Mainlining Christmas

Book Review: You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince Timothy Janovsky, 2022 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, although despite the title, it turned out this story is more inspired by/related to Grinchy themes than a retelling of any kind.   Premise: Matthew can't believe he's spending Christmas in the tiny town his mom grew up in, instead of with his friends in NYC, preparing to throw another epic New Year's Bash for the (other) richest kids in town. But apparently he made one mistake too many and has been banished while PR is spun. Making things worse, he's sharing space at his grandparents' home with a local student who is entirely too self-righteous (not to mention gorgeous).  Okay, I might have an addition to my list of favorite romance authors. (I have enough for a list now! Years ago, I never would have thought it.) This was delightful.  First I want to acknowledge the biggest things that make this story work,...

Red One may be the most perfect encapsulation of its time, and I mean that in an almost entirely negative way. Elements of this movie are, I'd argue, quite good. There are some solid ideas and interesting choices made throughout. But the misguided direction and cinematography, egregious structural issues, and comically large budget represent a unique sort of production alchemy that could only exist in a world where streaming companies rely on a combination of algorithms and desperation to churn out what they hope will be massive, attention-grabbing films capable of pulling in subscribers. And the fact this was greenlit on the tail end of that dying philosophy, resulting in Red One receiving a theatrical window just long enough for it to bomb before crashing with little fanfare on the streaming service that commissioned it, is perhaps the final and most appropriate tribute to the era it hails from. Taken outside of this context, it's a truly baffling film that tries to combine k...

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...

I've seen at least three genre films titled "Silent Night", and none were what I'd call a slam dunk. This comes closest, between John Woo's stylish direction, a clever gimmick, and an impressive performance from Joel Kinnaman - it's by no means a bad revenge flick, but the elements making this distinct don't overcome the ones making it feel generic. Specifically, the movie's sparce use of dialogue doesn't have the intended effect, so you're left feeling like the film is incomplete. That's the gimmick, by the way: this has essentially no dialogue other than radio transmissions and video clips watched and heard by characters in the movie. I actually think this would have worked better if they'd found ways to cut those as well - the handful of spoken words we hear don't add much and water down the effect. It's not that I found myself missing the dialogue itself - if there's one thing this movie succeeds in, it's demonstrati...

There are quite a few movies named, "Silent Night," so - just to be sure we're all on the same page - the one we're looking at today concerns a Christmas gathering coinciding with an apocalyptic event in which a massive toxic cloud is sweeping over the globe killing every living human and animal in its wake. The movie is sort of a jumble of genres, incorporating comedy, drama, horror, and science fiction. By far the most famous member of the cast is Keira Knightley, who - between this and the criminally underrated Seeking a Friend for the End of the World - is amassing a background in the quirky apocalypse microgenre. Unfortunately, this doesn't work anywhere near as well as Seeking a Friend, though there's still a great deal to appreciate here. The movie's narrative is almost entirely focused on a group of adult friends and their children who are coming together for a Christmas celebration/suicide party. The poisonous cloud I mentioned earlier isn't q...

For better or worse (or more accurately first for better then subsequently for worse) this 2009 movie written and directed by Richard Kelly (the Donnie Darko guy) based on the 1970 short story by the legendary Richard Matheson leaves you utterly perplexed as to what it is you're actually watching. "Button, Button" (the story it's adapted from) is fairly straightforward as far as these things go, based on the idea a box is dropped off containing a button which if pressed will result in a financial payout but also the death of someone the presser doesn't know. In the original story, the death was the husband of the woman who pressed the button (the loophole being she supposedly never really knew him); when this was adapted for the Twilight Zone series in the '80s, they altered the ending to instead imply the next recipient would be someone the previous holders didn't know. This... I mean.... Okay, spoiler warning, I guess. This isn't a movie I'll be ...

Book Review: Faking Christmas Kerry Winfrey, 2023 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. Whether Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday classic is debatable, but it has inspired several adaptations and remakes, including this one.   Premise: Laurel didn't mean to lie to her boss. She just really needed a job, and one misunderstanding spiraled out of control. Now she has to pretend that her sister's life is hers for one memorable Christmas.  You know what? I liked this one!  Laurel is funny and relatable. She's acknowledges that she's made bad decisions and is trying to do better, gets frustrated, wears her heart on her sleeve, and is fundamentally optimistic, despite also being hugely self-deprecating.  The best parts of Christmas in Connecticut (the banter, the humor and the fun characters) are largely intact, while the occasional sexism of the original is left behind. Laurel got her magazine website job that she's t...