Mainlining Christmas

To recap, I've been looking at several figures from the second wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" action figures. Today, I'll be talking about the figure I was most excited about: Father Frost. Does it live up to the hype? Read the rest of the review to find out!  Wait. I hate when reviews pull that shit. The answer is, "mostly." The figure's pretty goddamn great, with a couple minor caveats. First, let's talk a little about who this guy is. Father Frost is a Russian midwinter figure best known to American audiences as the inspiration behind the Winter Warlock in the Rankin/Bass special, Santa Claus is Coming to Town , though the Russian film, Morozko , features a much more authentic version of the character. Both takes on the character seem to get nods in the accessories of this version, though it's fundamentally a new spin on the character. As you'd expect, the figure's body (and several of his accessories) are reused ...

Well, I've got a new favorite Romanian Christmas movie. And before you roll your eyes, let me remind you that actually means something  - for whatever reason the nation has produced some extremely good holiday films. I've got no idea what else exists that hasn't gotten attention over here, of course, but the three that made their way to the States all packed a punch. Also, all three have featured faltering romantic partnerships as plot elements - no idea what's up with that trend, either. That's about where comparisons end between R.M.N. and the other two, however. Actually, comparisons should probably end a bit earlier, as even that's a tenuous connection: the male lead in R.M.N. has a very different relationship with both his wife and mistress than those presented in the films I linked to. Before we get into the actual story, I do want to caution this is a movie best experienced spoiler-free, and - in case that whole "new favorite Romanian Christmas movi...

The Cheaters is the one of two movies featured in the revised edition of Jeremy Arnold's book, Christmas in the Movies, that I'd never seen, so I figured I'd better rectify the oversight. While I wasn't as smitten with the film as Arnold, there's no denying it's charming, largely thanks to the performances of Joseph Schildkraut (who also appears in the more famous The Shop Around the Corner), Billie Burke (Glinda, from The Wizard of Oz), and Eugene Pallette. That said, "charming" isn't the same as "satisfying." Palette plays James Pigeon, an upper-class businessman confronting money troubles who's just learned a distant relative has passed away about a week before Christmas. Said relative has left his sizable estate to an actress who he doesn't even know (he was a friend of the girl's mother). If said actress isn't identified within a week, the fortune will instead go to James. In an attempt to ensure this occurs, the fami...

Book Review: Just Like Magic Sarah Hogle, 2022 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, and I think I read somewhere that this one was loosely inspired by the Grinch, but it's not a super strong connection.   Premise: Bettie had it all. She lost it all. She accidentally summoned a holiday spirit. Now she's got a one-way ticket back to the life she wants, unless she realizes she wants something else instead. I'll be honest, I almost quit reading this book. I hated Bettie. She was awful. She was useless. She was a self-pitying mess of a person who wasn't ever in any real trouble, despite the terrible decisions she'd made and things she'd done.  She was a mess partly because she'd briefly been a child star, but I didn't have any sympathy, because she was also a washed-up wannabe influencer who was trying to scam her way back into relevance rather than admit to her (extremely wealthy) family she needed help.  The...

I'm continuing my look at a handful of figures from the second wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" line of holiday action figures. Today, I'm reviewing "Nasty Krampus," and I'm going to start with what's probably my largest complaint in the review: I'm not crazy about that name. Does that matter? Not at all! But still, it feels like a rather dull descriptor for what's a pretty exceptional toy.  Naming conventions aside, this combines the  Krampus head, hands, and tail from Wave 1  with the naked torso used on the Wave 2 Barbarian Santa (no judgement: creative reuse is the name of the game when it comes to action figures). I don't have much to say about the individual components I haven't said before: everything looks great up close. I slightly prefer the paint on the first wave face, where the horns were a lighter color, but that's personal taste (and I'm really stretching to find something to nitpick here). O...

Similar to Two Front Teeth , Werewolf Santa is a (very) low budget comedy/horror production with a premise designed to attract attention. And also similar to Two Front Teeth, this doesn't manage to overcome its limitations, making it more of an oddity than a "real" movie. Despite a handful of elements deserving praise, this isn't worth tracking down unless you're a huge fan of ultra low budget, tongue-in-cheek genre flicks. That's a long way of saying it's not bad for what it is, but what it is, ultimately, is already kind of bad. That being said, I want to acknowledge that this is absolutely a case where I was not watching the movie the way it was almost certainly intended to be watched, which in this case means "high." The movie lampshades this in the opening minutes and later uses marijuana as either a plot point or a throwaway joke, depending on how generous you're feeling (Were-Santa consumes edibles early on, which give him the munchies...

Last year I looked at four figures from the first wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" line of Christmas   themed action figures . As a reminder, these are 6-inch collectable toys in a similar style to the Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black lines. As someone who's quite literally been waiting decades for a toy company to realize there was a market for this sort of thing, I was elated. While those reviews were running, I was waiting on three figures I'd preordered the year before from the second wave. These were originally expected before Christmas, but their arrival got pushed back a few months due to issues shipping them overseas. Today, I'm going to be looking at "Barbarian Santa," the only Deluxe figure I picked up this year. In this line, "Deluxe" mainly means the figure comes with more or better accessories, though I'm not convinced that's really the case here, as I'll discuss in more depth when I get to that s...

Another in a long line of movies I'm gobsmacked I never knew existed until now, The Day of the Beast is a Spanish horror/comedy from director Álex de la Iglesia about a Catholic priest attempting to prevent the apocalypse by committing enough sins and spreading enough evil that he tricks the devil into buying his soul and revealing the birthplace of the anti-Christ. A premise this absurd is of course going to rest on style and tone - fortunately, de la Iglesia is up to the task, and the resulting film is compelling and darkly funny. Where it comes up a bit short is the ending, which feels like it's missing a beat. But more on that when we come to it. The movie starts on December 22nd with Angel (the aforementioned priest, played by Álex Angulo) bringing his discovery to a fellow clergyman, who agrees to help him in his quest to prevent the end of the world. Unfortunately, that guy dies immediately after when a comically large cross falls over and crushes him; the first of many ...

This is one of several movies I found on a BFI list of great Christmas movies of the 21st century . Like a few movies on that list, Moven Callar's holiday credentials are a tad dubious - I'd defend this as a Christmas movie, but it's a pretty close margin. What's less ambiguous is the quality. The movie is gorgeously shot, with a fantastic performance from Samantha Morton in a role conveyed largely through physicality. I don't quite agree with the assessment in the article linked above that she "barely says a word throughout the film," but it's notable that virtually nothing she says offers a hint as to why she's doing any of the things she does. The movie is exceptionally good, and those in the mood for something dark and meditative will find it a satisfying experience, provided they're not easily frustrated by narratives that are disinterested in explaining themselves. So, take all that into account before reading on, because - as usual - we...

This is one of those times the lack of a film studies background is especially palpable. This 47-minute black-and-white film was made by French New Wave auteur Jean Eustache, who Wikipedia assures me was an incredibly important figure in both the movement and film history as a whole. Since my background on French New Wave more or less begins and ends with the only other Christmas movie I've found from that subgenre , I won't have much to say about how it fits in. But the holiday setting, on the other hand, is something I've got some experience with, so - as always in these situations - please take any non-yuletide opinions or interpretations I express with a few extra grains of salt. The movie is set in a small French city and tells the story of a young man attempting (and failing) to navigate adulthood and women. The narrator and main character is Daniel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who Wikipedia informs me is also damn important to French cinema). He scrapes by as a pett...