Mainlining Christmas

On one level, I appreciate what directors Zac Moncrief and Steve Trenbirth, as well as writer Jon Colton Barry (who co-wrote this with Moncrief), were trying to pull off here. These are all industry professionals - Moncrief and Barry are both veterans of Phineas and Ferb, which almost certainly ranks somewhere on the top ten list of animated series of the last twenty-five years - so this isn't going to be a by-the-numbers exercise in bland, inoffensive kid's media. You can tell they wanted to subvert expectations, push boundaries, and create something with a bit of an edge to the humor. And, again, they have experience in that department. I thought about that a lot while I watched A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas, the new 50-minute special currently streaming in a couple spots (including free on YouTube, in case there was any doubt this was financed as some sort of marketing promotion). I also thought a lot about the writing and the jokes, because... I think the writing might be oka...

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...

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...

Okay, that wasn't half bad. Actually... hold on. Let me double-check my math. Actually, I take it back: this was exactly half bad. But that does mean it was half good, which is a hell of a lot better than the first installment . The improvements are mainly in the animation, which received a substantial upgrade, likely due to the first being fairly successful. This wasn't giving Disney or Dreamworks a run for their money, but to my eye it looks about on par with most of what Blue Sky was putting out around that time. Given this was probably made for a tiny fraction of the money US studios have, that's pretty impressive. The characters interact better with their environments (though the lighting still looks off at times), and - more importantly - the action sequences are kinetic and engaging, both in how they're storyboarded and brought to life. This was a huge issue with the first movie, so I was happy to see the course correction. Unfortunately the writing didn't im...

I feel like I have to start this review by saying I don't know anything about the Jonas Brothers, and I don't think I could name a single one of their songs. I'm not stating that up front to be negative or confrontational: I just don't want anyone thinking that my recommendation for this is in any way connected to me being a fan or something - I'm not. It's just... this is a good movie. I didn't expect that. Hell, I didn't expect it to be good or for it to be a real movie. And yet it's both: a musical comedy that emphasizes the comedy, to the point it borders on parody but stops just short of crossing over the line into farce. It walks right up to that line, though, allowing the title characters to play comically exaggerated versions of themselves who are the butt of the movie's jokes but avoid faltering into unlikability. In that respect, the movie's a choreographed balancing act that could have - and by rights probably should have - gone ho...

This is a French anthology of animated shorts, each written and directed by a female filmmaker, stylized to look something like a children's book brought to life. The movie was released in various overseas markets last year, but - as far as I know - is just reaching the US now. It's simple but beautiful, a throwback to old 2D animated shorts and holiday specials. A few of the sequences reminded me of animated Sesame Street sequences, though I assume the actual inspiration came mainly from French cartoons of the same era. Everything in this is intended for a young audience - there's no serious danger or animosity in any of these shorts, and nothing really gets hurt. I wouldn't hesitate to show this to a toddler or younger: any child old enough to look at a screen is old enough to see this. At the same time, it's all sweet and touching enough to appeal to adults who appreciate the medium. This is an all-ages film, excluding perhaps that 8 to 16 window where anything c...

I'd never seen this before, but the art in the opening credits really took me back to 1998. I was just starting college and I had a new computer (an Aptiva), which included a number of programs. I didn't have Office (that would have cost extra), but I had a suite of knockoffs, including a rudimentary paint program. I mention this because the art in the movie is about on par with what I could have whipped up at the time. That sets a pretty good expectation for the rest of the movie, which has the feel of a made-for-TV production that probably wasn't quite polished enough to actually air on television. Or maybe it did. Honestly, I don't know where this did or didn't air or screen, if it went direct-to-video, or what. I don't know much of anything about "The Boy Who Saved Christmas" that wasn't in the movie itself, because there doesn't seem to be much information available - no Wikipedia page, a relatively barebones IMDB entry , and no readily av...

This is a 45-minute stop-motion special about an Australian outback tour operator accidentally trading places with Santa Claus. Based on the premise and a minor character with a heavy Australian accent, I assume this was produced for the Australian market, but I actually haven't been able to verify that. The production company behind the project is Canadian, the main voice actor is Australian, and the only firm information I can find on it playing anywhere pre-streaming is a French film festival. IMDB does list a release date of December 25, 2008 in Australia, but it seems odd for it to have been delayed three years if that was the *first* time it was seen outside of festivals. I swear, it used to be a lot easier to research this kind of stuff before AI turned the internet to crap. None of that reflects on the quality of the special, of course, but I'd like to at least know whether this is an Australian or Canadian special, whether it's popular anywhere, and so on and so fo...

Until I saw some online discussion surrounding this recently, I hadn't realized it was an adaptation of A Christmas Carol. I'd never seen the movie and have no memory of the trailers - if I ever thought about the movie, I must have assumed it was a fairly typical romantic comedy with supernatural elements. Hell, until we expanded our purview five or so years ago, we wouldn't have considered this worth reviewing the blog at all (it explicitly is not  set at Christmas). But the Dickens connection here is significant and worth exploring, and - for better and worse - this is an interesting movie. It's also surprising in a number of respects. This is a far more faithful retelling of A Christmas Carol than I'd ever have expected given the premise. It incorporates elements of the story and characters, mostly in clever and subtle ways (though I could have done without the "What day is it" callback gag near the end). That's the "better" side of the ...

Pinning this down to a genre - or even a short list of genres - is virtually impossible. The movie, for better and worse, plays like a barrage of ideas and imagery drawn from Ghostbusters, Blade, Marvel movies (Doctor Strange in particular), The Matrix, Men In Black, as well as more obscure fare - there's a surprising amount of The Frighteners in this. Meanwhile, the pacing feels like it's right out of a Michael Bay Transformers movie, which I promise is only 50% intended as an insult (Nekrotronic, for all its faults, is consistently interesting to look at, which is no small feat on a limited budget). If I had to try to classify this, I'd settle on action/adventure/comedy/horror/fantasy/superhero. More than any of that, this feels like a tongue-in-cheek two-decade-late adaptation of Mage: The Ascension (ask your parents to ask those weird people they knew in college). You'll note something was missing from that long line of genres: Christmas movie. And that's going ...

It's a bit reductive to describe this French horror movie as being about a killer advent calendar, but if anyone needs that for some kind of yuletide horror bingo card, by all means check it off. What I found most interesting about the film is its choice of subgenres and references to establish the rules and lore around the deadly box. I should caution those are minor spoilers, so read the next paragraph at your own risk. The movie's premise is ultimately revealed to be a mix of "deal-with-the-devil" and time travel elements, with the stipulation neither are explicit. The time travel, in particular, won't register as part of that subgenre to anyone who hasn't spent an abnormal amount of time considering that genre. As for the "deal-with-the-devil" thing... it's not entirely clear the monster at the center of this is a demon, at all. You could argue it's actually an angel, of the Old Testament variety. And Eva, the movie's heroine, doesn...