Ordinary Angels

Year 17, Day 360 - 12/26/25 - Movie #5,200

BEFORE: Last film of the year, I made it through another 300 films, through a romance chain, a documentary chain, a horror chain and a Christmas chain, and I think I hit a few other holidays along the way. Labor Day and St. Patrick's Day and even Easter. It was another long road with a lot of twists and turns but the chain was unbroken yet again, that's like the seventh year in a row, I think. And I'll try to do it again next year for the eighth time. 

Stephanie Sy carries over again from "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever", and so do a couple other actors. Again, this chain started on 1/1/25 with "Anatomy of a Fall", and I had no idea then where it would lead me or how it would end or whether I'd be able to keep the chain going for the whole year. Well, I can, access to nearly any movie I want via streaming is what makes it possible, also being able to re-organize things on the fly is very important, like in October I realized one of my links was not good and there was about to be a break in the chain, so I just had to stop and cut out a few films, replace them with the same number of movies and double-check that the new links were good. Whew, that was a close one. 

So here's what's going to happen, I'm shutting down again for a few days, because I have to add up all the numbers and write my annual recap of what went down this year, also I got a job working for an event organizer on New Year's Eve, a company that takes over a number of high-profile Manhattan restaurants and then hosts a bunch of Times Square-adjacent food and drink things. Today I went on a walk-through of the space (no names, but you've probably heard of this tropical-based chain) and tried to get an idea of what I'm in for. Then on New Year's DAY I have to work at a Brooklyn Nets game, so I'm really going to be busy, then worn out. I think maybe I'll watch my first movie of 2026 a day yearly, just to be on the safe side. 

I delayed this film one day because yesterday was Christmas, gave myself the day off obvi, but this also allows for one last Birthday SHOUT-out, this time to actor Darcy Fehr, born December 26 in some year not listed on the IMDB. 1974? I've only seen him in one film before, but apparently he's a well-known actor in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Well, I guess somebody has to be - I hope he had a good Christmas and has an excellent Boxing Day birthday.

Here's the last set of format counts for 2025: 

DECEMBER

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Death of a Unicorn, Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, Love the Coopers, A Minecraft Movie, Dear Santa, Violent Night, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Ordinary Angels

1 watched on Netflix: Family Switch

1 watched on Hulu: Nutcrackers

10 TOTAL

THE PLOT: Inspired by the true story of a hairdresser who single-handedly rallies an entire community to help a widowed father save the life of his critically ill young daughter. 

AFTER: This was another film that had its Manhattan premiere at the theater where I work, which means I was on outdoor duty on a cold day in February 2024. I'll print a list in my year-end wrap-up post of all the films that I could have seen at the theater, but did NOT because I was working there. We simply do not get high on our own supply... working at the screening means that I do NOT get to see most movies, but you know, they'll be streaming in a couple months on one of the many platforms I subscribe to, so there's that. Big premieres also tend to bring in their own staff to do check-in and ushering, leaving me with two choices, either hand out concessions or do crowd control and oversee tent build/breakdown outside. I don't mind the outdoor work, I get to see all the famous people arrive by car and enter the press tent, then they're usually escorted out the back right after the screening starts. I'll arrive at 5 pm and work until midnight or 1 am, until the tents are down and the theater is reset.  

Reaching the end of the Movie Year tonight is very life-confirming, because ending the year exactly where I want to end it means that every decision I made this year was a good one - every time I cut a film out to make a chain shorter, every time I added a film in-between two others with the same actor, every time I tried to line up my viewing with an actor's birthday, that all paid off. Trusting my instincts was right, every single time, at least in retrospect. It's true, hindsight is always 20/20 vision, if I end with the perfect film - all other mistakes or disputes about what to watch are now null and void, because I did it. Again. I'm calling this one the "perfect" film not only because it's #300 and it's how I chose to end the year, but because there's a pivotal point in the film that takes place JUST after Christmas, and that's where we all are. Then I guess the climax of the film takes place in mid-January, but let's not focus on that, let's stay on the part that proves I'm a scheduling genius. Now if I hadn't moved this film to this final slot, I'd still have it linked to "Freedom Writers", a film that is on my list, but I'm not planning to watch it any time soon. Who knows, maybe next year around June graduation or September for back-to-school, but those months aren't even planned yet. 

