11th Annual Not-at-TIFF Film Festival

There is a phenomenon known to cinephiles as the film festival bubble in which a person attending a film festival, like, say, the Toronto International Film Festival, its 10-day run commencing today, becomes so ensconced in watching movies and thinking about movies that the outside world ceases to exist. I don’t attend film festivals anymore, preferring to watch less and let it digest more, but I do miss that bubble, surfacing afterwards, wondering (or not) what I missed. If, however, you dip into a film festival bubble of life these days in America where the number of atrocities occurring can feel limitless, and their scale can feel infinite, it can also feel as if you’re burying your head in the sand. But then, to not occasionally stop drinking from the unrelenting firehose is unhealthy. They’ve got us right where they want us, in other words, forcing us to try and strike a nearly impossible balance, one that Not-at-TIFF, our annual counter-programmed festival to Real TIFF, did its best to strike, sort of. After all, somewhere along the line, round about 2020, say, Not-at-TIFF’s mission statement merged Here are Some Cool Movies to Watch! with a Festivus-like Airing of Grievances.

11th Annual Not-at-TIFF Film Festival

Who’s Harry Crumb? Real TIFF 2025 opens with the Colin Hanks documentary “John Candy: I Like Me,” a tribute to the late Canadian hero, so Not-at-TIFF 2025 will open with a John Candy movie. The first 100 guests will receive free philodendrons, the legend Shawnee Smith will appear, as will Bonnie Tyler for a special post-screening performance. 

Report to the Commissioner. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Real TIFF, and good for them, but rather than screen some old 1975 warhorse like “Dog Day Afternoon” to commemorate 50 years, let’s screen this down and dirty crime thriller. Because the way New York City looks in “Report to the Commissioner” is basically the way the President of the United States imagines every (blue) American city still looks today. Not that he would know, of course, because like Jack Donaghy refusing to leave his office after being mugged on The Tuxedo Begins episode of “30 Rock,” I imagine that His Imbecility hasn’t gone outside except to play golf since the Central Park Five. 

King of Marvin Gardens. Speaking of the President, I just finished Mark Kriegel’s incisive book Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson and was reminded of the outsized role His Imbecility played in the boxer’s ascension, including hosting the mammoth 1988 Michael Spinks fight at the Atlantic City Convention Hall which was attached to T*ump Plaza Hotel and Casino. In fact, Kriegel wrote, T*ump built a walkway between the two so that “high rollers” would not have to see the riff raff and “dilapidated boardwalk” of Atlantic City like the one presented in Bob Rafelson’s 1972 New Hollywood classic “King of Marvin Gardens.” I was reminded of the Tyson/Spinks showdown during the recent P*tin/T*ump summit in Alaska. After all, His Imbecility essentially turned this meeting with an alleged war criminal into a sporting event, including a flyover and a slogan, Pursuing Peace a la Tyson v Spinks being billed as Once and For All. And so, it was only appropriate that just as Tyson KO’d Spinks in 91 seconds, the Russian President essentially laid the American political tomato can out flat in what was tantamount to a minute and a half. 

Reality. I would think Sydney Sweeney was a S1M0NE invented purely to feed the discourse if I had not already seen her immense talent on display elsewhere, like this exhilarating 2023 take on the Reality Winner story that was one of the best movies of 2023 and deserves to be seen far and wide. Sweeney spends most of the movie in cut-off jeans rather than regular jeans, so I hope that’s good enough for the pundits and thinkers. 

Brain Donors. And because I’m doing it again, by which I mean making Not-at-TIFF too big a downer, here’s a palate cleanser. As “The Naked Gun” reboot has shown, audiences are starving for otherwise extinct 80s, 90s-style rapid fire comedies, and so here’s a deep cut, a 1992 Zucker Brothers-produced Marx Brothers homage with John Turturro riffing on Groucho. Rotten Tomatoes is a little suspicious of it, but I remember watching this on HBO at my best friend’s house and laughing my keister off. 

Strange Brew. John Candy is not in this 1983 Canadian American cult classic, but Rick Moranis is, and when My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife and I were in Portland, Maine last month we encountered a mailbox with a Rick Moranis sticker plastered to it (see above). And I liked thinking of a whole host of Maine mailboxes with these same stickers. Be the change you want to see in the world, and this person wanted to manifest Rick Moranis back into the movies. And hey, it worked!

Nowhere to Hide. While I was not a fan of “Weapons,” I was a fan of “Weapons” providing a prominent role for Amy Madigan. More of that, Hollywood, please. It got me perusing Madigan’s filmography and in doing so, I discovered this action-thriller in which Madigan plays an ex-marine fending off evil military industrialists and Michael Ironside plays her survivalist brother and why was this not the biggest movie of 1987?

On the 8th day we rest, of course, and just watch some YouTube videos, like this one, which really brings back memories. This was the first George Strait song I ever knew because they played this commercial about a thousand times during college football games that year. And this occurs to me because the King of Country is receiving a Kennedy Center Honor, and why wouldn’t he be, described in that sharp-witted syntax of the Kennedy Center’s cockamamie chairman as “believed to be by millions of people to be just as good as you can get.” And though in this track Strait tells us that “you’ve got to have an ace in the hole, a secret that nobody knows,” the irony is that everybody knows Strait’s secret is remaining politically neutral. Mensch Mel Brooks nobly declined a Kennedy Center Honor that would have been presented by Dubya because he opposed the War on Terror, and though Strait could take the same tack and tell our burgeoning authoritarian to take a hike, as only an artist who would agree to be sponsored by Anheuser-Busch would know, you don’t get rich by sticking your neck out.  

Small Town Santa. I’m sorry, but upon forcibly reviewing the Not-at-TIFF schedule, the T*ump administration’s special envoys to Hollywood demanded to include one movie and this title, starring America’s favorite I*E agent, is what they gave me. After all, The War on Christmas continues apace. (Don’t hold it against the blog. You don’t have to attend, that’s fine, because no matter what, we are required to report that all seats for this screening were filled.) 

Gypsy 83. I have been dealing with living in America in 2025 by listening intensively to music of my old favorites. Bruce Springsteen, yes, but also my #1 favorite childless cat dog lady, Stevie Nicks, her solo stuff as well as her work in Fleetwood Mac but especially her contributions to “Tusk.” (This was only enhanced by reading, and loving, Andrew Porter’s SoCo-set new novel The Imagined Life in which Nicks’s music is essentially a supporting character.) And so, I felt so much shame and embarrassment that I only learned this year about the existence of this 2001 movie in which two Midwestern goths road trip to New York for an event called Night of a Thousand Stevies. Did I greenlight this in a dream? 

