LAST TRAIN TO CHRISTMAS (2021): Michael Sheen & Nathalie Emmanuel star in Julian Kemp’s Holiday Time Travel Film

Michael Sheen and Nathalie Emmanuel lead a cautionary Yuletide story

Julian Kemp‘s holiday film, Last Train to Christmas, continues in the Dickens tradition, and then some.

There’s something about the joyous season that tends to evoke tall tales about retrospection, appreciation, and/or redemption. This tale takes place in 1985. Enter Tony Towers (Michael Sheen), a nightclub owner whose celebrity star is rising. Traveling by rail to Nottingham for a holiday family reunion, with his young fiancee in tow, Sue Taylor (Nathalie Emmanuel), he’s pulled to and fro into the past and future as he goes from car to car. As could be expected, the future isn’t what he expects, and apparently the events of his past aren’t quite as he remembers them.

Going on the brief on-line synopsis, one can easily imagine that Last Train to Christmas likely carries themes similar to other holiday films in just about equal measure. For example, it would be easy to find Tony Towers in good company with the cynical hipster television executive Frank Cross (Bill Murray) in Scrooged. In the publicity stills available, Tony seems to present the ebullience of the good-natured bachelor Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) in the The Family Man who (unwittingly) takes on an angel’s challenge a la George Bailey.

While not a yuletide movie per se, the basic framework of Snowpiercer could fit, not just for the obvious reason, but also for the cultural shocks endured by ‘working class’ Curtis Everett (Chris Evans), witnessing the astonishing creature comforts as he pushes forward through rail cars to confront the engineer/inventor Wilford about class inequities. (In this film, however, Everett might be more likened to the dogged, put-upon Bob Cratchit.)

Director Julian Kemp also wrote the script. He started his career early at the age of 13. The mainstay of his work has been in television, both in the U.K. and abroad. His children’s programming has earned a host of international awards, including four BAFTAs and three International Emmys. His most notable work in film was directing the light comedy House! (2000), lauded by the critics.

For the past ten years, Kemp has devoted himself to directing documentaries, among them an in-depth study of the drug wars in his eight-hour special for the History Channel, America’s War on Drugs. But perhaps Kemp’s most significant contribution to visual media is devising and directing Cinemaniacs in 2015, a series devoted to encouraging and supporting the efforts of young filmmakers. It seems Kemp has enough holiday spirit for a dozen Yuletides, and Last Train to Christmas promising for a festive return to narrative filmmaking.

In terms of producers, Kemp has plenty of support, including Matthew James Wilkinson (Amulet, Yesterday), Matt Williams (Twist), Laura Grange and Julia Stewart (A Christmas Number One), Karl Hall (I Am Not a Witch), and Neil Jones (The Banishing).

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Last Train to Christmas will be available for streaming in the U.S. through Sky Cinema on December 18, 2021. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard. This news was brought to our attention by FirstShowing.