With dazzling visuals, abundant holiday charm and a committed performance from Dan Stevens (“Beauty and the Beast”), The Man Who Invented Christmas doesn’t quite garner a “humbug.” In fact, it is a real pleaser — light and playful as it may be. The origin story simplifies Charles Dickens’ trials and tribulations while writing “A Christmas…
From “Black Christmas” through “Silent Night, Deadly Night” and onto “Krampus,” there is a fine tradition of Christmas-themed horrors running through the decades, and Red Christmas, the feature debut from writer-director Craig Anderson, fits comfortably into the canon. The Christian festival of family and giving is the perfect backdrop for an ultra-violent cautionary tale about…
“Heaven. Heaven is a place. A place where nothing, nothing ever happens” — Talking Heads, “Heaven” So, you’ve just been suspended. Suspended in time. In space. A literal suspension that leaves you wandering around everywhere and nowhere all at once. That prolonged feeling we sometimes, sadistically, seek (sick!) when watching a horror flick. True horror…
Why Him? The real question is why me? Why am I always searching for the seemingly most elusive item on Earth, not a holy grail or world peace, but a decently funny comedy that can a) make me laugh consistently and, b) not devolve into a juvenile series of f-words, toilet humor and disgusting situations….
Ah, what would this time of the season be without another motion picture featuring sex, drugs, rock and roll (and loud, annoying rap, to boot), fights, prostitutes, female pimps, gun threats, corporate layoffs, drunk driving (among other idiotic things committed while intoxicated), psychological disorders, sacrilegious sequences, rampant vulgarity, sexual harassment, child abuse, serious physical and…
I suppose the title, “The Christmas Pageant That Almost Never Was” would have worked, but Believe is fine. After all, it’s the holiday season, so we’re entitled to a little suspension of (dis)belief, as the newest faith-heavy film from writer/director Billy Dickson in his major debut, conveys. Drawing allusions to Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, “It’s…
Oh boy. There’s nothing quite as middling or eyebrow-raising as a belated sequel, is there? 2003’s “Bad Santa” was a morbid, distasteful, apathetic middle-finger to more warm and fuzzy, politically correct holiday ventures and I absolutely love it. Upon hearing that a sequel was finally coming I was excited, although I knew it could fall…
