Mainlining Christmas

The cliche, "so bad it's good," doesn't begin to convey the unprecedented absurdity that is this movie, an experience so unique as to feel alien in its approach to human emotion and storytelling. The existence of this film defies easy explanation. It is blatantly a marketing exercise attempting to promote the brand of Thomas Kinkade, a producer on the film, that inexplicably features a cast including Peter O'Toole, Ed Asner, and Marcia Gay Harden, along with talented character actors such as Chris Elliott and Richard Moll. None of them are phoning this in, either - everyone involves pours their heart into this thing, and the result is almost indescribable. Visually, this pointedly is not stylized to look like one of Kinkade's Candylandesque dreamscapes. Instead, it aims for realism, invoking the style of 70s dramas. Director Michael Campus made a handful of well-regarded blaxspoitation films and seems to have reemerged from a thirty-two year hiatus to make Chr...

I'm betting this would be better known if it hadn't named itself after that particular song. Not that there's anything wrong with the 1970 holiday song; it's just that the last few decades have been filled with a barrage of movies with similar names. When you hear a movie is titled, "This Christmas," the song isn't what pops to mind, but rather movies like Last Christmas , That Christmas , The Holiday , along with God knows how many Hallmark movies. The title of This Christmas simply isn't memorable. That's somewhat true of the movie, as well, though I want to stress this isn't necessarily a flaw. This Christmas sets out to deliver a a relatively traditional Christmas movie experience: a dysfunctional family confronting the holidays, renewing their commitment to each other, and going into a new year with more faith and optimism than they had during the last. The template is boilerplate; the variation comes from a change in setting and character...

Nutcrackers feels like a good movie, which is to say it's well shot, it (mostly) maintains a whimsically somber tone, and it features a relatively high-profile lead actor in an otherwise low-budget production. I've seen countless holiday movies with a similar premise (or at least a similar initial premise), but very few that veer away from the Hallmark vibe this completely. Before you read any of that as an outright endorsement, however, I want to draw your eye to a key detail in the opening sentence: I said this feels  like a good movie. Actually, it feels like two good movies. Or perhaps the first third of a one decent movie followed by the second half of an exceptional one. The problem here is the pieces don't snap together. The payoffs at the end of the movie are largely covering stuff hastily established directly beforehand. There's a series of comedic set-ups and ideas introduced early on that are just kind of forgotten. The disconnect isn't quite as jarring a...

I'm curious whether this was just in a blind spot for me, or if various factors surrounding the film resulted in an exceptional Oscar-nominated comedy/drama Christmas movie anchored by a legendary actor (and supported with an incredible cast) to fade from collective memory. Or maybe it never embedded itself far enough into cultural memory to begin with: it was at best a modest box-office success, so any real staying power would have come from VHS and cable. And while its Christmas credentials are in my mind unimpeachable, they're far less prominent than those in holiday movies from the same era now considered classics (few of which are anywhere near as good as Nobody's Fool, but we'll get to that). If it hadn't gotten a mention in Alonso Duralde's "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas," I might never have found it, which makes me wonder how many other brilliant forgotten holiday movies exist. At any rate, this one's very good and well worth track...

When I say "Nothing Like the Holidays" is a frustrating movie, it's not because the movie is bad (which it isn't). Bad movies are rarely frustrating, because you don't expect or necessarily want much from them beyond for them to end. Movies I find frustrating are those which have exceptional elements that make you root for them to succeed, only to watch as they fall short of greatness. In this case, the "exceptional elements" are first and foremost its cast, which is significantly more impressive than you'd expect from a movie in this subgenre and budget. Alfred Molina, Debra Messing, John Leguizamo, and Luis Guzmán are in this, along with a number of less well-known but also excellent actors. In addition, the movie manages to take a tired template - the dysfunctional family at Christmas - and adjust the setting and story elements just enough to occasionally surprise you. The selling point here, aside from the cast on their own merits, is that this i...

A rare example of a Christmas movie set in June, A Different Kind of Christmas is a 1996 TV dramedy starring Shelley Long (Diane from Cheers) originally airing on Lifetime and supposedly based on a true story about a district attorney whose mayoral candidacy and relationship with her son are strained by the reappearance of her estranged father, Santa Claus. Well, kind of. He identifies as Santa Claus, both professionally and in his personal life, however this isn't a Miracle on 34th Street situation. He knows what his legal name is, he realizes he isn't immortal, and he has a firm grasp on reality. At the same time, it's more than a professional gimmick: he wishes to appear "as Santa" at all times. In a sense, it's who he's decided to become. If you've seen enough documentaries about professional Santas this won't seem all that unusual: the role often elicits a degree of commitment you don't get from conventional parts. Hell, some have gone fur...

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...

Easily one of the most polarizing Christmas movies in recent history, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point can be viewed as either a masterpiece of atypical narrative structure, or as a failed experiment. The problem I'm running into is I can't decide which side of that line I fall on. I find it a little easier to address the more pressing question most of you likely have: whether or not you should watch it. The answer is almost certainly not... unless you're a diehard cinephile, that is. Just to be on the safe side, let's get the spoiler warning out of the way. This is, after all, a new movie, and its fans absolutely adore it (with good reason, I think). I'm still trying to sort out where my opinion falls, but I don't want to spoil the story of a movie this controversial without giving you a chance to make up your own mind. So, just to be clear, if you're still reading after this sentence, you're doing so with the knowledge you're about to have the s...

This half-hour animated special appeared on Disney+ this year, and it's very pretty, but not much more than that. The story follows Moon, a young owl whose impulsive optimism gets him into trouble; he hides from an eagle in a big tree that is then cut down and sent to NYC for Christmas. Moon runs afoul of some territorial pigeons and ends up lost in the city, where he eventually runs into a human girl, Luna, who is also alone. They travel around the city together over montages and music.  Moon wants to get back to the tree because his dad said to stay put. At first, Luna helps him get back to Rockefeller Center, but when they finally get there, she realizes that other owls won't be able to find him. So she reaches out to adults for help getting Moon home to the forest, and help for her to get home as well. Everyone is home for the holidays: The End.  At the very start, the singing narrator (John C Reilly, evoking Rankin-Bass, but not quite nailing it) explicitly tells us that ...

Penny Serenade is one of those movies that eases into revealing its holiday credentials. I spent most of the first half thinking I'd been misled by whatever Christmas movie list I saw this on, but - sure enough - by the end I was convinced. More than that, the nature of its structure makes it particularly interesting to examine as a Christmas movie. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's backup and get some context. If Penny Serenade were released now, it would probably be considered a dramedy, as it pointedly contains both tragedy and humor and its tone tends to revert to a midpoint between those extremes. It's mostly notable for being the first film to earn Cary Grant an Oscar nomination, though if you ask me, his costar, Irene Dunne, is the real MVP here. Don't get me wrong: Grant's great too, but I found Dunne's performance more believable and sympathetic (to be fair, the writing around her character also ages better, as we'll discuss in more d...