🎁 Watch List Weekly Recap 12/24/21 🎄

Talking Xmas movies with Ask Amy, five films for a full house, and a meta-"Matrix" reboot. Also: Thanks for making my 2021 possible.

🎁 Watch List Weekly Recap 12/24/21 🎄

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”


Monday was fun: I had a conversation about the best Christmas movies (and the worst) with Amy Dickinson, the syndicated advice columnist, NPR game show contestant, and publisher of the warm and witty Asking Amy newsletter.

Talking Xmas Movies with Amy Dickinson
One of my favorite writers out there in the digisphere — one of my favorite people, period — is Amy Dickinson, author, regular on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait
 Don’t Tell Me!,” and the eminently sane heart and mind of the syndicated advice column “Ask Amy

Aware that everyone’s house is filling up with relatives, I posted a Wednesday list of five films available on demand that should play well with the assembled clan.

Five Movies the Whole Family Can Watch
Earlier this week, I rattled off some Christmas movies, good and bad, with the help of a friend. Next week I’ll post my Best of 2021 list. I might try to squeak in a review of “The Matrix Resurrections” before my kids come piling through the door for the holiday. But maybe your kids have already piled in, or you’re amassing enough relatives under one ro


No, it’s not that hip couple you met at the last PTA meeting, it’s Neo and Trinity in “The Matrix Resurrections,” a sequel that no one asked for (including the director) but that subverts the franchise in bizarre and entertaining ways.

Neo Realism
The Nut Graf: “The Matrix Resurrections” (in theaters and on HBO Max, **1/2 stars out of ****) offers the novel sight of a director deconstructing her biggest hit. For the more thoughtful fans of the series.

That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll post my Best Movies of 2021 list but will otherwise be offline spending the holidays with my family. I wish you great joy and togetherness this difficult season, and I also would like to personally thank each and every one of you who has signed up for this newsletter. I took a big jump this year after two decades of sitting comfortably at the Boston Globe, and your support — financial and moral — has been more gratifying than I can express. The “Watch List” has been more successful than I dreamed it would be, and that is entirely due to you, dear readers. I thank you, my family thanks you, and Bodhi thanks you. See you in 2022.


If you enjoyed this recap edition of Ty Burr’s Watch List, please feel free to pass it along to your friends.

If you’re not a paying subscriber and want to sign up for additional postings and to join the discussions, here’s how:

It’s not too late to give the gift of The Watch List to a movie-loving friend or relative! If I could come over and put it in their stocking, I would, but email will have to do.