Time for snacks! Whether you’re gathering a crowd for a screening of Elf or catching up on Yellowstone in a quiet moment, you need snacks. And there is no better snack for kicking back than popcorn — a sometimes salty, sometimes sweet highly snackable treat. In this week’s issue, John Fladd talks to popcorn experts and does some recipe tinkering to create some corn delights.
Also on the cover And what goes better with popcorn than movies? Amy Diaz offers a look at new holiday films for kids, families, grown-ups and people who argue that Die Hard is a Christmas movie (page 28). John also checks out some seasonal brews from area beer makers (page 22). Or perhaps you want to enjoy the season’s lights? In this week’s Kiddie Pool (page 20) we list some of the spots to find holiday lights, and Michael Witthaus takes a closer look at LaBelle Lights on page 32.
LaBelle Winery’s lights display glows with holiday cheer
Created during the pandemic as a way to provide socially distanced family fun, LaBelle Lights enters its fourth year bigger and better. Newly added is The Treehouse, a big glowing box that looks like twisted birch branches made of spun sugar. It’s a beacon for the Derry location of LaBelle Winery and a great Instagram photo spot that’s located right at the holiday trail’s start.
Along with other new display pieces like the caterpillar-shaped Blizzard Bend and more glowing evergreens dotting the Forest of Trees are new events and attractions to carry the holiday spirit into the new year. Perennial favorites like the twinkling giant teddy bear and ornament-shaped Proposal Ball still remain.
There are expanded food options.
“People like to eat along the way,” Michelle Thornton, the winery’s Marketing Director, said recently. “We have Santa’s Snack Shack, which is grab and go, and LaBelle Market, which looks like a French market all decorated for Christmas. They have cookies that are the size of a human head, I mean, they’re huge.”
Themes change weekly, and as Christmas passes the soundtrack moves from “Here Comes Santa Claus” to “Sleigh Ride” and “Winter Wonderland.” Upcoming is Crazy Holiday Hats week, where guests are encouraged to show off wild, wacky and holiday-appropriate headgear.
Frozen Costume Week happens Dec. 26 through Dec. 29 and includes a ticketed event on the first day. Ice Princess Party is a dress-up affair for youngsters that offers a dance party with cocoa and characters such as Snow Sister and Ice Boy, live story time and a puppet show. A meet and greet at the end provides ample photo opportunities.
A stroll through the glowing displays after is included with the $44 ticket ($34 for ages 2 through 10). “What’s so fun about this,” Thornton said, “is after kids are done engaging with characters, they can go right over to LaBelle Lights and walk through it in their costumes.”
Grown-ups will enjoy Flannel Week, which starts on New Year’s Eve, followed by ’80s Ski Week with retro winter gear encouraged. The final week of the attraction has WinterFest, celebrating all things related to the season, before LaBelle staff takes down everything and begins planning for next time.
Winery founder Amy LaBelle came up with the idea of transforming their golf course for winter, and nurtures it like it’s her own Disney World. “That’s Amy … anything that brings joy and makes memories, those things are part of her personal mantra,” Thornton said. “When she presented it to our leadership team, we all went, sure, we can do that, and then we had to figure out how, [but] we’re really good at taking a concept and bringing it to life.”
Thornton mentioned that families on a budget should be aware of Twinkle Tuesday. “That’s half price for everyone,” she said. “That was also Amy’s idea; she wanted it to be affordable for everyone. If someone was concerned about pricing for any reason, we created a whole night for them that’s the same exact experience — but it’s half price.”
Anyone looking to extend the experience can reserve an age-specific swag bag while booking tickets, but they’re quite popular. “They sell out,” Thornton said. “We’re making them constantly.” For the kiddos, the canvas tote bag has a light-up bulb necklace and holiday wand along with light-enhancing 3D glasses. Adults get a logoed winter beanie and a set of hand warmers, a glowing holiday ornament and a $5 market voucher.
For a few more days, attendees can also book a Santa Photo Experience. “Instead of getting your photo at the mall, you can get it in this environment, which is probably a lot less crazy,” Thornton said. “It’s very festive … you’re seeing Santa and then the kids get to let loose and go through the lights.”
• Celebration time: Time again for the annual Buzz Ball, with the one constant being Greg & the Morning Buzz offering laughs and pickup band The Velvet Elves providing the soundtrack. From that point on anything can happen, with special guest musicians, comedians and actors teaming up for holiday-themed entertainment benefiting the Lend a Helping Can charity. Thursday, Dec. 19, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $58.75 at ccanh.com.
