Part of what I love about The Snowman is that so much of seems to fly, as if the winter cold had electrified the night air, allowing us to travel through it in unnatural ways. I love when James first looks out his window at the snowy morning. We pull back from his face pressed against the window, across the long stretch of the lawn as birds play in the flurry, in five seconds capturing all the joy and surprise of everyone’s first memory of snow. Later in the film, the Snowman discovers a motorcycle belonging to James’ father, and the two go riding through the forest, a frenzied prelude to the comparative tranquility of the flight scene that follows. Forest creatures scurry out of the way of the bike, the bright yellow headlamp illuminating the trunks of trees as James hangs on for dear life. It’s a wildly kinetic sequence: In the film’s more stationary scenes, the variegated frame-by-frame shading of the pastel animation style only affects the moving cels; in these scenes of 360-degree animation, every inch of the frame is alive with movement.

I got to write about my favorite piece of holiday filmmaking ever, and for once, the response of the A.V. Club commenters is filling my heart with warmth and joy.