Every Christmas

I watch Love Actually and Bad Santa. Tonight, in a wild and crazy move, we watched both on Blu-Ray. Damn, but they do look better in high-res.

Every year, the first fills me with emotion, and the second cracks me up. I am such a sucker for these two films.

I am also such a sentimental fool. The same scenes in Love Actually make me tear up and choke up each year, though I know them as well as old friends. I cannot recall another movie that makes me as happy as Love Actually.

Tonight, after watching it, I was thinking about why that was, why this film can affect me so strongly after so many viewings, and I decided it was this: Curtis, the director and writer, commits fully to a vision that he knows goes too far but that he invites us--nay, entices us--to share nonetheless. He is not saying that everything always works out, or that love conquers all, or that all romances will last forever. What he is saying is that love is out there, every minute of every day, happening in big ways and small all over the world, and that's it so powerful and so real that we should take hope from it and never forget it and know that always, always people will love no matter what.