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Our beginning-of-the-year customs go hand in hand with its bleakness as we choose to make ourselves more cheerless by abstaining from things we enjoy, while pushing ourselves towards the more mundane and less exciting.

In Hollywood’s ongoing cheerless attempts to contest the joy of music by cutting stellar classical musicians down to size, “Maria” joins the curt parade of “Tár” and “Maestro.”

Cashiers at the supermarket knew them as a quiet, cheerless family that shopped several times a week.

Set in an especially cheerless pocket of Southern California, where high-voltage lines loom over the sparsely treed landscape, it opens in the summer.

“It’s nothing fancy,” the employer says, clearly believing otherwise, as the nanny’s smile fades in the gray, cheerless light.