Stay strong, friends and faux festivalgoers.

   

Just Another List

The New York Times counted down the 25 Best Films of the 21st Century (uh, so far) in 2017 and this week has been counting down the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century (uh, so far) again. Counting them down after a neat block of time like a quarter-century feels more appropriate, less arbitrary, though I wonder, isn’t an arbitrary timeframe more appropriate for the arbitrary nature of a list? I mean, what interests me here is not the NYT’s composite list; that’s just fodder for all the people helpfully reminding us that lists are meaningless to complain about what the meaningless list got wrong. No, I’m interested in the individual ballots, fascinating snapshots of who Elizabeth Banks, and Mel Brooks are. (I especially liked the run from Nicholas Sparks to Tramell Tillman to John Turturro to John Waters, veering all over the place.) Lists are feelings, not facts, and impermanent, gone in the space of a single cup of espresso which is how long it took me to make my reader-submitted ballot via the NYT website. Once I was finished, I was already like, wait, I forgot stuff! But did I? I like being compelled to periodically compile such lists because it reminds me how my tastes have changed, and how they have stayed the same, and how my opinions on certain movies have altered, or strengthened. If I make it to the next NYT list in 2033, how might it look then? Who knows? Certainly not me. I can’t wait! Don’t like mine? Of course you don’t! Go to the NYT site and make your own!

My Favorite Beach Boys Needle Drops

Brian Wilson died in his sleep on June 11, 2025 at the age of 82. With him, The Beach Boys died too. I mean, yes, The Beach Boys are still active, technically, under the stewardship of Mike Love, but in spirit, they are gone. And though I have a soft spot for “Cocktail” (1988), not as a guilty pleasure but as something like a bizarrely fascinating artistic bomb, it’s always been unfortunate that it might be the preeminent movie associated with The Beach Boys. That’s courtesy of “Kokomo,” the #1 hit about a fictional tropical island created and written and recorded sans Brian Wilson. A perfect “Cocktail” song, undoubtedly, but also nowhere near the apex of Beach Boys songs in movies. (Unless you want to argue, as the invaluable culture writer Molly Lambert convincingly has, its “poisoned wholesomeness” makes it the key to unlocking “Cocktail” in the first place.) No, when it comes to The Beach Boys in movies, these are the needle drops that spring to mind.

(Note: for reasons of fair play, the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” is not eligible for this list.) 

My Favorite Beach Boys Needle Drops

Don’t Worry Baby in Never Been Kissed (1999). “Really,” readers all over the interweb are saying, “‘Never Been Kissed?’” Yes, really. Because even if “Never Been Kissed” is harmless, well, it’s also nothing special, or even close to it. But that’s the thing, cuing up my personal favorite Beach Boys tune can briefly elevate the climax of even the most middling rom com. 

Ol’ Man River in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). This song appears near the end of Wes Anderson’s animated opus, and it’s a happy ending. But even happy endings are, in a way, melancholic, as the sequence scored to this Beach Boys version of the 1927 Kern and Hammerstein show tune goes to show, demonstrating how life in all its banalities and difficulties, even for foxes and an opossum, just keeps rolling along.

Feel Flows in Almost Famous (2000). This is a Carl Wilson Beach Boys track start to finish that Brian only sang backup on, but still, it’s too memorable to leave off this list. I wasn’t familiar with this song until “Almost Famous,” in fact, and, honestly, to this day I can’t even say I know what it’s about which works in its favor. After all, Cameron Crowe places it over the moment backstage at the concert where the young scribe William Miller (Patrick Fugit) has ended up and the groupie, nay, band-aid Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) who in the previous sequence had promised to get him a backstage pass shows up, sure enough, with that backstage pass in tow whether or not he still needs it. It’s a moment, frankly, for all the dweebies like William and me – the cool girl remembers us! You can’t put that feeling into words, not ones that make any real sense, just a Beach Boys melody and vocal. Indeed, in some ineffable manner, the way Kate Hudson says, “The truth just sounds different,” she manages to harmonize with the song itself. 

Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in Roger & Me (1989). This song has been used so many times and in so many movies, from the Nixon Era classic “Shampoo” up through “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” apparently, and many points in-between, even on TV, including one of my 122 favorite “Seinfeld” episodes. Michael Moore utilized the lead track of “Pet Sounds” as an effective counterpoint to a montage of the ruins of Flint, Michigan, though I liked the monologue lead-in to this montage even more. It’s a former autoworker explaining that as he suffered a panic attack in his car after being laid off for the fifth time in five years, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” came on the radio, an irony so cruel it could make you believe in Providence to a certainty or not believe in Providence at all. 

Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in One Crazy Summer (1986). A song about wishing you could grow up already scoring one of the recurring bits in Savage Steve Holland’s off the wall comedy in which Joel Murray’s George Calamari is buried in the sand becomes a reminder to be careful what you wish. Buried in sand? Ha! Someday, George, you’re gonna grow up and be buried in life’s menial tasks! 

All Summer Long in American Graffiti (1973). In the wake of Wilson’s death, Bruce Springsteen said his single greatest car song “Racing in the Street” wouldn’t have existed without The Beach Boys, and “Racing in the Street” and “American Graffiti” go hand in hand, and when you need to summarize a movie via the closing credits in which cars and music are integral, well, who else are you gonna call? And that “All Summer Long,” as so many Neil deGrasse Tyson -types have pointed out over the years, was released two years after “American Graffiti” is set, hey, that only works to remind us that some pop songs are eternal.

God Only Knows in Boogie Nights (1997). The majestically sprawling “Boogie Nights” was one helluva hard movie to tie together come closing time and, yet, by employing what is frequently considered Wilson’s magnum opus, those astonishing vocal rounds seeming to stand in for the film’s own infinite layers, Paul Thomas Anderson did it.

I Get Around in Three Kings (1999). The only diegetic deployment of The Beach Boys on this list, marked in the cassette tape we see in the armored vehicle of four American soldiers cum treasure hunters, “I Get Around” provides a nifty counterpoint to the endless swath of desert through which they race, California Dreaming on such a Middle East day. It’s made all the more potent by how director David O. Russell and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel use long shots to make it seem as if they are surfing in the sand. 