• Country holiday: There are many seasonal events on tap this week, including Sara Evans; her 21 Days of Christmas is in town. The show includes reverent renditions of standards like a “Silent Night” that one critic recently enthused “could rattle the stained glass in just about any church.” ” Friday, Dec. 20, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $59 and up at etix.com.
• Brassy bash: Continuing the holiday mood is dinner and dancing with music from the NH Jazz Orchestra. Cocktails will be served at six, with dinner starting a half hour later. Then the Skip Poole-led big band takes over for an evening of Swingin’ Yuletide sounds played by musicians who’ve worked with stars like Mel Tormé, Rosemary Clooney and Johnny Mathis. Saturday, Dec. 21, 6 p.m., Murphy’s Taproom & Carriage House, 393 Route 101, Bedford, $30 at eventbrite.com.
• Funny guy: Enjoy standup comedy in a venue designed for it as Kyle Crawford holds forth. A fixture on the regional scene for over 15 years, Crawford has performed with national stars Jim Florentine, Jim Norton and Gary Gulman. He was a first runner-up in New Hampshire’s Last Comic Standing, and was also twice featured on Comcast’s Comedy Spotlight. Saturday, Dec. 21, 8 p.m., Headliners at The Doubletree, 700 Elm St., Manchester, $20 at headlinersnh.com.
• So good, so good: A Neil Diamond tribute act led by singer Michael Anthony, Tru Diamond performs an afternoon holiday concert at an area winery. The show will also include hits like “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Song Sung Blue” and the Red Sox mid-inning anthem “Sweet Caroline.” The five-piece band is considered one of New England’s best at channeling the Diamond sound. Sunday, Dec. 22, 2 p.m., LaBelle Winery, 345 Route 101, Amherst, $15 and up at labellewinery.com.
A heretofore-mid TSA agent gets tangled up in a terrorist attack in Carry-On, Netflix’s attempt at a “Die Hard is a Christmas movie”-style Christmas movie.
It’s Christmas Eve and Ethan (Taron Egerton) has just learned that girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) is pregnant. For the first time since failing to get into the police academy, he’s suddenly motivated to make more of himself at his TSA job at LAX. And lucky him, he gets a chance at working the carry-on bag X-ray machine on a busy Christmas Eve. Unlucky for him, his sudden show of ambition messes with the plans of Jason Bateman (his character is just called “Traveler” on IMDb), who is running some kind of terrorism operation. He had planned to kidnap Ethan’s buddy Jason’s (Sinqua Walls) family to force Jason to let through a bag carrying some clearly dangerous thing but when Jason gives Ethan a shot at the X-ray, suddenly Ethan is the one getting a mysterious ear bud and having a conversation about not calling the cops. Jason Bateman threatens Ethan’s girlfriend and demonstrates his abilities by hurting one of Ethan’s coworkers so Ethan feels like he has no choice but to follow his instructions, while also trying his best to find ways to stop Jason Bateman’s ultimately convoluted-but-who-cares plan.
Carry-On is goofy and I am here for it! “More silly holiday action” is my special Christmas wish; it’s an excellent bit of “goes-with” programming to the holiday rom-coms. Egerton is completely serviceable as a guy forced to step up and be heroic — his abilities are believable enough. Bateman is good fun as a smarmy villain. And Danielle Deadwyler, playing the one cop who knows the score, is a delight; give this woman her own Reacher. She also gets to participate in the movie’s funnest/dumbest action sequence; it’s silly and great. BStreaming on Netflix.
That Christmas (PG)
Santa Brian Cox Claus tells us the story of the English town of Wellington-on-Sea during That Christmas, a sweet animated tale co-written by Richard Love Actually Curtis.
Kids and their families navigate the days before Christmas with an assortment of concerns. Bernadette McNutt (voice of India Brown), of mid-teen-ish age, is eager to break free from the traditions of the season — from zhuzhing up the school nativity pageant to finding something other than the boring turkey dinner for Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, she’s left to care for her younger sister Eve (voice of Bronte Smith) and neighbor kids Teddy (voice of Freddie Spry), Scarlett (voice of Ava Talbot) and Nisha (voice of Kuhu Agarwal) when Bernie and Eve’s parents (voices of Rosie Cavaliero and Rhys Darby), Teddy and Scarlett’s parents (voice of Alex Macqueen and Lolly Adefope) and Nisha’s mom (voice of Sindhu Vee) head to a wedding for the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Sam (voice of Zazie Hayhurst) is worried that her twin sister Charlie (voice of Sienna Sayer) won’t get anything from Father Christmas because Sam is certain Charlie is on the naughty list. Sam doesn’t fully appreciate that some of Charlie’s pranks are meant to help her get together with Danny Williams (voice of Jack Wisniewski), a new kid who is smitten with Sam as well. Danny, when he isn’t struggling with his new school, is struggling at home with being mostly alone — his hard-working nurse mom (voice of Jodie Whittaker) is often at her job and he hasn’t seen much of his dad since their divorce. When a snow day is called on what would have been the last day of school, Danny winds up spending all of it at the school being one-on-one tutored by the imposing Mrs. Trapper (voice of Fiona Shaw), a teacher who still scares adults she once taught and doesn’t like to show how otherwise alone she is.
