When I was in high school, I gave up on the idea of Christmas, bitter at my discovery that going through the motions doesn’t actually result in initiation into the dominant culture. Yet Christmas remained an unavoidable holiday, and I found it was best spent watching movies and ignoring one’s parents for as long as possible. That’s when Love Actually came into my life.

Every time it ends, I wish it wouldn’t. I want the music to keep playing. I want the stories to keep unfolding. I want to live inside the warm, loving, and occasionally tragic world of the film, where not everyone gets a happy ending. Love Actually is the only film that brings me Christmas spirit—a modern, urban kind of festivity, but one that makes my heart warm like no stories of Santa or nutcrackers really can.

This is a great reflective review of a movie that I like a lot. Sonia Saraiya captures something about the about the way the film is mostly about moods and a collective excitement and mostly-gentleness.