We made it to 2026, all. Yay. Here’s to a great year.
And now for our December movies. Everyone talks about January being a cinematic wasteland, but as I keep reviewing stuff for Taking Up More Room I’m finding that December can be quite the wild card. Yeah, it’s when all the Oscar bait comes out, but quality is always up for grabs.
Ergo, it was hard to decide what to put on this list. While there were a lot of What the Heck movies (ahem, Oh. What. Fun. and A Very Jonas Christmas), there were also some hearty stabs at legitimacy. Without further ado, here we go, and as usual, click on the images for the full reviews…
Joy To the World
It’s sorta cute. An influencer named Joy writes bestsellers as if she has a perfect farm and a perfect husband and perfect kids, but she wants out. She wants a real life, because the one she pretends to have as an influencer is all fake.
Yep. It’s Christmas In Connecticut only not nearly as funny and it falls completely flat in the third act.
On the bright side, we have Chad Michael Murray and a snowball fight with tennis balls. Yeah. They bounce and roll. It’s absurdly fun.
Eternity
Larry and Joan are both in the afterlife, and they’re astonished to find that it starts with a waystation where they’re supposed to pick their eternity. There are catches, of course. Each eternity has a theme, and there are no backsies. If anyone decides they don’t like their chosen eternity, they can try to escape, but risk being thrown into a void.
Only in Larry and Joan’s case, there’s the added twist of Joan’s first husband, Luke showing up. He was killed in the Korean War, and he’s been waiting for her the entire sixty-seven years. Joan has to choose between Larry and Luke.
Yep, there are theological and narrative problems with this movie big enough to drive a truck through, but one of the big highlights is Miles Teller as older Larry in younger Larry’s body. He seriously carries the whole movie.
The Housemaid
Millie takes a job as a housekeeper for the ultra-rich, ultra-old money family, the Winchesters, and it doesn’t take long for her to figure out that something’s very, very wrong. Her first morning working for Nina and Andrew. she comes downstairs to find Nina going ballistic and making a mess in the kitchen looking for her PTA notes. She accuses Millie of taking them, and Andrew stands up for Millie.
It’s par for the course, but the thing to remember is that nothing is as it seems. Those who seem like allies might not be, and those who seem crazy might be completely sane. It’s got a slightly sadistic edge in spots, and oddly enough, the audience I saw it with found some of the most hardcore parts to be highly amusing.
After the not-so-good Americana and Christy, I have to wonder if Sidney Sweeney had The Housemaid held back on purpose, as if she was saving the best for last.
Sense and Sensibility
I’m not going to say a whole lot here because I’ve reviewed this movie here and on Substack, but suffice it to say, if anyone has a chance to see Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility on the big screen, DO IT, and it doesn’t matter how familiar it might seem.
Me, I’ve seen this movie many, many times over the past thirty years, and my husband and I even used some of Patrick Doyle’s original score as our wedding music, but watching the film on the big screen made it feel brand new.
Absolutely gorgeous, graceful filmmaking.
Song Sung Blue
It was a very tough choice as to which movie to put in the top spot because it’s technically tied with Sense and Sensibility, but the only reason Song Sung Blue gets it is that it’s refreshing to end the year with something that’s unabashadly fun. Jeremy Jahns said, “It is interesting that the Neil Diamond tribute impersonators have a more interesting and engaging biopic in 2025 than Bruce Springsteen. I mean, that’s just fascinating to me.”
He’s not wrong, and I’m not just saying that because I’m not a fan of Springsteen by any stretch of the imagination. A biopic about a cover band is an imitation of an imitation, so there’s some wiggle room in terms of how it’s done, plus there’s the fact that, from what I’ve heard, the Springsteen biopic was ponderous nonsense.
What was also neat about the film as well was watching it in a theater with an audience who were obviously enjoying themselves hugely. It made me think of my aunt Rosemary, rest her soul, because she was a huge Neil Diamond fan. She loved Neil Diamond almost as much as she loved Elvis and she would have been all over this movie.
Another post is coming out on Wednesday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
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