Mainlining Christmas

Another in a growing line of films I'd never seriously consider calling a Christmas movie, but it's old enough, interesting enough, and uses the holidays in an interesting enough (albeit limited) capacity to make it worth discussing here. The holiday, incidentally, is New Year's (I don't believe Christmas is so much as mentioned), and for the most part that holiday's role is symbolic - the leads discuss it several times, but it's in the context of plans that can never be. It's not technically part of the actual narrative, though there is a brief epilogue offering a glimpse of the day in question.  I should also note this movie is fantastic, offering a complex blend of drama and comedy, with the latter enhancing the emotional impact of the former, rather than detracting. The jokes, which I'll add are pretty hilarious, pull you into the sense of whimsy and hope that comes with falling in love, even if the situation is dire. Tonally, this is a fairytale set...

The Preacher's Wife has been on our watch list for years, but it's one of those movies that never seems to land on streaming services, or at least not ones we're subscribed to. Eventually I broke down and ordered a DVD, which then sat in a pile beside my TV for months. There it remained until someone commented on our 10 year old review of The Bishop's Wife  politely calling us out for not getting to the remake. Guess what we watched that night.  My first observation watching it was that I was going to need to rewatch the original if I wanted to have anything more substantive to say than, "yeah, this one's really good, too." Fortunately, the 1947 film is a lot easier to watch online than the remake, which is why you're getting a hybrid article covering both versions. Looking at them together has the unusual effect of making both seem even better. The films start with the same underlying premise but approach it in such radically different ways they feel ...

All the Creatures Were Stirring is a low-budget horror anthology movie released directly to Shudder in 2018 written and directed by Rebekah McKendry and David Ian McKendry, who (as you probably guessed from their names) are married. As is often the case with low-budget productions, any discussion of the movie's quality is going to be riddled with caveats and sidenotes. Depending on what you're comparing this to, what you expect out of it, and how steep of a curve you're grading on, you could describe this as fantastic, horrible, or just about anything in between. The movie features five short films and a frame story, all of which is packed into a brisk hour twenty minutes. Unsurprisingly, that means the individual stories aren't given a great deal of space to breathe. For the most part, the characters are pretty one-dimensional, though that's not necessarily a bad thing here. The collection is basically comprised of short genre stories, each of which serves to offer...

Even the title of this animated movie is difficult to unravel. This was a Finnish production, but it was animated in English before being released with several different titles, including at least two English titles depending on which country you were in. "The Flight Before Christmas" is the title for the US release, the far superior "Niko & The Way to the Stars" is the title in other English-speaking markets, and "Niko – Lentäjän poika" (which translates to something like, "Niko: Flier's Son") is the Finnish title. And, as far as I can tell, none of these are any more or less official than the others. Despite a strong preference for "The Way of the Stars," I'm going with the US title, since that's how this is primarily listed in the US. Adding complications, there are a few different versions of this floating around, because at some point this was also cut down to 45 minutes and shown on TV. For better or worse, we watc...

Easily one of the most polarizing Christmas movies in recent history, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point can be viewed as either a masterpiece of atypical narrative structure, or as a failed experiment. The problem I'm running into is I can't decide which side of that line I fall on. I find it a little easier to address the more pressing question most of you likely have: whether or not you should watch it. The answer is almost certainly not... unless you're a diehard cinephile, that is. Just to be on the safe side, let's get the spoiler warning out of the way. This is, after all, a new movie, and its fans absolutely adore it (with good reason, I think). I'm still trying to sort out where my opinion falls, but I don't want to spoil the story of a movie this controversial without giving you a chance to make up your own mind. So, just to be clear, if you're still reading after this sentence, you're doing so with the knowledge you're about to have the s...

Like its predecessor, the second Adult Swim Yule Log movie takes a lot of risks. But while this is ultimately a solid comedy/horror (leaning a lot more towards comedy this time), those risks don't pay off to anywhere near the same degree. It's probably unfair to expect otherwise, though: the first installment in this franchise felt revolutionary and exciting, essentially materializing a horror film from literal smoke. Even those of us not lucky enough to stumble on it organically when it aired advertised as a literal Yule Log video could sense the energy and excitement. That's just not here this time. While the movie has some very good and fairly original ideas, it ultimately feels much more conventional. This is a campy Christmas horror movie in the vein of Jack Frost (with the caveat I enjoyed this much more). It's got some practical creature and gore effects, an interesting premise exploring genre signifiers as a metaphor for trauma, and another good performance fro...

A musical retelling of the New Testament that feels like a mashup of Bollywood and the Star Wars prequels should be more fun than this. To be fair, there's still some fun here, but we're talking "Disney Channel original" with improved production values fun, not Chronicles of Riddick-level fun (despite Herod's soldiers' armor kind of looking like that of the Necromongers). It's bizarre, bordering on so-bad-it's-good, and may even cross that line, depending on your inclinations towards cheesy teen musicals. Because, to be clear, that's what this is. Hell, it's what it's going for! The movie, directed (and co-written and bunch of other stuff) by music producer Adam Anders, is aimed at teens, and the central message of the thing is "Mary and Joseph were just like you!" Well, that and variations on "you can make a difference, too," "you're part of God's plan," and "shut up and have babies." Okay, t...

This half-hour animated special appeared on Disney+ this year, and it's very pretty, but not much more than that. The story follows Moon, a young owl whose impulsive optimism gets him into trouble; he hides from an eagle in a big tree that is then cut down and sent to NYC for Christmas. Moon runs afoul of some territorial pigeons and ends up lost in the city, where he eventually runs into a human girl, Luna, who is also alone. They travel around the city together over montages and music.  Moon wants to get back to the tree because his dad said to stay put. At first, Luna helps him get back to Rockefeller Center, but when they finally get there, she realizes that other owls won't be able to find him. So she reaches out to adults for help getting Moon home to the forest, and help for her to get home as well. Everyone is home for the holidays: The End.  At the very start, the singing narrator (John C Reilly, evoking Rankin-Bass, but not quite nailing it) explicitly tells us that ...

Penny Serenade is one of those movies that eases into revealing its holiday credentials. I spent most of the first half thinking I'd been misled by whatever Christmas movie list I saw this on, but - sure enough - by the end I was convinced. More than that, the nature of its structure makes it particularly interesting to examine as a Christmas movie. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's backup and get some context. If Penny Serenade were released now, it would probably be considered a dramedy, as it pointedly contains both tragedy and humor and its tone tends to revert to a midpoint between those extremes. It's mostly notable for being the first film to earn Cary Grant an Oscar nomination, though if you ask me, his costar, Irene Dunne, is the real MVP here. Don't get me wrong: Grant's great too, but I found Dunne's performance more believable and sympathetic (to be fair, the writing around her character also ages better, as we'll discuss in more d...

Alias Boston Blackie is the third installment of a fourteen film series (plus a radio show spin-off) based on a character serialized for magazines who'd previously been adapted into silent films prior to Columbia Pictures's relaunch in the '40s starring Chester Morris. Kind of makes you wonder how long it's going to take for the name, "James Bond," to elicit the same blank stare "Boston Blackie" does now. Or maybe you're better versed in early 20th century crime fiction than I am. Blackie started out a character in crime fiction, assuming Wikipedia can be trusted (I sure as hell don't have the time to track down and read a bunch of 100 year old stories to confirm that). By the time he made his way to Columbia, the character had been reformed, presumably to keep him on the good side of the Hays Code, which was pretty strict about active criminals being punished for their deeds before the end credits rolled. Put a pin in this, though - I was pl...