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...

I always love stumbling across a Christmas movie while catching up on genre fare I missed. Is that weird? Most likely, but then so is this movie, so that's appropriate. I should acknowledge this is one of those times viewers of the film are likely going to be surprised to hear it described as a Christmas movie, as references to the season are relatively sparse. However, the timing is unambiguous and noted on multiple occasions - in fact, the movie goes out of its way a few times to keep Christmas present. There's no reason that Orlok's familiar needed to be captured in the Christmas market, for example, but the movie drops in that detail. The second half of the film is explicitly set during the holidays (possibly the 24th through 28th, though I'm making a few assumptions to get that specific), which is plenty to cement this as a Christmas movie, albeit a subtle one. Backing up, Nosferatu is a remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror film, which in turn was an uno...

Introspective and slowly plotted, The Eternal Daughter is a sort of ghost story featuring very few (if any) supernatural elements. Instead, the movie employs genre elements from gothic ghost stories to explore the way we're haunted by memory and our relationship with the past and those we've known. To clarify, none of the "genre elements" are used to evoke fear: this isn't trying to frighten us, but rather pull us into an ephemeral state of being where the line between reality and imagination is blurred. Depending on whether you find yourself on this movie's wavelength, you're either going to find all this deeply moving or about as boring as a pile of rocks.  To be perfectly honest, I think my experience was a bit of both. I don't say that as criticism. The Eternal Daughter is a gorgeous, evocative film centered around two phenomenal performances, both from Tilda Swinton (more on this in a bit). I think this is a successful, artistic work that achieves...

Another in a shockingly long line of high quality Shudder Christmas horror flicks, Brooklyn 45's premise, structure, and setting make it a bit of an outlier. The movie is set in real time during the evening of December 27, 1945, almost entirely within the confines of a locked room in a Park Slope brownstone. The cast functionally consists of six actors, all but one of whom is over 50. The movie is extremely well researched by writer/director Ted Geoghegan, who manages to deliver something that feels grounded without relying on cliches. The characters are written and performed like people, rather than stereotypes of how we imagine 1940s military personnel to speak or behave. At the same time, you can catch flourishes in the performances and direction borrowed from 1940s melodramas, enhancing the sense you're watching a fusion of past and present. The movie plays with this idea in the opening and closing, too: it begins in black and white, looking for all the world like it was sh...

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 was a little surprised when I checked the date after watching Body - I'd kind of assumed it was a pandemic production due to the minimalist cast and setting. Instead, this 2015 thriller was produced with limited resources, which apparently drove the decision to pare back on elements (and presumably runtime, as this is only an hour and fifteen minutes long). The film was the debut of Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, who wrote and directed this and would go on to make several other films (most recently Novocain, which I'll have a review for later in the season). I'm not surprised they've been getting work - Body wasn't particularly well received by critics , but it's obvious Berk and Olsen are proficient filmmakers. My opinion of the film is a bit more positive than average, for what it's worth. I don't think this is some kind of hidden classic, but as a relatively straightforward Hitchcockian thriller built around three friends who find themselves in a harro...

This is, for better or worse (mostly worse), very much a product of its time, landing around the end of the X-Files, which this borrows from heavily. Elements also feel similar to Donnie Darko, though I'm skeptical this would have had the time or inclination to replicate anything about that film, which had bombed at the box office. Of course, all of this stuff is drawing inspiration from the work of David Lynch - some editing and effects choices in The Mothman Prophecies seem to be directly referencing Twin Peaks. Oh, and it's also based on a book I haven't read. The book purports to be non-fiction, with the caveat this stuff tends to strain the definition of that categorization. This is, after all, a story about extra-dimensional aliens prophesizing future catastrophes that cannot be prevented. Whether or not you believe that's possible, I assume anyone reading this is intelligent enough to have figured out by now the media built up around it is almost universally crea...

Another in a growing line of films I'd never seriously consider calling a Christmas movie, but it's old enough, interesting enough, and uses the holidays in an interesting enough (albeit limited) capacity to make it worth discussing here. The holiday, incidentally, is New Year's (I don't believe Christmas is so much as mentioned), and for the most part that holiday's role is symbolic - the leads discuss it several times, but it's in the context of plans that can never be. It's not technically part of the actual narrative, though there is a brief epilogue offering a glimpse of the day in question.  I should also note this movie is fantastic, offering a complex blend of drama and comedy, with the latter enhancing the emotional impact of the former, rather than detracting. The jokes, which I'll add are pretty hilarious, pull you into the sense of whimsy and hope that comes with falling in love, even if the situation is dire. Tonally, this is a fairytale set...

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 ...