The unintended theme this week, at least in three out of four films, is something about charity or helping those less fortunate, and really, what could be more appropriate for a holiday week. Yes, yes, of course all four films this week are Christmas-themed, but except for "Violent Night", they're all about people who are financially well-off, or at least with steady jobs, helping the poorer people in their town, and sure, that's a theme I can get behind, without all the churchy stuff would be better, but I'll take what the chain provides. "Nutcrackers" had a successful man taking care of his less fortunate sister's orphaned children, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" had a girl's parents getting the poor kids in town to participate in the pageant, plus they also brought them a ham from the church food pantry. Tonight we've got a Kentucky hairdresser who feels the need to help a local roofer raise the money needed to get his young daughter a liver transplant, and also pay (or at least reduce) the medical bills associated with her care. 

This is a big deal, like who would help a family of strangers that's drowning in debt and in danger of losing their home, because of circumstances outside of their control? I guess we can assume that the girl's deceased mother was the breadwinner in the family, because Ed, the widowed father, keeps falling deeper into debt trying to pay for his daughter's medical care. Relatable, even though this story takes place in 1994, well before the Affordable Care Act, at another time in U.S. history when insurance prices were high, and medical costs for the uninsured people were even higher. Which, you know, kind of sounds very similar to the insurance crisis we have in America right now. Meanwhile there's been talk about letting the ACA expire, while at the same time Trump's promise to come up with a better plan for reducing medical and insurance costs has not been fulfilled, and that promise was made EIGHT years ago. Remember when he said he would have a new plan to replace "Obamacare" in "just a few weeks"? Yep, that was at the start of his FIRST term, and we're still waiting. But by all means, let the legislation that made healthcare accessible for millions expire, and we'll all just get along by going to the E.R. whenever we're sick. Boneheads. 

If I didn't know this was based on a true story, I might not have believed it. But it is, so I kind of have to. Hilary Swank plays Sharon Stevens, who kind of works her way into helping this family out (though the father doesn't want her help at first) as she sees this as her "mission", her shot at redemption after screwing up the relationship with her teenage son. Also it's a bit of avoidance, she would rather help out this family in need than deal with her own alcoholism and lack of responsibility. Well, eventually she's going to get there, but at first she just sets her sights on fund-raising and helping out this family because it makes her feel better.  She is doing the right thing, even if it's not for the best reasons at first. 

Sharon does manage to get the medical bills reduced, which means that the family may not have to sell their home and downsize. However more problems arise once the young girl makes it to the top spot on the organ donor list, a liver becomes available however young Michelle would need to fly to Oklahoma for the transplant, and this wouldn't be a problem, except there's a cold wave and a terrible winter storm. Roads are blocked, and even though Sharon had lined up a private plane to take the girl to the airport, that's useless if Ed can't drive her to the airport in Louisville. At this point it would take a miracle, or more accurately a SERIES of miracles to find a helicopter and a pilot, a clear place to create a runway, and an army of volunteers with snow shovels. No spoilers, sorry. 

I'm willing to overlook the fact that this is a very Christian faith-based film, because in many ways this is the TYPE of the film that we need right now. Our country is either falling apart (or doing better than ever before, depending on who you ask) and so many people are struggling to make ends meet, for many people inflation means probably making a choice between groceries and medical insurance, having both would be considered a luxury. I mean, eggs are no longer $10 a carton (remember that from a few months ago?) but even though they're cheaper, it feels like the cost of everything else is still getting greater. I know I've had to dip into my savings a couple times since I changed careers, I've been waiting for my second job to come through with more shifts, but it hasn't yet, which explains why I'll have to work on New Year's Eve. I don't get paid time off, because I'm really just a temp at both jobs, so taking a week off to visit my parents really hurts me right in the wallet. I'm going to have to take every shift I can get over the next four months just to climb out of debt - or double my efforts to get a new full-time job. 

Anyway, that's a January problem right now, I missed out on seasonal work in December because we went on a vacation, so next year when the school shuts down maybe I need to find work as a department store Santa or something. I don't really want to be around sticky smelly kids for long periods of time, but I'll have to do something to bring in more money soon. So yeah, the money thing, the fact that it's right after Christmas, and the fact that it's snowing outside all make this the perfect film for me, right now.  And also I kind of book-ended the year, I started with "Anatomy of a Fall", which was set in a snowy landscape, and now I'm ending the year with another winter-based film. So we've come full circle once again. 