When a blizzard rolls in on Christmas Eve, all of these townsfolk — plus Lighthouse Bill (voice of Bill Nighy) and Santa — work together to help the kids have a good Christmas in spite of various suboptimal circumstances and find joy in community. It’s all very good-natured British, very Call the Midwife Christmas special but without the horrifying medical emergencies.
My younger kids were occasionally bored with some of the ramp up to the big day and its blizzard but the last 60 percent or so of the movie held their attention. And it has a nice mix of kid wackiness, silliness involving a flock of turkeys that runs loose and just a touch of snark to help balance out some truly heartwarming Christmas-y-ness. B+Streaming on Netflix.
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (PG-13)
A big, largely-Italian-American family comes together on Christmas Eve for a night of food, light bickering, kid antics and general merriment in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.
Someone on Bluesky described this movie as feeling like if Robert Altman made a holiday movie and that is a pretty clean way to explain what you’re getting here. A group of adult siblings and others — cousins, and/or “cousins” in the sense of people who are part of a big family even if it’s not entirely clear how — gather at the home where they grew up, with all of their children, ranging in age from small to adult themselves. The mother (Mary Reistetter) still lives in the house with one of the siblings — who now wants to sell the house and put her in a facility that can better care for her. We get hints at how far along this plan is throughout the movie, putting a general sense over the movie (one that we in the audience might be more aware of than the characters all are) that this could be the last Christmas Eve of this kind for this family.
This is, however, kind of background. Mostly we are just mingling, poking in on conversations between different relatives. We get to the party with Kathleen (Maria Dizzia) and her teenage daughter Emily (Matilda Fleming), her younger son and her husband Lenny (Ben Shenkman). We see some of Kathleen complaining about her prickly relationship with Emily and some of Emily’s “eyeroll, Mom” at Kathleen and at times follow Emily when she and other cousins sneak out and drive around. They meet up with other kids, hang out at a diner, hang out at a place where teens go to make out, try to convince someone to sell them booze. Nothing “happens” in the big-event sense. We get family members reliving annual traditions, we get spreads of food and a big meal, we get teens teen-ing around. We are just spending Christmas Eve with them and experiencing the overheated togetherness of a joyful/obligatory family gathering. Solid performances (including by Francesca Scorsese, Sawyer Spielberg — yes, the kids of that Scorsese and that Spielberg — and Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade fame) make this a solid hang movie. BStreaming on AMC+ and available for rent or purchase.
Red One (PG-13)
Santa Claus is kidnapped and Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans have to save Christmas in Red One, the unnecessarily CGI-heavy, grimly quippy, unfun holiday action adventure.
Nick a.k.a. Red a.k.a. Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons, continuing this season’s widely commented on “ripped and/or hot Santa” trend) is kidnapped. An investigation by Callum Drift (Johnson), head of security, and Zoe (Lucy Liu), head of some organization that protects mythological creatures, leads them to Jack O’Malley (Evans), a con artist and hacker. He was paid to sneak into a government office and find the location of what he was told was a weapons test. He didn’t realize that what he was actually tracking was the location of Santa’s cloaked North Pole metropolis. Jack has long been a “no beliefs, no loyalty” guy and agrees to help Callum hunt down his employer (for money).
Eventually, Santa’s brother Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) and a Christmas witch (a real Icelandic thing, according to Wikipedia) called Gryla (Kieran Shipka) are in the mix. Also, Jack finds that the investigation is getting in his way of being even a C-minus dad to his young teen son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel). Mary Elizabeth Ellis plays Dylan’s mom and mostly she just plays a person who delivers exposition on what a crummy parent Jack has been. I mention this because she is often a really fun actress, as in her recent role playing Ted Danson’s daughter on the Netflix series A Man on the Inside, which is a truly funny, sweet show about aging, life phases, family relationships and more and you could watch about of half the season in the time it takes to watch this movie, which I think is a better use of your two hours.
Here, we get a chase through the streets of the North Pole, a Santa’s workshop staffed by penguins and bears, magic portals and other Santa lore stuff that probably could be fun but here just feels like mid-quality CGI for the sake of CGI. This is particularly noticeable with Krampus, a character that is given a Hulky-Thanosy outsized demonic body, which actually gets in the way of what could have been a personable performance by Hivju, who you may remember as Tormund Giantsbane on Game of Thrones. He is a fun actor playing a fun character but it’s so buried in nonsense that you don’t get to get a real sense of him or his relationship with Santa.
