minds for over forty years, although there’s hardly any historical evidence for it. Sky’s now venturing into a new interpretation of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, the 1979 play that inspired Milos Forman to make one of the greatest music films of all time in 1984. The movie that won eight Oscars, provided iconic scenes and a monumental portrait of genius and envy. A massive legacy for any new adaptation, that’s easy to fail at.

And yet that’s exactly what appeals to me. How do you approach a story that’s long since been debunked as a myth? The real rivalry between Mozart and Salieri never existed in this form; much of it was exaggerated, orchestrated and dramatised for the stage. But the emotional truth behind it – the clash between a natural talent and a man who despairs of his own mediocrity – remains universal.

On the one hand, things look hopeful. Will Sharpe plays Mozart as an impulsive, hyper-creative bundle of chaos whose music flows out of his hands faster than he can think. Paul Bettany, on the other hand, plays Salieri as a quietly burning perfectionist whose faith and self-image crumble the closer he gets to Mozart’s «God’s gift». If the series presses the emotional buttons, Amadeus could actually become what it already was: a gripping drama about talent, jealousy and the question of how much genius a person can take.

Starts: 21 December

F1: The Movie is now on Apple TV. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re in for a treat. For me, it was one of those rare blockbuster moments where I sat in the movie theatre and kept thinking, «How the hell was this even allowed to be filmed?»

For two years, a Hollywood team was glued to the real Formula 1, while Brad Pitt drove real cars on real tracks, flanked by real world champions like Verstappen and Hamilton. No doubles, no green screen – just G-forces, sweat and breakneck speed. And as the viewer you feel every bend. Director Kosinski stages the races as if he were pushing you into the cockpit and only letting you out again when your pulse reached 180.

Yes, the film’s clean. Too clean. They obviously want to polish the global F1 brand here. But do you know what? It works. Because the immersion is brutal. Because Pitt as Sonny Hayes unashamedly exudes charisma. And because Hans Zimmer’s score makes the engines even louder than they already are. It’s a must-watch!

Starts: 12 December

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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