OK, I can work on the 2025 recap post this weekend, and then I'll be back here on January 1 or 2 with the start of a new chain. We start a new year, I start a new chain. 

Directed by Jon Gunn

Also starring Hilary Swank (last seen in "The Homesman"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Emily Mitchell (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Skywalker Hughes, Nancy Travis (last seen in "Destiny Turns on the Radio"), Tamala Jones (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Don Mike, Ryan Allen (last seen in "In the Shadow of the Moon"), Drew Powell (last seen in "Message from the King"), Andrea del Campo, Dempsey Bryk, Erik Athavale (last seen in "Violent Night"), Curtis Moore (also carrying over from "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever"), Lauren Cochrane (ditto), Adam Hurtig (ditto), Neil Shah, David Lawrence Brown, Darcy Fehr (last seen in "The Ice Road"), Diana Botelho-Urbanski, Jan Skene, DJ Brotherson, Paul Essiembre (last seen in "Nobody"), Sharon Bajer (ditto), Nancy Sorel (last seen in "How It Ends"), Ernie Pitts, Gwendolyn Collins, Amy Acker (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Gabriel Daniels, Jason Wishnowski, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 snow shovels

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Year 17, Day 358 - 12/24/25 - Movie #5,199

BEFORE: It turns out there are actors who specialize in doing Christmas movies - the Trivia section on IMDB for "Violent Night" mentioned that Stephanie Sy is one of them, with 16 (now 20) Christmas movies listed in her filmography. These are EXACTLY the actors I want to know about, because they could be very handy at the end of each year - look, I stumbled on to Stephanie Sy on my own, but there are others out there, once you factor in all the "Christmas romance" (Christmance?) films that are made for the Lifetime and Hallmark networks, plus Netflix and Hulu are probably filled with them, too. I've mostly avoided this genre, because I mostly need to keep Christmas movies in one month and romance movies in another, but I think a few of them have slipped through, like "Last Christmas". Now OF COURSE I'd rather stick to straight holiday fare like "The Night Before" or "Office Christmas Party" or "Bad Santa 2", but you never know, a Christmance movie might get me out of a linking jam one of these years - they're not all going to fall into place like this year's holiday movies did. 

Stephanie Sy carries over from "Violent Night". Who knows, maybe one of these years when I get myself semi-retired I can find part-time work as a shopping mall Santa. I've already got the build for it, I would just need my hair to get a little whiter and develop some kind of tolerance for dealing with small children - but it seems like easy peasy work if you can just get a costume and go through some kind of training process. 

THE PLOT: Nobody is ready for the mayhem and surprises that ensue when six of the worst youngsters disrupt the town's yearly Christmas performance. 

AFTER: It's almost time for those cable channels to start running 24 hours straight of "A Christmas Story" and honestly, I don't mind having that on in the background during Christmas and letting the story loop back in on itself every 90 minutes. I've seen that film more times than I care to admit, so it kind of no longer registers, but after you've seen it through a few thousand times there's kind of a "Pulp Fiction" effect, where Ralphie and his family transcend the laws of time and space and are just caught in an infinite loop of holiday traditions from the past. Going to see Santa at the department store, getting beaten up by bullies and then beating up the bullies, breaking his eyeglasses and the neighbor's dogs eating the family turkey, over and over and over again. 

This film is kind of in the same vein, the story is told by an adult reminiscing about that one Christmas pageant 30 years ago that was different from all the others, and this happened back in AnyTown USA, what year we're not exactly sure, but it was some time before smart phones and the internet and everyone drove station wagons and went to church and put up holiday decorations outside. Maybe you lived in a town like this, and maybe you remember doing some of these things at Christmastime, the filmmakers are kind of counting on hitting you right in the nostalgia-centric part of your brain. Maybe your parents were active in church activities, maybe your town had a Christmas pageant or potluck dinner, or maybe you remember a family of needy and/or unruly kids or bullies that you had to deal with. 

