A lot of ink has been spilled over the last 10-plus years about the way superhero movies have grown to dominate the big-budget film business, like some amorphous comic-book blob subsuming every other genre. For Western fans we have superhero Westerns; for sci-fi fans we have superhero sci-fis; for serious war drama fans we have serious superhero war dramas. I’m really waiting for someone to nail the superhero romantic comedy.

Even before it hit theaters on Wednesday, Mary Poppins Returns was breaking records. Not for the box office, but for the longest time between an original live action film and its sequel. The lovely Tom Hanks movie Saving Mr. Banks notwithstanding, Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers was known to be as prickly as her literary creation and famously hated the songs and animation in the 1964 film. That left the Walt Disney Co. unable even to discuss a second film until after her death in 1996. 

The Netflix series The Standups is officially rated TV-MA, for “mature audiences.” For those unfamiliar with the TV and streaming rating system, that’s essentially like an R rating for movies. So it’s ironic there’s nothing in the show’s first episode, featuring comedian Nate Bargatze, that would warrant so much as a PG-13. In fact, without a single instance of even mild profanity, and only one joke that trades on potty humor, his set would likely struggle to rate a PG.

The 2015 Australian film Oddball, based on actual events, is a traditional family dog flick that is streaming on Amazon and that the whole family can enjoy during the holidays.

Squirrelly sheepdog Oddball is more interested in causing trouble than guarding chickens, even though it’s what he’s bred for. His mom is the right-hand hound of chicken farmer Swampy Marsh. Without her, Swampy wouldn’t be able to keep foxes from killing his precious merchandise. Unfortunately, Oddball is not up to defending fowl, and he isn’t particularly popular with Swampy’s neighbors.   

It’s a curious thing about the latest Harry Potter–related movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald—until the last 15 minutes, the eponymous character hasn’t committed much in the way of crimes. The story’s big plot twists that have Potter allies running around the internet begging people not to reveal spoilers have nothing to do with Grindelwald’s crimes either.

It’s a little hard to believe, even in this era of reboots and remakes, that any studio would bite at a new animated version of the classic Christmas cartoon, The Grinch (rated PG for brief rude humor). After all, is there a single Who from 9 to 92 who hasn’t seen the original at least a dozen times? Not to mention the 2000 live-action version. 

Let’s get the headline out of the way—you can drop the mediocre, Jim Carrey Grinch from your Christmas viewing repertoire and replace it with Illumination’s somewhat-less mediocre one starring Benedict Cumberbatch. 

It’s hard to believe that in all these years of turning over every rock for new Christmas entertainment to market, no major American studio had ever released a big-budget film based on the perennially beloved ballet, The Nutcracker. Now that Disney finally has, you may wish they had waited a little longer to come up with something more worthy.