Mainlining Christmas

The case for Jacob's Ladder being a Christmas movie is a weak one, no matter how you cut it. But it's also a weird case, which makes me more interested than I'd otherwise be in a movie where holiday credentials are relatively ephemeral. In the past, I've argued any movie where half or more is set around the holidays should be considered holiday media, even if visual reminders or references to the season are scant or intentionally obscured. In the case of Jacob's Ladder, the majority of the movie is set during this period. And also it isn't. That contradiction is quite literally built into the framework of the movie, though whether its (extremely loose) holiday connections are meaningful or trivial is less clear. In a moment, I'll try and provide at least a little context for all this, but - considering this movie has some passionate fans - I feel like I should at least give anyone who hasn't seen this a chance to jump ship before I spoil the film's s...

1997's second-most famous movie about a sociopathic felon (played by an iconic Hollywood star) taking control of the aircraft carrying him across the country and forcing the protagonist to fight to minimize the number of innocent victims, Turbulence has mostly (and understandably) been forgotten. But unlike Con Air, Turbulence was set on Christmas Eve (aggressively so, as we'll discuss in a bit), so that's the one we're going to be talking about. I should acknowledge comparisons to Con Air are entirely surface level: Turbulence is a relatively contained suspense movie owing as much or more to '70s disaster flicks as '80s action, while Con Air is a grandiose action/adventure that seems to wear its "Die Hard on a plane" designation like a badge of honor. Turbulence has a minimal cast and with minor alterations could probably have been made on a shoestring budget, though somehow they managed to balloon this into costing 55 million dollars (roughly 110 mil...

I found the key to unraveling this bizarre religious horror/action movie buried in its Wikipedia article: prior to falling in the hands of director Peter Hyams, End of Days was apparently offered to Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro, either of which would most likely have turned the seemingly bonkers premise of pitting Arnold Schwarzenegger against the devil into the amusingly bonkers farce it deserved to be. But they were both busy (or perhaps uninterested), resulting in Hyams taking over the project. To his credit, Hyams proves capable of delivering a sleek, visually impressive movie. The effects are solid, including some early CG that (mostly) avoids the pitfalls of looking cheesy or dated. But none of that means much, because he doesn't seem to be in on the joke here. Despite some objectively ridiculous dialogue, names lamp-shading campy origins (for Christ's sake, there's a priest named Thomas Aquinas), and - again - Schwarzenegger blasting the devil with enough firepow...

The Preacher's Wife has been on our watch list for years, but it's one of those movies that never seems to land on streaming services, or at least not ones we're subscribed to. Eventually I broke down and ordered a DVD, which then sat in a pile beside my TV for months. There it remained until someone commented on our 10 year old review of The Bishop's Wife  politely calling us out for not getting to the remake. Guess what we watched that night.  My first observation watching it was that I was going to need to rewatch the original if I wanted to have anything more substantive to say than, "yeah, this one's really good, too." Fortunately, the 1947 film is a lot easier to watch online than the remake, which is why you're getting a hybrid article covering both versions. Looking at them together has the unusual effect of making both seem even better. The films start with the same underlying premise but approach it in such radically different ways they feel ...

I'll be arguing that You've Got Mail is, in fact, a Christmas movie and further that the movie implicitly tells us as much, despite simultaneously going out of its way not to set the bulk of its runtime on the holiday (at least not clearly), and further to obfuscate and play down the significance of holidays in general. However, from the perspective of a viewer, this is going to feel more like a movie with a few scenes around Christmas than anything you'd typically think of as a holiday movie, which is why I'll also be tagging this "Not Christmas." Its holiday connections aren't quite as much of a puzzle as, say, Alien: Covenant , but it's relationship with Christmas is more similar to that than, say, The Shop Around the Corner , despite being a loose remake of that film. It's worth noting that the majority of the runtime of The Shop Around the Corner isn't centered around Christmas, either, but that film concludes with the holiday, using assoc...

While I'm absolutely stretching to discuss it as a Christmas movie, After Life is a 1998 Japanese fantasy drama written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda about a facility between life and death where souls spend a week, during which they choose a single memory the support staff will recreate on film, which will be screened for the spirits prior to their departure for the hereafter. They're told the memory they select will be the only one they retain. The movie exists more as a loosely structured exploration of memory, perspective, and meaning. There's virtually no conflict, and what's present is relatively muted, focusing more on its characters' internal journeys than external drama. It's a solemn, meditative experience - depending on how you approach things like that, you're either going to find this mesmerizing or excruciatingly dull. You can count me in the first camp, by the way - I'm absolutely a fan. But I'm pretty sure if I'd tried watchin...

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 ...

I first saw this ten or fifteen years ago while exploring Guillermo del Toro's filmography.  Filmed in a combination of English and Spanish, Cronos is his first film. I recall thinking it was good but being a little underwhelmed at the time, particularly compared to his follow-up, The Devil's Backbone. If I noticed this was set at New Year's, I forgot it soon after. While this didn't leave much of an impression on me then, it absolutely did now. I think I was expecting a more typical vampire story, and as a result wasn't ready to fully appreciate the more subdued, thoughtful film del Toro delivered, which is more a fairytale assembled out of deconstructed horror elements than the usual superpowered monsters. In my defense, understated genre films were more common in the '90s and early '00s, so something like this stood out less then than it does in 2023. Regardless, this is fantastic, which means it's time for a mandatory spoiler warning. If you're a...

Just about the only thing you'd describe as subtle in this comedy from the late '90s is its holiday setting, which - to be fair - is a bit ambiguous. The film definitely starts just before Christmas, though even that takes a little while to be established. Christmas Eve plays into the story in a fairly significant way, though we sort of breeze through the 25th itself. After that, the timeline gets a little muddled, though it certainly seems like virtually all of the movie would have to be set between Christmas and New Year's. But I'm getting quite a bit ahead of myself. Let's start by acknowledging what I assume is obvious from the seemingly contradictory fact that this involves some pretty impressive talent yet has been virtually forgotten: it's not good. That's not entirely accurate. Instead, let's say this really doesn't work, and most people without an interest in Gore Verbinski's filmography would be better off skipping it. This is Verbinski...

I somewhat jokingly referred to this as the anti-Love Actually after watching it, and think that would probably be a good selling line to convince American audiences to give this French dramedy a shot. In a sense, that seems accurate - like Love Actually, this follows an ensemble of characters navigating a web of relationships and emotions, but the movie is unambiguous in its assessment of long-term monogamy. Virtually every character over the age of eighteen has been unfaithful to a partner; quite literally, every romantic relationship in the film has an expiration date. However, I now think my immediate reaction was incorrect. Despite La Bûche's pessimistic view of coupling - the movie ultimately embraces love in all its forms and does so enthusiastically. In this sense, it might be better described as a companion to Love Actually (albeit one likely to please that movie's detractors). Regardless, La Bûche is either the most cynically sweet or sweetly cynical Christmas movie I...