Tyler Taormina’s latest feature is full of mirth and melancholy, a sprawling yet intimate instant holiday classic

Few films earn the word autumnal more than Carson Lund’s Eephus. Moving at the lazy yet agitated pace of a baseball game, the film captures the final showdown on a beloved diamond and, more importantly, finds plenty of time for exploring all the superstitions, rituals, and traditions that America’s pastime inspires. Eephus premiered during the Director’s Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival alongside a companion piece, shot by Lund, that took audiences even further from the warm Riviera sun. Both Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point and Eephus were produced by Omnes Films, the collective co-founded by Lund, Jonathan Davies, Michael Basta, and Miller’s Point director Tyler Taormina. Like Eephus, Taormina’s instant Christmas classic focuses on a huge cast of characters who are joined together to carry out familiar rituals for the last time. The age-old traditions on display aren’t quite frozen in amber. They’re more like tableaus in a cracked, slowly draining snow globe.

Unlike Eephus’ amateur athletes, who all know their diamond’s days are numbered, just a few members of the Balsano clan know that their beloved Long Island home has been sold and that family matriarch Antonia (Mary Reistetter) is bound for another kind of home. The subject comes up a few times and inspires a few arguments, but it’s in keeping with Taormina’s elliptical approach to drama that a resolution comes around halfway through the film, not shouted during a blowout fight but shared in a whispered aside. Kathleen (Maria Dizzia), one of Antonia’s daughters, carries the secret throughout the rest of the film. She’s in town with her husband, Lenny (Ben Shenkman), and their two children, adolescent Andrew (Justin Longo) and teenage Emily (Matilda Fleming). She joins her siblings — Matt (Josh Trischetti Jr.), who’s hosting with Bev (Grege Morris); Elyse (Maria Carucci), whose hotheaded husband, Ron (Steve Alleva), mans the kitchen while warning of incoming “chaos and insurrection;” and Ray (Tony Savino), who nurtures artistic ambitions and writes in secret — in addition to sundry cousins like Bruce (Chris Lazzaro), a volunteer fireman with an artistic streak of his own, and Michelle (Francesca Scorsese), who indulges Emily’s thirst for adventure.

Taormina opts to dole out character and plot details through small isolated incidents, fleeting snippets that nevertheless leave their Proustian traces. Moments tend to gain their resonance in hindsight,¹ the sort of impressionistic snatches that make up our recollection of events experienced during childhood or while under the influence. It’s like a pointillist version of that Norman Rockwell painting. Packing the house and the frame with so many Balsanos means Taormina and Lund can show us several archetypal yet specific versions of the Yuletide experience. Fittingly, the film proves most thrilling when it allows us to celebrate the holiday as a child. The opening titles play mostly over upside-down suburban streets, viewed by Andrew, looking up and out through the back windshield of the family minivan. Later in the evening, when Santa Claus speeds by alongside the local fire department, we watch the youngest members of the crowd lose their minds and look out through eyes that regard him as the genuine article. Dazzling, kaleidoscopic shafts of lights cut across our field of vision, as if to suggest the divine presence on screen and keep us from staring too directly.

Related: Making Ham on Rye: An Interview with Tyler Taormina by Bennett Glace

Ricky Nelson’s “Fools Rush In” plays over those upside-down credits. It’s the first sequence to feature a song in full. It’s apparently not a coincidence that Miller’s Point shares a chunk of its oldies soundtrack with Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963) and that both films open with Nelson’s tune. The presence of “Point of No Return” by Gene McDaniels, also prominently featured in Scorpio Rising, contributes to the sense that, as in Anger’s film, we’re watching lovingly repeated rituals that cannot last. Anger plays the song once, as a motorcycle race grows increasingly chaotic and deadly consequences start to seem inevitable. Taormina plays it three times. We hear it first while Andrew runs a gauntlet of puckering relatives. He looks toward the camera as he catches a smooch on each cheek; the lyrics could suggest his feelings of having outgrown this treatment. When it plays again over a sequence of teenage rebellion, there’s no mistaking its meaning. Scorpio is bound to crash just as the kids are fated to grow, hitting their own bumps in the road along the way. The family elders are meant to relinquish their place at the pulpit and the head of the table, fading away in their dotage. Its final appearance, just barely audible, suggests it may be lingering in Emily’s mind as she makes these realizations.

While Anger took glee in subverting all types of Americana iconography, including Christmas trees in Fireworks, Taormina’s reverence for holiday imagery² comes across no matter which of the dozen-plus Balsanos we’re following. The teens we track through much of Miller’s Points’ second half pretend they’re too grown-up or too smart for presents, but for Emily it’s an unconvincing act. Sentimentality gets the better of her toward the end of the film and we follow her attempts to round up a discarded present. Earlier moments between her and friends show us how the teenage characters’ gaze has evolved yet retained its traces of childish wonder. As they speed down the road in absconded cars, blurry rear projection effects fill the windows and call to mind Santa’s speeding sleigh. The scene recalls the opening titles as the teenage couples watch their windshields fill with snow in anticipation of makeout sessions and hushed conversations.

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The rowdy teens, expectant children, and increasingly drunk adults get most of the attention, but Taormina saves time for returning to Andrew too. He’s too old for Santa and too young for sneaking out or getting soused. Another writer-director might put these words in his mouth or contrive a feud with Emily to underline their role as dual protagonists. Taormina and co-writer Eric Berger, a friend since childhood, predictably choose quieter and more reflective characterization. Andrew watches in bemused silence while his younger cousins strain to hold their eyes open and stay awake for Santa’s arrival. Later on, he looks out the window at an impossibly picturesque moon. The world remains rich with promise and possibility, whether or not reindeer are headed for the rooftop. Lund and Taormina subtly recall and reverse this shot in the film’s closing moments as Emily returns home. She can’t see an idealized Christmas celebration through the frosty glass. She’s past the point of no return, left with the remnants and memories.

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1.  I agree with Richard Brody’s assertion that you need to see the movie twice to really see it. It was only on rewatch that I caught Ray’s silhouette dancing in the trees and heard the line, “I got a whole chicken nugget stuck in my braces.”  ↩︎
2.  He credits around 30 set dressers, including a handful of families. ↩︎