Every holiday season, viewers settle in for the same comforting ritual: a Hallmark movie where a big-city professional returns to a snow-dusted small town, finds love, and wraps everything up with a kiss under the mistletoe. The predictability is the point. Behind that predictability sits a tightly controlled formula that the Hallmark movie unwritten rules … Read more
Hallmark Channel spent decades as the unofficial home of cozy, conservative holiday entertainment. So when the network finally released its first Christmas movie featuring a same-sex couple in 2020, many viewers wondered why it had taken so long to make LGBTQ holiday movies in the first place. I have been following this story closely since … Read more
Every October, something strange happens on American television. Across millions of households, a familiar ritual begins: the made-for-TV Christmas movie takes over cable screens, streaming platforms, and living rooms from coast to coast. What started as a niche experiment in seasonal programming has grown into one of the most recognizable cultural phenomena of our time, … Read more
Every December, my wife queues up Home Alone for the third year running. She already knows what happens next, and so do I, and so does our youngest. So why we rewatch predictable Christmas movies every year has a simple answer on the surface — it feels good. Below that, the reason is wrapped in … Read more
Rafiki has a hopeful ending: yes, Kena and Ziki do end up together. After a violent separation, the film jumps forward a few years. Kena has become a doctor and Ziki returns to town. The final scene shows them coming back into each other’s lives, and the unspoken look between them tells us their love … Read more
If you have ever watched Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki and felt your eyes drawn to every pink wall, every soft lilac strand, and every neon-soaked street corner, you were experiencing exactly what the director intended. The film is saturated with meaning, and the color symbolism in Rafiki is one of the most talked-about visual approaches in … Read more
Emily M. Danforth published The Miseducation of Cameron Post in 2012 as a 470-page coming-of-age novel tracing a queer teenager’s life from age twelve through her late teens. Six years later, director Desiree Akhavan adapted it into a 90-minute film starring Chloë Grace Moretz that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The two works … Read more
The first time I watched Saint Maud, I left the theater unsettled for a reason I couldn’t quite name. On paper, the 2019 film is a story about a newly-converted palliative care nurse named Maud (Morfydd Clark) and the dying woman she is determined to save (Jennifer Ehle, never better). On screen, it is something … Read more
When I first watched Alice Junior, I did not expect a Brazilian teen romcom to make me think this much about identity, rebellion, and joy. This is the kind of film that looks like a candy-colored romp on the surface, but the Alice Junior symbolism and themes run deeper than the glittery emoji overlays suggest. … Read more
When Lifetime aired The Christmas Setup in December 2020, it did something the network had never done before. It put a gay love story at the center of a holiday rom-com, treating it with the same warmth, cheer, and happily-ever-after energy that straight couples had enjoyed for decades. The film’s ending was not just a … Read more