Metacritic reviews

This is a Christmas movie in which magic exists largely on the periphery, and that is just the right mix of chilly and sweet.

A low-key, near-total charmer, writer-director Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again captures something ineffably moving about the holiday grind.

Mood is ephemeral, but it helps establish point of view and orients us in the dream-space of the film. With all of the things that Christmas, Again (written and directed by Charles Poekel in his feature debut) does well (and it does almost everything well), the most striking thing about it is its evocation of an extremely specific mood.

Poekel isn’t interested in something as mundane as a new romance. He’s basically trying to make Seasonal Affective Disorder: The Movie, and comes damn close to pulling it off. He has a tremendous ally in Audley, who gives one of the year’s best performances (albeit one destined to receive no awards and scant attention).

The hard-won consolations of seasonal sentiment emerge in the searching performances as well as in the impressionistic handheld images.

Charles Poekel displays an assured directorial hand and maintains a modest, appealing, even droll sensibility throughout.

The pic’s charm comes from its moments of unforced naturalism: little observations about the way people behave, paired with details and anecdotes that Poekel himself lived during his years operating McGrolick Trees, the same stand where the film was shot.

Audley (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), in practically every frame of the film, has to carry this feather-light narrative on his shoulders and does so with ease.

The movie's pace feels more like a plod, less deliberate than simply unsure of itself. Christmas, Again is a quiet film, but one that could perhaps use a bit more buzz of the holiday season.

Christmas, Again is a low hum of a downer, but maybe that's appropriate.