The Valuable Lessons of Spaceballs

The golden age of movie parodies seemed to run out of steam in the mid-90s as irony became ascendant. If “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult” was not the spiritual nadir in 1994 then maybe it was Mel Brooks’s “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” in 1995, such a critical and commercial bomb that Brooks never directed again. (Perhaps not so curiously, he entirely elides this subject in the chapter on the movie in his memoir “All About Me!”) And yet, a not half-bad looking “Naked Gun” reboot starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson will be released on August 1st and as was recently announced, Mel Brooks’s “Star Wars” spoof “Spaceballs” is getting a sequel, tentatively slated for release in 2027, forty years after the original. Variety reports that “Spaceballs 2” comes with an accompanying logline deeming the movie “A Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film.” Reports abound of the death of irony, and that sounds like a death of irony joke, and so maybe Brooksian parody is due for a comeback?

The interweb rejoiced at this announcement, and why wouldn’t it, starved for some good news. I rejoiced too. I was not nine going on ten when “Spaceballs” was released and obsessed with “Star Wars” (and college football) and little else and so of course I loved it. What’s interesting, though, is that contemporary reviews of “Spaceballs” were rather mixed, pegging it as outmoded (with “Return of the Jedi” four years in the review mirror) and scattershot in its comedy. And it’s true, as I came to realize, that despite Brooks’s typical Borsch Belt commitment, “Spaceballs” never achieves the dizzying ludicrous speed, ironically, of “The Producers” or “Blazing Saddles.” But it’s also true that the funniest bits of “Spaceballs” have stayed with me longer. It’s a parody, yes, but upon further review, in places it’s a true satire, skewering the industry and the world in profound ways, teaching lessons that all these years later still resonate.

The Valuable Lessons of Spaceballs 

Lesson One. If Brooks was not necessarily prescient for this joke in 1987, since you could already see the industry trending toward its sequel obsession with “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Teen Wolf Too,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3,” “Superman IV,” and “Jaws: The Revenge,” well, still, to this day, no joke satirizing shameless cinematic cash grabs has topped it. In a way, “The Matrix Resurrections” already was “Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.” And if the real “Spaceballs 2” is the 98-year-old Brooks seeing through that punchline before the end, what a way to go out. 

Lesson Two. If “Spaceballs” did not predict social media itself, it innately predicted the pervasive feeling of social media. 

Lesson Three. By infusing “Spaceballs” with fake “Spaceballs” stuffs, like “Spaceballs” the Breakfast Cereal, and “Spaceballs” the Lunch Box, and “Spaceballs” the Shaving Cream, Brooks was making it so you couldn’t quite tell where the movie ended and the merchandising began, as if the former were merely a vehicle for the latter, taking a “Spaceballs” the Flamethrower to the pesky line between film and product.

Lesson Four. Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” was released in December 1987, six months after “Spaceballs” was released and which in its own way had already explained the 80s mantra that greed was good, thank you very much.

Lesson Five. This one is more for me than you. But. As mentioned above, college football has always been my other passion along with movies and to this day, when a college football gets not just good but crazy, I do not define it as good and crazy but as having Gone to Plaid. 

Lesson Six. It’s possible there has never been a better movie joke than the meta sequence in which the bad guys procure a copy of the home video cassette of the movie they are literally in to fast-forward to the point of the movie where they currently are to try and determine the whereabouts of the good guys, finding themselves watching their scene. (“When does this happen in the movie?!” “Now. You’re looking at now.”) It was a send-up of the nascent home video culture of the 80s, yes, but with deeper layers baked in. Not just the joke about instant cassettes being out in stores before the movie is even finished, suggesting a world where selling the movie is more vital than making the movie, but portending our frightening future where an obsession with documenting and presenting our lives has caused the notion of being in the moment to be twisted into something else entirely. Indeed, Rick Moranis’s villain Dark Helmet being in the moment but not able to quite recognize or accept that he’s in the moment is nothing less than a kind of comic Buddhism. The most existential images in cinema are Monica Vitti staring into the void in any Antonioni joint and Rick Moranis staring into the camera in “Spaceballs.”

Lesson Seven. I think of this line and line reading all the time. All the time.

Pitching More Hallmark-NFL Christmas Movie Collaborations

On the strength of last year’s Hallmark Christmas movie “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” the network has inevitably re-synergized with the National Football League for 2025 by announcing “Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story.” I thought this movie was already made in 1998, but then again, maybe “Buffalo ‘66” is made for people suffering from seasonal affective disorder rather than people who do not understand how other people don’t like Christmas. Whether this was loosely inspired by Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who once threw five interceptions against Nebraska, dating Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld, just as “A Chiefs Love Story” stemmed from you-know-who, no press release mentions. But one thing is clear, this is undoubtedly the beginning of a beautiful (profitable) relationship. And so, if Roger Goodell and Mike Perry are looking for some ideas for future years, fear not, Cinema Romantico’s got your back. You don’t even need to steal these ideas from me and then use your lawyers to weasel out of paying me later; just take them free of charge! Please! 

(Note: please imagine Lacey Chabert in all female roles.)

Pitching More Hallmark-NFL Christmas Movie Collaborations 

Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story. The new franchise-saving rookie quarterback struggles on the field only to find his play improve when he begins dating the beloved, hard-charging local meteorologist. But when they break up, his game falls apart, and the Windy City schemes to get them back together just in time for the big Christmas Eve game.

Holiday Touchdown: A Vikings Love Story. When Astrid, Princess of the Scandinavian Kingdom of Karlstad, comes to America for a visit, she is eager to see the Minnesota Vikings, whom she assumes are a group of Norse warrior re-enactors. When she falls in love with the team’s handsome tight end, will she choose to stay in the Twin Cities and take a job at 3M, or will he spurn football for a life in Karlstad where her people might be very confused to meet a Viking dressed in a burgundy 1970s flared suit rather than a horned helmet and animal hides.  

Holiday Touchdown: A Lions Love Story. After becoming the first NFL franchise to go 0-16, the Detroit Lions are now threatening to become the first NFL franchise to go 0-17, leading two season ticket holders, an unemployed auto mechanic with a penchant for baking Christmas cookies and a career-oriented car saleswoman who hates Christmas, to attend games wearing bags on their heads and fall in love even though they don’t know what the other one looks like. Will the Lions pull out the win when the team plays its last game of the season on Christmas Day? And will they still love each other without bags on their heads?

