This holiday season, you don’t have to look far for quality entertainment. There are plenty of films coming out, as there usually are, around Christmastime.

Opening up the season was the biography over sensation band Queen, following the life of Freddie Mercury through his rise to fame, his decline into substance abuse, and his struggle with AIDS. The movie was impressive especially on the account that Rami Malek, portraying Mercury, trained his voice to mimic Mercury’s. The production team wove Malek’s voice with a professional Mercury impersonator. The camera crew also took careful action to recreate moments in the band’s life, such as the Live Aid concert in 1985 which was shot almost identically to the original broadcast. All in all, Malek gives a strikingly realistic performance as Mercury, and the rest of the actors all fit into their roles perfectly.

Following the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Harry Potter franchise movie which received mixed reviews, there was a lot of speculation about where the production team would take the second installment in the Newt Scamander trilogy. Upon seeing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald, although the critics were once again strangely indecisive about the film, I found myself much more intrigued with the plotline of the trilogy. Despite the complaints of a messy or over-complicated plot, as was with the first installment, the movie is worth it for Eddie Redmayne alone. His depiction of the quirky Hufflepuff wizard is endearing and touching, and Redmayne truly pulls the movie together.

The highly anticipated Mary Poppins Returns is the next major movie picture, releasing just this week. There has not been a remake or a sequel of the beloved Julie Andrews film ever until this one, starring Emily Blunt stepping into the prim and proper heels of Andrews’ iconic character. Although Dick Van Dyke’s Bert does not make another major appearance, Van Dyke only having a cameo, whirlwind writer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda plays a new male protagonist, Jack. Jack and Mary Poppins return to No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane once again to meet little Michael Banks, now grown, and reconnect with the Banks family, most likely involving a lot of magic and a lesson to be learned. I am excited to see this sequel and see what spin they the new actors take on the original characters.