Mainlining Christmas

There are quite a few movies named, "Silent Night," so - just to be sure we're all on the same page - the one we're looking at today concerns a Christmas gathering coinciding with an apocalyptic event in which a massive toxic cloud is sweeping over the globe killing every living human and animal in its wake. The movie is sort of a jumble of genres, incorporating comedy, drama, horror, and science fiction. By far the most famous member of the cast is Keira Knightley, who - between this and the criminally underrated Seeking a Friend for the End of the World - is amassing a background in the quirky apocalypse microgenre. Unfortunately, this doesn't work anywhere near as well as Seeking a Friend, though there's still a great deal to appreciate here. The movie's narrative is almost entirely focused on a group of adult friends and their children who are coming together for a Christmas celebration/suicide party. The poisonous cloud I mentioned earlier isn't q...

After watching Red Snow, I find myself a little surprised it's not better known, which is another way of saying I had a blast watching it. This is a horror/comedy vampire movie, and - honestly - that's about all I want to tell you before dropping a *spoiler warning* and advising those of you who like this sort of thing to check it out. Okay, I'll toss you a few more bones, in case you need more convincing. Or, in the case of those of you who are die-hard horror fans, perhaps a warning to temper your expectations. After all, this is a movie *I* really enjoyed, and - in case you've forgotten - I don't exactly have the best tolerance for scares, gore, and the like. Red Snow is absolutely the kind of R-rated horror movie that elicits complaints about not being gross or scary enough for a significant subset of the genre's fanbase. If that's a deal-breaker for you, you're probably better off skipping this. But for the rest of you, it's delightful. And, for...

Here's another parent review for y'all. At some point earlier this year, my daughter decided that she was interested in the Minnie's Bow-Toons shorts that are available on Disney+. And I discovered that there's a whole dang animated Disney Junior universe. As far as I can tell, first there was a popular animated show for preschoolers about Mickey Mouse and friends called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Minnie's Bow-Toons is a series of shorts spinning off of that show. But after the original MMC stopped airing, it was retooled and returned as a new show in a similar style: Mickey Mouse Roadster Racers, which ran for two seasons before the format was changed again and it was renamed Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures. This spawned more sets of spin-off shorts, including new seasons of Bow-Toons, now called Minnie's Bow-Toons: Party Palace Pals. The latest season of Bow-Toons, Camp Minnie, changes up its format even further to focus on outdoor activities. There are even mor...

There have been a substantial number of Christmas romcoms released direct to streaming over the past few years, too many for us to even try keeping up with. We attempt to get around to the most notable ones, but even then it's felt like a race against a malfunctioning automated assembly line. Christmas at the Ranch got on our radar because it's one of a small (though thankfully not as small as it once was) number of LGBTQ+ holiday movies. For better or worse, that turns out to be most of what makes Christmas at the Ranch different from the scores of other Christmas romcoms: aside from the fact both leads are women, this is fairly generic as far as these things go. I'm aware that can be a selling point to a number of people who love the subgenre and have been starved for representation. There's nothing wrong with making what amounts to a Hallmark romcom with a lesbian couple, since Hallmark's been slow to meet that demand (to be fair, they've made a few now, but ...

It's always hard approaching movies which were clearly made on a virtually non-existent budget, and this one's harder than usual. The Magical Christmas Tree feels limited by resources in ways that severely hamper the experience. At the same time, there are some really good aspects to the film that stand out. More than that, it offers a unique premise and highly unusual kind of representation within the universe of Christmas media. Which leads me to this very targeted recommendation: if the idea of a fantasy romantic Christmas comedy built around non-binary characters sounds like something you've been waiting for, there's a good chance you're going to love this despite its shortcomings. I'll add some of the movie's strongest assets reinforce that feature. The lead, Socks Whitmore, delivers a solid comedic performance as Pace. Ky Mullen does a decent job as well as their love interest, an elf named Buddy, but now I'm drifting into the premise, so let's...

If you didn't know there was a made-for-TV Christmas movie in which almost all of the supporting roles are played by former contestants and judges from RuPaul's Drag Race, now you know.  As you can probably guess, it's a fairly unique entry in the pantheon of holiday flicks. Like anything with a strong gimmick, viewers who are very familiar with the source material will probably get more out of moments that are clearly cameos and references than we did. But even though I've only watched one episode of Drag Race, I still enjoyed this.  It's funny and biting, it pushes the envelope (of course), and manages to be charming as well. The film does overstay its welcome a bit. It could have been a tight, hilarious 45 minutes, but at 86 minutes aspects of the underwritten characters get a bit tedious, and the jokes become especially hit-and-miss in the middle.  I want to mention something I alluded to above, that the supporting roles are mostly drag queens. The main characte...