Holiday Touchdown: A Seahawks-Ravens Love Story. The recently widowed Seahawks’ star tight end is convinced by his brother to start a relationship podcast through the prism of football which a Baltimore Ravens influencer listens to one night, triggering a whirlwind social media romance that cuts across team lines. 

Holiday Touchdown: A Jets Love Story. When the Jets’ star quarterback suffers a season-ending injury, he returns to his small upstate New York hometown to emotionally and physically recuperate, encounters his old football-hating flame, and contemplates leaving the big city behind to run his mom’s sports bar.

MSRP of roughly $52,000 pending tariffs

Holiday Touchdown: A Titans Love Story. As has been reported, “Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story” will not only be filmed in the greater Buffalo area but at the new Bills stadium, set to open in 2026, a little bit of stadium agitprop. The Tennessee Titans, meanwhile, are set to move from their old outdoor Nissan Stadium to a new domed Nissan Stadium in 2027. So, why not a movie in which the daughter of old Nissan Stadium’s architect balks at the new monstrosity? “Football indoors,” she says, “is like Christmas without snow.” Yet, when she unknowingly falls in love with new Nissan Stadium’s architect, she begins having second thoughts. The movie ends with them driving into the sunset in a Nissan Titan XD. 

Holiday Touchdown: An Eagles Love Story. It already exists. It’s called “Silver Linings Playbook” and it’s awesome. Go watch that instead. Next.

Holiday Touchdown: A Patriots Love Story. This will have to air on GAC with Candance Cameron Bure. Not interested. Next.

Holiday Touchdown: A Cowboys Love Story. Jerry Jones would demand final cut. Can’t have it. Next.

Holiday Touchdown: A Memphis Showboats Love Story. ION will collaborate with the USFL by remaking “Showboat” as a Christmas-themed cruise. 

Holiday Touchdown: A Broncos Love Story. A propaganda film in which a Denver fashion designer and sports memorabilia dealer fall in love as they mount a campaign to convince the Broncos ownership to return to the Orange Crush uniforms of the 70s and 80s. “These are the best uniforms in NFL history,” they say in lines from a screenplay written by me, “and they’re just sitting in the barn doing nothing. What the hell is wrong with you people?!”

Holiday Touchdown: A Packers Love Story. When the Packers’ resident running back grinch is forced to work with the team’s comely PR agent for a Christmas toy drive, he finds himself falling not just in love with her but with the season. Christmas isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. 

My Favorite Gene Hackman Line Readings

I know, I know. My eulogy for Gene Hackman argued that he was such a quality actor, he did not even need lines to impart character and feeling. And that’s still true. But movies haven’t been silent since 1927, baby, and though I feel like modern movies would benefit not so much from wordlessness as more attention to visual storytelling, there is also so much character and feeling that can be imparted through line readings. Even more than that, some actors can take certain lines that are dead on arrival and then revive them. Hackman could do both. See below.

“I heard that one myself, Bob. Hell, I even thought I was dead ‘til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska.” – “Unforgiven” (1992). It’s everything, but it’s chiefly the way he says “Nebraska.” He emphasizes the second syllable by stretching it out, bringing the vast, desolate prairie of the state to life in his elocution and in doing so, improbably, incredibly inverting the neighboring state’s “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.” 

“It was just a bunch of N*zi goons.” – “The Package” (1989). As a green beret who finds himself trying to prevent an assassination, the way Hackman says this line, dismissively, with both a literal and figurative shrug, is not making light of their abhorrent ideology, not at all, but rightly reducing it to gum on his shoe.

“Trials are too important to be left up to juries.” – “Runaway Jury” (2003). It’s a trailer line, meaning a line that effectively describes the entire movie, one in which Hackman’s diabolical jury consultant works to swing a trial in favor of his wealthy clients. Yet, Hackman sells it by saying it in such a way to convey how his character is selling something, a service, the little leading chuckle at the end and the fiendish winkle in his eye deftly conveying not so much that the actor is on the joke but that the character is in on the joke, a well-heeled huckster giving you his signature pitch.

“Well, keep your strength in the dribble, alright.” – “Hoosiers” (1986). There’s the moment during the regional finals when the god-fearing bench player Strap is unexpectedly thrust into action and answers the bell and when Hackman’s Coach Norman Dale asks what’s gotten into him, Strap replies, matter-of-factly, “The Lord. I can feel his strength.” And Dale’s reply, gleaned from the two critical baskets Strap scores coming without bouncing the ball even a single time, is a line that Hackman does not render mean-spirited like a non-believer telling a believer he’s full of crap, but more akin to a semi-bemused matter-of-fact strict believer of his own in basketball fundamentals.

“Are you listening to me?” “Yes, I am!” – “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001). True, few lines have ever made me LLOL (literally laugh out loud) in a movie theater louder than Hackman in this same movie saying, “This is my adopted daughter Margot Tennenbaum,” giving it a real ring of familiar formality, an asshole who does not quite know he’s an asshole, but it’s this line, “Yes, I am” that I think of most. It happens when his son Chas (Ben Stiller) is ordering his father Royal (Hackman) to stay from his sons, Royal’s grandsons, but he’s not sure his dad seems to be hearing. “Are you listening?” Chas demands and the parenthetical instruction in West Anderson and Owen Wilson’s screenplay is “screams” which is exactly how Stiller reads it. Royal’s response in the screenplay, however, contains no such parenthetical and the line “Yes, I am” concludes with a period rather than an exclamation. But Hackman does not just say it; he screams it right back; as he does the following line, “I think you’re having a nervous breakdown!”

Wes Anderson often likes to employ symmetrical frames with his actors looking directly into the camera, essentially opening a portal between them and us. This scene is symmetrically framed, too, though the actors are not looking at us, and yet, Hackman opens that portal, nonetheless. He opens it by seeming to respond to Stiller in the moment, an actor utterly alive to his character, to his scene, to the camera. 

