Mainlining Christmas

After watching this, I realized I'd made a mistake by not watching the original 1950 movie this is a (loose) remake of first, since I found myself unsure what was original and what was drawn from the source material. So, naturally, I watched the original as well. This is only a review of the 1988 movie, as the original is set in summer and we have a reputation to uphold. Aside from the vague premise, the two movies don't have much in common. Even some elements I'd have sworn were pulled from the 1950 version weren't, such as dated character names and explicit noir tropes. My guess is this was intended as a love letter to the noir era in general. Perhaps the Christmas setting was a nod to one of the many holiday noirs, since it certainly wasn't taken from the 1950 film, which was set sometime during the hot summer months. D.O.A. opens and closes with scenes shot in black and white that look and feel like something right out of a classic noir. In fact, the opening is ...

I heard this classic Hong Kong action movie was technically a Christmas film, so I decided to give it a rewatch, only to discover that wasn't possible. To rewatch a movie, you need to have seen it before, and I discovered a ways in I actually hadn't. I'd have sworn otherwise, but while I've seen numerous of the movie's various stunts and set pieces in clips, the rest was new to me. First, let's jump to the Christmas stuff, with the caveat there's very little. For the record, I'm going to defend this as a Christmas movie for the same reason I defended the label being attached to  Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! - films set at Christmas in a time and place where the holiday is afforded less importance tell us about how those cultures relate to Christmas. The holiday doesn't belong to Hollywood or the United States, and I think it would be a mistake to limit our viewpoint to the tropes, conventions, traditions, and assumption of our own nati...

Four years ago I revisited a number of movies in the "slasher-Santa" subgenre and was surprised to realize a surprising number were good . Even many of those I dislike deserve credit for being smarter, better shot, or at least based on more a more interesting foundation than the straw man I'd concocted. Let that be a lesson to you about making assumptions. I bring all this up mainly because the most interesting thing about the 1980 horror film, To All A Goodnight, might be how perfectly it encapsulated my original ignorant assumptions about what the subgenre would be like. This is pretty much exactly what I'd imagined the subgenre to be like: cheap, lazy, dumb, and misogynistic with few redeeming qualities. The movie plays like a knockoff of Black Christmas , minus the complex themes, genuine terror, eerie fear, iconic performances, effective direction... basically anything and everything that makes Black Christmas endure. In its place... gah. There's just not muc...

Like most people of my generation, I’ve seen this movie many, many times. I was eight when this came out, and I’m pretty sure my family saw it on the big screen. We’d go on to rent it and eventually tape it off the TV. As an adult, it was one of those movies Lindsay and I considered essential – I don’t recall when we bought it on DVD, but we’ve had a copy for ages. But eventually the DVD just didn’t seem good enough, so I picked up the Criterion blu-ray in a recent sale. That was the version we introduced our own daughter to, and the quality, as you’d expect, was fantastic. It’s so good, you can clearly see the Christmas tree behind the mother as she talks to Fred Savage. Likewise, there’s no mistaking the winter landscape or holiday decorations on the next-door house outside his bedroom window. I’d long been aware there was a paper Santa in his room, but on its own this doesn’t necessarily indicate the season (crafts tend to stick around, after all). But along with the other stuff, it...

I've been meaning to re-watch this for a while. I originally wrote about this back in 2016, and while I'll link to that post , it's not one I'm proud of. Having a "review" up for a critically acclaimed adaptation of a James Joyce story where my take is basically just me whining that I found the movie boring hasn't sat well with me as my appreciation for different kinds of films has expanded. I suspected - correctly, I might add - I'd react differently if I gave the movie another chance. That said, I agree with at least part of my original sentiment - this one really isn't for everyone. It requires a great deal of attention to follow the large number of characters and their relationships. Multiple viewings are probably the best approach if you're unfamiliar with the source material - at an hour and twenty minutes, that's not too heavy a lift (I watched this twice yesterday, for anyone curious). Even then, the movie and its underlying plot (w...

