Mainlining Christmas

The Electric State is not a Christmas movie, at least not in my opinion. It only has two scenes which incorporate holiday elements: a flashback to a holiday interaction and a sort of virtual reality recreation of that same holiday at the end. Had the context been a little different, the finale set at the virtual holiday might be enough to justify arguing this counts as a Christmas movie (plenty of romcoms - including the classic Holiday Inn - have effectively claimed the label under similar circumstances). But for reasons we'll go into, the context here is a little different. So why talk about it at all? Well, because I've got some thoughts about the Christmas elements, and I think it makes for an interesting case study in the way holidays are often utilized in film. I should note this is one of the very few aspects of The Electric State I found remotely interesting. I'll start by saying I'm not approaching this with any kind of axe to grind against the Russo brothers....

Note: A digital copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review. What really jumped out at me as I read through the new edition of Alonso Duralde's guide to holiday movies (and looked back on the original) was how far ahead of the curve Duralde's been. For those of you unfamiliar with the first edition, "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas" is a guide designed to streamline the process of finding holiday movies you may have missed or forgotten about. The original came out fifteen years ago, and it remains pretty much the only book of its kind on the market (or at least the only one I've been able to find... and I've been looking). I'm not forgetting Jeremy Arnold's "Christmas In The Movies" - that's also quite good, but Arnold's approaching the concept of the holiday movie from a very different, much more focused perspective. What sets "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas" apart is that it's collecting a...