A Wholly Debatable (Un)Definitive Ranking of Star Trek Movies

Reflecting the weird state of our cinematic present, the 14th “Star Trek” movie, “Star Trek: Section 31” (is this like “Leonard Part 6?”), was released in January. Made specifically for the Paramount + streaming network, it is billed as a television movie, like “Murder by Moonlight,” though calling a movie released to streaming a television movie makes me think of the co-owner of the pizza place where I worked in high school when I asked him whether he thought the peanut butter or the jelly was more important in a PB&J: “What the hell’s the difference?” Indeed. And though I have more of a history with “Star Trek” then you might think in so much as my mom used to watch reruns of the original “Star Trek” show on the little monochrome TV in our kitchen that typically aired before dinner, I am no Trekkie, not even close, a needle starting at zero going the other way, to quote Neil McCauley, the legendary thief who probably never even knew who Gene Roddenberry was. And yet, if many others ranked “Star Trek” movies in light of “Section 31,” why couldn’t I? My list may not be valuable, nor enlightening, and definitely not necessary, God no, but it could be interesting, or at the very least, infuriating. And besides, do you want to read another Oscar take this morning about who should host or what should have won or what it all means and what in the world was Timothée Chalamet thinking with that yellow suit, or do you want to read a Nicole Kidman and Jean Harlow fan rank “Star Trek” movies? That’s what I thought.

A Wholly Debatable (Un)Definitive Ranking of Star Trek Movies

12/13. Star Trek: Nemesis / Star Trek Beyond (2002, 2016). The two I haven’t seen. That rules me out of order, I know, but this whole list is out of order. 

11. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). I have seen this one, but I confess, I cannot recall a single thing about it.

10. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). The main problem, as I see it, and this is true of its 2009 predecessor (see below) too, which I still rather liked, is that Chris Pine is doing a better James T. Kirk in “Into the Woods” than he’s doing in “Star Trek.”

 

9. Star Trek Generations (1994). The whole thing with Kirk and Picard just never felt right. Like Coverdale/Page. 

8. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). Most notable for being Kramer’s favorite “Star Trek” movie. 

 
7. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). I always admired this one for zigging right outta the gate, but still, the inaugural “Star Trek” movie one is a little too much like 2005, the spiritual sequel between “2001” and “2010.”

6. Star Trek: First Contact (1996). I don’t have time to do the research, and I wouldn’t even be sure where to begin if I did, but there must be some sort of corollary between “Star Trek” enjoyed by non-Trekkies and John Kay & Steppenwolf appearing on the soundtrack.

5. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Unlike Kramer this was Jerry’s preferred “Star Trek” movie, and I can see that, but also, see #2 where I elaborate a bit more.

4. Star Trek (2009). J.J. Abrams’s aesthetic eventually wore out its welcome and exposed its limitations which means this reboot now stands as the definitive expression of his doing-125-in-a-65 but somehow holding it all together style, highlighted by literalizing a nostalgia trip, recalling a more innocent, amusing age of fan service.   

3. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). This is insane, I know, but hear me out. Because while the 2009 reboot was very much J.J. Abrams’s movie, the truest auteur movie in the “Star Trek” canon is “The Final Frontier,” a vainglorious calamity made entirely in the image of its director, which is why I cannot help but sort of love it. 

2.Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Ricardo Montalban was legitimately moving as Kahn, but I confess, I prefer Christopher Plummer more blatantly having fun as General Chang. Plummer channels his character’s penchant for Shakespeare into a Shakespearean kind of performance, casting the Klingon Court in the light of the Globe Theatre, not breaking the fourth wall in the traditional sense but somehow allowing us to feel as if we are in his presence and he in ours, nevertheless. Plus, Iman as the greatest of all Kirk love interests because she brings a little diva energy opposite the biggest diva of ‘em all.

1.Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). It is the greatest sci-fi screwball comedy ever made, and with a green message to boot. What’s not to love? 

That green message reminds me how I was recently reminded of William Shatner’s real trip to space aboard Businessman Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space shuttle in 2021. Variety published an excerpt a year later from Shatner’s book reflecting on that voyage, how he was overcome in “being confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands.” I do not doubt the sincerity of his feelings, nor the feelings of other space travelers who have experienced the so-called Overview Effect, but boy, talk about a cosmic kind of As a Father of Daughters moment. I was struck with my own sadness at the thought of people having to go all the way to space to grasp the preciousness of Earth. If all 8 billion people down here have to go all the way up there to get it, what hope do we have? In fact, it brings to mind DeForest Kelley’s incredulous observation in “Star Trek IV:” “You mean I have to die to discuss your thoughts on death?”

SNL Memories are Made of These

The first episode of Saturday Night Live that I remember watching was not an actual episode but its 15th Anniversary special in 1989, demonstrating that even back then the sketch comedy show had a penchant for celebrating itself. Then again, such self-admiration might be earned given its ongoing status as a survivor through the ever-evolving landscape of television, illustrated in its 50th anniversary special airing tonight, and even if its survival was predicated upon, as others have noted over the years, institutionalizing counterculture, an ethos in opposition. Indeed, as we celebrate SNL, let us not forget the show and Lorne Michaels threw Sinead O’Connor under the bus in 1992 even if now they proudly cite it as part of their history, cravenly seeking retroactive credit for it, went yellow belly when Rage Against the Machine appeared in 1996, and buried a Robert Smigel cartoon in 1998 because of its anti-corporate mockery. Their oft-stated notion of anarchy only goes so far.

That does not mean, however, that Saturday Night Live was just flat unfunny nor that it’s only funny through the lens of youth. I remember in December 2018 when my friend Daryl pulled up the Best Christmas Ever sketch starring Matt Damon and Cecily Strong on his phone and showed it to me. It was like being a NASA technician and suddenly waking up to a signal from Voyager 1 beyond the solar system; it’s still out there! Even if you, yourself, have long since stopped paying attention, SNL keeps transmitting comedy, so long as you are willing to tune into its frequency. And that is what I find myself thinking about on the verge of its golden anniversary, the sketches themselves, not zooming out for a 10,000 foot view but zooming in and acknowledging how for 50 years, Saturday after Saturday in fall, winter, and spring, writers and actors and comics have gathered together and tried to figure out how to be funny. They have failed more than they have succeeded, rules of the game, but have still accumulated plenty of hits and sometimes even raised the Home Run Apple.

