Film for the Holidays blog post structure

Most blogs have routines they observe in terms of how they structure posts, both for the convenience of readers and to assist blog authors in keeping themselves on the tracks, so to speak, and this blog is no exception. As noted in a previous post, I’ve got a set of things I’ll be doing in each movie’s review here, and I wanted them to be clear from the beginning.

First of all, every post will begin with a brief review essay from me tackling how I think the movie works, what it made me think of, where its themes resonated with me and where I think it fell short. There’s no real format for this, and it will vary over time and in reaction to different kinds of movies. These will inevitably spoil some portions of the movie’s early going, but I’ll try to avoid giving everything away — more negative reviews I expect will likely reveal more plot details, but even there I’ll try not to reveal too much, and in more positive reviews I think you can count on me wanting to leave the movie with plenty of secrets for you to enjoy.

After the initial review essay’s done, I’ll take on the following sections — first of all, I will try with each blog post to offer three recurring features for each film, though not every movie will supply material for each of these:

• I Know That Face: Who in this film is someone you might recognize from another holiday movie?  This might not be possible in every single film, but whenever I can, I’ll try to call attention to it – especially folks in much more supporting roles who might otherwise be overlooked.
• That Takes Me Back: Half the fun of old holiday movies, for me, are the moments when you see or hear things that bring you back to the past somehow, whether it’s days you know from your childhood or things you’ve only ever seen in a Currier and Ives lithograph.  I won’t spotlight every single element of a movie that’s nostalgic, especially ones that are set a long time ago (or were filmed a long time ago), but I’ll try to call attention to moments or scenes that really hit that note for me.
• I Understood that Reference: Holiday media is so internally referential that, where I can, I want to call attention to times in a movie when you’re hearing a reference to other stories or films that are also holiday themed.  It’s fun to think of the ways in which the characters in these films actually know the genre they’re also appearing in.

After those features are handled, I’ll always conclude with some simple scoring/tallying elements for each film. I’m not trying to create an overall set of rankings here, but I do feel like it’s useful to talk about the ways in which any holiday movie might be measured, depending on what you’re going to the movie to get.

• Holiday Vibes: On a scale from 1 to 10, how much does this tap into the feeling of the season?  This can take many forms – traditional story elements, iconic moments (Santa’s lap, lighting the tree, family gathered at the dinner table), emotional beats that connect to holiday celebration for many of us, etc.  The category’s totally separate from any sense of quality, so a higher score here only means that it puts me (James) more in a holiday frame of mind or lends me as a viewer a more definitively holiday vibe – not necessarily that I think it’s doing this with artistic skill, etc.
• Actual Quality: Again, a scale of 1 to 10, how great is this as a work of art?  How good a movie did I just watch?  A totally subjective judgment here, based on my (James’s) own ideas about what makes something worthwhile/enjoyable.
• Party Mood-Setter: Is this a good choice for a movie to leave on in the background while you’re baking cookies or decorating the tree or hosting a little holiday get-together, given that this is how many of us interact with holiday movies at least some of the time?  I’d like to treat this as a simple “yes/no” question, but I expect I’ll usually be qualifying my answer to some extent.
• Plucked Heart Strings: On balance, is this likely to make your eyes well up with tears, either out of overwhelming joy or devastating sadness (both of them classic holiday moods)?  Again, this is totally subjective, and I’ll at least try to treat it as a simple “yes/no” toggle.
• Recommended Frequency: James offers a final suggestion, that may run anywhere from “never sit down to watch even part of this” through “this belongs in your rotation every year”, based on all the above.

Every post will conclude with me supplying the most accurate hyperlinks I can offer to where you can legally access a copy of the film to watch for yourself, if you’d like. Accurate, at least, as of the time I scheduled the post, though I’ll try to maintain those links periodically so they remain useful. Again, as previously noted, I get no money from any service or site I’m linking to, so follow those links based on your own preferences for who to do business with, etc. I strongly encourage you, too, to make use of your local library’s media collection, since for many of you, these films are available on disc (or via a library streaming service like Hoopla) for free!

There may, over time, be other ways of writing about these films that emerge, but at least for the 2024 season, I think you can expect me to stick to these structures. I’m hoping they make it fun for you to read and think about holiday movies you know well, as well as films you’ve never even heard of. Certainly my aim is to give you a real buffet table of possibility here, and to share both some films I’ve loved as well as some films that either confused or bothered me. Thanks for stopping by Film for the Holidays — I hope you’ll enjoy what I’m doing enough to make this a regular stop this season (and I encourage you to sign up for the post by email, using the subscription option, if you find that more convenient). You’ll see the first film arrive on Friday: until then, happy holidays to you!