Skip to main content

‘Twas the Fight Before Christmas review – festive cheer turns to horror with the neighbour from hell

Becky Read’s documentary about a Christmas-obsessed man who inflicted camels, choirs and thousands of visitors on a small town is anxiety-inducing – and totally enraging

I was going to advise anyone of a nervous disposition to take a fistful of diazepam before they settle down to watch ‘Twas the Fight Before Christmas (Apple TV+). But I suspect the best advice is not to watch it at all. It’s virtually the festive season. There will be enough anxiety and rage soon enough. No need to invite it early by watching the true story of Jeremy Morris and his unblinking determination to bring “Christmas cheer” to a quiet corner of North Idaho.

This film by director Becky Read, about the slow and steady unfolding of the average citizen’s worst nightmare, starts innocuously enough. Christmas-loving lawyer Morris joyfully recounts to the camera what a success he and his wife Kristy enjoyed one year with a spontaneous yuletide event at their home – lights! All over the house! Candy for the kids! Hot chocolate for all! More lights! So the next year, they made it bigger.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31448rO
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more