Daryl showing me that sketch on his phone demonstrates how people now consume Saturday Night Live. When I went looking for the Rock for Michael sketch after watching the “We Are the World” documentary, I found it on TikTok. Not that it’s entirely different than how I consumed it during middle school and high school in the 90s. Though back then you had to literally watch it live or not at all, I would often record SNL sketches to our VCR, sort of the analog era TikTok. And so, I decided to let my mind wander and see what sketches drifted to the top, compiling a metaphysical mixtape to the VHS recorder of my heart.

(Note: NBC notoriously makes it difficult to find SNL sketches via the interwebs, so I will link to what I discuss below in the best form I can.)

That mixtape would include Waikiki Hockey (May 1989), for sure, because I cherish Elvis movies and the infamously wooden host Wayne Gretzky was not a hindrance but help in spoofing them and their own wooden star. Also, RIP Jan Hooks (as Ann-Margret), and RIP Phil Hartman who is totally at his most Phil Hartman here, not called upon to be funny, exactly, merely the glue that melds it all together.

I would include the Dysfunctional Family Dinner (January 1998) starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Will Ferrell, and Ana Gasteyer, released a year-and-a-half before “American Beauty” and a hundred times more profound. 

There would have to be room for the “What Is Love” sketch, which is what I call the Roxbury Guys sketch, the one that concluded the 1996 season and gave rise to the 1998 movie “Night at the Roxbury.” Because really, it isn’t even all that funny, sort of falling apart humor-wise about halfway in, and still, the whole thing gets by, nay, is propelled by Haddaway’s 1993 dance track. There’s nothing else like it in the whole SNL canon.

Well, except for the Emma Stone-led sketch from November 2011 that wasn’t even a comedy sketch so much as an astute embodiment of Adele’s “Someone Like You” as an instinctive tearjerker. 

For our mixtape ode to Weekend Update, let’s honor 50 years of fake commentators with Kate McKinnon as Olya Povlatsky talking about the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 (I love bleak Russian humor, apparently) and 50 years of jokes with this fatalistic slice of consummate Norm Macdonald (RIP) deadpan from 1997: “This week, Janet Reno charged Microsoft with trying to monopolize access to the internet and asked a court to fine the company a million dollars per day. Analysts say that, at this rate, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates will be broke just ten years after the Earth crashes into the sun.”

Our first mixtape musical guest is Neil Young translating the pledge of allegiance, so to speak, into a thunderous political broadside with “Rockin’ in the Free World” for the 1989 season premiere. Nirvana famously smashed up their instruments after performing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1992 and Win Butler of Arcade Fire smashed a guitar in 2007 and Phoebe Bridgers smashed a guitar in 2021, and rock on, all of them, but Neil Young figuratively smashed a guitar in a way all those other literal guitar-smashings will never know. 

Speaking of political moments on Saturday Night Live. When it comes to sketches of that variety, we tend to think of the obviously political ones, and some of those made true marks, like the spoof of the final Bush/Dukakis Presidential Debate from October 1988 that may as well be, as the kids say, my whole personality. But better than that, there was the Kandahar sketch in November 2001 that satirized the Freedom Fries jingoism of the era with a boldness and eccentric incisiveness rare for the show, and even better than that was The Lost Ending of “It’s A Wonderful Life” (December 1986) in which Bedford Fall becomes a mob like France circa 1789. I have been thinking about that sketch a lot lately.

John Mulaney’s musical-inspired Diner Lobster sketch might be tighter, not least because it sticks exclusively to songs from Les Misérables, but I genuinely prefer Airport Sushi (February 2020), which borrows from all manner of Broadway musicals and gets tied together by The Talking Heads. It’s nothing if not an effective anti-P.S.A. for the state of air travel these days, a semi-surreal answer to Spielberg’s sugary sweet “The Terminal.”

While we’re on the topic of Mulaney’s recurring musical parodies, I suppose it’s time to bring up SNL recurring characters, so many of which, no matter how many of them might have been good to begin with, were destined to run out steam by being run into the ground. If there was one that never did, at least to my way of thinking, it was Mike Myers as Linda Richman, maybe because, taken in tandem with my deep affection for “Seinfeld,” and despite being a Midwesterner raised Lutheran, I have a predilection for Jewish humor. Including the Madonna/Roseanne/Barbra sketch from February 1992 might be obvious, but it’s the exemplar of the show working its guest stars successfully into pre-existing material and the literal surprise Streisand appearance at the end (the story goes only Lorne Michaels knew she would turn up) was one of the moments when a live show truly was. (As a bonus, my favorite Linda Richman discussion topic: “Rhode Island, neither a road nor an island. Discuss.”)

The sketch does not appear to exist online, but here’s visual proof, at least, that I am not making the whole thing up.

Given 50 years, you’ve gotta dig around the crates and find at least one deep cut. And while Alec Baldwin’s most famous of his innumerable SNL turns is undoubtedly Schweddy Balls, I prefer him as the grizzled marine aboard the Chinese Spy Plane that led the news in April 2001 trying to rally his unwilling compatriots to a sneak attack. Turns out, this one was so unrememberable to everybody else that I couldn’t find it online anywhere. 

For our second musical mixtape performance, I mean, those who know me, who really know me, know: what else is there? Lady Gaga performing “Paparazzi” in 2009 is not just my favorite SNL musical performance; it is one of my favorite things in the history of the world. You can’t often pinpoint the exact moments when your life irrevocably changes, but in this case, the first time the chorus comes in, right there, that’s when my life changed. “The Fame” was a year old, I honestly hadn’t paid any attention, and then I went and bought it the next day and there was no going back.

Lady Gaga closed her hosting gig in November 2013 by playing herself at some indeterminate point in the future as a Manhattan version of the faded starlet Cosmo Kramer lives next door to during his brief stint in L.A., trying to get the apartment handyman (Kenan Thompson, invaluable as always) to recognize her to no avail, having fun with her then-big single “Applause” in a way that becomes, honestly, less funny than legitimately melancholy. If it evoked Gaga’s commitment to a bit, foreshadowing her eventual turn in “House of Gucci,” it also evoked the sensation of a show-ending SNL sketch, that point when Saturday night has bled into Sunday morning, sleepiness overtakes being awake, and you wonder if what you’re seeing is real. 

It’s counterintuitive to close with a cold open, but nothing brings 50 years of SNL home like the Steve Martin-led musical number Not Gonna Phone it in Tonight that kicked off the December 14th, 1991, episode. It essentially becomes a song and dance embodiment of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in “Airplane!” telling Joey that he’s out there busting his buns every night, taking both the show’s familiar 50-year-old criticism of coasting and that the show used to be better at some indeterminate point in the past and then gleefully, playfully, magnificently sending it up. 

