Mainlining Christmas

   Even for action figures, that title's a mouthful. Let me attempt to break this down: Four Horsemen Studios is a company producing toys for collectors, which means the quality is going to be several steps above what you'll find in the toy aisles, and the same goes for the price tag. This seven inch figure ran me seventy bucks before tax and shipping - roughly three times what you'd expect for a similar size toy from a mass-market toy company. Was it worth it? Yes, actually, it was absolutely worth it, but I'll get to that in a moment - first I need to finish explaining the name and what it is. Four Horsemen Studios mostly produces original fantasy and sci-fi figures. The "Figura Obscura" line is used to make figures drawn from myth, folklore, and classic literature. They produced a Krampus a while back, but I balked at the price tag. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't regretting that, by the way. That brings us to their sub-line within Figura Obscura de...

This is a low-budget live-action kid's Christmas movie released a couple years ago to very little fanfare. As is often the case with things like this, how good or bad it is largely boils down to deciding what you're comparing it against, as well as what it's trying to accomplish. There's essentially no information about the production online (or at least none I was able to locate), so what little context I have derives from what's on screen, both during the movie and in the credits. We figured out it was filmed in Italy early on, thanks to a sign written in Italian in the background of a shot. The movie's location is one of its stronger assets - the filmmakers had access to impressive mountainous regions, as well as medieval looking buildings and streets, though I suspect some were filmed at some sort of theme park or Renaissance Fair. That aesthetic extends to the costumes and relevant props, as well - anything that looks like you'd see it worn by professio...

Small Things Like These is an Irish movie adapted from a novel about a coal merchant attempting to understand his past and find the courage to defy a powerful Catholic organization that's torturing single pregnant women and stealing their children. In short, it's the story of Ireland's own failure to address the Magdalene asylums within their nation for centuries, told through the prism of one man. The movie is exceptionally good by most metrics. Cillian Murphy plays the lead and seems to have been the main force driving the production - he's absolutely fantastic here. That goes for the rest of the cast, as well, but this is really Murphy's movie in more ways than one. Director Tim Mielants creates something impactful and memorable. The cinematography is likewise exceptional, capturing the grit of coal dust and soot that covers the buildings, just as the crime at the heart of the movie remains a blot on the nation (I said this was good, not subtle). It's an effe...

After watching this, I realized I'd made a mistake by not watching the original 1950 movie this is a (loose) remake of first, since I found myself unsure what was original and what was drawn from the source material. So, naturally, I watched the original as well. This is only a review of the 1988 movie, as the original is set in summer and we have a reputation to uphold. Aside from the vague premise, the two movies don't have much in common. Even some elements I'd have sworn were pulled from the 1950 version weren't, such as dated character names and explicit noir tropes. My guess is this was intended as a love letter to the noir era in general. Perhaps the Christmas setting was a nod to one of the many holiday noirs, since it certainly wasn't taken from the 1950 film, which was set sometime during the hot summer months. D.O.A. opens and closes with scenes shot in black and white that look and feel like something right out of a classic noir. In fact, the opening is ...

I'm convinced this would have broken into the canon of Christmas classics were it not for one extremely racist line of dialogue about eleven minutes into the movie. And, to be clear, the line in question (delivered as both a joke and a character beat) is quite offensive. War or no war, the line was bad then and is certainly bad now. The irony is other than that one joke, the movie holds up remarkably well in virtually every respect. It's a comedic Christmas murder mystery in the vein of The Thin Man starring Deanna Durbin as a fan of the mystery genre who jumps at the chance to investigate a murder she partially witnesses from the window of a train. The tone is closer to that of an adventure comedy than a noir, though it occasionally borrows stylistic embellishments from the genre it's poking fun at. If you took my advice a few years ago and watched Mystery of the Wax Museum , this strikes an similar balance between homage and parody (Durbin's character is also reminis...

I'm betting this would be better known if it hadn't named itself after that particular song. Not that there's anything wrong with the 1970 holiday song; it's just that the last few decades have been filled with a barrage of movies with similar names. When you hear a movie is titled, "This Christmas," the song isn't what pops to mind, but rather movies like Last Christmas , That Christmas , The Holiday , along with God knows how many Hallmark movies. The title of This Christmas simply isn't memorable. That's somewhat true of the movie, as well, though I want to stress this isn't necessarily a flaw. This Christmas sets out to deliver a a relatively traditional Christmas movie experience: a dysfunctional family confronting the holidays, renewing their commitment to each other, and going into a new year with more faith and optimism than they had during the last. The template is boilerplate; the variation comes from a change in setting and character...

Nutcrackers feels like a good movie, which is to say it's well shot, it (mostly) maintains a whimsically somber tone, and it features a relatively high-profile lead actor in an otherwise low-budget production. I've seen countless holiday movies with a similar premise (or at least a similar initial premise), but very few that veer away from the Hallmark vibe this completely. Before you read any of that as an outright endorsement, however, I want to draw your eye to a key detail in the opening sentence: I said this feels  like a good movie. Actually, it feels like two good movies. Or perhaps the first third of a one decent movie followed by the second half of an exceptional one. The problem here is the pieces don't snap together. The payoffs at the end of the movie are largely covering stuff hastily established directly beforehand. There's a series of comedic set-ups and ideas introduced early on that are just kind of forgotten. The disconnect isn't quite as jarring a...

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch Julia McKay, 2024 I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I got this title too late in the season to cover it last year, but better late than never? Premise: Besties Holly and Ivy decide to swap their planned holiday getaways after Holly's fiancé breaks off their relationship just before their Christmas wedding. They both find new friends and possible love by taking the road they didn't plan on. This book is two romances in one, and that fact leads to both the story's flaws and its joys. The good: two stories means that they switch off, meaning neither one is likely to get boring or overstay its premise. Holly's fiancé (who Ivy has doubted but tried to be cool with for a long time) jilts her for another woman, causing her to be numb and sad for a lot of the beginning of the story. It's good to break this up with Ivy's concern for her friend. Meanwhile, Ivy is unhappy with her career, but unwillin...

The third Niko film is the best to date, at least as far as the writing is concerned. The eagles in the second movie basically filled the same role as the wolves in the first , which made it feel somewhat recycled. This time, the primary antagonists are a rival group of reindeer with an axe to grind against Niko's father and Santa's Flying Forces, which makes for a more compelling arc, particularly because the series has always made it clear there are good reasons to hate those guys. It also plays with its genre references in more interesting ways, adding in elements of sports movies into the mix. That's hardly new to animated media about reindeer, but this time it means the story's destination isn't quite as obvious from the start. That's the good news. The bad is the animation feels like a slight step backward. I'm sure it's technically more impressive than the last movie (they had more than a decade of technological advances, after all), but whatever...