(I can't help but notice the similarities between this film and "Nutcrackers" - rural Midwest town, family full of misbehaving kids, adaptation of a well-known holiday play or performance that gets "adapted" by the well-meaning participants. Ah, well, it's going to happen. For that matter, tonight's film is also giving off a kind of "Charlie Brown Christmas" kind of vibe, too.)

Look, I lived this kind of life myself, in suburban Massachusetts - upscale town, parents active in the church, and then at Christmas time my sister and I would sit in with the choir because we knew all the hymns and Christmas songs, then in high-school we were in both District Choir and the high-school's 8-person showcase, so in my time I did a LOT of holiday work. December was when we kind of went on tour and sang at all kinds of functions, union halls, charity events and such. Tight harmonies, suit jackets, a free pass to get out of class whenever, we killed it. I can't say I worked a Christmas pageant, but I knew the bass parts to a LOT of Christmas songs, and even if I didn't, I could sight-read them. And I was on the victim end of a few bully situations, but getting older and bigger and not putting up with their B.S. went a long way toward ending all that. Still, I got out of suburbia at 17 and headed for the big city where I could kind of disappear, only not really.

Beth Bradley tells the story of the year her mother had to direct the Christmas pageant, because the woman usually in charge broke both of her legs somehow (the movie couldn't seem to tell us how this happened, so maybe it's better if we don't ask). This was the 75th Anniversary version of the town pageant (Umm, "town" and "church" are kind of synonymous here, so much for the separation of church and state...welcome to the Midwest, no Muslims or Buddhists) but unfortunately, this was also the year that Herdmans, (the "poor" kids in town with possibly absent parents) learned that the church gave out a lot of food and snacks, so really, it was the place to be. Never mind that they had a reputation for stealing, lying and bullying, they saw their opportunity to sign up for the Christmas pageant and get unlimited snacks. Yeah, I see the motivation there - even church potluck dinners can be a total draw. They get you with the food but then you have to learn about Jesus, it's a trap!

After bullying their way into the key roles in the pageant, the kids are motivated to learn about the nativity story, but only because they want to make rewrites!  This leads to some very valid questions about the Bible, like why did the Three Wise Men bring myrrh? What does the angel of the Lord look like? What did the manger smell like? (Probably like a farm, right?). And most importantly, whatever happened to King Herod? The villain of any story should meet an untimely end at some point, but the Bible is notoriously silent on this point.  This always kind of confused me during Sunday School, because there's a King Herod who is warned about the birth of Jesus and orders the slaughter of the innocent children, and then there's another King Herod mentioned during the crucifixion story. Is that the SAME King Herod, or a different one? Well, we didn't have the internet back when I was a kid, so I kept quiet and didn't ask too many questions, but now I can do my research and learn that there was Herod the Great, who may have ordered the Massacre of the Innocents (or not, this might have been a story created for the Bible) and I can now confirm that Herod the Great died in about 4 BC after an excruciatingly painful illness. The "other" Herod was his son, Herod Antipas or Herod the Tetrarch, and this is generally believed to be the Herod who played a role in executing John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, if you believe the Bible stories. Well, I'm glad to finally sort all of that out - I don't think I would have gotten a straight answer out of my church leaders in the 1980's. 

Anyway, the Christmas pageant rehearsals are a complete disaster, obviously there are better candidates available to play Mary and Joseph and the Three Wise Men, but that's great if you want the same exact Christmas pageant as last year and the year before that and the year before THAT. Mrs. Bradley is trying to do the Christian thing by giving the Herdman children a chance, even though they're not the best actors or the best-behaved children, or don't even attend church regularly except for when there are snacks. Meanwhile the "church ladies" in town are not satisfied with the lack of progress and the possibility of a disaster pageant and are wondering why the Herdman kids have not been replaced. This is an important distinction, between doing the "church thing" and the "Christian thing", and yes, there is a difference. And yes, they had Karens back then, but some of them were called "church ladies".  