Cinema Romantico 2025 Movie Preview: THRILLERS ONLY

The consensus seems to view January as the worst month. I’ve always considered August the worst month, the dog days of summer dragging on, but then, I prefer winter to summer. And truth is, January has much to hold against it. No matter how many people try to frame it as a new beginning, the older you get, the more you realize our calendar is just a Gregorian construct and time is a flat circle. No wonder that the first month of the year, like the eighth, is a movie dumping ground for so many middling thrillers, like “Back in Action” (Jan. 17 on Netflix), which was supposed to be Cameron Diaz’s own triumphant new beginning but reports paint as a false start. On the other hand, how would one want to ease into the dreadful new year with anything other than some middling thrillers? I still have a lot of 2024 movies to catch up with, but what excites me is not “The Brutalist” nor “Nosferatu” but [makes sign of Lauren Bacall’s beret in “The Big Sleep”] “Flight Risk” (Jan. 24 in theaters). No matter who directed it, no matter who it stars, I confess, every time that trailer has appeared during a college football bowl game, it has made me feel warm and fuzzy and given me something to anticipate. Here are some others to look forward to, or not, as we once again preview the upcoming year in movies through the lens of thrillers only.

(Releases are, of course, ranked on the Runaway Jury Scale, measuring each new thriller’s potential for glorious middlingness, 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.) 

Cinema Romantico 2025 Movie Preview: THRILLERS ONLY

Carry-On. This Netflix action-thriller mash-up was officially released in December, but it’s probable you have yet to see it. I have seen it, and I’ll write a review at some point, and though, full disclaimer, I watched during a bout with Christmas Covid (fun!), meaning while my head was impossibly congested and I was hopped up on cold medicine and soused on ginger tea, I might have enjoyed it more than “Conclave.” We give it...5 Runaway Juries

Flight Risk. See Above. We give it...5 Runaway Juries

Fight or Flight. Another one on a plane with the added benefit of starring Josh Hartnett who continues his unlikely transformation into a quadragenarian middling thriller star. Could his next one co-star Clea DuVall? We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Hurry Up Tomorrow. This is apparently a thriller based on the upcoming album of the same name by The Weeknd. So, is it like if Bob Dylan’s “Renaldo and Clara” had been a spy thriller? And would that have made “Renaldo and Clara” better or worse? We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Inheritance. Rather than the hereditary succession to some sort of substantial financial portfolio, like “Inheritance” (2020), or “The Inheritance” (2024), the inheritance here is spy craft. That’s how we do! We give it...3 Runaway Juries

The Amateur. Instead of just having a particular set of skills, a la Liam Neeson, Rami Malek must train to acquire those particular skills...and only get that training upon blackmail. Innovative! We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Cold Storage. Speaking of Liam Neeson, here he seems to be starring in some kind of lightly veiled COVID-19 conspiracy thriller...except it’s based on a novel published in 2019. A novel by David Koepp, the accomplished screenwriter who is member of the Middling Thriller Hall of Fame. Splits the difference. We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Bring Them Down. An Irish thriller in which a shepherd gets into a whozeewhatzit over some dead sheep sounds like it should star Liam Neeson but stars Barry Keoghan instead and also sounds like the trashier version of “Rams (2016),” not “Rams (2020),” which I mean as a compliment, mostly. We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Beneath the Storm. This just sounds like “Sharknado” with Djimon Hounsou. If they’re going to let Djimon Hounsou finally cut loose and embrace his inner-comedian, I give it...3 Runaway Juries; if they’re just going to try and make a solemn “Sharknado,” I give it...Zero Runaway Juries.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. The old Continental Basketball Association should have branded itself this way – From the World of the NBA: the CBA. We give it...3 Quad City Thunder

Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. “Dead Reckoning Part One” didn’t seem to make as big a splash as it should have, maybe because at some people point just become bored by excellence, like with the Kansas City Chiefs. Even so, I’m no less excited for this one than I was for the previous one, or “Fallout” before it, even as I hope this really is the final reckoning, at least for the Christopher McQuarrie versions. Like Tom Cruise sitting atop the Burj Khalifa, why not go out on top? We give it...5 Runaway Juries

If you judge a movie by its cover, we have a possible Best Picture winner on our hands.

Black Bag. Is a Steven Soderbergh riff on a middling thriller Store Brand Soderbergh or a middle-shelf wine that tastes top-shelf? Either one, honestly, this is 5 Runaway Juries.

Working Man. “Levon Cade left his profession behind to live a simple life of working construction and spending time with his daughter. However, when his boss's daughter vanishes, he's called upon to use the skills that made him a legendary figure in the shadowy world of black ops.” That synopsis seems ripe for every working critic’s standby This Could Have Been Written By A.I. joke but nope, it was just co-written by Sylvester Stallone. We give it...2 1/2 Runaway Juries

Alarum. This one wasn’t written by Sylvester Stallone, but it stars Sylvester Stallone because one way or another he’s gonna let you know this old guy’s still got it. We give it...2 Runaway Juries

Now You See Me 3. We’re still making these? We give it...Zero Runaway Juries

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. Will “Den of Thieves 3” be “Den of Thieves 3: Slayer?” [Crickets.] We give it...Zero Runaway Juries

The Running Man. It has Glen Powell, I get it, as they say, and yet, a remake of an 80s dystopian thriller during the second reign of His Imbecility makes it feel like Jack Donaghy should be involved. We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Not In the Grey, but it could be.

In the Grey. Guy Ritchie’s latest thriller has been postponed from its original January release, so maybe it won’t even see the light of day in 2025, but it’s still worth mentioning for starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill as a pair of extraction specialists and how I like to imagine this instead as a 1955 Martin and Lewis joint.  

