Baking All the Way
Baking All the Way fits in with the company of schmaltzy holiday flicks, but the cast’s genuine charm elevates this festive flick.
Seasonal
Wylie Writes’ One-On-One with Cory Lee
The winter holidays are fast approaching, and ’tis the season for an onslaught of Christmas movies. While most of these movies are usually found on cable or on subscribed streaming services, this will be the second year that Vortex Media screens a seasonal flick in select theatres before it heads to Super Channel.
Letters to Satan Claus
By: Trevor Chartrand Goofy and upbeat, Letters to Satan Claus is a comical send-up of Hallmark holiday movies…with a slasher twist. While it’s never laugh-out-loud funny, this film has a satirical edge that makes for an effective parody of holiday movies.
Cup of Cheer
How do you satirize a genre that’s become a spoof of itself? It isn’t an impossible trick but, to pull it off, it takes a keen eye for detail and a filmmaker who can thread the needle between appreciation and cynicism. 2014’s They Came Together, a comedy from the creators of Wet Hot American Summer that hilariously destroyed the rom-com genre, is the bellwether for me, and this year’s clever seasonal spoof Cup of Cheer…
A Merry Friggin’ Christmas
By: Addison Wylie I’ve seen good Christmas movies and I’ve seen bad Christmas movies. But, outside of those schmaltzy TV movies that play in syndication around the holidays, I don’t think I’ve seen a Christmas movie as strange as A Merry Friggin’ Christmas. I would say this means Tristram Shapeero’s film is in a league of its own, but that’d be giving the movie too much credit. A Merry Friggin’ Christmas has been labeled as…
Getting to the Nutcracker
By: Addison Wylie For those looking for a seasonal flick, Getting to the Nutcracker may hit the spot. Serene Meshel-Dillman’s documentary about the conception of The Nutcracker at Los Angeles’ Marat Daukayev School of Ballet is a eloquent film. If you’re a theatre enthusiast and are already humming Tchaikovsky, Getting to the Nutcracker will have you grinning throughout its entirety. Dillman documents each phase as best as possible leading up to the big show (which…