Christmas with the Coopers (aka Love the Coopers) movie review: familial torture
Glossy Hollywood automatons sleepwalk through family dynamics full of forced quirkiness, excruciating cuteness, and phony emotion. Absolutely cringeworthy.
Home for the Holidays
Friday night fortune cookie: Claudia Larson says…
“Nobody means what they say on Thanksgiving.”
question of the day: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving-themed movie?
Yesterday, the Online Film Critic Society — of which I am a member, and I serve on its Governing Committee — announced our favorite Thankgiving-themed movie (go here to learn which film we picked). Now it’s your turn: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving-themed movie? These are the movies we chose among: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Dutch … more…
question of the day: Why aren’t there more movies about Thanksgiving?
Sure, there are a big handful of films that take place in part around Thanksgiving, but I can think of only three (and one of them is a stretch) that are really about the holiday: Home for the Holidays and Pieces of April, both of which revolve around the family dinner, and Planes, Trains and … more…
Dan in Real Life movie review: knocked down
If you can manage to get through Dan in Real Life without falling madly in love with both Juliette Binoche and Steve Carell, then you’re a better man than I am, Charlie Brown.
The Family Stone (review)
So, I was raving to a friend about this great new movie I’d just seen, *The Family Stone,* how it’s about this big wacky family getting together for Christmas– And she stopped me right there with a moan and said, Oh God, it’s not like that Jodie Foster movie *Home for the Holidays,* is it? And I said, Why, yes, it’s exactly like that, but even better. She moaned again and said, Oh, I hate that movie.
Home for the Holidays (review)
Beautifully written by W.D. Richter and directed with a sure hand by Jodie Foster, Home for the Holidays wraps all those contradictory feelings up and serves them for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps the most realistic holiday movie I’ve ever seen, this oddly charming, poignant, and blackly funny film is a treasure not to be missed.