Young Beth Bradley goes on a food delivery with her parents, and she gets to see how the Herdman kids really live, they depend on the food from the church, the parents work all day and leave them alone (or maybe the parents split years ago, it's tough to say) so after seeing how the needy people live, Beth learns to be more tolerant, and there's a turn of events, where first Beth couldn't imagine the pageant with the Herdman kids in it, and then she can't imagine the pageant without them, so she goes to see them to convince Imogene to continue to perform as Mary, because in some ways, she's perfect for the part. The Herdmans' Mary and Joseph turn up dressed like poor refugees, and you know, that's perfect for the story in a way. 

I spent my time in community theater as well, and this is perfectly captured here, too - the dress rehearsal can be complete chaos, to the point where nobody really knows how the actual performance will go. It could succeed, it could fail spectacularly, but maybe even if it fails the fact that it happened at all is something of a success. Or we can find beauty in its imperfections, or learn something new about the story by seeing it performed in a different way. That's what an adaptation is, somebody new's version of the same events, and that's why we keep getting Dracula and Frankenstein movies, because each director brings something new to the table, and even with an old story we can think about it in a new way. 

The Herdmans grow up, and we learn at the end that most of them managed to avoid jail, and Beth Bradley grew up to run the same Christmas pageant as her mother, which is not a bad thing. She tells the story of that 75th anniversary pageant to the kids each year, hopefully to promote diversity and tolerance and understanding - well, it's a start, anyway. It's all still a bit too churchy for my tastes, but at least we're having a conversation about what it all means. The book this is based on came out in 1972, which was a long time ago - there's no year cited in tonight's film, but that's probably for the best, we can imagine it taking place in whatever year we were that age.

Directed by Dallas Jenkins

Also starring Lauren Graham (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Pete Holmes (last seen in "Family Switch"), Molly Belle Wright, Beatrice Schneider, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez (last seen in "Love, Guaranteed"), Matthew Lamb (last seen in "Smile"), Essek Moore, Kirk B.R. Woller (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Ewan Wood, Mason D. Nelligan, Kynlee Heiman, Nolan Grantham, Vanessa Benavente, Lorelei Olivia Mote, Danielle Hoetmer, Mariam Bernstein, Jenni Burke, Kamal Chioua, Lauren Cochrane (last seen in "Champions"), Sarah Constible, Wyatt Dewar, Donna Fletcher, Sara Angelica, Davison Gee, Adam Hurtig (last seen in "Violent Night"), Ray Strachan (ditto), Reena Jolly, Daina Leitold, Chloe McKinnon, Curtis Moore, Khloe Banville-Sumner, Elizabeth Tabish, Isla Verot, Tom Young, Stanlee Arches, Maddox Braun, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 slices of holiday ham

Violent Night

Year 17, Day 357 - 12/23/25 - Movie #5,198

BEFORE: The Christmas countdown moves on - and just like with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when you see Santa Claus, you know we're getting really close to the end. This film is only three years old, but it feels like it's been on the list for a very long time, that just means it's one of those tough-to-link-to films, but I got really lucky this year and a big number of holiday films just kind of fell into place. That can happen - but probably next year I'll be back to crossing off just one or two from the list each time around. 

I want to remind everyone that this blog has never taken any advertising money at all, hell, it's never made me any money at all, I'm just doing it for the love of movies. That being said, this film popping up now is a great reminder that the FINAL season of "Stranger Things" is now streaming on Netflix (a company that doesn't need my help, anyway). I managed to watch the first four episodes of Season 5 while we were on the cruise (I downloaded them first so I wouldn't run up a bunch of roaming charges while at sea) and a few more episodes will be released on Christmas Day, because somebody apparently doesn't want you to spend time with your family members. I think the last episode ever comes out on New Year's Day. Good luck getting to sleep.  

Edi Patterson carries over from "Nutcrackers". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fatman" (Movie #4,895)

THE PLOT: When an elite team of mercenaries breaks into a family compound on Christmas Eve, a disgruntled Santa Claus must take them out to save both the hostages and the holiday.

AFTER: Well, we all live in a world where "Die Hard" for sure counts as a Christmas movie ("Die Hard With a Vengeance", not so much). I can remember a time when if somebody said that their favorite Christmas movie was "Die Hard", they would NOT be taken seriously, but now it's a totally legit answer. Well, if you mashed up "Die Hard" with "Bad Santa" and "Home Alone" plus a bit of "The Northman", maybe you'd come up with something like this - or maybe it just needs to be its own thing, because it's kind of really out there. I appreciate the inventiveness, plus the use of the tagline "You Better Watch Out" on the poster. That was kind of MY idea for a non-existent horror movie called "Slay Ride". 