This movie feels very much “Marvel but Christmas” in the worst sense of that description (unlike The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, an actual Marvel holiday product which is goofy and delightful and is available on Disney+). It also straddles a weird line of being more violent and creature-scary than you’d want your kid movie to be but doesn’t offer much for adults. C-In theaters and streaming on Prime Video.
Hot Frosty (TV-PG)
A sad widow falls in love with a ripped snowman in Hot Frosty, the delightfully bonkers but not winky holiday rom-com from Netflix.
Kathy Barrett (Lacey Chabert), who runs the diner in downtown Hope Springs, is mourning the loss of her husband and doesn’t have the mental energy for things like fixing her house’s many repair issues or looking for new romance. Her friend at the local consignment store gives her a good-luck red scarf to encourage her to get back out there. But sad Kathy just ends up putting the scarf on a snowman in the town square, one who has a well-chiseled set of abs. Later that night — through the Magic of Christmas!, probably — the snowman becomes a human, though one with a very cold resting temperature and a tendency to sweat profusely when exposed to even minor warmth. Jack (Dustin Milligan, Josh the podcaster from the excellent Rutherford Falls), as this “man” is eventually called, isn’t sure about much — like, if he can melt or how clothes work or how eating works — but he is certain he is very fond of Kathy. Not exactly sure what Jack’s deal is, Kathy just sort of goes with the whole “I used to be a snowman” thing and lets Jack crash at her house, in part to hide him from the sheriff (Craig Robinson). When Jack came alive, he accidentally streaked in front of an older couple, broke a window in the consignment store and took some coveralls — a crime spree the sheriff and his deputy (Joe Lo Trugilo) just can’t countenance.
There are a lot of little goofy moments in and aspects of this movie that are played perfectly straight in a way that made me truly enjoy this bit of holiday fluff: Jack excitedly telling the other (non-alive) snowmen in the town square that maybe “it could happen” for them too. Craig Robinson’s increasingly Inspector Javert-like obsession with finding the man who crimed up his one-street town. Joe Lo Trugilo, still basically Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Charles Boyle, answering “how does some soup sound?” literally. Lacy Chabert never once winking at the audience. Dustin Milligan giving “beautiful dummy” without playing his character as too witless. Either you’re going to buy into “lady falls for ripped snowman” or you can’t. But if you do, you’ll be rewarded by this movie that has fun with, without making fun of, its silly premise. B Streaming on Netflix.
The Merry Gentlemen (PG)
Chad Michael Murray PG-ily The Full Montys (“full” in this case being “shirtless in jeans, sometimes Speedos”) to save Britt Robertson’s family’s nightclub in The Merry Gentlemen.
After being fired from her Rockettes-like Broadway show in New York City, Ashley (Robertson) returns to her hometown to find that her parents (Michael Gross and Beth Broderick) are behind on their rent for their nightclub, the Rhythm Room — which is also not exactly mobbed with customers. Ashley comes up with an idea to quickly earn the $30K her parents owe and save their business: a male revue of sexy men sexy dancing. She enlists/enforces Luke (Murray), the club’s volunteer handyman who is also a woodworking artisan, to join along with a few other guys. Using her dancer skills, she helps teach the boys routines that bring in the crowds of local ladies, politely whooping it up from their seats as the men enchant them from the stage only, no touching.
This is a totally solid and watchable cast and the premise had the promise of some Hot Frosty fun, but this movie is missing the daffiness that made that movie such a treat. It is also, like many of this genre of movie, quite sexless — a thing that just is what it is for these children-of-Hallmark but which really sticks out with this movie’s premise. Also, despite its just under 90-minute runtime, the movie drags a bit and feels like it would be best enjoyed as a thing on in the background while you’re doing something else. C+ Streaming on Netflix.
The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland (7+)
Santa Claus attempts to make a delivery to Wonderland and runs into the very anti-Christmas Queen of Hearts in The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland, a prettily-animated sweetness-with-a-hint-of-tart animated adaptation of the book by Carys Bexington and illustrated by Kate Hindley.
Just as he’s about to set out on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus (voice of Gerard Butler) gets a last-minute letter from a young princess in Wonderland asking for a Bandersnatch. He decides to rework his flight plan to make a little stop in Wonderland — over the objection of the skeptical reindeer — but, Wonderland being Wonderland, he and the reindeer and an elf who tagged along are quickly waylaid in their task. In addition to mazes with rooms that seem to defy physics and potions that make you big or small, Santa and company find their present-delivering task made harder by the Queen of Hearts (voice of Emilia Clarke), who hates Christmas and every tinsel and pudding and (because this is the United Kingdom) Christmas cracker that reminds her of the holiday.
