Mainlining Christmas

A few years ago, there's no way I'd have written this up here. That's not a strike against the movie - I liked this quite a bit - just an acknowledgment that it is absolutely not a Christmas movie. It is not set at Christmas, it does not reference Christmas (or any holiday, for that matter), and it is not about Christmas. However, the wintery setting and other elements (first and foremost the titular animal) resemble contemporary Christmas traditions and iconography. The movie also takes place in Lapland, a location with connections to the holidays, and folkloric winter horror has deep connections to the Christmas season, as well. In short, while this isn't a Christmas movie, the overlap with subgenres within the holiday film canon is substantial, and I suspect this will be of interest to readers of this blog. I know I'm stepping onto a slippery slope here, but I'm going to risk it to talk about this bizarre Finnish horror film about a woman who falls in love, g

I'm continuing my exploration of Little Women, despite most adaptations falling well short of our usual yuletide requirements. Today, I'm moving on to the 1949 version, which was essentially a remake of the 1933 film. You'd think that would mean my opinion would be the same, but - between the two - I prefer this by quite a bit. I'm in the minority on that opinion, by the way: the 1933 is widely considered the stronger film, with Katherine Hepburn even more widely considered the better Jo. But, as I said in my review of that film, Hepburn felt miscast to me - I just couldn't see her as the character. I don't think June Allyson was by any means a perfect casting choice in the remake (she was in her thirties, and you can absolutely tell in close-ups), but she works better as a teen in my opinion. Likewise, the supporting cast here is stronger, or at the very least more in line with what I want from this kind of movie. The 1933 version was comparatively straightforw

I should start by acknowledging I've previously said Little Women wasn't Christmas media and that we wouldn't be covering it here. I still stand by the first part, incidentally - most adaptations of Little Women don't pass our personal litmus tests - but obviously, I reconsidered the second half. As I've been diving into the origins and evolution of Christmas movies, I've concluded Little Women may be quite a bit more important to the history of the quasi-genre than I'd given it credit for, this version most of all. So I decided to watch through the theatrically released adaptations to explore how this story influenced and/or reflected that evolution. I'm not going to do full reviews for these, since - again - it's not a Christmas movie, and I assume you know what Little Women is anyway, but I'll offer some general reactions and thoughts. I want to acknowledge two video essays I found extremely useful in this project - Be Kind Rewind's Compar

Most descriptions you'll find of Love & Peace (including the next sentence of this one, I guess) focus on how many disparate genres are packed into the movie. And that's true: this is a musical kaiju fantasy Christmas family comedy, and there's no denying it's a bizarre film (which is apparently par for the course for writer/director Sion Sono). But opening with that is a bit misleading, as it implies the movie is some sort of random jumble of wacky ideas, which isn't the case. Yes, there are a lot of ingredients in this, but they're here for a reason, and the end result is both tonally and thematically coherent, even if the premise is complicated. I'm going to get to the plot in a moment, but... ugh. This one's awkward. Because, as usual, I'm going to spoil the hell out of everything in a movie I'm going to strongly recommend, which is normally your cue to head over to the nearest streaming service, watch this absolute gem of a movie, then c

I paused this movie about three-fourths of the way through, checked the time stamp, and pumped my fists in the air as I confirmed it qualified under our guidelines as a holiday movie. In case that reaction wasn't clear enough, Mystery of the Wax Museum is getting a recommendation, which means it also gets a spoiler warning. I don't think knowing details about the premise, characters, or plot will significantly undermine the experience in this case, but - just in case - if you're a fan of movies from this era, horror/comedy/adventure hybrids, or really movies in general, this one's a blast. It's also an absolutely gorgeous film that will challenge most viewers' assumptions of what movies from the early '30s looked like. Utilizing the now largely forgotten two-color Technicolor process, the film is both beautiful and eerie. The color, coupled with clever lighting and set design, creates a world that's unreal, evoking the feel of looking at a wax sculpture

Right off the bat, I'm going to open with a simultaneous recommendation and a warning: this bizarre, British TV movie from the early '90s is well worth checking out provided you're able to stomach the racism. Because... yeah, the movie's approach to its subject matter, while clearly intended as tongue-in-cheek, absolutely exploits both the culture it's drawing its mythology from and the race of Lenny Henry, who plays the genie. For what it's worth, the movie's portrayal of race is good-natured and well intentioned, with the movie ultimately existing in part as an endorsement of diversity and immigration, but the subtext of a black immigrant being weird and silly by virtue of not understanding British customs is absolutely baked into the premise. I doubt it was a coincidence that the remake flipped the races of both the genie and Bernard (and, for what it's worth, the cast of the remake was one of its best assets). And speaking of the remake... I'm go

