A Boy Called Christmas (2021) - Movie Review

I’ve encountered quite a few films like this over the lifespan of this blog. These family-friendly, secular-reason-for-the-season Christmas origin stories like Klaus and The Man Who Invented Christmas that, rather than just retell the Biblical genesis (heh) of the holiday, take a more contemporary approach that acknowledges that it’s not just the religious that celebrate this time of year.

And coming from these particular creatives, I’d lying if I said I was entirely hopeful that this could hold up alongside those other two classic efforts. This is directed and co-written by Gil Kenan, who is not only co-writer on the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but who we last checked in on with the totally unnecessary remake of Poltergeist, and also co-written by Ol Parker of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fame. If nothing else, this should be make for some interesting write-up fodder.

In The Earth (2021) - Movie Review

There is more than one way to dramatise the… interesting situation we’ve been living in over the past two years. Sure, a filmmaker could go the literal route, have a story set during the actual COVID-19 pandemic as a means to connect the fiction to our own reality, but there’s also the less obvious way. Something that can use the veneer of fiction to brush against the thought processes and emotions indicative of this time, but without being as direct about it. And with the latest from writer/director/editor Ben Wheatley, a creative I’ve come to rely on when it comes to interesting material to write reviews for, we have a story that definitely has its cultural specificities, but is aiming for something more cerebral than the likes of Locked Down or Host.