Mainlining Christmas

This 2020 British adaptation offers a somewhat unique approach to A Christmas Carol. It's actually a little hard to explain, because the short version, "A Christmas Carol reimagined through modern dance," doesn't actually convey the experience. Perhaps it should, though: the movie's main flaw is it tries to do too much at once and as a result kneecaps some of its best assets. The film starts with a Victorian family preparing a sort of miniature stage, complete with tiny paper characters. The kids are essentially cutting up newspaper and constructing a model using the illustrations and words. Once they've finished, the matriarch begins telling the story, heavily using Dickens's text. We then cut to the world of the model for the performance. This is one of the aspects that makes me almost want to recommend the movie despite... well, we'll get to the "despite" in a moment. But the sets are breathtaking and inventive. The story plays out in a wo

Over the past year or so, Hallmark has been quietly rebranding itself in an attempt to offer at least the appearance of representation. The area they've been attracting the most attention has been their recent pivot towards including same-sex couples, but that's hardly the only change in programming. After years of fixating only on Christmas, the company has finally decided to keep focusing on Christmas. But, you know, also toss in a Kwanzaa movie. That's also about Christmas. So a Christmas/Kwanzaa movie. That's where Holiday Heritage, a family dramedy with a side of romance, comes into the picture. The movie's main character is Ella, a successful Boston graphic designer planning to open her own company and go into business for herself. But that's an "after the holidays" thing - first she's going to return home to the small town in Pennsylvania where she grew up, because there's no way in hell Hallmark's going to make a movie about Kwanzaa

Buckle in, everyone, because even explaining what this movie is might get a little complicated. Here's the first issue: I fundamentally disagree with every synopsis I've seen of "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" on the internet. I'm not talking about whether the movie's good or not (though my opinion is significantly more favorable than the consensus). I mean, on a quintessential level I disagree with descriptions of what the movie's about, who we're supposed to sympathize with, the subgenre it's in, and - hell - even the overall genre. I don't really think this is a horror. Okay, I might be overstating things a bit. This was clearly marketed - and to some extent made - as a psychological horror, but I think it's better understood now as a dark comedy. One of the primary complaints I'm seeing skimming the handful of reviews present on Rotten Tomatoes is that this really isn't scary. Frankly, I don't think it's supposed to be. It&#

Well, I didn't entirely hate it, which makes this my favorite installment in the Santa Clause franchise by a wide margin. To be fair, I haven't seen the trilogy this is sequeling since reviewing them, which was between nine and twelve years ago, so it's possible I'd have a more favorable reaction now. Possible, but unlikely: the stuff I recall disliking about those movies isn't the kind that tends to age well. Regardless, the new Disney+ limited series picks up in real time, sixteen years after the end of the third movie. Santa and Mrs. Claus have two kids: Buddy (who was born at the end of the third movie) and Sandra. Mrs. Claus - or Carol, as she used to be called - is going through an identity crisis, Buddy dreams of seeing the human world, Sandra seems completely uninterested in anything that isn't an animal or a witch, and - due to declining Christmas spirit - Santa's magic seems to be failing. When he learns about a "Secessus Clause" which wo

Notable for having perhaps the least creative title among scores of loose adaptations, An American Christmas Carol is a 1979 TV movie that's sort of a mix of a retelling and a sequel of Dickens's classic. Like the big-budget musical that kicked off the decade, the lead role is played by an actor in his 30s with makeup used to effectively double his age. In this case, the actor is Henry Winkler, best known as Fonzie from Happy Days. And, for what it's worth, I think he works a little better as an old man than Albert Finney in 1970's Scrooge, despite Finney's makeup being quite a bit better. Winkler's physicality sells his age, which makes for a more convincing illusion. Because this is set in New Hampshire in 1933, Winkler isn't technically playing Scrooge - his character is Benedict Slade, which isn't quite an anagram for Ebenezer Scrooge, but if you squint you can see the game they're playing. Same with the name of his underpaid assistant, Thatcher.

This should be a short review, but I think I can make it even shorter: you need to track this down and watch it. "On the Twelfth Day..." is a 20-minute British comedy special from 1955 that's more or less just playing with the premise of adapting the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" literally, without dialogue other than the lyrics. Suffice to say, it sinks or swims on a combination of the comedy and visual design, and... you know what? It doesn't sink or swim - it floats away in a hot air balloon. It is joyful, ridiculous, and beautiful. Just a joy, start to finish. It's directed by and stars Wendy Toye as a progressively more exasperated woman dealing with a suitor literally named "Truelove" in the credits (played by David O'Brien), who gifts her everything outlined in the song, in the quantities specified. Toye and O'Brien act silently, with O'Brien seemingly channeling Charlie Chaplin. Both give great comedic performances, as

Brer Rabbit is a character with an extremely complex legacy going back to African folklore. Unfortunately, the vast majority of modern versions have racist connotations, largely due to the character's appropriation by white writers and filmmakers exploiting those stories (looking at you, Walt). Whether the character can be untangled from that exploitation is an open question I can't answer, but I believe it should go without saying that it shouldn't be white people trying. Brer Rabbit's Christmas Carol was an hour-long 1992 made-for-TV movie, a sequel to a 1991 TV movie called Brer Rabbit Tales. It was produced and directed by Al Guest and Jean Mathieson, and I wish I had a concrete answer to the obvious question. Guest and Mathieson were Canadian animators who made a number of shows and TV movies over the course of their careers. Based on her IMDB picture, Mathieson appears to be white. Guest doesn't have a picture on his page, and I can't find any additional p