Mainlining Christmas

I learned about this while looking at the fifth volume of The Valancourt Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, which includes the lyrics to a popular British song written by Thomas Haynes Bayly dating back to 1829 about a young woman who seemingly vanishes during a game of hide-and-seek and whose skeleton is found in a chest years later. The underlying story is even older - Wikipedia credits Samuel Rogers with the earliest written version, a poem titled, "Ginevra", published seven years earlier, with the caveat the narrative was most likely folklore before either Bayly or Rogers wrote it down. Apparently, there are numerous old manors throughout England claiming to have been the site of the supposed tragedy inspiring the story. One difference that's hard to miss between Bayly's "The Mistletoe Bough" and Roger's "Ginevra" is that the earlier poem wasn't set at Christmas. Bayly's song, as the name implies, absolutely is - at least until the ti...

I don't even want to touch the premise of this movie until I explain a few things, because anything I tell you about what's going on in this bizarre horror flick would spoil stuff I wouldn't want to spoil. Normally, opening a review (or whatever it is I do here) that way implies I'm recommending a movie, but even that's going to be complicated. This is a movie calibrated towards a very particular kind of viewer, and even then there's a catch. The last few minutes of the film squander the goodwill it built over the previous hour and a half by pivoting in a different direction that left me rolling my eyes. Still, the experience the movie offers up until that point is so weird and fun, I'm hesitant to give too much away upfront. So instead I'm going to start this with an attempt at describing that experience, as well as who might be interested in checking this out. As always, if at any point you start to expect you fall into that bucket, I encourage you to ...

The fact there's a 1981 psychological horror movie written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Michael Caine that you've probably never heard of basically tells you everything you need to know. To its credit, the movie explores some important themes: toxic masculinity, misogyny, abuse, and projection make up a substantial part of the narrative and even more of the subtext. Unfortunately, the film itself is almost shockingly boring, and character decisions undermine the twist to the point of nullification. The movie spends its runtime dangling the question, "How much of this is real?" without giving us a reason to care. By the time the ending reveals the truth (and the inevitable post-script slaps an obligatory question mark on that reveal) I was just grateful the whole thing was over. The premise, incidentally, centers around a comic writer (Jon, played by Michael Caine) who loses a hand in an automobile accident then comes to believe that hand has reanimated an...

Both of the following statements can be true: Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2 is a rushed, direct-to-video production that barely qualifies as an actual movie, and - based on what director Lee Harvey was working with - it's shocking it's not far worse. The original plan was to release recut footage from the first movie as a new movie in a bait-and-switch scheme to trick fans into handing over more money. And, to be clear, repackaged clips are still a significant part of the sequel, with most of the first half devoted to a series of flashbacks to famous scenes from part one. But the team making this managed to secure a modest budget and a rushed shooting schedule, and were able to cobble together something that could be reasonably called a movie. They deserve credit for that. Maybe a little more than that, too. While the movie isn't at all good, it contains sections and choices that are smarter - or at least more ethical - than you might expect, particularly when compare...

Well. That wasn't remotely what I was expecting. And, just so we're on the same page, that's a very good thing. I should probably get used to this subgenre (or in this case movies marketed within the subgenre) surprising me, particularly since I kind of predicted the turn said subgenre was due to take a few years ago. But, yeah, based on the initial teaser, I was ready to write this off as an overly-nostalgic homage to a horror film that I have... let's go with "mixed feelings" about. That's being generous, by the way - I didn't enjoy the 1984 film at all , though I see the appeal. There's some smart stuff going on in that movie if you can look past the misogynistic exploitation, the slow pacing, and the nihilistic cloud hanging over the whole thing. I certainly preferred the original to  the 2012 remake , which basically turned up the volume on everything distasteful about the original while dumbing down the premise and themes to the point there w...

As is customary in these situations, I'll start by stating the obvious: One Battle After Another is a movie with Christmas-related elements, but it's not something I'd describe as a Christmas movie. The elements in question are interesting, unusual, and initially confusing, as is the movie itself. To a degree, I think that's intentional - One Battle After Another exists in a world similar to ours but more exaggerated, one where both the right and left sides of the political spectrum are sort of caricatures of their real-life counterparts, as imagined by their opponents. Or at least I think that's what Paul Thomas Anderson intended while writing and directing the film, only reality sort of intervened in ways that leave you feeling as though his movie wasn't just set in a different universe but was imported from one, as well. The revolutionaries of the film are essentially the lawless renegades described by Fox News when they warn their viewers about armed Antifa ...

