There is still a bundle of year-end-awards contenders in the on-deck circle, waiting to make their Memphis debuts (the young Bob Dylan portrait “A Complete Unknown,” the Nicole Kidman sex drama, “Babygirl” and the vampire retelling, “Nosferatu”) or full-release return (Indie Memphis opening night film “Nickel Boys”).

But those titles and others will continue to wait amid a relatively slow week for new releases.

There is one awards-contender showing up, though likely to have more limited appeal.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Memphis theaters

Daniel Craig was recently named Best Actor by the National Board of Review and received a Golden Globe nomination for his starring role in “Queer,” which opens exclusively this week at Malco Theatres’ Ridgeway Cinema Grill.

It’s the second film this year from director Luca Guadagnino, who started the year with the buzzy tennis-as-sex (or was it vice-versa?) drama “Challengers.” But “Queer” is more reminiscent of an earlier, equally celebrated Guadagnino film: 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name.”

“Queer” is an adaptation of an early novel by William S. Burroughs, one written in the 1950s but not published until the 1980s. Craig is William Lee, essentially a fictionalized version of Burroughs himself, living among a community of male, American expats in Mexico who seem to spend their days sitting around cafes, subsisting on nothing but cigarettes, booze, chatter and desire.

For Lee, the latter takes two forms: a handsome young arrival to the scene (played by Drew Starkey) and heroin. (The novel Burroughs wrote before “Queer,” also featuring “William Lee,” was called “Junkie.”)

“Queer” is as carnal as “Call Me by Your Name,” but more explicit; it’s mood less romantic than tortured. It’s a pretty straight drama until the midway point when it starts to take the surreal and violent turns you might associate with Burroughs (best known for the controversial “The Naked Lunch”). The in-your-face title is now suggestive of the way characters in this time and milieu discussed and processed their own sexuality and place in society.

Arrow Creative closing; Brooks Museum to absorb programs

This is a strong acting showcase, and not just for Craig. Particularly good is Jason Schwartzman, nearly unrecognizable under a heavy beard, as one of Lee’s friends. This supporting turn by Schwartzman follows a great lead performance earlier this year in the indie drama “Between the Temples.”

I’m reluctant to say that “Queer” isn’t for all tastes because few things are. But this is very much a case where if you don’t suspect you’d be interested in it, you probably won’t be.

Opening in wide release this week is “Kraven the Hunter,” a showcase film for a relatively little-known Marvel Comics character most associated as a Spider-Man villain. 

The character, here played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is a “big game hunter” who’s the son of a ruthless crime lord (played by Russell Crowe). Yeah, I dunno. “Kraven the Hunter” is helmed by a director, J.C. Chandor, who’s done good work in the past with straight dramas, including “Margin Call” and “A Most Violent Year.”

Also opening in wide release is “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” a Japanese animation addition to the Tolkien-verse, set before the events of the main trilogy.

Memphis Movies This Week: ‘Flow,’ ‘The Order,’ and a chance to meet ‘The Wizard’

“The Man in the White Van” (opening at Malco’s Cordova Cinema Grill and DeSoto Cinema Grill) is a crime thriller set in 1970s Florida, about an ominous white van stalking a young girl.

With so few new films opening, a couple of good, under-the-radar films discussed in this space last week — the animated “Flow” (Studio on the Square) and the true-crime thriller “The Order” (Collierville Cinema Grill) — are returning for a second week. 

Special screenings

While its song-and-dance scenes don’t quite reach the ecstatic peaks of “Singin’ in the Rain” or the best Astaire-Rogers films, 1954’s “White Christmas” still features a bounty of now old-school movie-musical numbers that combine pizzazz and charm in a way that doesn’t come nearly as easily anymore. 

This holiday staple gets a 70th-anniversary big-screen encore this week, showing at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, and again at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16, at Collierville Cinema Grill, Paradiso Cinema Grill and Hollywood 20.

The film’s title card actually identifies it as “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas,” perhaps the only movie to give a songwriter top billing, and it wastes no time (less than five minutes) having co-star Bing Crosby sing the beloved song (as they say, it’s a banger), one he’d introduced a decade earlier in “Holiday Inn,” a similar film. 

Starry Nights book brings holiday cheer to children this season

Here, Crosby and Danny Kaye are Army buddies doing a Christmas show for fellow soldiers while stationed overseas. After the war, they become a successful show-biz team and find themselves partnering (on and off stage) with a sister act (Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen) and putting on a show to benefit the troubled Vermont inn owned by their former commanding officer. 

As Christmas “classics” go, I don’t think “White Christmas” has nearly the magic of “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Meet Me in St. Louis,” but it’s a good, cozy watch, ably directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood”), one of the ace studio hands of the era. 

For a very different Christmas-themed movie experience, this month’s Time Warp Drive-In returns to the Summer Drive-In on Saturday, Dec. 14, for “Holly Jolly Holiday Horror.” 

This year’s selections are “Christmas Bloody Christmas,” a 2022 feature about a robotic Santa Claus on a killing spree, and “Troll Hunter,” about, well, hunting trolls.