Mainlining Christmas

I kind of wish I could claim I just randomly stumbled across this gem, but the truth is I found this - along with a handful of other movies - on this list of great European Christmas films last year. Three Wishes for Cinderella (we'll stick with the English title, though apparently, "Three Chestnuts for Cinderella" would have been a more accurate translation) is an adaptation of the classic fairytale. Or, more precisely, an adaptation of a specific version of said fairytale written by Božena Němcová a century earlier (thanks, Wikipedia!). The movie is set during the holidays and is apparently a tradition in some areas of Europe the way Rudolph or Frosty is here. I'll circle back to the holidays, but first I want to dig into why this is - in my opinion, of course - the best live-action version of Cinderella I've ever seen. Maybe the best version, period (the Disney classic is probably my least favorite of their films from that era). And if you're tempted to ob...

I'd seen conflicting reports on whether or not Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush was a Christmas movie, so I decided to check for myself. I've seen several of Chapman's other films over the past year, and consider him one of the most consistently entertaining filmmakers of his era (possibly the most entertaining, in fact). While The Gold Rush might be my least favorite of his movies I've seen to date, it's still quite good, and it technically meets our definition for a Christmas movie, which you probably guessed from the fact you're reading this at all. I want to stress that the word "technically" is doing some heavy lifting. The movie doesn't mention or acknowledge Christmas itself, though both Thanksgiving and New Year's are significant dates in the narrative, making it easy to confirm the bulk of screen time is spent on or between these holidays. In fact, only the first and last fifteen minutes fall outside this range. I should mention the...

I'm a little unclear on some details, but this appears to have been part of a series of adventures built around the character, "Octavius, the Amateur Detective." Based on a title card's invitation to read the story in "The Pictorial Review," I'm assuming it was a series of short stories adapted into film. If "The Adventure of the Wrong Santa Claus" is any indication, these were comedy adventures. The story starts with Octavius being asked to come to a friend's family Christmas party and dress as Santa. He purchases a costume and heads over. While at the party, he's introduced to Grace, who is... some relation to his friends. Or something. He's also informed that there's a spare Santa suit in a spare room, though he decides to wear his own. Unbeknownst to Octavius, a burglar skulking outside overheard that there was a spare Santa suit, broke in, and changed. While Octavius is getting changed, the thief sneaks in and knocks him un...

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 ...

I paused this movie about three-fourths of the way through, checked the time stamp, and pumped my fists in the air as I confirmed it qualified under our guidelines as a holiday movie. In case that reaction wasn't clear enough, Mystery of the Wax Museum is getting a recommendation, which means it also gets a spoiler warning. I don't think knowing details about the premise, characters, or plot will significantly undermine the experience in this case, but - just in case - if you're a fan of movies from this era, horror/comedy/adventure hybrids, or really movies in general, this one's a blast. It's also an absolutely gorgeous film that will challenge most viewers' assumptions of what movies from the early '30s looked like. Utilizing the now largely forgotten two-color Technicolor process, the film is both beautiful and eerie. The color, coupled with clever lighting and set design, creates a world that's unreal, evoking the feel of looking at a wax sculpture ...

Well, I didn't entirely hate it, which makes this my favorite installment in the Santa Clause franchise by a wide margin. To be fair, I haven't seen the trilogy this is sequeling since reviewing them, which was between nine and twelve years ago, so it's possible I'd have a more favorable reaction now. Possible, but unlikely: the stuff I recall disliking about those movies isn't the kind that tends to age well. Regardless, the new Disney+ limited series picks up in real time, sixteen years after the end of the third movie. Santa and Mrs. Claus have two kids: Buddy (who was born at the end of the third movie) and Sandra. Mrs. Claus - or Carol, as she used to be called - is going through an identity crisis, Buddy dreams of seeing the human world, Sandra seems completely uninterested in anything that isn't an animal or a witch, and - due to declining Christmas spirit - Santa's magic seems to be failing. When he learns about a "Secessus Clause" which wo...

As a fan of the Guardians movies and (as you may have noticed) of Christmas media, I've been waiting for this. And, at risk of spoiling the end of the review, I was not disappointed. There are a few details I have issues with, but on the whole, I absolutely love this thing. The special opens with an animated bit establishing that Peter Quill's childhood Christmases with the Ravagers were traumatic (or at least that's Kraglin's impression). Mantis, who we learn is secretly Peter's half-sister, wants to give him a proper Christmas, so she and Drax head to Earth to get him the perfect present: legendary Earth hero, Kevin Bacon. They arrive in Hollywood and, after some of the standard shenanigans you'd expect, the two Guardians are given a map to the stars, which they use to track down Bacon. They break into his house, chase him down the street, fight off police, then Mantis uses her powers to manipulate Bacon's mood so he's eager to follow them anywhere. Th...

As far as I can tell, Northpole was an attempt by Hallmark to create a family-friendly holiday franchise in the vein of Disney. The fact you've almost certainly never heard of it offers a pretty good summary for how that went. They actually did make a sequel the following year: maybe we'll get to that one of these days. This actually isn't our first experience with the brand. To accompany the movie, Hallmark made a number of tie-in products, most   of   which   we bought and reviewed  (I'll talk about some of those later). This is part of the reason I think Hallmark was trying to turn this into something big: they clearly invested in this idea. Let's talk about what that idea actually was. In the context of the movie, Northpole is a magical city where Santa and his elves live. It's powered by magic snow, which falls from the northern lights, which in turn are powered by happiness. Or something. Look, the idea is that Northpole creates toys so kids will be happ...

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 ...

La Befana Vien di Notte is a live-action Italian fantasy/superhero/comedy/adventure/children's movie about Befana. I probably shouldn't assume everyone reading this is familiar with Befana: she's a legendary witch who delivers gifts to the kids of Italy on Epiphany Eve (January 5th). The easy explanation is she's "like Santa," which isn't inaccurate, but feels reductive. There's a lot of debate over just how old the legends are and where they come from: I'm not going to get into any of that here. What's important is this idea isn't invented for the movie, and in Italy this would come across like a big-budget Santa Claus movie. The problem we ran into trying to watch La Befana Vien di Notte is that this isn't Italy, and the film hasn't received a proper US release. Amazon has a version up, but the language options are limited. There's of course a dubbed English track, but... Okay, side note. I'm pretty firmly entrenched on th...