THOMAS AND FRIENDS: THE CHRISTMAS LETTER EXPRESS is a holiday special streaming on Netflix that follows Thomas the Tank Engine and his locomotive friends as they prepare for Christmas. They help deliver a missing letter to Santa from a child named Ryan who has asked for a skateboard. The trains work to make the child’s Christmas wish come true.

The program is bright, colorful, and full of Christmas fun. There is no questionable or offensive content. The characters are kind and helpful and work together to promote a biblical/moral worldview. It contains light pagan elements about the magic of Santa Claus. There is no violence but one train drives into the ocean but is quickly rescued. THOMAS AND FRIENDS: THE CHRISTMAS LETTER EXPRESS is appropriate for all ages.

CONTENT: (B, Pa)

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

A biblical/moral worldview with characters who are kind, helpful, and work together. Light pagan elements featuring the magic of Santa Claus;

Foul Language:

No language;

Violence:

No violence but one train drives into the ocean but is quickly rescued;

Sex:

No sex;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

None; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

None

THOMAS AND FRIENDS: THE CHRISTMAS LETTER EXPRESS is a holiday special streaming on Netflix that follows Thomas the Tank Engine and his locomotive friends as they prepare for Christmas and help deliver a missing letter to Santa. The program is bright, colorful, and full of Christmas fun. The characters work together to help one another and display kindness. The movie has a biblical/moral worldview with no questionable content and is appropriate for all ages.

THOMAS AND FRIENDS: THE CHRISTMAS LETTER EXPRESS begins with Thomas and Percy riding together as Percy delivers Christmas letters around the town. Thomas delivers cookies and learns that Santa will appear in the Christmas parade. Later, a few trains become tangled in Christmas lights and must work together to untangle them.

Percy thinks he’s done delivering letters until he notices that one letter has yet to be delivered, and it has Santa’s address on the envelope. The trains travel to a mountain and watch the sky, searching for Santa. They realize many of the Christmas lights on the hill are out, and Helicopter Harold helps them locate working lights. The trains finally spot Santa in the sky and head into town to find him.

Later, the letter blows away, and the trains work together, chasing it to retrieve it. The letter opens, and Thomas reads that a child named Ryan has asked Santa for a skateboard. The trains decide to make the child’s Christmas wish come true, but they can’t find a skateboard. Santa comes to the rescue and gives the skateboard to Percy to deliver. Percy is thrilled when he sees the child happy once they receive their gift. THOMAS AND FRIENDS: THE CHRISTMAS LETTER EXPRESS closes as the trains participate in the Christmas parade.

Eminem’s mother, Debbie Nelson, who inspired the lyrics for songs ranging from the scathing “My Mom” to the heartfelt “Headlights,” has died. She was 69.

Dennis Dennehy, a spokesperson for the Grammy-winning “Rap God” star, confirmed Nelson’s death to The Times on Tuesday. He did not disclose additional details or provide any comment from the rapper.

Nelson died Monday night at a hospital in St. Joseph, Mo., according to TMZ, which first reported her death. Reports about Nelson’s cancer first surfaced in September.

Nelson was 18 years old when she and high school sweetheart Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. welcomed Eminem (born Marshall Mathers III) on Oct. 17, 1972, in St. Joseph. A few years later, the spouses separated, leaving Nelson to care for their son by herself. Mother and son moved frequently but settled in Detroit.

Throughout his childhood, Eminem and his mother endured a fraught relationship — exacerbated by poverty — that eventually became fodder for multiple songs after he came to fame in the late 1990s. For his sophomore album, “The Slim Shady LP,” Eminem references his mother’s drug use and physical violence in tracks including “My Name Is” and “Brain Damage.”

“She beat me over the head with the remote control / Opened a hole and my whole brain fell out of my skull,” he raps in in the latter. “I picked it up and screamed / ‘Look, b—, what have you done?’”

Nelson took legal action against her son in September 1999 for his album, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress through his lyrics, according to ABC News. At the time, she sought $11 million in damages, but a Macomb County judge awarded her $25,000 instead.

