Mainlining Christmas

Fairly high concept for a Hallmark movie, this is about a screenwriter scripting a remake of a classic Hollywood Christmas movie getting magically transported back to the production of said movie in 1947 and falling in love with its tragically doomed star. If all that sounds a tad over-ambitious for a studio known for cranking out relatively uniform (but surprisingly high-quality) low-budget television movies... well... that is an issue here. While A Biltmore Christmas is decent, it's clear they're biting off a bit more than they can chew. Watching, you can tell everyone involved is putting in real effort, but you can see where they just didn't have the time to set up complex shots, learn more than surface-level impersonations of characters from classic Hollywood films, or nail the look and feel of the era they were emulating. I don't think any of that is necessarily a dealbreaker, depending on what you want out of this. This is, after all, a TV Christmas movie, and in

Spoiler Alert is a romantic dramedy starring Jim Parsons based on a memoir titled, "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies at the End", directed by Michael Showalter (the guy who made The Big Sick). The adaptation is co-written by Dan Savage, making his screenwriting debut. That's a pretty remarkable collection of talent, and I didn't even mention that Sally Field and Bill Irwin have supporting roles. The movie is effectively split into two sections: the first is a straightforward rom-com about a gay couple falling in love, building a life together, and encountering complications. Around the halfway mark, the film pivots to drama, as one of the two leads is diagnosed with cancer, which eventually kills him. The movie let's you know where it's heading at the start (sooner, if you're familiar with the full title of the book it's based on), but that doesn't make the transition any less jarring. That's intentional, obviously. The movie is an exploration of t

Well, this one's going to be hard as hell to rate. On a technical level, The Children is an extremely impressive movie. It's well-shot with atmospheric visuals, effective jump scares, and a really unnerving premise. The central conceit, that children turn on adults, is executed so convincingly I'm honestly unsure whether to credit the film's editing or the performances of the young actors for selling the kids as terrifying, deadly, and remorseless. And if reading the last paragraph made you a little sick to your stomach, you may already have an inkling of the "but" coming up. Just because you can show something in a movie doesn't necessarily mean you should. I kind of feel like I just watched a new form of exploitation being invented. Okay, "new" is an overstatement, and not just because the actors playing The Children's young antagonists are now old enough they might have kids of their own. While the details of the premise have changed, the

I'm working my way through the collection of "Holiday Noir" Criterion is streaming this year (God, I love that service). Like some of the other movies in this collection, the "noir" label should be taken with a grain of salt. It certainly has elements in common with noir - particularly towards the end - but the tone here is relatively light throughout, and this isn't as stylized as I generally expect from the genre. Or maybe my definition of that term is simply too restrictive - I'll defer to serious noir aficionados so long as they listen to me when I tell them films like Backfire should be recognized as legitimate Christmas movies. Whatever labels you attach to it, this one's quite a lot of fun. It's not unique or bizarre enough to be a "must watch," but it's a pulpy, energetic mystery that throws a barrage of fun twists at you from start to finish. For a movie with an escalating body count (including at least one character you ac

I assume this is obvious to everyone subscribed to Criterion right now, but I'm finding a bunch of these thanks to a collection they dropped entitled Holiday Noir, which - to be clear - is pretty high on my list of "things in 2023 to be grateful for." I bring that up mainly because I think this movie's inclusion in that collection is a bit of a stretch, not because of its holiday content (this is very much a Christmas movie) - but rather because I certainly wouldn't classify it as "noir." It's admittedly a fuzzy term (even more so than most movie genres), but I tend to look for movies with pervasively dark tones that typically set out to leave you less optimistic about the world than when you started, movies where even victories feel like defeats and true happy endings are a virtual impossibility. And that just doesn't describe "I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes," which I'd consider more akin to your run-of-the-mill drama. There's

