41/25
One of Steven Spielberg’s sons and one of Martin Scorsese’s daughters are in this film
Tale
On Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what might be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night draws on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenage girls runs away with her friends to claim the winter suburb for themselves.
Taormina’s films exist outside of conventional genre and storytelling
Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point is a surprising and strange film from Tyler Taormina, an uncompromising young filmmaker. If you’ve seen Taormina’s previous films (“Ham on Rye”/”Wild Flies”/the dialogue-free “Happer’s Comet”), then you can have an idea of what’s going to wash over you when you sit down to watch this, his first foray into wider distribution.
They’re funny, but they’re not comedies; there’s drama, but they’re not dramas
Characters experience conflict and resolution, but there’s no common thread to follow to the end. Taormina’s films offer an experience that feels totally alive, with characters you’ll fall in love with and moments that seem too ordinary to be Hollywood, as well as moments that seem too absurd to be fake.
It’s a film I highly recommend to anyone with an open mind and heart
It’s a tough film to share, because the press materials (accurately) depict a family-friendly Christmas movie with Michael Cera, but it’s not what you’d expect from that at all. When you try to describe the film, it starts to sound “art house” and dry, but it’s anything but.