Despite the legal fallout, Eminem continued to tap his relationship with his mother for other songs, including 2002’s “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” and 2009’s “My Mom.” The latter centers on her alleged drug use and how he picked up similar habits as a result.

“Valium was in everything, food I ate, the water that I drank … peas in my plate / She sprinkled just enough of it to season my steak,” he raps. Elsewhere in the song, Eminem describes more rampant drug use, being forced to eat food as a kid and the realization he’d become a drug addict. The rapper, who has long been open about his struggles with addiction, celebrated 16 years of sobriety this year.

In 2008, Nelson published her memoir, “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem,” where she discussed their fractured relationship and alleged she and her siblings had been abused by their stepfather when she was a child. The same year, she told the Village Voice in an interview she was open to making amends with her estranged son.

“I’m not ever gonna give up on my kids. I won’t give up on anybody,” she said at the time. “There’s hope for everybody. It’s a matter of just basically swallowing your pride. It’s like a cashed check. It’s over, it’s done. You need to move on.”

A year later, during a 2009 appearance on music show “106 & Park,” Eminem confirmed he was not on speaking terms with his mother but said he had gained a “better understanding of what she was going through” over the years.

Their years-long feud seemingly simmered down in 2013, when Eminem released “Headlights,” with Nate Ruess, frontman for indie pop band fun. Seemingly a letter to his mother, “Headlights” hears Eminem reference “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” and contemplate, “Did I take it too far?”

“I don’t hate you ’cause, Ma, you’re still beautiful to me, ’cause you’re my mom,” he raps, before recalling the tense environment of their home and his father’s abandonment of them both. He also voices regret for his searing song and proclaims, “I love you, Debbie Mathers.”

In 2022, Nelson congratulated her son on X (formerly Twitter) for his 2022 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “I could not let this day go by without congratulating you on your induction into the Hall of Fame,” Nelson said, according to People.

“I love you very much. I knew you’d get there. It’s been a long ride,” she added. “I’m very, very proud of you.”

Nelson was born in 1955 on a Kansas military base, the eldest child of a “large dysfunctional family,” she wrote in her memoir. After her parents divorced, she took on the responsibility to help provide for her younger siblings. Nelson is also the mother of Nathan Samra-Mathers. Eminem gained custody of his younger half-brother and then raised him after Nelson put Nathan in foster care as a child.

Nelson is preceded in death by her ex-husband, who died in June 2019. In addition to her two sons, she is survived by Eminem’s children Alaina Marie Scott, Hailie Jade and Stevie Laine.

Times staff writer Malia Mendez contributed to this report.

‘Body horror’ may not be the most accurate descriptor to qualify Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, but the movie undoubtedly adopts many tropes when it focuses on Mother’s (Amy Adams) transformation from a human to a dog. Indeed, when a cyst appears on her back and reveals a large tail full of pus, one may be inclined to say that this dark comedy veers into such territory, and rightfully so. 

The ‘body horror’ itself is appropriately gross and immediately destabilizes both the audience and the protagonist, who discovers a side of her she didn’t realize she had until now. ‘Mother’ (both parent and kid characters are unnamed because it could be you, me, or anyone else) has been living absolute hell parenting her Son (played with an impeccable sense of comedic timing by twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden). Like any mom at this stage in her life, she attempts to set unattainable goals for her child to be tended to, whether going to the library for a torturous ‘Book Babies’ session or taking her son to the park with almost certain death waiting for him if she doesn’t always pay close attention to what he is doing. 

Of course, it doesn’t help that her son is ineffably cute but incredibly chaotic (the innocent charm they have at this time is deadly for many parents who want to teach them the right way to do things patiently but are unable to do it because of how cute their child looks at all times). From saying the F-word in public to purposefully breaking dishes and then crying about it, he’s certainly not helping her mother have an easygoing time with him, as lovable as he may be. However, Mother’s life isn’t going the way she wants to. She is forced to do everything for her son and absent Husband (Scoot McNairy), which leads her to sacrifice the promising career she had in art to be a stay-at-home mom. At that moment, her sense of smell begins to develop, and she starts experiencing profound physical changes in her body that lead her to believe she is slowly transforming into a dog. 