Let's get to the details - Santa Claus is real, and he has a magic sack of infinite holding, flying reindeer and an infinite computerized nice/naughty database and all that. But he also stops for frequent bar breaks on Christmas Eve and seems to be fueled by Christmas cookies and also the whiskey from everyone's liquor cabinet. When we see a bartender get puked on by Santa flying off in his sleigh, we realize this isn't quite the typical storybook Santa. More on that in a bit. We also follow Jason and his broken-up racially blended family as they prepare to visit his rich mother on Christmas Eve. Jason is in competition with his sister, Alva, over who's going to run the family company if their mother should choose to retire, only it doesn't seem like that's going to happen any time soon. Alva has a teenfluencer son and a boyfriend who's an action-film actor named Morgan Steel. But that's not very important. 

What's important is that Santa Claus finally gets to this same house (he starts in Europe and works his way west around the globe, which makes sense, if he wants to take advantage of the time zones and maximize his efficiency. Yes, I see what you did there.) and gets waylaid by the home-made cookies put out by Trudy, Jason's daughter, and the aged whiskey he finds in Jason's mother's liquor cabinet, causing him to fall asleep. At the same time, a bunch of armed robbers attack the mansion and kill all the security guards, holding the whole family hostage while they try to break into the safe. It's a holiday heist run by "Scrooge" and his gang, all of whom have cool holiday code-names like "Peppermint" and "Gingerbread" and "Candy Cane". 

But they don't know that Santa happens to be in the house, and once Trudy makes contact with him via her "magic" walkie-talkie, Mr. Claus knows what he has to do, rescue the family and take down the evil gang, who are all on his naughty list anyway, so really, they've all got it coming. What most people don't know - OK, what everyone didn't know until now because it was made up just for this movie - is that Santa Claus is really a former Viking warrior who became eternal somehow, and decided to make up for his long career pillaging and killing to instead use Christmas magic to travel around the world delivering presents once a year AND occasionally slipping back into warrior mode, whenever necessary or maybe just for funsies. Yeah, maybe this is a bit of a stretch. 

Basically this new back-story, added to the usual Santa Claus legend, turns him into something of a superhero. He's already got Ant-Man-like powers if he needs to shrink his size to get through tight chimneys, and tech powers like Iron Man if he's got gear like the sleigh and the nice/naughty list, plus the infinite sack kind of calls Dr. Strange to mind - so this is the first post-MCU Santa, if that makes any sense. Then he's got a hammer like Thor (it's name is Skullcrusher) and he takes a lot of damage like Wolverine or Deadpool - once he starts fighting the terrorist-like thieves, he survives axe wounds and bullets and a few other things, while the bad guys (eventually) start dropping like flies because they don't have the healing powers of Christmas magic. 

There are inconsistencies, of course - Santa is both eternal/non-aging and vulnerable/killable. How do we reconcile those two things?  He's got the stamina to travel all around the world in one night, but he also gets sleepy when he drinks too much. Can both of those things also be true? He's very clever when it comes to weaponry and keeping track of millions of kids's gift preferences, but he also has no idea how Christmas magic works. So, is he smart or stupid? He's really whatever this film needs him to be at any given moment, I guess. 

When we first meet Santa, he's kind of just on the cusp of being fed-up with mankind's greed and materialism, and maybe he's thinking this was going to be his last year giving out the gifts - this was a fine idea and I wish the film could have explored this a bit further, because it's an interesting place for Santa's head to be. But then of course he finds a new purpose in taking down these mercenaries, saving the (somewhat) innocent rich family, and being re-inspired to keep Christmas alive. Until next year, at least. A bit of a programming note that this movie is not for kids, in other words they may not be prepared to watch Santa get horribly injured and almost die, but in the end we get to see him save Christmas and re-dedicate himself to his mission, so just like with the comic-book heroes, the story never really ends. 

