Mainlining Christmas

Sitting right on the overlapping portions of a Venn diagram encompassing things that are "very good" and "completely insufferable," the new Apple TV+ live-action/animation hybrid special (they're trying to sell it as a movie, but don't be fooled) feels like the sort of thing that would be divisive if it were streaming on a platform more people actually used. The book this is based on meant a lot to me growing up, though I was a bit taken aback by some of the subtext rereading it now, which comes off as a bit ableist. This is of course far from the first adaptation of the classic children's book, though it's the first I remember encountering that qualifies as Christmas media under most definitions of the term. While you could make a case that the original is incorporating a trope in which a special Christmas present comes to life, Christmas is basically an afterthought in the book, compared with - say - a similar idea forming the backbone of The Nutcr

Aside from a short bit at the end (more on that in a moment), this six-minute film is essentially a "how it's made" documentary showing how Christmas Crackers are produced (or more accurately how they were produced in the early 1900s). Even that's an overstatement: we don't really get a good look at the process; instead we're seeing quick glimpses of the components being made. It's all done using machines by workers performing their tasks extremely quickly, so it's not easy to tell precisely what they're doing or how the machines work. We get a feel for the environment in which they're made, but that's about it. It's worth noting the factory is staffed by a mix of male and female employees. I don't have much sense of scale, but my guess is these are unique workstations (i.e.: I can't imagine demand was so great that there were dozens more employees off-screen performing the same functions). At any rate, the film ends with a brie

The Naughty Nine is Disney's new direct-to-streaming kid's heist adventure about a team of highly-skilled children breaking into Santa's workshop after being snubbed by the Jolly Old Elf on Christmas Eve. My guess is most of you are eyeing that premise the way I did, as a promising idea that most likely wouldn't be executed remotely well enough to work. Disney, after all, certainly wouldn't be my first choice of companies to tackle this sort of thing. But I was pleasantly surprised, at least for the most part. It's that "most part" that's going to be a sticking point: the second act drags, and there's an "obey authority" message embedded in the subtext that doesn't sit well with me. Despite those issues, the characters are fun, the first act is delightful, and the actual emotional arcs are fulfilling enough to justify a recommendation, albeit a tepid one. Lindsay and I had fun with this, and if you're intrigued by the idea of

This is a low-budget holiday romcom released direct to Freevee, an ad-supported subservice of Amazon Prime, which was almost certainly rushed through filming prior to the strikes, with a premise likely reverse-engineered from the pun in the title; a pun that has already been used by multiple existing low-budget holiday productions. In a nutshell, it would be hard to imagine a series of warning flags more conclusive that the movie in question was going to be absolutely abysmal. Which makes it all the more shocking that it's actually kind of good. I want to be careful not to oversell this one, because it certainly isn't great. The movie has quite a few problems, including some structural ones, and the bulk of the jokes land closer to "amusing" than "hilarious." But there are a few truly standout moments of both comedy and drama, the cast does really solid work, and - perhaps most notably - Jonah Feingold's direction includes some interesting, smart choices

This fifteen-minute film was directed by D.W. Griffith, which should probably be addressed before we get into the movie itself. Griffith of course also directed the 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, which glorified the founding of the KKK. I am not a film historian, nor have I actually seen Birth of a Nation, so I will not be commenting on its significance in the history of the medium. I will say that any discussion of Griffith as a filmmaker - or any of his films - should probably acknowledge his legacy is at least as connected to the history of white supremacy as it is to the evolution of early film. For what it's worth, I actually watched A Trap for Santa Claus and wrote the remainder of this review prior to realizing who directed it. In short, I'm not just attempting to separate the art from the racist here: I literally didn't notice until after. The story starts with a family down on their luck. Unable to find work, the father is taking their misfortune particularly hard a

I recently watched and wrote up the 1938 remake of Holiday before realizing it was, in fact, a remake. Since I'm prioritizing pre-war holiday movies this year, I didn't want to skip over its predecessor. In earlier years, I'd have given it some time to avoid watching the same basic story twice in quick succession, but last year's Christmas Carol project warped my brain to the point that sort of thing no longer bores me. That does place me in the somewhat awkward position of talking about a film that - at least as far as story is concerned - is virtually identical to one I just discussed. Since I neither want to reword the same synopsis nor copy and paste what I wrote before, when the time to talk plot rolls around, I'll just direct you to that review and discuss elements that were different between versions. First, though, I want to get to the unfortunate business of measuring the two films overall. Normally, I tend to favor earlier adaptations (as my picks for  Th

I've got two pieces of business before I start describing this movie in detail. The first is that this is a remake of a 1930 film of the same name , with both versions being based on a play. I'm not certain which order we'll wind up running the reviews, but - just to be upfront - I watched and am writing up the remake first. The second piece of business I want stated upfront is that this movie rules, and you should watch it. The jokes are hilarious, the performances are fantastic, the characters are extremely likeable, and the politics hold up. But more on that (a lot more, in fact) later. While I don't think knowing more is going to seriously impact the fun of seeing it play out, consider this your mandatory spoiler warning, in case you want to track down and watch an eighty-five-year-old romantic comedy before learning more. The movie opens with Johnny (played by Cary Grant) returning from a vacation. He meets a couple friends and reveals he met a woman and they'r

