reviews by genre

White Christmas (review)

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White Christmas is billed as a remake of Holiday Inn, but the only thing these two films have in common is Bing Crosby singing the most beautiful secular Christmas carol, Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas’ (which was originally written for Holiday Inn). White Christmas isn’t as delightful as its supposed predecessor, but if for no other reason, it’s worth seeing for a gorgeously simple arrangement of the title tune, which Crosby croons accompanied only by a windup music box.

Holiday Inn movie review: two guys and a girl

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God, I love those snarky 40s comedies in which there’s just a bit of meanness under the humor. Holiday Inn is, of course, filled with the kind of pretty Christmas songs and picture-postcard scenes of snow and horse-drawn sleighs that make for beloved holiday movies. But there’s also some darkness lurking here.

The Santa Clause and Jack Frost (review)

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Little did I know when I reviewed Jingle All the Way that it is part of a trend in 90s holiday movies in which inattentive, workaholic Boomer dads go all out in attempts to win back the affections of their young, ignored sons. But while Jingle’s Arnold has to resort to a girly endeavor like shopping in the effort to appease his spawn, The Santa Clause’s Tim Allen and Jack Frost’s Michael Keaton have a much cooler alternative: magic. Allen deals in white magic; Keaton’s, unfortunately, is of the darker variety.

A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart) and A Christmas Carol (aka Scrooge) (Alistair Sim) (review)

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I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Patrick Stewart do his one-man reading/performance of A Christmas Carol several times. Nothing beats the impact of live theater, and so for years now Stewart has personified Ebenezer Scrooge for me. I was delighted to learn that Stewart would be playing Scrooge in a full-blown production of Charles Dickens’s classic novel — playing all this month on the cable network TNT — and fully expected that it would become a favorite Christmas movie of mine. And it has.

Santa with Muscles (review)

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A thoroughly nonheartwarming tale of fisticuffs, Santa suits with muscle shirts, protein powder, and a Cindy Brady clone with a squeaky lisp who sings to her dead mother, Santa with Muscles is one of the most nonsensical movies I’ve ever seen, truly silly in no good way.

Toy Story 2 (review)

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Funnier and more touching and meaningful than its predecessor, Toy Story 2 is the rare sequel that improves upon its progenitor — and, considering how wondrous Toy Story was, that’s saying something. Toy Story — as funny and fun as it was — was also bursting with joy, with the delight the filmmakers obviously took in bringing a roomful of toys to life. Toy Story realized that secret childhood fantasy we all had, that our toys had lives of their own, that they played with one another when we weren’t around.

Jingle All the Way (review)

Alas, Jingle All the Way may be the most realistic Christmas movie ever made. After all, what says “Christmas” more these days than the spectacle of supposed grownups clawing tooth and nail for the season’s hot toy in an effort to indulge their ignored and neglected and simultaneously spoiled rotten TV-addled brats?