The thieves manage to break into the safe, but all of the money is gone - one of the family members was just a little faster than them when it came to stealing the fortune. Trudy, meanwhile, sets up traps in the attic, "Home Alone" style, so that when the henchmen come for her, they all manage to die in horrible slapstick fashion - by then Santa has recovered from his initial injuries and is able to use his magic hammer, along with ice skate blades, a snowmobile and a sack of billiard balls, to injure or kill the rest of them - in a very Deadpool-like fashion. The holiday gets put back on track in under two hours, but somehow it also feels like it took a whole lot longer than that. Remember that Santa gets all the way around the world in one night somehow, and we all sweep the inconsistencies there under the rug. After killing a dozen mercenaries, Santa resumes his flight, like it wasn't even a thing. 

Whatever else it is, at least this was wildly inventive, and reportedly a sequel is in the works. Umm, sure, OK, let's meet back here in five or six years. Before I go, I just wanted to mention that I've met a few of the actors in tonight's film IRL, I met Beverly D'Angelo back in 2003 or so when she recorded a voice for an animated film titled "Hair High", she had recently given birth to twins fathered by Al Pacino. And this year I met John Leguizamo a couple times, he came to the theater where I work now to speak in Q&A sessions for two films, "Bob Trevino Likes It" and a documentary called "Drop Dead City". 

Directed by Tommy Wirkola (director of "What Happened to Monday" and "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters")

Also starring David Harbour (last seen in "Awake"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "Ride Along"), Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Alex Hassell (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Alexis Louder (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Cam Gigandet (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Leah Brady, Andre Eriksen, Brendan Fletcher (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Mike Dopud (last seen in "Shooter"), Alexander Elliot, Mitra Suri, Can Aydin, Phong Giang (last seen in "Thunderbolts"), Finn McCager Higgins, Rawleigh Clements-Willis, Stephanie Sy (last seen in "Champions"), Marina Stephenson Kerr (last seen in "Flag Day"), John B. Lowe (last seen in "Reasonable Doubt"), Ray Strachan (last seen in "Cyrano"), Sean Skene, Erik Athavale (last seen in "Nobody"), Adam Hurtig (ditto), Robert Borges.

RATING: 6 out of 10 reasons to be on the Naughty list

Nutcrackers

Year 17, Day 356 - 12/22/25 - Movie #5,197

BEFORE: I'm back after a week away, ready to sprint to the Christmas finish line - just THREE films left in Movie Year 17 after tonight, all Christmas-themed. Plus my January and February chains are waiting in the wings. After Christmas I get another bit of a break, but I'm going to be working on New Year's Eve, so there might be a delayed start to January. 

We enjoyed a week in a warmer climate, we sailed out of the Brooklyn docks on an MSC ship, which didn't stop until it hit Cape Canaveral in Florida, where we visited the Kennedy Space Center (in 2018 we went to the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of BBQ Crawl #2) and finally stood under a Saturn V rocket, which is quite large. We also saw a space shuttle and that giant crawler thing that carried all those famous NASA rockets from the assembly building to the launch pad, moving at a top speed of 1 mph. 

After that, the ship spent a day at the cruise line's private island and then 1 day in Nassau, Bahamas, where we went on a self-curated walking tour of historic Bahamanian government buildings and also gift shops. Then two more sea days, during which we enjoyed the ship's many semi-fancy meals and snacks and I beat everyone else on the ship at progressive trivia (the secret was to attend every single night, as the score was cumulative). Hey, while our friends and neighbors in NYC were freezing, we were dining on a ship's sundeck, enjoying the buffet in 70-degree December weather, it's hard to beat that. On the last night, we took in the ship's featured jukebox musical, "Rock Circus", but, you know, probably the less said about that, the better. 

Ben Stiller carries over from "Dear Santa". 

THE PLOT: After a tragedy, four siblings find a loving shelter in an unexpected turn of circumstances. 

AFTER: Well, I'm not really sure WHAT I was expecting, but we're down to the last few movies and really, there's no changing the set-list, so I'm gonna get what I get. Kind of like Christmas presents, there's no telling what you got until you unwrap them. No takebacks, either, no swapping - my father's family used to do the "Yankee Swap" thing, where everybody in the room who wanted to participate would bring a wrapped gift (with a dollar value up to a specific limit) and then we'd draw numbers, whoever drew #1 got to pick the first gift, but whoever drew #2 could keep the gift they unwrapped OR force a swap with person #1, and so on. So if you went first and unwrapped a "good" gift, you had to pretend that it wasn't that great, or else you weren't going to hang on to it for very long. I think maybe person #1 got to force one last swap at the end, because they never had much choice in the first place. Anyway, people ended up trading gifts afterwards if they got stuck with something they didn't want, because it was a friendly game - now that side of the family doesn't get together any more, and I kind of miss that. 

