Chris Klimek

A Complete Unknown isn't a traditional biopic. Instead of covering Bob Dylan's life story from birth to old age, it covers the period shortly after his arrival in New York City, as he first begins to fall in with the city's folk music scene. Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan — and does all his own singing. We see Dylan become a superstar, as well as his famous set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival —where he and his band plugged in for an electrified set that's often viewed as a cultural turning point in America. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. Subscribe to NPR Plus at plus.npr.org or make a gift at donate.npr.org.

The new film Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to 2019's Joker, which won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar. This new film is a courtroom drama and a romance tossed into a musical blender set to liquefy, as the Joker goes on trial for the murders he committed in the last film and falls in love with a groupie played by Lady Gaga.

Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary filmmaker behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, is back with his first new film in over a decade. It reimagines the fall of Rome through a futuristic American city, and has a lot of big and messy ideas about time and the fate of humanity. It's also jam-packed with stars like Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Aubrey Plaza. We try to make sense of it all.

Each week, Pop Culture Happy Hour guests and hosts share what's bringing them joy. This week: the 1980s movie Miami Connection, and the podcasts Blank Check and Depresh Mode.

The last James Bond movie to star Daniel Craig is out today; Chris Klimek argues that Craig is the "bookend Bond," showing us 007 at the beginning and end, but never the prime of his career.

As a soldier reanimated by nanobots, Vin Diesel — "a lumbering fireplug who runs like John Wayne and fights like Roger Moore" — underperforms.

Guy Ritchie returns to the genre he made his bones on, and the film's "rigorous and largely circular" plot is fun; more fun than McConaughey's undercooked performance, anyway.

Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is back at the top of the chart a quarter century after it was first released. So why haven't there been any lasting Christmas songs to take its place?

Clint Eastwood's workmanlike account of a man falsely accused of the 1996 Olympic bombing clears Jewell's name while baselessly and maliciously smearing a real-life reporter's in the process.

Roland Emmerich's CGI-heavy depiction of the WWII battle that turned the tide in the Pacific isn't boring, but it's familiar beats ensure it's more a movie about war movies than it is about war.