Love, Death & Robots is an animated science-fiction anthology series on Netflix that leans towards R-rated fare. Like most anthologies, the quality and style vary from short to short. Some of these are absolutely fantastic, while others are fairly mediocre. None are what I'd call awful - even the worst feature jaw-dropping visuals, almost always of the computer-generated variety. My largest criticism of the series is it's prone to excess: the first volume, in particular, contains so much unnecessary nudity and sexual content I found myself wondering if there was a mandate only lifted for a couple shorts. This short doesn't have that issue. In fact, I'd describe it as impressively restrained and tonally balanced, particularly given the premise. It's also the first of only two stop-motion installments to the series, as is appropriate for the holiday theme. Let's get to the story, though at only five minutes, "scene" might be a better descriptor. The ...

We're trying to catch up on at least a few Hallmark Christmas movies this year. We mostly dropped them a while ago, in part because we got tired of writing what felt like the same review over and over again, and in part because it became easier to watch similar offerings from streaming services we were already subscribed to. But after stumbling across a few better-than-average offerings, we found ourselves wondering if the production company had improved, or if we'd just seen a few anomalies. Consider this a data point in what will no doubt be a long attempt to answer that question. And this data point is a check in the "anomalies" column. Every Time a Bell Rings is a Christmas dramedy centered around three adopted sisters, now grown up, dealing with unresolved issues, life events, and the loss of their father, all while reviving a childhood tradition in which they complete a scavenger hunt to try and locate a bell family legend claims grants wishes. I'll tell you...

All right, cards on the table: despite being plenty old enough to remember the marriage, divorce, and death of Diana, I didn't really pay much attention when it was going on. Or after, for that matter: I never found the news specials, documentaries, or movies/shows appealing. To put it another way, I know very little about the life and death of Princess Diana. I went into Spencer with virtually no context about her or the royal family. That might be an issue here, because I get the feeling you're supposed to have a little background before seeing this movie. It seems to be challenging the viewers' understanding of Diana, which presupposes you actually have one. I don't think this invalidates my opinion on the movie, but I want to be upfront about where I'm coming from and what my limitations are. If you're someone who's been fascinated by this person and the tragedy around her death, you're likely going to view Spencer through a very different lens and w...

Well, this miniseries doesn't fit in with any of my existing approaches to defining or addressing Christmas media. A few years ago, I'd just have written up the first and ninth episodes, as those - and only those - are set around the holidays (on different years, no less). Only Station Eleven is highly serialized and intended as a unified piece. More than that, the Christmas episodes (to the extent the term even applies) are set around the holidays for thematic reasons pertaining to the miniseries as a whole. Technically, if I still cared about justifying this kind of thing, I'd point to that as a reason to write this up despite falling well short of the 50% threshold for automatic consideration as Christmas media. Really, I'm writing it up because I think it makes for an interesting anomaly exploring aspects of the season in a fairly unique and interesting (to me, at least) way. I'm not even sure how to approach a synopsis for the series. It's not so much that ...

TWO Aardman holiday specials this year? Woo! While Robin Robin featured a slightly different look and style for the studio, Shaun the Sheep is right in their comfort zone: hilarious comedy done with extremely professional stop-motion animation. If you've never seen any Shaun the Sheep, you can jump in at any time. There's a television series, two films, and multiple specials. All of them feature roughly the same premise: Shaun and his sheep pals live on a farm. Shaun is much more intelligent than the farmer knows (as are the other sheep, if less so), and comedy ensues. The farmer (who is an idiot) and the farmer's loyal dog often come up with plans to improve the farm, which often come into conflict with capers run by the sheep and other animals.  And it's all wordless. There's no dialogue in Shaun the Sheep, only mumbles and expressive animal noises. The simplicity lends itself to brilliantly outlandish physical comedy.  This special might be the funniest entry I...

So far, the Disney+ MCU shows have been something of a mixed bag. I don't think any have been awful, but the level of quality has fluctuated wildly from series to series, with WandaVision being by far the best and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier being the most disappointing. Good or bad, they've all boasted impressive production values and have all delivered some of the quippy dialogue that's become a hallmark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hawkeye joins Iron Man 3 in sporting a Christmas setting. Between the two, I think Hawkeye makes better use of the holidays -  in Iron Man 3, it mainly just felt like a callback to the director's filmography. Here, it serves to heighten the tension, tie in to themes of family, build up a sense of the surreal, and... well... okay, it's also kind of making a bunch of allusions to Shane Black movies, but it's not like I mind. Of course, the Christmas setting also means it's fair game here, so let's dig into the sec...