My point is, I can't swap this one out - I guess I thought I was going to get some slapstick comedy like "Christmas with the Fockers", and this just isn't that, it's more of a family drama than a holiday comedy. BUT there's Christmas stuff at the end, so it's going to count. Ben Stiller plays Michael, a real estate guy from Chicago who's notoriously single, but he drives to Ohio after his sister passes away, to check in on her four sons, who are now orphans. He'd only met the older two sons before, so it seems like maybe the sibling relationship had been strained for a few years. 

Anyway, the kids are very unruly, but also they're dealing with the traumatic loss of their parents (no explanation at first of how both parents died at the same time, but they'll get there...) but they live on a farm and are home-schooled, so their social worker is having a really tough time finding foster parents for them. She assumes that Michael, as next of kin, will take over looking after them for a while, but he's just not the foster parent type - not at first, anyway. Naturally he has a hard time connecting with them at first, because they are out of control and hyperactive and willing to "punk" him at every opportunity. In addition to being far away from his job at a critical time, Michael also has to deal with life on a farm, no cell phone service in rural Ohio, a tyrannical town deputy, and a town full of weird characters who want nothing to do with becoming foster parents. Well, except one lady who already has a bunch of foster kids, and she seems both over-eager and wildly insane. 

Michael attempts to befriend the man who owns the most property in town, he and his wife recently became an "empty nester" and seem to be interested in taking in children, only the kids disrupt the man's Christmas party with an out-of-control golf cart that destroys his Nativity scene and ends up in the pool. Yeah, what part of "be on your best behavior" did these kids not fully understand? 

Michael re-opens his late sister's dance studio when he learns that one of the boys has adapted the famous ballet "The Nutcracker" to modernize the story, adding a samurai and a few pirates couldn't hurt, because the original ballet had sugar plum fairies and a Mouse King, so maybe it was in need of an update. This kind of reminded me of that part in "Sing Sing" where the inmates decided that "King Lear" really needed a time travel sub-plot so they could add in pirates and gladiators. 

They found four brothers to play the brothers, and all four are trained ballet dancers, and live on the farm seen in the film. So it's tough to say whether they set out with this story in mind and just happened to find four brothers who fit the bill, or if the story was tailor-made around the family actors that they found. At the end we get to see the brothers dance in their altered version of the Nutcracker, the specific changes that they made to the plot aren't all that important, I guess as long as you have a Mouse King and a Nutcracker character, we can assume that everything else kind of fell into place. 

There's a fair amount of actual heart and holiday spirit here, again it may not be the film I was expecting but I'm willing to make allowances and work with what I've been given, you know, because it is the holiday season and all that. Also, this is a good reminder that a lot of the big holiday films that Hollywood makes are set in big cities like NYC or Los Angeles, but there's Christmas all over the place, the cities don't have a monopoly on it. 

Directed by David Gordon Green (director of "Prince Avalanche" and "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent")

Also starring Linda Cardellini (last seen in "Nonnas"), Homer Janson, Ulysses Janson, Arlo Janson, Atlas Janson, Toby Huss (last seen in "The Rental"), Maren Heisler, Edi Patterson (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Tim Heidecker (last seen in "Us"), Lucy Zukaitis (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Bryant Carroll (last seen in "Maggie Moore(s)"), Louis Heisler, Noah Fisher, Isabella Steele, Dominick Marrone, Vasily Deris, Alexander Louis, Rodrigo Almarales, Jeff Janson, Melissa Gelfin, Anita Farmer Bergman, Cliff Cash, Donna Grasso, Bridget Pervalle and the voices of Ari Graynor (last seen in "10 Years"), Ashley Rae Spillers (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Jerome Agean.

RATING: 5 out of 10 hard-to-catch chickens (and while there's no partridge in a pear tree, there is a snake in a toilet)