In its opening scene, Heller, cinematographer Brandon Trost, and editor Anne McCabe intelligently represent Mother’s chaotic, overwhelming life through aesthetic choices reminiscent of Monia Chokri’s Babysitter. Extreme close-ups of Mother’s routine acts (putting butter in the pan and frying hash browns while attempting to subdue her son’s deafening cries), quickly edited together, pervert what the idealized ‘joys’ of being a mother are. In this case, Son acts more like a burden than the boy she unconditionally loves. Heller then directs her audience to Mother’s ragged hair, tired eyes, and wrinkles on her face that seem more apparent than they should, not because of her age but due to her constant sleeplessness and heightened stress levels. 

This immediately pulls us into the on-screen adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s book of the same name, to which Heller then takes an immediate dark turn (a bold swing for some who may not know what this film is about). The attentive filmmaker she has always been (see her masterpiece, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Heller still ensures there’s a profound bond between Mother and Son, either through fleeting moments of love as she reads him a bedtime story or as they hold their hands together while running after dogs in a park. 

There’s a sweetness buried inside their relationship that has unfortunately been lost when Mother has been tasked to do everything to please him and her neglectful husband, who would rather fly away from familial problems than face them head-on. In fact, in one of the film’s most powerful scenes, Husband asks Mother, “What happened to my wife?” as he wonders how she became so depressed, bitter, and angry at herself, the world, and her husband. She bluntly responds: “She died in childbirth.” 

This seems to be Nightbitch’s central thesis, illustrated by an unexpected transformation into a fierce canine, which helps her reclaim the story she wants to make for herself. The metaphor is apt and sounds rich enough to be pushed to its fullest extent. But just as it’s about to go all in on its kooky, almost otherworldly storytelling, Heller decides to stop the movie dead in its tracks and not develop any of its ideas, nor the characters who seem rife with potential. For no reason whatsoever, the editorial (and thematic) choices begin to squander any attempt at fleshing anything out of its characters and central story. 

The end result seems more confounding than anything else because it feels like the movie is trying to do far too much in such a short time (98 minutes). As it moves away from the thrilling, almost unique body horror, Heller also loses her aesthetic impulses that made the movie’s first half so compelling and often funny to watch. 

The original source material may be too ambitious to transpose on screen. However, when so much of the movie does work in its opening section, it seems baffling that Nightbitch would lose its most interesting parts in favor of absolute nothingness. But it also seems afraid to commit to one genre or a thematic throughline,to keep us invested. Had it fully leaned into body horror, it could’ve gone in a completely different direction than its massively unconfident script allows. 

Thankfully, Adams always seems to give a damn and represents Mother’s psychological torment intelligently with enough empathy and compassion for the audience to attach themselves to her plight. Her most nail-biting line deliveries are expressed with the energy of a thousand flames (and how her eyes shift in key scenes exacerbates this feeling), alongside voiceover narration that solidifies all of the emotions she can’t express physically. But she’s also frequently outshined by the Snowden twins, who literally steal the spotlight from her and run away with it. 

They have no shame in doing so, either, with note-perfect comedic timing that balances out their charming, lovable exterior. The cutest kids are usually the most troublesome. Heller understands this inextricable fact and displays it to us for all the world to see. However, she shows an insatiable chemistry between the two that makes it instantly believable that Mother will do anything for her Son, even if it mentally and physically exhausts her. 

All of this is finely presented and depicted with thunderous energy during Nightbitch’s opening half. It’s why it feels so disappointing that Heller never fully commits to either her premise or the themes she lays out, concluding Nightbitch with an admittedly funny coda to an otherwise middling and disappointing affair. It may not be as bad as Heller’s feature directorial debut, but it certainly won’t be remembered as her finest effort, either, especially coming off the heels of her best-ever film. 

Nightbitch releases exclusively in theatres on December 6. 

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