Cleaner. This sounds like if “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” were a mainstream thriller rather than action-packed agitprop meaning I feel like it’s destined to make people looking for a mere middling thriller angry and people looking for “How to Blow Up a Pipeline 2” even angrier. We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Event Movie. This IMDb phrasing makes PTA’s next joint sound like a disaster movie released in June, which would be incredible, honestly, all the PTA players in some variation of “The Towering Inferno,” though word on Hollywood Blvd is that it might be a thriller, or at least, thriller-adjacent, which would be incredible in its own right. I don’t necessarily believe it, but still, it’s fun to imagine the guy who engineered the best movie car chase of 2021 in “Licorice Pizza” with only one car (and no gas!) making a true blue thriller. In the event that it is, we give it...5 TK-421 hi-fi stereo systems

Top 10 Made for TV Christmas Movies Synopses Version 2024

Being locked away in a COVID hotel for almost three weeks in late 2021 meant being locked up in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas which is generally my favorite time of the year; I like the weather, I like the light, I like the lights, l like how despite all the attendant hustle and bustle, it’s the one time of the year when you can sort of, sometimes, feel the world slow down. It was even more distressing being in Rome, a city I’ve heard puts on a good Christmas, but which I was unable to see, because even once I was released, I went straight to the Airport Hilton so I could catch an early flight the next morning home. At least the Hilton had a Christmas tree, albeit one tucked away in some weird, empty alcove with a single red wingback chair. And though the bright lighting and pointed lack of sound that made it feel like a mausoleum were a long way from celebrating the season in the Piazza Venezia, I plunked myself down in that chair, nevertheless, just so I could scroll my phone in the presence of an artificial holiday spruce. 

At some point, I realized a door across the way was even more sparsely decorated than the alcove, a single strand of gold tinsel wrapped around its handle. If it looked like someone had been left with this one last strand and hung it there for lack of a better idea, I imagined that maybe it was someone who used that door all day long and hung it there to provide themselves this one little bit of recurring merriment, however small and futile, like me sitting in this alcove beside this Christmas tree. You take what you can get. For an American of a certain disposition, it might well be a bleaker sort of holiday season, and if it is, it is, do not let anyone tell you that there is no time to despair or that you can’t grieve in whatever way you see fit. You can; you should. But I also hope you can find a little bit of joy here and there, like tinsel haphazardly hung from a door handle, or in these, the 10 best Made for TV Christmas Movie synopses this year. (All movies from the Hallmark Channel except where otherwise noted.) 

Top 10 Made for TV Christmas Movies Synopses Version 2024

10. Operation Nutcracker. “When an antique nutcracker set to be auctioned at the Warby family Christmas charity goes missing, a demanding event planner and the heir to the Warby dynasty try to track it down.” It’s always a demanding event planner.

9. Twas the Date Before Christmas. “Jessie invites a fake date to her family’s Christmas Olympics to avoid cancellation, but as they bond over quirky holiday traditions, real feelings develop, and she struggles to keep her secret from unraveling.” Christmas Olympics? I’m listening.

8. Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. “Alana Higman, a die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan and her family are competing to win the team’s Fan of the Year contest, in a process judged by the director of fan engagement Derrick.” The Hallmark Channel Christmas universe might seem to exist outside the realm of current events, but Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are so big, they have infiltrated it. Naturally, it leads one to wonder what football celebrity couple Hallmark could exploit next. Simone Biles & Jonathan Owens? Olivia Culpo & Christian McCaffrey? I think we should go further back, much further, all the way to the 1980s and Brigitte Nielsen & Mark Gastineau. Then again, that movie would probably have to be on Lifetime. Google it, kidz. 

7. Five Gold Rings. “New York City painter Audrey Moss returns to her small hometown in Minnesota for the holidays and is met with an unexpected quest from her beloved late grandmother: find the owners of five mysterious gold rings and return them to their rightful homes before Christmas morning, only nine days away.” What do you think, are the five gold rings five pieces of jewelry or are they five ring-necked pheasants? And what is the Minnesota small town? I predict Zumbrota, “the only Zumbrota in the world.”  

6. Hot Frosty. (Netflix) “Widow Cathy magically brings a snowman to life. His innocence helps her heal and find love again. They bond before the holidays, but he's doomed to melt.” No disrespect to Lacey Chabert, the Queen of Christmas, who stars here, but I’m not sure she’s the right choice for this material just as I’m not sure Netflix is the right platform. This synopsis demands Keira Knightley in a Victorian Era tragedy.  

5. Leah’s Perfect Gift: “Leah Meyer, a Jewish woman who has always dreamed of experiencing a traditional Christmas, faces unexpected challenges when she spends the holidays with her boyfriend's uptight Connecticut family.” Hoo boy, a lot to unpack here. First of all, what even is a traditional Christmas in this context? Christmas Eve Mass and the Nativity? Or Santa Claus and chestnuts roasting over an open fire? And why does Leah want to have to experience a traditional Christmas? Can’t her boyfriend want to experience Chinese food on Wednesday December 25th? And Leah? Of course, it had to be Leah! As sure as every other Hallmark heroine’s name is Holly, or Noelle, it only makes sense it would be Leah (or Esther, or Rachel). Anyway. Maybe next year Hallmark will finally get one of these inclusive offerings historically accurate and make Christmas at the Pogroms.  

4. Trivia at St. Nick’s. “When students all flee an elite university in Vermont for winter break, the locals and faculty hunker down for their favorite time of year - the annual Christmas Bar Trivia Tournament.” It’s “The Holdovers” for Hallmark! 

3. The Christmas Quest. “An archeologist and her ex-husband, an expert in ancient Norse languages, are sent to Iceland at Christmastime to search for the legendary treasure of the Yule Lads. When others join in the hunt, the pair find themselves swept into a thrilling adventure as they race to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.” Oh yeah. This is the good stuff. This is the sort of stuff Paramount should be greenlighting for $20 million.

2. The Christmas Charade. “Facing another dull Christmas alone, sparks fly when a risk-averse librarian accidentally gets wrapped up with a grinchy FBI agent in an undercover mission to save the Heart of Christmas.” Lots of noteworthy Hallmark female coding happening in this one, but it’s the punctuating Heart of Christmas that really puts it over the top. Is Heart of Christmas supposed to be literal, like the Heart of the Ocean in “Titanic?” Or is Heart of Christmas more figurative, like they are saving the essence of Christmas, that sort of secular holy spirit that is the reason for the Hallmark season? 

1. A 90s Christmas. “While celebrating her promotion alone on Christmas Eve, a workaholic lawyer is transported back to 1999 via a mysterious rideshare experience.” We have now reached the point where 1999 is to 2024 what 1955 was to 1985 in “Back to the Future” and, oh my god, will somebody please pass the spiced eggnog?