You don’t download a “holiday companion” app because life is going amazing. You do it because the city is loud, your apartment is quiet, and Christmas is being dramatic again. Then a stranger shows up, jokes too much, and somehow makes it all feel survivable.
Some people buy ornaments. Some people call their families. Some people pretend they’re “fine” and rewatch the same cozy movie until their brain turns into eggnog.
Noah does something far more 2025: he downloads a holiday companion app. Because apparently loneliness now comes with UX, push notifications, and a name that sounds like your aunt trying to set you up with her coworker’s nephew.
Enter Jordan – the kind of guy who treats December like a sport. He’s funny, loud, fast-walking (yes, the film says it out loud), and armed with enough holiday energy to power a small subway line. Noah is quieter, recently cracked open by a breakup, and clearly not built for small talk with strangers who sparkle this hard.
And that’s the trick of This Time of Year: it starts like a joke and keeps turning into something real when you’re not looking.
The setup is simple: two strangers meet, grab hot chocolate, and roam New York in December. But the film doesn’t use the city as postcard porn. It uses it like a mirror – shop windows, reflections, little moments you catch while walking, the weird feeling that everyone else is in a scene and you’re just… passing through.
Their “activity” becomes window shopping with a twist: they narrate strangers and mannequins like it’s performance art. It’s hilarious at first – petty, dramatic, borderline unhinged in the best way. But it also turns into a soft method of confession. You can hide a lot inside a joke about some random couple, until suddenly you’re talking about yourself.
Jordan, for all the glitter, has that familiar holiday bruising underneath. The kind where you love Christmas, but Christmas doesn’t always love you back. He admits he lied about his cheerful persona. Friends don’t invite him. Family “tolerates” him most of the year, but “gay Christmas Jordan” is apparently too much. That line hits because it’s both funny and painfully believable.
Noah’s pain is quieter – the breakup that rewires your daily reality. The film nails that specific sadness: going from “every day” with someone to “nothing,” and realizing you’re not just missing the person, you’re missing the version of yourself you were around them.
What makes this work is chemistry and timing. The banter is sharp, but it doesn’t feel written to sound clever. It feels like two people trying to survive their own heads. The story never pushes into big melodrama. It stays in the space where connection is small, awkward, and still kind of scary.
And then, because this is a holiday film that refuses to be boring, it slides into music – a moment that could’ve been cringe, but lands like a warm punch. Jordan performs, Noah watches, and for a minute you can see the whole point: not “finding love” in a neat bow, but finding a reason to show up tomorrow.
The ending is exactly the kind of gentle payoff this story earns. Not fireworks. Not a fantasy. Just an invitation: “You want to come?”
Which is the most romantic thing in the world when you’ve been lonely long enough.
Set against the backdrop of a vibrant Brooklyn barbershop, Barrio Boy follows closeted barber Quique as his unexpected romance with an outsider challenges the rigid macho expectations of his neighborhood.