Animated Christmas specials serving as stealth pilots is something of a tradition in its own right. The most successful example, of course, was The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire , but a number of other properties attempted to use the format , as well, including the one we're looking at today. Astonishingly, this one seems to have been successful, as it spawned a number of additional specials and eventually a series that lasted for five years. Lindsay grew up watching said series - I did not. She assures me that the kids who appear in the frame story of this special would be dropped pretty fast, with the world defaulting to one entirely occupied by anthropomorphic animals. That premise does sound at least marginally better than what we just watched. Let's start there. We're introduced to a park ranger, his two kids, and their dog, Schaeffer. The forest they're living in (and that the ranger is looking after) is being mysteriously cut down, so he goes to investigate ...

On its most basic level, Cobra is an R-rated '80s action movie written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, but that doesn't begin to describe what makes it unusual or (with apologies for jumping right to the punchline) awful. Because at the end of the day, Cobra is bad, despite some impressive stunts and a genuine attempt to make something interesting. Let's back up. For a while, Stallone was looking to play Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, a role that would eventually go to Eddie Murphy. Stallone, of course, had a very different vision for that movie's tone, which (coupled with the budget his vision would require) seems to be the main reason that version ultimately fell through. I have no idea if he perceived Cobra as some sort of proof of concept, or if he just had a bunch of ideas floating around his head as a result of working on the other project. Regardless, he pulled his ideas together, combined them with ideas borrowed from a novel called Fair Game (which the cr...

Night of the Comet joins I Come in Peace and Trancers  on a list of low-budget cult Christmas science-fiction movies from the '80s and early '90s. All three flew under our radar for years, so I'm left wondering if there are more out there. Night of the Comet is unquestionably the best of those three, incidentally. I'm not sure I'd recommend this to someone who isn't a fan of genre (and perhaps more importantly genre history, as we'll get to in a moment), but any connoisseur of '50s drive-in fare, early zombie movies, or '70s post-apocalyptic films will find this well worth checking out. It's also notable for the impression it left on popular culture: it's been cited as an inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and while watching I saw ideas I'm fairly certain were borrowed for Cabin in the Woods and Zombieland, among others. All of which is to say this is a neat, clever film. Perhaps a bit too clever in some ways, honestly - its mashu...

Disclaimer up front: I would not consider this a Christmas movie, and was on the fence about writing it up at all. The holidays are never discussed until a character unexpectedly mentions it's Christmas Eve around the 35-minute mark, and less than twenty minutes later, the New Year's Eve section ends. Aside from some scattered decorations and a lot of snow, there's not really anything else to even superficially tie it back to the holidays. A few years ago, I wouldn't even have considered writing this up, but our philosophy has shifted a bit towards examining how the holidays are used in media, as opposed to only focusing on movies that meet our arbitrary definition. In addition, well... there's actually something interesting going on here with the holidays I'll get to in a moment. First, let's talk about the movie itself. "Better Off Dead" is an '80s romantic comedy written and directed by Savage Steve Holland, creator of Eek! The Cat, and star...

This might be the last holiday movie I remember seeing as a child that we'd yet to get around to. The reason it took so long was, despite remembering a handful of moments and details, I had no idea what this was called. My best guess is that I probably watched this sometime in 1985 or 1986, possibly on VHS at a daycare I went to back then, though any of those details could be wrong. What's clearer was my reaction to the movie: I remember being mostly bored by the thing. And unfortunately, that assessment holds up pretty well. This TV movie has an obnoxiously slow pace, some awful directing, and very little action. In short, this isn't worth tracking down despite a surprising number of merits. I'm feeling jolly, so let's run through those first. This uses some solid matte paintings, backdrops, and miniature work to create the North Pole (technically North Pole City, but I said we were going to cover the good stuff first). Actually, that may be selling these features ...

We don't cover many random sitcom episodes anymore, but this one has been on my list for a while. This isn't a case of a childhood memory for either of us or a show that someone recommended: this is an episode I saw on a Wikipedia list of Christmas episodes, and I said, "Wait, there was a show with WHAT premise?"  Someone finally uploaded it to YouTube, so I was able to watch it.  An overall note: if, like me, you flinch at characters embarrassing themselves and constant, loud laugh tracks make you wince... maybe brace yourself before you try this one. The Charmings was a short-lived sitcom in the late '80s about Snow White and her family (along with one of the seven dwarfs and her wicked mom) magically getting zapped to modern-day California and having to adjust to life there. Presumably this was pitched as similar to fish-out-of-water shows like Mork and Mindy. I thought it would be more of a secret-identity-in-the-suburbs show like Bewitched, but they don't...