Now this is a movie that feels like the Christmas season. Better still, The Holiday knows the value of a chemistry test, and a four-lead ensemble with sorta surprising casting turns out to work marvelously.

I say surprising because the four, collectively, feel disparate to me at a first glance. Jude Law is someone I associate with pained twinks, sure, but pairing him up with the mob girlfriend from The Mask / one of Charlie’s Angels? Yet their romance is my favorite part. Likewise, Kate Winslet understands an *incredibly* charming Jack Black is going to make a woman in love giggle helplessly, buoyed on the joy he brings to her, and his fist pump when they kiss is representative of how we would all react to kissing Kate Winslet. But I wouldn’t have ever thought of the two together.

The latter relationship feels the less intimate of them; Winslet’s character is on a different journey, which splits her time between that guy from Gladiator and her new 90yo best friend. The balance works great. Winslet’s performance is so relatable to me, she almost vanishes, and I know that I’d be smooching on Jack Black by the end of the movie. He’s so cute. And he communicates pretty well.

Usually I don’t connect with Cameron Diaz’s performances, and this is no different. She’s adorable to watch, though. And Law manages to meet Diaz on exactly her level. He brings warmth that makes her amelodically bright delivery feel *right.* This is a miracle performed by the casting director: Law and Diaz sparkle together.

Everyone does a great job bringing energy to dialogue that meanders, and whatever complaints I started to collect in the first couple acts were forgotten by the gorgeous ending that lets us imagine our own happy ending. Will these couples be together forever? Nobody establishes that. But they’re all together on New Year’s Eve, which we linger upon through a window, seeing them like we just got the back story on why our neighbors are smiling so much. It’s realistic enough that their joy is visceral.

Predictably, I did let out a supersonic/lesbionic scream when Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz made physical contact and didn’t immediately elope.

image credit: Sony Pictures

I love a movie that knows its goals and meets them with skillful intention. The Knight Before Christmas is part of the Vanessa Hudgens Cinematic Christmas Universe. There’s only one version of this Vanessa Hudgens, and she falls head-over-heels for an adorable twinky knight-out-of-time when she hits him with her car. (He’s okay! Thanks to the knight armor!) Through a series of low-stakes events with no interest in dull nonsense like historicity, the knight gets to remain in modern day and serve Vanessa Hudgens forever or something.

I say “modern day” here loosely because this is the kind of small town which exists exclusively in snowglobes and Hallmark movies. A single dad working two jobs is still experiencing little greater hardship than a daughter without mittens. Everyone is very attractive with perfect dental care. The Christmas lights are perfectly arranged. The knits are coordinated. Etcetera.

The only thing really blowing the fantasy is the fact the cops manage to recruit Sir Cole, thus All Sir Coles Are Bastards. Apparently we *need* policing in this little community and it’s a uniformly positive influence. All right. I’ll believe the fantasy that all these people have fabulous teeth (in both time periods) and massive houses in this little small town, but that’s kinda pushing it.

I never get tired of the Netflix holiday movies appearing in one another’s movies.

I love that the old crone is maybe 55. She looks happy to be in the movie.

Image Source: Netflix

It’s fun to reflect on how many romcoms tackled issues we’ve recently begun to frame in different ways, like gender. I recently watched Kate & Leopold to find Kate had abandoned something “soft and feminine” about herself to become shielded in masculinity, which doesn’t actually do anything to protect her; Gracie Hart is dealing with a very similar dilemma, with a different outcome.

Either of these women might identify as nonbinary born a generation or two down. What once felt like stories about tomboys confronting what that means in their lives can currently be framed as conflicts with the very gender binaries that the movies otherwise fully reinforce.

In this case, Gracie Hart has become overtly hostile to her gender. She’s as quick to express sexist sentiments as the men in her FBI office, who gather around computers to howl over photo manipulations of coworkers in swimwear, eagerly watch surveillance footage for boobs, and make it clear that Actual Women are mostly meat.

No wonder Gracie doesn’t want to identify with women. Her career in law enforcement is contingent on getting along with these guys. But she found that men were always intimidated by her strong (arguably masculine) and aggressive personality, even as a kid; these butch elements are inherent to Gracie.

Hence she enters her Sexy Transformation Phase with full hostility, disgusted to be thrown into a world where she’s expected to eat nothing fun for vanity. She doesn’t love having her hamclam waxed. She mostly likes using her hotness to taunt the man who is weak enough to be attracted to her, which is so relatable. (Benjamin Bratt in the year 2000, please call me. Sooo cute.)

Forcible enfranchisement in feminine beauty rituals gives Gracie an “in” with other women at the pageant. As much as Gracie has come to hate her gender, her gender embraces her lovingly, joyfully, and brings her into the fold.

Before long, Gracie’s no longer faking it around her new cross-country friends from the pageant. It’s nice to see Gracie having fun with people who don’t toss insults about her looks every two seconds. And when her fellow women realize she’s clueless with makeup, they make sure Gracie is competition-ready, despite being competitors. That’s sisterhood, baby.