Aside from knowing the basic premise, quite literally every expectation and assumption I had going into this movie about an animatronic store Santa malfunctioning and going on a murder spree turned out to be dead wrong. Fortunately, one of those assumptions was that I probably wouldn't like it all that much, and... Okay, let's do the spoiler warning right off the bat, because this is one I'm absolutely recommending to fans of horror, who might want to experience it without realizing what they're getting into. I was about to say that recommendation only  applies to horror fans, as the movie's content is decidedly R-rated (both in terms of sex and violence), but this isn't exactly my go-to genre and I loved it despite... well... it gets pretty gruesome at times, even if the gore has an intentionally anachronistic look.  (Editor's note: this is not a case where we are united in our opinion. I admit that I generally detest slashers, but this is no exception for

While looking for background on the 1939 movie of the same name, I saw a Wikipedia article about this. I clicked through expecting to find a remake but discovered the two movies were completely unconnected. Much to my surprise, this coincidentally is also a Christmas movie (more so, in fact). The 1970s are probably the decade we've explored the least, so I was excited to find a movie I never knew existed from the era. Or at least I was until I started watching it. To be fair, I'm not at all certain that this is actually bad or if the style of humor is simply so grounded in the era it was made that it feels alien to someone watching fifty years later. I suppose the distinction is largely academic: either way, this isn't something virtually anyone is going to be interested in sitting through today. The movie is written by its two costars, Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna, a married couple whose prior screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. That one was based on a play t

I've encountered a few movies from the 1930s that follow a similar template to Made for Each Other, a film that shifts genre relatively dramatically between comedy and melodrama. The idea seems to be to offer a film encompassing a bit of everything, or at least as close as they could cram in. This can feel off-putting now that we're no longer accustomed to this particular mix of tones, but conceptually it's not all that different than what Marvel movies attempt: it's only that the specific genres being incorporated have changed. That does mean this movie feels dated in a way several more straightforward comedies don't. The first half of Made for Each Other holds up pretty well, but as the movie grows more and more serious, I found it difficult to enjoy unironically. Though, for better or worse, moments of the last third kind of come off as unintentionally funny. The movie stars Carole Lombard and James Stewart as newlyweds Jane and John, who eloped immediately after

This is one of seven "Holiday Noir" movies streamed by Criterion this month. A few of the movies they included aren't exactly what I'd call "Christmas movies" (not that Criterion promised they would be), but Blast of Silence passes my litmus test with flying colors (or in this case, flying black and white). The entirety of the film plays out during the holiday season, starting a few days before Christmas and ending on or around New Year's. The movie's "noir" credentials are a bit more complicated. Technically, this falls outside the window of what generally qualifies - Wikipedia identifies it as "neo-noir," which seems a more accurate designation. Essentially, this acts as a bridge between the dark melodramas of the '40s and '50s we now call noir and the gangster epics that would become popular over the next few decades. At least on the surface, this is a focused, contained crime story built around a single character. The

After watching Red Snow, I find myself a little surprised it's not better known, which is another way of saying I had a blast watching it. This is a horror/comedy vampire movie, and - honestly - that's about all I want to tell you before dropping a *spoiler warning* and advising those of you who like this sort of thing to check it out. Okay, I'll toss you a few more bones, in case you need more convincing. Or, in the case of those of you who are die-hard horror fans, perhaps a warning to temper your expectations. After all, this is a movie *I* really enjoyed, and - in case you've forgotten - I don't exactly have the best tolerance for scares, gore, and the like. Red Snow is absolutely the kind of R-rated horror movie that elicits complaints about not being gross or scary enough for a significant subset of the genre's fanbase. If that's a deal-breaker for you, you're probably better off skipping this. But for the rest of you, it's delightful. And, for

Morning for the Osone Family is the rare war story that doesn't show the war at all. Instead, this is interested in the ordeal of two women dealing with family politics, cultural constraints, and grief as the war claims those they've loved and threatens their hope for the future. It's a fascinating film, though I want to acknowledge my background leaves me underqualified to discuss it in any real detail. This is, of course, a Christmas blog, so that's going to color how I approach the film. But while this has a great deal to offer in that context, the holidays are really more a side thought. They serve enough symbolic and tonal purpose to warrant discussion here, but this certainly wasn't intended as a "Christmas movie," nor would I describe it as such. I'll do my best to at least touch on the other themes, but anyone interested in the film's place in Japanese culture or post-War cinema will probably want to find a resource more equipped to discuss