Even though this holiday season might look a little different than years in the past, there will still be holiday movies and TV shows to enjoy. Here are some of our picks and a look at what the holiday season will bring.
In this holiday season of streaming options, it’s confinement vs. escapism. Plus courtroom drama.
Watching “Schitt’s Creek,” a pre-pandemic Canadian production that has become a binge staple in millions of mid-pandemic U.S. households, you may find something odd happening around the middle of Season 3. The motel room where much of it takes place starts to remind you, with every new exterior establishing shot, that you’re in lockdown, in late 2020, watching a comedy of confinement. This is getting away from it all? Here are all of Michael Phillips’s holiday movie recommendations.
Yes, Virginia, there are movies this holiday season. Here’s where to find them
The trick is knowing where to find them. Across streaming services, on-demand platforms, virtual cinemas and even actual cinemas (where theaters are open*), will be Oscar contenders, action and horror flicks, comedies and thrillers, as well as international titles, animation and documentaries to break up your virtual family get-togethers. Read the full schedule.
– Original Credit:
This we know: It will be a quiet Christmas this year. Empty stages, shuttered box offices, Handel’s “Messiah” even more do-it-yourself than normal. “The Nutcracker” sadly missing. A planned live performance of “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” in Milwaukee scrapped by rising COVID cases.
But it’s the holiday season, and we’ll make the best of it. The Tribune offers our usual guide to seasonal entertainment, albeit most of it online and streaming for 2020. There are a few live events too. And make no mistake, there’s still some gifts on this list. Read the full list.
‘Happiest Season’ review: a holiday romance, in and out of the closet, with Kristen Stewart
Something happens five minutes into Hulu’s “Happiest Season” that tells us two things. The character played by Kristen Stewart finds herself hanging from a second-story rooftop gutter. That’s the first thing.
The second thing: It’s handled as a throwaway gag, and doesn’t come off as entirely forced or completely stupid. With a few exceptions (we’ll get to those) this will not be a pushy, strident experience. We can relax into the machinations of the plot, appreciate the underplaying skills of the ensemble and get a warm-hearted holiday rom-com in the bargain.
Finally, Hallmark’s holiday fare makes a gay couple ‘part of the family’
“The Christmas House” is part of a bumper crop of queer-inclusive holiday fare this season, alongside Netflix’s “A New York Christmas Wedding” (now streaming), Hulu’s “Happiest Season” (Nov. 25), Lifetime’s “The Christmas Setup” (Dec. 12) and Paramount Network’s “Dashing in December” (Dec. 13). Read the full story.
Why movie fans still have reasons to be thankful this holiday season
We all know what kind of year 2020 has been, so let’s start with a bit of good news: There are some genuinely terrific movies headed our way this holiday season. And, perhaps more bittersweet, your options for viewing those movies at home are greater than ever. In the following conversation, Times critic Justin Chang and columnist Glenn Whipp highlight some of the upcoming releases most worth anticipating, and celebrate a few other reasons to be optimistic as the year heads toward its finish line. Read more here.
What to stream: These chess films are perfect for a post-‘Queen’s Gambit’ savoring
It’s the rare series that demands to be savored, not binged, and it’s a welcome reminder that chess has always been a delightfully cinematic game, what with the ticking clocks, swift maneuvers and risky strategizing. The game has long been a rich terrain for high-stakes storytelling, so if “The Queen’s Gambit” has you jonesing for more chess, here are a few unique chess films to scratch that itch. Read more here.
‘Run’ review: ‘American Horror Story’ star Sarah Paulson tries a little tenderness, motherwise
Streaming Friday on Hulu, “Run” gives the very busy and first-rate Sarah Paulson somewhere to go, which is one of its key strengths. It’s a familiar but enjoyably vindictive PG-13 thriller about mother/daughter trust issues. Plus a little psychopathology. Read the full review.
The Chicago stories Netflix’s ‘Mank’ didn’t get around to telling
An intriguing collection of Chicago backstories can be found just off-camera in Welles’ 1941 masterwork. How “Kane” was wrestled into existence by its first-billed screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz,serves as the basis of director David Fincher’s “Mank” makes its Netflix streaming bow Dec. 4.
Here are a few Chicago angles that didn’t make the cut in “Mank.”
‘Ammonite’ review: Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan star in portrait of two ladies on fire
Because the world cannot possibly handle two same-sex love stories in corsets, released several months apart, “Ammonite” may have a hard time getting noticed in the wake of Celine Sciamma’s 2019 superb drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”
That said: Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are very good in a fairly good, slightly stiff second feature by writer-director Francis Lee. It’s a methodical account of gradually consuming passion, taking as its subject the real-life British paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847), a lifelong resident and fossil hunter in Lyme Regis, along the English Channel on the Dorset coast of England. Read the full review.
‘Mank’ review: A Hollywood legend bites the hand that feeds him, on the rocky road to ‘Citizen Kane’
Like Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” or Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” director David Fincher’s “Mank” relishes the pleasures of swank, alluring period re-creation. Once it opens in theaters (a few of them, Nov. 13) and settles in on Netflix (Dec. 4), it’ll be catnip for anyone who lives, moviewise, for the sight of exquisitely costumed extras piling out of fancy old automobiles in front of a mock-up of the Café Trocadero on Sunset Boulevard. In living, poetic black-and-white. Read the full review.
The Netflix movie musical “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey” has all the makings of a classic that endures year after year. It co-stars former Chicago theater actor Justin Cornwell as a toy-maker and inventor named Jeronicus who loses his way and eventually sinks into a deep depression that only his granddaughter can help shake. Read the full story.
Comfort viewing for the holidays: Three feelgood new releases for a most unusual season
It’s “the most wonderful time of the year” in a year that for many is the most horrible they can remember. That gives this year’s crop of holiday-themed movies the added weight and expectation of lifting spirits that have likely been very low indeed.
The very idea of what makes for a holiday movie is, of course, itself a point of spirited contention — eccentric choices such as “Die Hard,” “Metropolitan,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” can be just as satisfying as the more obvious likes of “Elf,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Bad Santa,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” Read the full story.