Mainlining Christmas

I found the key to unraveling this bizarre religious horror/action movie buried in its Wikipedia article: prior to falling in the hands of director Peter Hyams, End of Days was apparently offered to Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro, either of which would most likely have turned the seemingly bonkers premise of pitting Arnold Schwarzenegger against the devil into the amusingly bonkers farce it deserved to be. But they were both busy (or perhaps uninterested), resulting in Hyams taking over the project. To his credit, Hyams proves capable of delivering a sleek, visually impressive movie. The effects are solid, including some early CG that (mostly) avoids the pitfalls of looking cheesy or dated. But none of that means much, because he doesn't seem to be in on the joke here. Despite some objectively ridiculous dialogue, names lamp-shading campy origins (for Christ's sake, there's a priest named Thomas Aquinas), and - again - Schwarzenegger blasting the devil with enough firepow...

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...

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...

Book Review: The Merriest Misters Timothy Janovsky, 2024 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. This romantic spin on The Santa Clause makes for some real holiday magic. Premise: Patrick and Quinn met, fell in love, got married, moved into their own house. Everything you're "supposed" to do. But their marriage is cracking under the pressure of family expectations, unspoken resentments, and unfulfilling careers. That's when Patrick unexpectedly gets a most unusual opportunity, and Quinn's along for a wild ride all the way to the North Pole.  Well, the library gods were kind to me and provided this last-minute holiday gift! This might be my favorite Christmas read of the season.  Think The Santa Clause, except instead of a guy killing Santa, becoming Santa, and fixing his relationship with his son, Patrick injures Santa (who unexpectedly quits), becomes Santa, and fixes his relationship with his husband.  Santa is mag...

The last fifteen years has seen a number of attempts to adapt northern European Christmas folklore into horror. Rare Exports  gave us a version of the Yule Goat, both A Christmas Horror Story and  Krampus  (as well as numerous low-budget horror flicks) have played with the now iconic demon (though I'd argue the character in the latter more closely resembles the Yule Goat, but that's a subject for another time), and another installment in the aforementioned  A Christmas Horror Story  was inspired by the tomte (which is essentially another name for the nisse). And of course there's the Danish series, Nisser , which Netflix picked up and rebranded, "Elves." Looking further back, there's a strong case to be made that  Gremlins  was in part inspired by the same lore, albeit filtered through WWII stories and the mind of Roald Dahl. Regardless, put a pin in Gremlins, because we'll be circling back. There's Something in the Barn represents a somewhat mo...

I'm not sure how this one snuck by me two years ago. I don't recall having heard of it once before buzz around the sequel put it on my radar. Then again, maybe I just glossed over it at the time, assuming that whatever it was, it wasn't worth my time. By design, this movie - and make no mistake, it is a feature-length horror/comedy movie - was designed to fly under the radar and build on word-of-mouth. Ideally, that and a recommendation are enough to pique your interest. If so... just go watch it. Need a little more encouragement? The closest things I can compare this to are John Dies at the End and Twin Peaks. Especially Twin Peaks. This thing has Twin Peaks energy spilling out of its fireplace. If either or both of those are things that appeal to you, there's a good chance you're going to be pleasantly surprised by this gonzo production. "Gonzo" is the right word, too. This was greenlit by Adult Swim and financed through a slush fund to keep higher-ranki...

While I'm absolutely stretching to discuss it as a Christmas movie, After Life is a 1998 Japanese fantasy drama written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda about a facility between life and death where souls spend a week, during which they choose a single memory the support staff will recreate on film, which will be screened for the spirits prior to their departure for the hereafter. They're told the memory they select will be the only one they retain. The movie exists more as a loosely structured exploration of memory, perspective, and meaning. There's virtually no conflict, and what's present is relatively muted, focusing more on its characters' internal journeys than external drama. It's a solemn, meditative experience - depending on how you approach things like that, you're either going to find this mesmerizing or excruciatingly dull. You can count me in the first camp, by the way - I'm absolutely a fan. But I'm pretty sure if I'd tried watchin...

I find myself using the word "frustrating" a lot when talking about Hallmark Christmas movies and the adjacent genre they inhabit. In this case, I'm using it in a somewhat favorable light, as what's frustrating is the disconnect between the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't. This starts out as a pretty serviceable comedy and maintains that for a little more than half its runtime before, well... we'll get to that. First, a little about what Sugarplummed is. Or even better, what it isn't. I'm seeing a number of sites list this as a romance, which is just plain wrong. Bizarrely wrong, in fact, to the point I find myself wondering if those categorizing it as such actually watched past the Hallmark logo. While the main character's relationship with her husband goes through a rough patch, it's all part of her strained relationship with her family, all of which is secondary to the central relationship at the core of this story: her friendshi...