Radio listeners in Cleveland accused WDOK of spoiling the Christmas season by deciding not to play the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The station said it received complaints that the tune glorified sexual aggression toward women, but critics said the station caved to political correctness.

Not to be outdone by Hallmark, Netflix has released a slate of Christmas movies, and one in particular is getting lots of love from fans.

The special screening of Creed II that I attended allotted two rows for the press. The remaining seats were filled by folks organizers evidently brought in to whoop it up. And why not whoop it up? Adonis “Donnie” Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is a handsome, chiseled warrior who puts his heavyweight boxing title and his life on the line against a massive Russian puncher. Donnie is the Greatest American Hero for the new millennium.

Beautiful Boy is difficult to watch. It hurts on many levels. Based on the dual memoirs of David Sheff and his son, Nic, the film despairs that a drug addict can ever kick his habit. Nic gets clean for a while, but again and again chooses to shoot up with crystal meth. As surely as highs crash, so too recoveries collapse, the film seems to say.

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.   

In 2009, Maverick Books published John R. Erickson’s Story Craft: Reflections of Faith, Culture and Writing from the Author of Hank of the Cowdog. With permission from the publisher, we’re posting in our Saturday Series a chapter each month through January. Here’s a chapter titled “The Christian Writer,” which starts with a quotation from Philip Ryken’s Art for God’s Sake: “Christian art is redemptive, and this is its highest purpose.” —Marvin Olasky

Run, don’t walk, away from Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The new show is so demonic that some real-life Satanists have accused it of portraying them in a bad light. The witches in the show worship the devil, celebrate “dark baptism” (you don’t want to know), and engage in cannibalism. Despite all this, Sabrina is only rated TV-14.