Michelle Pfeiffer brings star power to Christmas streaming

Led by the always-excellent Michelle Pfeiffer, the film also stars Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives), Denis Leary (Rescue Me), Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass), Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), Joan Chen (The Wedding Banquet), Danielle Brooks (The Colour Purple) and more.

Pfeiffer plays Claire Clauster, a mum who is excited to have her three very different grown children back home for Christmas. Eldest is Channing (Jones), who brings her husband Doug (Schwartzman) and their two kids. Channing is a writer and has her life the most together of her siblings. Then there's Taylor (Moretz), a free spirit type who brings a new girlfriend to Christmas every year and swears that she's the one. Finally there's the baby of the family, Sammy (Sessa). He's a part-time camp counsellor who was dumped by his girlfriend just before heading home for the holidays.

Claire goes out of her way to make sure everything in the home is perfect for the family, ensuring she has all their favourite foods prepared and thoughtful gifts stocked under the tree. She never takes a moment for herself, and husband Nick (Leary) tries to be helpful, but is fairly useless in that department.

This Christmas, all she wants is for her kids to nominate her for the Christmas mum contest on her favourite daytime talk show, hosted by Zazzy Timms (Longoria). She's sent them countless messages and emails encouraging them, subtly, to submit her name so she can win a trip out to California and visit the taping of the show. But none of her kids get the hint, and the deadline passes without an application.

Fed up with being overlooked and underappreciated by the family she spends all her time fussing over, Claire decides this Christmas she's hitting the road and leaving them to fend for themselves.

As far as streaming Christmas movies go, this is higher quality than most. The performances are solid, the music is good and there's at least a little spark to the filmmaking.

But the story is only average, even though it's good to see a spotlight shined on the mums of Christmas who do so much and don't receive nearly enough praise.

This documentary feature, narrated by Julianne Moore, takes a look at the storied history and lasting legacy of influential magazine The New Yorker as it builds up to its 100^th anniversary edition.

Whether or not you've read The New Yorker or have any knowledge of the magazine (which obviously has far less cultural significance in Australia than it does in the US), this is a fascinating documentary and a love letter to print media.

It's amazing to think that a magazine exists which has not once in its 100 years featured a photograph on its front cover, instead running a cartoon or other artwork in the cover of every single edition.

Even the fact that this title still purchases cartoons from artists each week, supporting creatives and giving them a platform, is admirable and lovely to see.

Anyone who watched and enjoyed the 2011 documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times will find The New Yorker at 100 to be similarly enjoyable.

Getting a look at style guide meetings (where, among other things, the crew discusses whether or not to keep the hyphen in 'teen-ager') and listening in on fact-checkers running through a story is a joy for anyone with an appreciation of journalism.

Overall the film is, understandably, quite complimentary of the publication, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable to watch.

Could this be the movie that finally nets Adam Sandler that elusive Oscar nomination?

Jay Kelly, from writer-director Noah Baumbach and co-writer Emily Mortimer (who also has a small role), follows a famous movie star (played by George Clooney, the very definition of a movie star) as he reckons with the fact that he maybe hasn't lived his life as well as he could have.

Set over several days, we meet a generally kind and charming Jay Kelly, who has a host of people following him around and catering to his every need, led by his manager and friend Ron (Sandler, terrific). Kelly has just wrapped a film and has a few weeks off before starting his next venture, and thinks he's going to spend at least some of that time with his 18-year-old daughter before she leaves home and starts her college career. But his daughter has other ideas and is headed to Europe for a trip with her friends.

After running into an old friend at another much older friend's funeral, Kelly starts reevaluating his life and decides he's not doing his next movie and instead is going to chase his daughter through Europe and accept a tribute from a film festival in Tuscany, completely disregarding what these decisions will mean for all the other people that work for him.

There's moments of tenderness in Kelly's character, and his interactions with his daughters and regrets over decisions made in the pursuit of his career, but the heart and soul of the film really lies with Ron. And the longer Jay Kelly goes on, the more you start to question why it's not actually about Ron, with Kelly as the support character instead.

With Clooney and Sandler earning Critics Choice Award and Golden Globe nominations for this film, there's a good chance these performances will also be in the running for Oscar nominations, though actual wins seem unlikely at this point in time.

The film also features support performances from Riley Keough, Jim Broadbent, Billy Crudup (very memorable), Greta Gerwig, Laura Dern (excellent as always), Eve Hewson, Patrick Wilson, Isla Fisher, Louis Partridge and Stacy Keach.

Netflix's latest answer to Yellowstone and all its spinoffs is western The Abandons, led by Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey. Anderson is a wealthy landowner trying to buy up the remaining properties that stand in her way of mining the land for all its worth, while Headey is one of the holdouts. Blood and drama ensue. Also on the streamer you'll find another Christmas movie, My Secret Santa, which pulls a She's the Man move with one of that movies stars, Alexandra Breckenridge (Virgin River). The festivities continue with ex-royal Meghan Markle and her latest Netflix output, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. Over on Prime Video there's some puppetry action with The First Snow of Fraggle Rock, while HBO Max has a sequel to Edward Burns' 1995 film The Brothers McMullen with The Family McMullen. Meanwhile on Stan is the new series Spartacus: House of Ashur.