Also because it’s the U.K., the movie has nice notes of acid through all the holiday sweetness — the reindeer who are a bit cynical office workers for a somewhat scatterbrained boss, the silliness of the Wonderland characters like the March Hare (voice of Asim Chaudhry) and the Mad Hatter (Mawaan Rizwan), the elf band that pops up everywhere to add mood music to scenes. Clark makes for a fun mad Queen and Gerard Butler is a surprising Santa choice but he works. And throughout the movie has lovely storybook animation that adds notes of humor to the full-color prettiness. B+ Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Dear Santa (PG-13)
An 11-year-old with a tendency toward misspelling accidentally sends his letter with his fondest wish to Satan in Dear Santa.
Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) is having a hard time with life — he’s not really fitting in at his new school, his parents are constantly fighting and the family is still struggling with a recent tragedy. He does have a good friend, Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker), and a crush — Emma (Kai Cech), who is nice but who Liam can’t figure out how to be normal around. He writes to Santa, really just because the ritual gives his mom a bit of cheer, but due to some spelling difficulties it’s addressed “To: Satan, North Lope” and is received in the hot place by Jack Black. Tickled that a kid has written to him, Satan appears, all devil horns and stinkiness, to grant Liam’s wishes. It takes Liam a bit to realize he’s dealing with Old Nick, not Saint Nick, but eventually he learns the terms of the deal: he makes three wishes, the devil gets his soul. No, thank you, Liam says. But without realizing who he was dealing with, he already made one wish — for Emma to give him a chance. The wish is a pretty deluxe package deal — VIP tickets to a Post Malone concert, with sweet transportation and even a ticket for Gibby. But Liam is loath to make another wish and lose his soul.
Dear Santa is a bit of a Farrelly Brothers joint — Bobby directs, Peter has a screenplay co-writing credit and both have producer credits. Though this movie is PG-13, it has moments of R-rated-seeming comedy that are more in line with their early R movies than a more family-friendly comedy. The movie also has some real lesser-quality Disney-sitcom vibes — the kids and the material are largely not a good fit. The young actors oftentimes can not sell the comedy they’re given and/or aren’t given comedy that they can make work, leading to some very tinny, artificial scenes. Add in yikes-some acting by Brianne Howey and Hayes MacArthur as Liam’s parents, and this feels more toss-off TV movie than the Farrelly Brothers presence and Jack Black’s leading role would suggest. The movie’s main problem, I think, is that it’s not solidly a family comedy or solidly a Bad Santa-esque R-rated comedy. Either could have worked but this middle way leaves the movie mushy and underbaked. C- Streaming on Paramount+ and available for rent or purchase.
Nutcrackers (PG-13)
Businessman Ben Stiller finds himself caring for his four semi-feral nephews in the mournful but sweet Nutcrackers.
Michael (Stiller) feels like a stock 1980s comedy character, with his “Big Presentation” deadline looming and his big-city ways and his inability to cope without wi-fi (which would have been, what, a fax machine in a 1980s movie?). When his sister and her husband died, he sent an Edible Arrangement to the funeral for his four young-teen-through-young-elementary -age nephews (Homer Janson, Arlo Janson, Ulysses Janson and Atlas Janson). Now he is headed to their rural working family farm to sign some papers and get them adopted or something — it’s not clear what he thinks is happening with the kids and the farm but “not it” is very clearly his position. Social worker Gretchen (Linda Cardellini) tells him that she doesn’t have a family willing to take all four boys yet and Michael needs to stick around to care for them for what he clearly thinks will be more days than weeks. With their long hair, their home-schooled farm-focused lives and their general brotherness, the Kicklighter boys are known as sort of a handful. Their mom/Michael’s sister was, however, beloved in the town for her dance studio. Eventually, Michael hits on the idea of them putting on a kid-penned variation on the Nutcracker to show everyone how adorable and adoptable the boys are.
Stiller here is fine — the right amount of prickly for a guy who doesn’t have child experience and had been estranged from his sister but not cartoonishly heartless. But it’s the Janson boys, real-life brothers, who give the movie heart. They play the boyness of their characters — a constant whirl of wrestling, bad decisions, general messiness, loyalty and surprising moments of kindness — in a way that feels genuine and will be instantly recognizable to anybody who has parented or taught or otherwise attempted to corral more than one boy. B- Streaming on Hulu.
