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 ...

Describing Come to the Stable as a comedy doesn't quite convey the tone of this lighthearted, charming film about two nuns from a French convent traveling to the town of Bethlehem (the one in New England, mind you, not the famous one) on a mission to repay a debt to God by building a children's hospital. This thing is whimsical, with sensibilities more in line with a cartoon's than a straightforward comedy. Think a 40s take on Phineas and Ferb where the main characters are sisters instead of brothers, and where "sister" is an official designation. The Phineas and Ferb comparison is more apt than you'd think. For one thing, the nuns aren't really given strong character arcs of their own, but instead serve as catalysts for other characters' arcs. To be clear, this isn't a flaw: contrary to what a distressingly large number of internet commentators (as well as an even more distressingly large number of Hollywood producers) have come to believe, not ev...

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 heard a great deal about How to Blow Up a Pipeline before watching; after seeing it, I'm honestly surprised I hadn't heard more. The film is ambitious in ways you rarely see in any genre, let alone heist movies. I haven't read the nonfiction book it's inspired by, but based on what I've been able to gleam from the internet, it seems the source material was intended as a manifesto endorsing property damage as a response to climate change - in short, a defense of ecoterrorism. I don't think it's a stretch to say the movie sets out with the same goal: this seems to want to be a sort of manifesto, and the methods it endorses, while notably measured and meticulously dissected within the narrative, are violent in nature (though it should be noted the target of said violence is always property, never human life). I'm sure the above is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people - I'm spelling this out up front to serve as a sort of content warning. This...

We last looked at The Thin Man back in 2013 - I'm grateful Lindsay reviewed it at the time, because (as she says in a note at the bottom) she was able to appreciate it a lot more than I was. In my defense, I really hadn't had much experience with movies from the 1930s back then, so I wasn't prepared for some stylistic choices and conventions the film employs. While I still don't love this quite  as much as some of its most vocal proponents, I've come around on it for the most part and more or less agree with Lindsay's conclusions: it's a delightful, comedic adventure anchored by its leads that would have benefited from more equable screentime for Myrna Loy's Nora. That's hardly a dealbreaker, obviously, but I do think it's worth emphasizing it is a flaw that the most interesting aspects of the film are largely sidelined, either because of fidelity to the source material or the garden variety sexist outlook that women couldn't or shouldn'...

I actually wasn't going to write this one up. My initial reaction was this film had some interesting moments set at Christmas, but for a number of reasons neither qualified as a "Christmas movie" (at least by my definitions) or leveraged the holidays in ways that were thematically noteworthy enough to count. Obviously neither of those reactions reflect on the movie itself, which is a fantastic (albeit disturbing) entry in the Italian Giallo movement, a sort of quasi-genre that paved the way for the modern slasher and has influenced countless films across virtually every genre. But the movie got me wondering whether there were any Giallos that used the holidays in a more sustained manner, so I did a simple web search for "Giallo Christmas movie" to see if anything popped up. And the only thing that did was Deep Red. While I didn't (and still don't) really consider this a Christmas movie, articles on Collider and Slash Film  were more generous in their la...

Like most people of my generation, I’ve seen this movie many, many times. I was eight when this came out, and I’m pretty sure my family saw it on the big screen. We’d go on to rent it and eventually tape it off the TV. As an adult, it was one of those movies Lindsay and I considered essential – I don’t recall when we bought it on DVD, but we’ve had a copy for ages. But eventually the DVD just didn’t seem good enough, so I picked up the Criterion blu-ray in a recent sale. That was the version we introduced our own daughter to, and the quality, as you’d expect, was fantastic. It’s so good, you can clearly see the Christmas tree behind the mother as she talks to Fred Savage. Likewise, there’s no mistaking the winter landscape or holiday decorations on the next-door house outside his bedroom window. I’d long been aware there was a paper Santa in his room, but on its own this doesn’t necessarily indicate the season (crafts tend to stick around, after all). But along with the other stuff, it...

If That Christmas had been released a decade ago, it would probably have performed modestly at the box office, sold well on DVD, gone into circulation on television and streaming, and be on its way to becoming a holiday classic. It's not reinventing the wheel, but it's the right mix of sweet, funny, and somber that makes for a fantastic experience that stays with you. This is really good stuff, with inspired voice casting and beautiful animation. But this wasn't made a decade ago, nor was it made five years ago, when the Disney/Fox merger threw production and release plans into disarray. So, here we are in 2024, when it's become pretty common for things like this to get picked up by Netflix and subsequently forgotten. Critics aren't enthusiastic about this one, either, so it's unlikely this will get much of a boost during awards season. Hell, we'll be lucky if this ever gets a blu-ray release (though if it does you can bet your ass I'll be buying a copy)...