In Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy, who turns in a phenomenal performance (even better than Oppenheimer, I think!), plays a coal seller in a small town in 1980's Ireland. He’s a gentle and quiet man, a loving husband, and father to six daughters, but his peace is disrupted when he witnesses a disturbing situation at the neighboring convent -- a situation that forces him to make decisions about whether he should take action (and, in so doing, potentially take a stand against the local Catholic power structure) and a situation unearths his own unsettling childhood memories. 

It's a fictional story (based on a novel of the same name) but rooted in historical reality, specifically linked to longstanding abuses precipitated by the Catholic Church in Ireland. I won't give away the exact situation, but if you saw the film Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench, which played at the Pickford, you might have an inkling about what that situation is. 

It is, ultimately, such a beautiful film, where Murphy's character is the gentle beating heart of it, a person who normally would not be the kind to cause disruption but whose tender conscience and compassion, whose empathy for others and whose love for his family and community drives him to do things he might not do otherwise. And I, thus, found the film to be a deeply hopeful one, particularly in times when empathy is needed more than ever.

In The Muppet Christmas Carol, Jim Henson’s beloved creations, the muppets, delightfully and humorously enact the classic Charles Dickens story, and Michael Caine is perfection as the iconic character, Ebenezer Scrooge. And Caine himself, as he revealed in a 2016 GQ interview, loves the movie as much as any of us who’ve seen it do and jumped at playing the role: 

“[M]y daughter . . . was then seven, and she had never seen me in a movie. I had never made a movie that a 7-year-old can see. And so a man mentioned the Muppets and I said, “That’s it! I’ll do that!” And it’s A Christmas Carol, it’s a fabulous tale! You’ll be old Scrooge, it’ll be marvelous! And it was absolutely perfect at that time for what I wanted. I could make it, and my daughter could see it. That’s why I did it. And it was lovely.”  Caine further noted, “I watch it all the time with the [grand]kids, I think it’s the funniest [Muppet Movie] of the lot. But then I would, wouldn’t I? And I see it every year . . . It’s a good, fun film for kids. And of course it can never grow old, unlike me.”  

Join us for The Muppet Christmas Carol on Saturday at 1:30 pm or 8:30 pm or on Sunday at 10:00 am. 

Like The Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life is one of those films with endless, perennial and intergenerational appeal, and while I wrote a bit about it last year, I loved what Guillermo del Toro had to say about it this year in a recent piece that asked directors to name their all-time favorite Christmas movie: 

“It’s a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite movies for many reasons. I find it fascinating that Capra, an immigrant [from Italy], gave back America a view of itself that was more lovely and wholesome than it really was, and at the same time darker and more nightmarish than movies tended to imagine. Like Walt Disney, Capra is very often misinterpreted as an eternal optimist, but the nightmarish nature of the dark episodes in It’s a Wonderful Life demonstrate that he understands terror, that he understands darkness. 

“It’s a nightmare that is adjacent to the American Dream, and to the American psyche. There’s always this creepier, darker, edgier side to the Norman Rockwell goodness. The hopefulness of the ending only exists in a contrast. 

“To me it’s perfectly timed, in terms of comedic tone and delivery and melodrama. It’s a movie that it would be impossible to go through without that final release. In a strange way, it’s the greatest ‘What if?’ speculative fiction. 

“I first saw it as a kid on TV and every time I see it, it’s inevitably one of those movies that makes me cry three, four times. We watch it in the cinema every year around Christmas, and we watch it on TV at least another time, because it’s just impeccable.” 

Join us for It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve at 12:30 pm or 6:15 pm.  

Finally, the powers that be (with their often mysterious movie release date decisions) have pronounced that it’s gonna be a Bob Dylan-and-vampires-Christmas this year, and so Dylan will kick things off with a Christmas Eve preview of A Complete Unknown before it officially opens on Christmas Day:  

A Complete Unknown is the new Bob Dylan biopic, starring Timothée Chalamet and based on the book Dylan Goes Electric: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, which traces Dylan's launch onto the folk music scene in New York's Greenwich Village through to his shocking and crowd-enraging rock performance at the Newport Folk Festival. 

I fully admit, I went into this film with arms folded, not really convinced by the preview nor by the idea of Chalamet as Bob Dylan. And while I’m still mulling over what I think about Chalamet as Dylan -- any iconic and recognizable person will always be immensely difficult to portray -- there is so much I adore about A Complete Unknown and it’s a film that’s stuck with me in the weeks since I saw it.  Chalamet shows astounding talent: there is a LOT of music in the film (whole songs, from start to finish) and he performed all of it all live, on set. It's a stunning achievement, and the Oscar buzz right now surrounding him and performance is justified for that aspect of the performance alone. 

The film also boasts truly wonderful performances by the supporting cast: Monica Barbaro is terrific as Joan Baez (she also performed her songs live); Edward Norton is an absolute delight as Pete Seeger (he, too, performed his singing and playing live); and Elle Fanning as Dylan's first NYC girlfriend, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash are also riveting. 

A Complete Unknown, in many ways, does feel like a snapshot of a person and of a time more than a story: there's not a lot in the way of a truly robust narrative, and Dylan as a figure is left deliberately rather mysterious in terms of his motivations, beliefs, and inspirations. But I can't help but feel those were the right choices for this particular film. I loved sinking into the time period, and I loved the way the film simultaneously re-centers Seeger in the period and also doesn't shy away from the idea that Dylan was, well, kind of a jerk. It's not what we might call a “reverent” movie and that choice is both surprising and refreshing. 

All the reverence, in fact, surrounds the music itself.  The music is center-stage and often truly electrifying: the film beautifully captures what it might have been like to hear certain Dylan songs that we all now know so well and to hear them for the very first time, in public, with other listeners. I was moved to tears several times simply by the music and by what the music represents, communally and historically.