Christmas Eve in Miller's Point

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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I don’t know about you, but this time of year I try to cram in as many Christmas movies as possible. Old classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” modern classics like “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” Hallmark Christmas movies about cynical young women who visit a magical town where they learn the true meaning of the holidays (and find love), and endless retellings of Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” with Scrooge portrayed by everyone from Alastair Sim to Albert Finney to Mickey Mouse to Mr. Magoo.

Puts me in the Yuletide mood.

So, if you’re like me, you’ll want to squeeze in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.” You can still catch it today if you hustle.

This jingle-bells comedy follows “four generations of the Balsano family gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home. As they lose themselves in rowdy celebration, cousins Emily and Michelle sneak away to a winter wonderland, where suburban teenagers find their rebellious paradise.”

Michael Cera headlines the movie (as well as serves as a producer). Also in the large ensemble cast is Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, and newcomer Matilda Fleming.

Trivia note: One of Steven Spielberg’s sons and one of Martin Scorsese’s daughters are in this movie.

Variety calls “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” an “instant Christmas classic.”

In director-writer Tyler Taormina’s film, the holidays are a time to feel gratitude for what you have — because one day, it won’t be there. Three generations of an Italian-American family descend on their ancestral home in Long Island for what many realize could be their final time. The home, where the Balsano siblings have gathered for the holidays each year, now seems destined to be put on the market, as they weigh moving their aging mother into an assisted living facility.

Serious, yes. Funny, yes. Nostalgic, yes.

Even though the meandering story that doesn’t really go anywhere, you will enjoy joining the holiday celebration anyway.

The movie’s trailer hints at this happy mess, complete with baby boomer doo-wop, a long list of grinning cast members, and a narrator promising that “It’s more than a holiday. It’s a gift for the whole family.”

This is Taormina’s third feature, the first two being “Ham on Rye” and “Happer’s Comet.”

He admits that “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” is a somewhat autobiographical story:

“It’s kind of crazy to be the only one to leave this big extended family,” he says. “So I think a lot of my work is looking back on this place that I grew up. It becomes very anthropological. It really is like a study of the humanity and the people and the way they are.”

As Roger Ebert critic Isaac Feldberg observes, “This sense of longing to preserve time and space as it begins to fade into memory is a hallmark of Taormina’s filmmaking. Taormina envisions this family gathering as a shimmering holiday fantasia, within which many varieties of familial drama coincide with moments of surreptitiously surreal opulence, with a nostalgia that appears to be crystalizing imperfectly before our eyes.”

Let’s thank Tyler Taormina for inviting us to join him for this Christmas gathering.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com