I'll warn you upfront this falls in a sort of awkward space between "conceptually good" and "actually good," at least by today's standards. The fact I'm comparing a movie 116 years old to anything remotely modern should be an indication there's something pretty neat about this, so if you've got 14 minutes to kill and don't want to be spoiled, go look this up on Youtube: it's not hard to find. And make no mistake, there's absolutely something in this to spoil. Let's get into what this is, because I doubt it's what you're expecting from the title. Or more accurately, it starts like what you're expecting then goes in a wildly different direction about halfway through. The first half is a bit slow. We're introduced to the characters: a kind little rich boy with tons of toys, and a poor girl who lives in a small shack. While on a walk, the boy comes across the girl, who's standing in the cold. He gives her his coat

Rather than running these individually, I'm posting reviews for five shorts, each of which is an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. This is far from an exhaustive list, of course, but this covers every surviving version through the 1950s I was able to locate. For those of you who don't feel like digging through my notes, I'll save you a little time - these are all good for when they were made. The two that really stood out were the 1928 silent French version and the 1937 animated version. The animated probably aged the best of the bunch, as far as general audiences are concerned, while the 1928 film was the one I found the most fascinating from a technical standpoint. So, if you're interested in old movies, that's a good one to see (actually, all of these are good to see, but that's a great starting point). Those are the two I was thinking of when I slapped a "Highly Recommended" label on this post, though in both cases

At last, we come to the fourth and final movie I'll be looking at. I realize there are countless TV movies, mini-series, and even an anime, but considering this isn't really a Christmas story, I feel like this is already bending the rules. Only this one adaptation actually might qualify as a Christmas movie. Sort of. Kind of. I'll get to that in a minute. First, I want to cut to the chase. This is, by several orders of magnitude, my favorite of the bunch. It's absolutely fantastic, incorporating iconic sequences, enhancing and updating both the humor and drama, and simultaneously exploring the intricacies of the author's complex relationship with the work and by extension that between reality and fiction in general. It is a phenomenal movie. Greta Gerwig's approach differs from earlier versions in that she doesn't follow the book's blueprint. Rather than tell this story linearly, she intercuts between the first and second halves of the story, and in so d

I'm not entirely certain this was originally intended as a Christmas film, but apparently it's included in at least one modern holiday compilation, so I'll count it. This film is a 7-minute-long short about a group of women riding in a couple horse-drawn sleighs who are attacked by a group of men armed with snowballs. The women then chase down the fleeing men, push them into the snow, and pelt them with snowballs. It's not entirely clear whether the women are motivated by good-natured play or rage-fueled vengeance, so I guess that's up to the viewer. If that sounds fun... it kind of is. The scope of this is impressive: I didn't get a precise count, but it feels like it involves a substantial number of participants. Likewise, this involves some fairly large stunts. At one point, one of the sleighs tips over, throwing the riders into a snowbank, and they all rally to get it upright again. There's also a sequence where the women - now on foot - slide down a ste

Murderville is essentially a blend of a cop show parody, a gameshow, and an improv performance. The setup involves a scripted murder mystery in which a celebrity guest, playing the character assigned to solve the crime, is NOT shown the script or provided any sort of preparation. This guest host then needs to stumble through the story while the rest of the cast improvs around them. The show typically uses only one guest, but this isn't a normal episode. For the Christmas special, we get two or three, depending on whether you count a brief surprise spot from Pete Davidson as a real guest. Jason Bateman is around from the start, with Maya Rudolph added about halfway through. Guiding the guest star(s) is Will Arnett, playing Detective Terry Seattle, a parody of the typical hard-as-nails lead. Seattle has an ongoing subplot involving his ex-wife, who's also his boss, though this is less of a factor in this episode. Seattle gets a few scenes with side adventures in this episode. Arn

I first watched this about a decade ago, after a friend recommended it as a Christmas movie. I recall being a little annoyed at the time, both because I didn't particularly enjoy watching it and because it failed to meet my tests for qualifying as a Christmas movie. Upon re-watch, I stand by my assertion this is not, according to any meaningful use of the term, holiday entertainment (though I do have some thoughts on how Christmas is used). As for not thinking much of it, well... I'm glad I didn't review it back then. This adaptation is quite good, whether or not I was capable of appreciating it when I first saw it. There are some fairly large caveats to that praise, which I'll get to, but it succeeds in what it sets out to do, which is to adapt the story for the era it was made for. In this case, that largely meant updating characters and feminist themes to be more relevant to girls of the '90s. The movie focuses more heavily on Jo's writing than earlier films,