This is a remake of a 1991 British TV movie called Bernard and the Genie, which I've yet to see at the time I'm writing this review (though there's a decent chance that'll change before you're actually reading this). Skimming the Wikipedia article for that film, the stories seem quite a bit different, even if the overall premise is the same: a man down on his luck finds a genie who grants him bucketloads of wishes as he tries to fix his problems. Hopefully it worked better the first time around - despite some impressive talent involved, this remake mostly falls flat. The main issue is one of tone, namely that the movie tries to create the wrong one. The scripts for both this and the movie it's based on are written by the legendary Richard Curtis, who seems to treat the story as something of a farce, at least until the resolution. Likewise, Melissa McCarthy is certainly playing the Genie with the same sort of larger-than-life comedic energy. Unfortunately, direct

If you didn't know there was a made-for-TV Christmas movie in which almost all of the supporting roles are played by former contestants and judges from RuPaul's Drag Race, now you know.  As you can probably guess, it's a fairly unique entry in the pantheon of holiday flicks. Like anything with a strong gimmick, viewers who are very familiar with the source material will probably get more out of moments that are clearly cameos and references than we did. But even though I've only watched one episode of Drag Race, I still enjoyed this.  It's funny and biting, it pushes the envelope (of course), and manages to be charming as well. The film does overstay its welcome a bit. It could have been a tight, hilarious 45 minutes, but at 86 minutes aspects of the underwritten characters get a bit tedious, and the jokes become especially hit-and-miss in the middle.  I want to mention something I alluded to above, that the supporting roles are mostly drag queens. The main characte

Is there a word for movies that obtain cult status despite being box-office successes? Violent Night occupies a somewhat awkward place in the pop-culture landscape between studio production and weird outsider. Depending on your opinion of the film, you can either view it as the best of both worlds or the former masquerading as the latter in an attempt to appear edgy. I had a somewhat mixed reaction to the film myself. As an action flick with a nasty sense of humor (I resisted the urge to say "naughty"), I found it incredibly satisfying. It's essentially a take on the slasher Santa formula with the premise inverted, so the gruesome kills are cathartic rather than horrific, and I had a lot of fun with it. At the same time, I found the story and underlying lore lacking, and the politics of the thing kind of awful, both on its own merits and even more so as part of the larger holiday media tradition. Let's talk premise before we get into all that, though. The main charact

Are we doing Thanksgiving movies now? As a matter of policy, I'm not certain - we've always kind of punted on the question of whether we should view Thanksgiving as an independent holiday or whether it should be viewed as the kickoff to the Christmas season, and the general scarcity of movies centered around the holiday make the point largely moot. But John Hughes's Planes, Trains & Automobiles has started to feel like a notable omission in our collection of reviews of holiday media. Making matters more complicated is the fact the movie is sometimes advertised in a way implying it's a Christmas movie, with a large candy cane signpost displaying the title. Someone wants people to associate this with Christmas, even if the movie is explicitly set over the lead-up to Thanksgiving and culminates with that  holiday. It's also worth noting the movie prominently shows Christmas decorations, along with wintery imagery. None of this is out of place for Thanksgiving, of c

I'll start by acknowledging what I assume is obvious: Elvis is not, by any reasonable definition, a Christmas movie. Despite that, there are aspects of the movie that use holiday imagery and associated plot points in ways that are unusual and interesting enough to be worth exploring here. That said, there's a reason this is getting written and posted in the "off-season:" this film is Christmas-related, rather than Christmas media. I'll start where I usually finish: with an assessment. The movie is good, though I'm not convinced it's quite in the same league as most of this year's best picture nominees. I found the movie technically impressive and intellectually interesting, but not at all emotionally engaging. I should probably acknowledge I'm not a huge fan of Elvis - this might play much differently to someone with more of an initial attachment to the singer. More importantly, I don't think this was trying to engage emotionally. Its approach

As soon as I heard this existed, I knew it had to be the last version of A Christmas Carol I watched and reviewed for this project. Twelve Hundred Ghosts is, at least in theory, a supercut of more than 400 adaptations, homages, and reimagined spins on a Christmas Carol, arranged and edited by Heath Waterman, who completed the project over a year and a half. So that certainly puts the fifty-some-odd versions I covered here this year to shame. I do want to return to that "supercut" moniker. Strictly speaking, it's not inaccurate, but I don't think it does justice to the experience of watching this. Waterman isn't simply cutting between scores of adaptations across multiple mediums; he's creating a montage that explodes both the original narrative, as well as the incredible breadth of media it's inspired. He uses split screens to combine versions from different eras and styles, he plays audio tracks over incredibly different films, he includes audio plays, re