I remember watching this anthology at least a few times back in the '90s - while it didn't have much of a theatrical run, it was weird enough to be a popular VHS rental (at least in circles I hung out with) back when that was a thing. The gimmick here is the movie tells four stories, one after the other, about four bizarre experiences a new bellhop has on New Year's Eve, with each of the four stories set in separate rooms and written and directed by different filmmakers: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. The two names in that list you recognize are the two whose segments work, though it's not at all clear which way the causal relationship goes there. Apparently there were some major cuts required by the producer, and those came from Anders's and Rockwell's segments (the "producer" in question was Harvey Weinstein, in case you needed more reason to empathize with those directors). Since the uncut versions were ...

As someone old enough to remember the kind of movies Y2K is an homage to, this one's kind of difficult to rate objectively. Because on one hand, this is a damn near perfect recreation of a type of late '90s genre/comedy hybrid that permeated the era. Aside from the genre-pivot (which feels like it's reverse-engineered from Krampus ) and some of the gore effects being a little too advanced, this is more or less exactly what this movie would have looked and felt like had it been released in 1999. And making fun of Y2K paranoia was absolutely a popular pastiche as the millennium approached, so this wouldn't have felt out of place in theaters. Hell, I half suspect the only reason something with this exact premise wasn't released was studios, which relied much more on DVD sales and TV rights at the time, would have assumed there wouldn't be any interest in the film after January 1st, 2000. So on one hand, this is the movie it sets out to be, which should be a win. On...

The Merchants of Joy is a documentary looking at several families operating Christmas tree lots in Manhattan. It focuses much more on the personalities of those involved than it does on the business side, in no small part because none of those profiled were willing to open their books and reveal trade secrets. We get a little behind the scenes information surrounding the bidding process for lots, how hard it is to turn a profit, what they do during the off-season (mostly operate other seasonal stands), and that big box stores operating at low margins are an existential threat to this business. We also learn several of the sellers largely source their trees from the Pacific Northwest, which surprised me a bit (I'd have assumed Maine or Canada). But the bulk of the documentary was focused more on them as people. It all works because it's an interesting, quirky collection. The year the documentary was recorded (I'm assuming 2024) also turned out to be a significant one, as two...

My best five-word description of P2 is " Turbulence in a parking garage," which could almost pass for a complete review. There's very little substance in this horror/thriller, which hinges on its ability to create psychologically believably characters and create a convincing frightening scenario... but ultimately comes up just a little short on both counts. Decent production values, a solid performance from Rachel Nichols, and some well-meaning themes prevent this from being a total loss, but the movie's merits are overshadowed by its shortcomings to a degree that's hard to overstate. The premise is about as barebones as these things get: a woman is trapped in a parking garage on Christmas Eve by the attendant, who she discovers has been stalking her. The two of them are the only characters with more than a minute or two of screentime: this is by design a barebones story meant to focus on the attendant's psychosis and her reaction. But maybe the filmmakers re...

We reviewed this twelve years ago and at the time more or less agreed with the consensus that it's a good movie, slapped a recommendation on it, and moved on. We never mentioned The Three Godfathers, because at the time we'd never seen a single adaptation or read the book ( we've rectified that since ). At some point, I picked up a copy of the film on blu-ray and dropped it in the "rewatch this soon" pile of discs sitting beside my television. That was probably three or four years ago. Last night I popped it in, hit play, and discovered a few things. First, I discovered my memories of the movies were comically inaccurate. If you'd asked me to give you a brief rundown of the plot, I'd have given you a synopsis bearing absolutely no resemblance to anything after the first ten or fifteen minutes of this movie. Second - and related - I discovered it is not, in any meaningful way, an adaptation of The Three Godfathers, but rather inspired by that story (or m...

This is another in a long line of films straddling the line between "Christmas movie" and "has Christmas in it," to the point I'm torn which bucket to drop it in. The holiday sequences don't take up a significant portion of the runtime, and seasonal elements don't really permeate the movie in ways that make it feel particularly seasonable - I probably wouldn't recommend this specifically for holiday viewing, though I would recommend it as a movie. However, the holidays are referenced enough to signal the filmmakers considered them significant, and I have some thoughts on why that might be. In fact, the use of the holidays might be the one subtle thing in an otherwise fairly unsubtle dramedy. To clarify, I'm not describing the bulk of About a Boy as unsubtle as a criticism - I liked it quite a bit. But the movie as a whole is fairly upfront about the points it's making and the ideas it's playing with. For example, it's clear from the s...