Mary (TV-14)
The Christmas story is the focus of Mary, a biography of the early years of Jesus’ mom.
The standard nativity pageant story is not generally feature-length so this movie starts with the difficulties Mary’s parents Joachim (Ori Pfeffer) and Anne (Hilla Vidor) have conceiving in 18 B.C. Nazareth. Blue-robed Archangel Gabriel (Dudley O’Shaughnessy) shows up to Joachim and Anne to tell them that God will give them a daughter, with conditions. Years later, their daughter Mary (Mila Harris) is elementary-aged and when Gabriel shows up again mom and dad know it’s time to take Mary to the temple where she will serve God, as they’ve agreed. Mary spends years at the temple (long enough to age up into actress Noa Cohen), mostly doing housekeeping stuff with a similarly aged group of girls and under the mentorship of Anna (Susan Brown), who feels a bit like she’s on loan from the Bene Gesserit. One day, stoneworker Joseph (Ido Tako), with a little heavenly nudging, sees Mary doing the laundry at a nearby river. Their interaction includes only Mary telling him the name of her father and also calling him crazy for wading into the river to get her shawl. But Joseph decides she’s the one for him and asks Joachim for her hand in marriage. Mary’s parents aren’t sure but then he mentions getting some directions from the blue-robed guy and they give him the thumbs up. Mary is more-or-less OK with the engagement but then she gets her own visit from Gabriel and is told that she is “with child.” The wider community is really jerky about Mary’s single mom-to-be status and Joseph has to decide what he wants to do about it.
Extremely meanwhile, King Herod (Anthony Hopkins, very “angry Odin” but bigger and louder and more bonkers) is busy restoring the temple, murdering his wife, acting twitchy about his place in the Roman power structure and just generally being a pretty unhinged guy. When he crosses paths with Mary, he has a sort of prophetic-vision-reaction, leading his main bodyguard (Gudmundur Thorvaldsson) to get all obsessed with hunting down this random teen who gave the stink-eye to his boss.
I enjoy a good Bible story movie, particularly if the movie takes a Ridley-Scott-with-the-Gladiator-movies “sure, whatever” approach to historical accuracy and has at least one character who decides to go full Shakespeare-at-top-volume theatrical. This movie has all of those things: the costuming here feels more galaxy far, far away than Earth a long, long time ago; Anthony Hopkins goes All In as Herod, and I do not remember the Bible having as many action scenes for Mary and Joseph as we see here. Are Mary’s eyebrows way too on point for a pregnant lady in antiquity? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fun watch. B-Streaming on Netflix.
An Almost Christmas Story (PG)
A young owl ends up in the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center in An Almost Christmas Story, a visually lovely animated movie.
According to Wikipedia, this is actually computer-generated animation but the visuals suggest paper craft (cars and buildings that seem to be made of cardboard, puffs of steam that look drawn on paper) and characters with a wooden puppet or papier mache look. Their movements suggest stop-motion animation and puppetry — it’s all very well done and helps give a kind of tactile warmth to the story.
Little owl Moon (voice of Cary Christopher) does not, as his father, Papa (voice of Jim Gaffigan), tells him, stay put while his father flies off to look for shelter and instead flies out to look for sticks to fix the family nest. A hawk chases Moon, who falls and hurts his wing, and Papa hurries Moon into a random tree and says to wait for him. Before Papa can get back, though, the tree is cut down and winds up at Rockefeller Center, decorated for Christmas and sitting next to the ice rink. When Moon ventures out of the tree, he winds up falling into Luna (voice of Estella Madrigal) a young girl with a prosthetic leg attempting to relearn to ice skate. After some adventures through the subway while being chased by pigeons (voices of Mamoudou Athie, Philip Rosenthal and Natasha Lyonne) who think Moon is trying to steal their garbage food, Moon and Luna end up wandering around, each lost and trying to seek their family.
The movie (which clocks in at 21 minutes) is a celebration of human (and animal) kindness. Its real highlights are the beautiful animation style and the very fun and fitting voice work, with standouts being Lyonne and John C. Reilly as a narrator of sorts. B+Streaming on Disney+.
Brightly Shining, by Ingvild Rishøi (Grove Press, 192 pages)
It’s been 181 years since A Christmas Carol was published, and so it’s past time for another author to give us a compact, memorable holiday book that becomes as much a part of the season as shopping and eggnog. The Dickens classic was a marvel of brevity, coming in at just about 30,000 words, which is surely one reason it remains popular. No one has time to read, say, Richard Powers in December.
