Lily Cahill

Paris! Christmas! Waltz!

I spent one week in Paris when I was 20. I went to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and Versailles and the Opera House and Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge, and had absolutely the best, most incredible time. I've never been back, but that's the thing about Paris: it remains. So I'm a sucker for all things Parisian. You know what else I love? Dancing. Sometimes, a dramatic emotional climax can only be expressed through a high-pressure dance routine. And Christmas...look, you know I love Christmas. So if there was ever an SEO-driven movie title designed to target me specifically, it's A Paris Christmas Waltz.

It Isn't This Hard to Get Pentatonix Tickets

I will admit that, of all Netflix's Christmas offerings this year, I was least interested in Meet Me Next Christmas. Hot Frosty and The Merry Gentlemen feature rampant manchest, so obviously I was most excited about those. The next tier was the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Our Little Secret and the Sabrina Carpenter Christmas Special (review coming next week!). Meet Me Next Christmas was on the bottom of the list, even though I like Christina Milian. I just don't like her as much as I like a gimmicky premise, with or without Lindsay Lohan. However, I didn't do this movie justice. Milian and her costar, Devale Ellis, have the best chemistry of this year's crop, and it turns out that there's plenty of gimmicky premise to go around.

I Can't Be Snarky, This Movie is Genuinely Lovely

I am not particularly interested in time travel. There's the stark historical reality that, as a woman, I'm already living in basically the only era where I can expect to have (some) fundamental rights. But also, I'm also a huge fan of running water, electricity, and grocery stores where I can find the world's bounty at my fingertips. And ice. Do you know how hard it used to be to get ice, especially in the climates where you really need it? So I probably wouldn't travel back in time. But if I did, I could do worse than to travel back to a 1940s movie set, filming at the gorgeous Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.That's the setting for A Biltmore Christmas, which is possibly the best Hallmark movie I've ever watched.

Dance for Me, Twinkletoes

I love a man who can dance. Or maybe I just like Channing Tatum in Magic Mike? Either way, I find that watching men dance rides that perfect edge between sexy and hilarious. Female strippers can be depressing, but male strippers have this zesty absurdity that makes their dance routines sort of wholesome, even when they end up naked. To be clear, I'm pretty much talking about male strippers in movies. I've never actually seen a male revue, which seems like something I should remedy in 2025. Or maybe I should visit the small town in The Merry Gentlemen and catch a mid-afternoon strip show.