Mainlining Christmas

I've been meaning to re-watch this for a while. I originally wrote about this back in 2016, and while I'll link to that post , it's not one I'm proud of. Having a "review" up for a critically acclaimed adaptation of a James Joyce story where my take is basically just me whining that I found the movie boring hasn't sat well with me as my appreciation for different kinds of films has expanded. I suspected - correctly, I might add - I'd react differently if I gave the movie another chance. That said, I agree with at least part of my original sentiment - this one really isn't for everyone. It requires a great deal of attention to follow the large number of characters and their relationships. Multiple viewings are probably the best approach if you're unfamiliar with the source material - at an hour and twenty minutes, that's not too heavy a lift (I watched this twice yesterday, for anyone curious). Even then, the movie and its underlying plot (w

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