Three years ago, I had hopes for Small Things Like These, a slim novel written by the Irish novelist Claire Keegan, which turned up as Oprah Winfrey’s book club pick this month even though it was published in 2021. That book (Grove Press, 118 pages) wasn’t about Christmas, per se, but is set around Christmastime and has, at the heart of its deeply affecting story, a working-class man who was born to a teenage housekeeper. Furlong never knew who his father was, and yet grows up to be happily married with five daughters and becomes a sort of social justice warrior by accident when he makes a disturbing discovery while delivering coal, a reliable staple of Christmas stories.
Small Things Like These has a Truman Capote “A Christmas Memory” vibe to it, in the telling of Furlong’s back story, with passages like this:
“On Christmas morning, when he’d gone down to the drawing room [his mother’s employer] occasionally let them share, the fire was already lighted and he’d found three parcels under the tree wrapped in the same green paper: a nailbrush and a bar of soap were wrapped together in one. The second was a hot water bottle … And from Mrs. Wilson, he’d been given A Christmas Carol, an old book with a hard red cover and no pictures, which smelled of must.”
Or maybe that is a Little Women vibe. At any rate, there are letters written to Santa, and a Christmas Mass, and an ending with the kind of wild and irrational hope befitting a good Christmas story. A Christmas Carol it’s not, but it was Dickensonian enough that I decided to add the book to my Christmas collection when I finished it last year.
Now Grove Press has published another slim Christmas-themed novel, Brightly Shining, by the Norwegian author Ingvild Rishoi (translated into English by Carolina Waight). In Norway, where the book was published in 2021 under the title Stargate, the author has been compared to Dickens and also Hans Christian Andersen (who, lest we forget, gave us “The Little Mermaid” before Disney did).
Brightly Shining is the story of a 10-year-old girl (who, in Victorian times, would have been characterized as a waif) and her struggle to maintain hope in seemingly hopeless circumstances. Ronja lives with her 16-year-old sister Melissa, in an impoverished household ostensibly headed by their father, who is addicted to alcohol, has trouble holding down a job, and is usually failing to provide support of any kind for his daughters. Most of the time, there is nothing for the girls to eat but cereal, and there is no mother in the home, although Melissa tries as best as she can to be a mother to her sister.
One day, a caretaker at Ronja’s school, who is aware of the situation, points out a flier advertising a job selling Christmas trees, and she takes it home to her father. After at first dismissing it as “a job for country bumpkins,” he relents and is hired, giving wings to Ronja’s hopes: that there might be enough money for food and gifts and a Christmas tree of their own. Her biggest dream, though, is that the family may one day have a cabin of their own in the woods.
As Ronja, the narrator, recounts: “ ‘Miracles do happen,’ the caretaker used to say. ‘Sometimes there just isn’t any other way out, and that’s when a miracle happens.’”
But that’s not how things transpire. Old patterns repeat, and Melissa takes over the job selling Christmas trees, with Ronja showing up at times just to watch, and eventually getting involved in the operation.
A bully of a boss turns into the story’s villain, and Ronja befriends a widowed man living in their building, leading to one of the book’s most poignant scenes, at a holiday pageant at Ronja’s school. The old man, Aronsen, does what he can to help Ronja, feeding her a real breakfast, ironing a dress for the school pageant and even buying greenery at the Christmas tree lot, but his efforts, and Melissa’s, cannot make up for the loss of functioning parents in the child’s life, even though, as she says, “I can’t not hope. That’s just the way my brain is.”
As in Small Things Like This, Brightly Shining attempts to give us the happiest ending possible while being honest about reality, which is to say, it’s not really a happy ending at all, especially after all the talk about miracles. Let’s just say it’s as happy an ending as O’Henry gave us in “The Gift of the Magi,” meaning it requires aggressive spin to cast either book as a feel-good Christmas story.
