It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I finally put my tree up a few days ago (I usually put it up a lot earlier but I've been a bit lazy) and now that it is up I am really excited for Christmas!  This year I have decided to slow down and not see so many shows (last year I saw five different productions of A Christmas Carol and it got to be a chore to get through all of them) so I can spend more time with my family.  We are planning on a craft night, a baking night to make Christmas treats for our neighbors, a night to make gingerbread houses, a night to go see Christmas lights, and lots of movie nights (we are compiling a list).  I am also really excited because my niece and her husband are coming on Christmas Eve for a week!

I really love this time of year (I especially love sitting in my living room with just the light from the Christmas tree) and I am determined to enjoy every minute of it!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Thanksgiving 2025

I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family yesterday and it was a really nice day!  I am very thankful that we all get along so well and that both my sisters are really good cooks (my nephew says the only thing I make for Thanksgiving dinner is a purchase).  This year we opted for a ham instead of a turkey but we had all of the traditional side dishes, including stuffing, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, strawberry jello salad, vegetables and dip, and homemade rolls.  Everything tasted so good!  We grazed on lots of treats while we played Shanghai rummy (I came in last) and then we ended the evening with banana cream pie (we have it every year because no one really likes pumpkin pie).  I had a lot of fun and I am looking forward to spending even more time with my family during December (hopefully I have better luck the next time we play cards).  I hope you had a wonderful holiday with the people you love!

Wake Up Dead Man

The second movie in the double feature with my nephew last night was Wake Up Dead Man.  I am a huge fan of this franchise and I think this installment is my favorite because, where Knives Out and Glass Onion are indictments against inherited wealth and celebrity culture, respectively, this one takes aim at organized religion and, even though it has a darker tone, it also very moving because faith is proven to be more powerful than corruption.  Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is a young and idealistic priest with a violent past who is sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in upstate New York as punishment for hitting a deacon.  The small parish is led by the radicalized Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) who antagonizes all but a few eccentric members of his dwindling congregation, including the devout Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) who assists him, the recovering alcoholic Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church) who works as groundskeeper, the bitter Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) who replaced her father as Wicks's lawyer, the failed right-wing politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack) who now espouses his rhetoric online, the conspiracy-obsessed best-selling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) who is writing a book about Wicks, the local doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) whose wife has recently left him, and the disabled cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny) who is hoping (and paying) for a miracle from Wicks. Jud is determined to serve the congregation with love and mercy rather than fear and judgement and this often brings him into conflict with Wicks so, when Wicks is stabbed to death in an alcove in the middle of the Good Friday service, he is the most obvious suspect.  Police Chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) eventually calls in Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to solve the seemingly impossible crime because everyone is revealed to have a motive but it appears that no one had the opportunity.  There are lots of twists and turns and, as always, it subverts expectations multiple times.  I especially loved the push and pull between reason personified by Blanc and faith represented by Jud because both are eventually needed to solve the mystery.  Craig is as entertaining as ever and both Close and Brolin give standout performances from the ensemble but O'Connor is absolutely brilliant as a flawed character who ultimately embodies what is good about religion.  Finally, I loved how the theme of good and evil is emphasized by the clever use of light and shadow in the cinematography.  I loved this continuation of the series and I hope Rian Johnson continues making them!

Note:  My only complaint is that the song "Wake Up Dead Man" by U2 is not used during the credits like the song "Glass Onion" by the Beatles is used in the previous movie.  I had to play it for my nephew on the drive home.

Eternity

Last night I had another double feature, this time with my nephew, and we began with Eternity which we both enjoyed.  After Larry (Miles Teller) and Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), a couple who has been married for 65 years, die one after the other, they find themselves in an afterlife where they have one week in a so-called "junction" to decide where, and with whom, they want to spend eternity. They each have the help of an afterlife coordinator, Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) for Larry and Ryan (John Early) for Joan, and a variety of options to choose from.  However, complications ensue when Luke (Callum Turner), Joan's first husband who died in the Korean War shortly after their marriage, appears and reveals that he has been waiting for her in the junction for the past 67 years.  Joan is now faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with and the man she was denied a life with.  Her decision isn't made any easier when both men, rather amusingly, turn it into a competition for her love.  Even though this features a really clever and intriguing premise, I think it goes on much too long and I found it really annoying that the rules painstakingly established within the afterlife are broken, not once but twice, to advance the plot.  However, I liked all of the performances, especially those of Early and Randolph because they are hilarious, and the world-building, particularly the exhibition hall and advertisements promoting the options for places in which to spend eternity (my favorite was the Weimar Republic without the Nazis) and the archives of memories which look like museum exhibits.  I didn't love this but it is a lot of fun and I recommend it to fans of romantic comedies.

Sentimental Value

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway yesterday was Sentimental Value.  I have been looking forward to this ever since it won the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year and I was definitely not disappointed.  Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) is a stage and television actress in Norway who, along with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), is dismayed when her estranged father, celebrated director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard), reappears in her life after the death of her mother.  He is hoping to make a comeback with an autobiographical movie about his mother featuring a script written specifically for Nora.  She is angry with her father for abandoning her and turns down the role thinking that he is only using her to get financing.  When Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) becomes enamored with him after seeing a retrospective of his work at the Deauville Film Festival, he offers her the role instead and they begin rehearsals in the house, which has been in his family for generations, where key moments in the script actually happened.  Rachel eventually realizes that she cannot do justice to the role because she has no connection to the character.  Nora finally reads the script and recognizes that the character is actually based on her and that her father wrote it as a way to reconcile with her.  This features incredibly powerful performances from Skarsgard and Reinsve and I was especially impressed by the scene in which Gustav first offers Nora the role because there is so much raw emotion simmering under the surface during their seemingly polite conversation (it is absolutely riveting).  Fanning is also great and I loved the juxtaposition between how Rachel delivers a line from the script in English and how Nora delivers the same line in Norwegian because it is immediately apparent that the role was written for the latter.  The house in which Gustav, Nora, and Agnes grew up is used as a character to represent all of the memories that keep them in a dysfunctional relationship and it is remodeled throughout the narrative to depict the possibility of a fresh start.  This is a brilliant exploration of the power of art to heal and I highly recommend it.