Gracie learns the gift of feminine strength. Meanwhile, a fabulous Candace Bergen acts as her villainous foil. Bergen’s character has been running the beauty pageant for her entire career, and now she’s going to get fired. She hates *everything*. But she decides to take it out on the women, planning to literally tear the crown from the winner’s head via incendiary device.

It’s a nice classic romantic suspense story that I would (as always) prefer ended with Absolute Lesbianism. There are a few good laughs, a lot of really good actors (a couple moments of “hey! that guy!”). Of course, All Gracie Lou Freebushes are Bastards, but we can’t fix every character flaw in a single movie.

Image credit: Castle Rock Pictures

I think we’ve all agreed at this point that Love Actually isn’t a good movie, but hopefully we can agree it’s kind of a great movie. If I were to edit it to suit specifically my preferences, these are the parts of each story I would chuck or keep:

Hans Gruber Cheats on His Wife
This whole story goes in the bin.

The Writer & The Housekeeper
The cheating ex-wife goes in the bin. After that, everything except the mean jokes about the woman’s sister can stay.

Liam Neeson & His (Step-)Kid
In the bin.

Rodrigo Santoro & The Adorable Office Lady
Everything stays up until the moment she picks up the phone the second time. We assume that her brother has sufficient care at his home, and that she has healthy boundaries, and that she nails Rodrigo Santoro. good for you, adorable office lady.

Teenage Kiera Knightley and Her Stalker
Everything the bin, except perhaps one quick shot of the breasts covered in tiny santa hats, as well as the “to me, you are perfect” sign, cropped to exclude the holder, and moved directly after the Prime Minister’s dance scene.

The Prime Minister & His Assistant
The Prime Minister’s dance scene – with zero other context included. Everything else in the bin.

The Actor Stand-Ins, Colin Frizzle, and Billy
Every second: no cuts, no comments.

Image credit: Universal Pictures

A hot couple with great chemistry can take you great distances in romcom. Add a sympathetic take on sex work, tastefully spicy intimacy, and gorgeous costumes, and you’ve got my favorite romcom from when I was growing up. Pretty Woman formed all my preferences in romance.

This movie is ripe for a class- and capitalism-first analysis that I can’t do because it feels too personal, but I love that this is yet another entry into movies about “success in capitalism is hollow and i must turn from its excesses to find myself.”

The older brooding guy and *gorgeous* leggy redhead were surely my first non-Disney bisexual crush.

Despite a socioeconomic chasm and almost two decades between them, Edward and Vivian are one of the most equal-feeling couples of my recent romcom watches. Linus baffled Sabrina with manipulations, Higgins had zero interest in Eliza’s agency, but Edward and Vivian always communicate to get on the same page.

These two have a more positive relationship than most employers and employees, but Pretty Woman also touches on the less-glossy aspects of sex work, like physical abuse, drug addiction, exploitation by pimps, and more – primarily through dialogue. They could have chosen to keep it shallower yet in support of the fairytale Vivian wants, but I think it’s a tasteful balance of reality versus romantic fantasy.

The original screenplay was far severer, and didn’t end with a happily ever after. I love breaking tropes. But we truly do not have enough gorgeous, vulnerable endings as we see in this movie, where our lovers (parted as friends) reunite at the cost of Edward braving his fear of heights. A little bit.

I’m genuinely happy to see these people come back together and ride off into the Sunset Boulevard. This movie is exactly as warm as it needs to be.

Image credit: Touchstone Pictures

In a nightmare of capitalistic gender binaried cisheteronormativity, the magazines Cosmopolitan and Maxim have taken on lives of their own, and they wear the faces of Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. Cosmopolitan decides to mimic her awkward autistic friend to prove how even someone as hot as Kate Hudson can drive away any decent, rational, properly heterosexual, extremely masculine, sports- and cigar- and poker-loving man. She can’t wait for the opportunity to write about politics (vaguely, something about Tajikistan) but first she must manipulate a man into rejecting her for being bubbly, socially inappropriate, goofy, and demanding.

Meanwhile, Maxim has no leg to stand on, because he’s hoping to leverage his control over Cosmopolitan’s heart to make her actually fall in love and prove to his slimy boss that he deserves an ad account. He is competing with two incredibly hot women who should get anything they want and wield their sexuality to this effect. “MENNNN like you don’t know what WOMENNNN want,” they say, hotly, and I honestly don’t wanna criticize. I love them.

The movie rides a charming high on the frothing chemistry between McConaughey and Hudson, who are equally matched in being the whitest human beings, charmingly rich, and in absolutely no risk of actual violence when accidentally running away with priceless jewelry to fight in a parking lot. I genuinely cackle at the antics, even though you cannot regard these characters as actual human beings without suffocating on the weight of arbitrary gender expectations.

The extremely taupe-colored love story is not nearly as fun after the point where we go home to Maxim’s home to meet some cop holding a baby, and the premise of these magazines manipulating each other turns into yawn-worthy low drama that plucks out a couple standard tropes for the resolution and doesn’t even bother to customize them for the concept. He interrupts her on her journey to a job interview to make out on a bridge. The end.

PS, the love fern was nowhere near dying. Ferns die so much more than that.

Image source: Paramount Pictures