Not to say that both books aren’t beautifully crafted — they are. Not to say that they’re not memorable — they are. It’s just that I’ve been forever ruined by the last chapter of A Christmas Carol and seek that level of merriment in my Christmas reads, which Brightly Shining and Small Things Like These refuse to supply. God bless them, anyway. B+
Lots to unpack from this French producer’s upcoming 2025 debut album, the first thing being the fact that I usually can’t stomach French music and was surprised to like this stuff, the second being that it’s almost painfully art-wonky; if you were at all confused or triggered by the bizarre opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, you should stick to something more meat-and-potatoes than this, just trying to help. Toward the latter, the video for the title track is one of the weirdest you’ll ever see, combining performance art and ballet in a presentation that, like the cover art, will surely be misinterpreted by unqualified critics as a shocking glamorization of the KKK (it isn’t at all). Artists gotta art, you see, and this guy’s been lucky enough to be introduced to and seen by the right people; among other things, he’s written platinum hits for French rap artists like Josman. The music itself has haunted house elements, i.e. slow techno exercises that sound like Heligoland-era Massive Attack after the guys drank a gallon of Robitussin. It’s plenty melodic, and to say it’s unapologetically urban would be the understatement of the decade. Perfect stuff for a perfectly broken planet. A
Victoria Monét, A Jaguar II Christmas: The Orchestral Arrangements (RCA Records)
Talk about under the wire; I was sifting through my emailbox for a metal or noise album to review here in order to finish off the week quickly when this one — an actual holiday record! — popped up. If you weren’t aware that AOR-R&B was even still being made by anyone, you can make room in your stack of Anita Baker and Toni Braxton albums for Monét, a multiple Grammy winner who worked her way up from the songwriting bullpen to bathe the world in her own brand of expensive-hotel vibe, with hits like the yacht rock-bordering “On My Mama,” which gets a bedroom-chill overhaul here, as well as subtle “12 Days Of Christmas” interpositions. That kind of thing goes on a lot on this record: Monét is a creative soul, well-versed in symphonics; in the appropriately named “Cadillac Christmas” she inserts snatches of “Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy” into a yacht-hip-hop beat while maintaining her understated street cred (don’t try that at home; it’s a difficult trick). Wonderfully tasteful, this. A+
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• Yee-ha, our next album-release Friday is Dec. 20, when people like me, CD reviewers with weekly columns that need to be filled with news of new albums, sit in our glittering snow drifts on The Island Of Misfit Toys, with nothing to talk about at all. There aren’t many new CDs that come out this time of year; all the “important” new albums have already come out and we already made fun of them gave them a thorough, professional evaluation, for the edification of you, our faithful readers. And so, like a Charlie In The Box, or a squirt gun that shoots Polaner All-Fruit instead of water, or a toy cowboy who rides an ostrich, I sit alone, in my completely unorganized trash heap of an office, waiting to hear the jingling of sleigh bells, that magical sound that heralds the arrival of Santa Claus, who will, I hope against hope, bring me albums to talk about in this award-winning space. I get so looooonely this time of year, guys, passing the endless hours, with no albums to critique, trying to ignore the urge to have a Skittles-eating contest with myself or just leave this page blank until tomorrow and go back to binging reruns of Match Game ’78 on the Buzzr channel, wasn’t Charles Nelson Reilly a funny fellow? Oh forget it, no one wants a misfit social media-addicted CD reviewer when the music market is oversaturated, good grief, why didn’t I stock up on Kleenex, I just hope none of you nice people ever have to — wait! Do you hear that, folks? And look! A bright red shiny nose-sized light, making straight for me! It’s —! It’s —! It’s — SANTA! Wait, Santa threw me something, wrapped in shiny paper and a nice bow! Yow, I can’t even believe it, it’s a new album, coming out on Dec. 20, for this column! Let’s see, I’m so excited, this album’s from some band I’ve never heard of — of course it is — called Fish in a Birdcage and it is titled Mentors! Well, let me look into this. They’re from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which probably explains why they’re putting out an album five days before ChristmaHannaKwanzaa, I don’t think they don’t have holidays in Canada except for Guillotine Day or whatever it is, could someone text me the Widipedia deets on that before my hands finish typing this entire column? Wait, no, I get it now, this is an actual band, not a joke YouTube-only hip-hop band like the one I wrote about two years ago, these guys have an actual record contract, with Nettwerk Records, which is literally my favorite record company to receive albums from. What does all this mean? It means they must have been contractually obligated to put out an album before the end of the year or else, you know how it goes! But guess what, this is a good band, judging by the first single, “Badger.” It’s a stompy tune that’s part Strokes, part Billy Squier and part Scottish-ren-faire grog-folk; I’m seriously impressed. Thank you for giving me a holly jolly Christmas, Santa! On, Dasher! On, Whatsyourface!
• Anyway, folks, that’s it for the least happy time of the year for us misfit CD reviewers! I’d like to thank the dude who sold me the nice expensive coffee mugs at World Market in Bedford, N.H., Petunia will definitely love them, and furthermore — wait! Look! One of Santa’s reindeer left me a present! — No, not that, don’t be gross, it’s another album! This one’s from some British “comedy music” kid who calls himself ZEDNED, and it’s titled Do You Think I Give A S—t. No, seriously, it’s an actual album, fam, it’s on Spotify and Apple Music and whatnot, so I’m going to listen to the song “Jake Jake Jake,” which is probably about ZEDNED himself, because his “real name” is Jake Muscles. Let’s see — OK, OK, it’s a joke song, with a totally canned trap-and-wub-wub beat, and he’s talking about gross sexytime stuff. Do not buy.
