Chinese-American surgeon Michelle Krusiec is in the closet to her conventional family, even allowing them to try to match her with any number of eligible bachelors. Unbeknownst to everyone else, her mother Joan Chen harbors secrets of her own that could bring shame to their family. The film centers on Michelle’s attempts at balancing her burgeoning relationship with her strict familial expectations and her mother’s newly found situation. While obviously somewhat low budget, it remains a light hearted, cute take on romance in various forms. 

Convict Ginger Rogers, on a good behavior furlough from prison, meets PTSD-suffering soldier Joseph Cotten on the train to visit her relatives for the holidays. They are both social outcasts of a type and make for an odd pairing in a Christmas film. Despite not knowing each other’s ails , they manage to find strength and comfort from the other character. Adding to the cast is Tom Tully and Spring Byington as Rogers’s kind and supportive aunt and uncle while Shirley Temple is their suspicious teenaged daughter. Their welcoming home provides just the right atmosphere to make this unusual Christmas tale work for the holiday season.    

Winston Duke is a formerly alive soul whose current job is to choose which of a handful of candidate souls will have the chance to be born. Outside of that job, he spends his time watching the lives of those souls he has chosen and occasionally hosting visits from Benedict Wong who serves as somewhat of a supervisor/mentor for Duke. It’s an ambitious and unusual take on existential topics that has kept me intrigued from the moment I read the premise. The cast, also including Zazie Beetz, Tony Hale, and Bill Skarsgård, is somewhat eclectic but somehow works when thinking of all the potential souls in the universe. Beyond that, the film has a gorgeous, minimalist set and Duke’s performance is heart-wrenching and incredibly mesmerizing. Looking up his filmography, it seems I might be stuck watching Spenser Confidential just to see more of his work. 

After the suicide of Spencer Tracy, a much-despised railroad tycoon, his lifelong friend and secretary Ralph Morgan recounts to his own wife what brought the man to such a desperate act. Coming from a humble background, Tracy was educated by his first wife and then encouraged by her to pursue greater pursuits, to the detriment of his family life. It’s an odd story that doesn’t work on many fronts. There is not a great feel for the qualities of Tracy’s character. While the film portends to be a straight telling of the man’s life, there’s a strong sense of judgment in its chosen form with Morgan out to convince his wife that Tracy was noble and entirely justified in every action he undertook.