Mainlining Christmas

We watched the Trolls Holiday Special and walked away with one big question: Is Trolls a Christmas Movie? After we got around to watching the movie itself, we decided the answer is ehhh... not really? Probably not? However, its one holiday element is unique enough that we wanted to catalog it. The movie Trolls (based somehow on the plastic dolls from back in the day) is a surreal confabulation of light, color, and pop music. The trolls are small and brightly colored, and the favorite snack of a larger creature that looks much more like your stereotypical common troll. These "Bergens" believe that the only way to be happy is to essentially steal the trolls' happiness (by eating them). However, (and this is where the holidays come in) they only eat trolls once a year, on a holiday called Trollstice. Other than being a pun on solstice, Trollstice has very little in common with Christmas though. There is one very early scene in which the bergen prince wakes his father

I knew going into this movie that despite the title, it wouldn't exactly be a straight adaptation of the book. However, I was surprised how many elements of the well-researched biography  made it into this somewhat fantastical film. Plus the heart of the work, the enthusiasm for the subject, definitely transferred. The movie is a dramatization of the writing of A Christmas Carol with a large dollop of artistic license. I think the liberties taken with the truth are mostly reasonable for the sake of drama, but they are certainly present. For example, it's true that Charles Dickens' father always had trouble with money, that he was always asking for loans and sometimes selling Charles' correspondence, etc. without his knowledge. They did not, to my knowledge, reconcile over the same Christmas when A Christmas Carol was written. A Christmas Carol, along with much of Dickens' other work, was influenced by the times he had worked as a boy when his father was in debto

Distributed by Neflix and widely panned by critics, Mute is an SF/noir movie directed by Duncan Jones and set (spoiler alert) in continuity with Moon. I liked this quite a bit more than the average critic, but I won't deny it was a deeply flawed film. If you hear the words "SF/noir" and immediately think of Blade Runner, you have the right idea - Duncan was quite open about drawing his inspiration from Ridley Scott. Oh, also it's set at Christmas. I was a little surprised by that - I put it on because I'm a fan of the genre (the SF/noir genre, I mean, though obviously I'm also a fan of Christmas movies). It wasn't until decorations started popping up that I realized I'd be writing a review. More on all that in a bit. Set in the not-too-distant future of 2035, Mute follows two plot lines simultaneously. The ostensible POV character is Leo, a mute Amish man living and working in Berlin. He more or less lives for his girlfriend, Naadirah, a

All the kids in the theater liked the Grinch film that day, but Erin found the experience rather blasé. I know, I know - we've already released a podcast reviewing The Grinch , but I wanted to cover a few details we glossed over, like the plot. It's worth noting the story is a little different this time. Or rather, it's almost entirely the same, but the reasons things occur, along with what that implies, is completely different. Like the original, this revolves around the Grinch, a green-furred individual living on a mountain overlooking Whoville, a town of elfin creatures who live for Christmas. Unlike the original, the Grinch isn't a monster in any sense of the term. He lives apart from the Whos, though he regularly goes into town for groceries. While there, he's somewhat misanthropic, but not to the degree he's shunned or even disliked. One of the Whos even considers him a close friend (though the Grinch doesn't share the sentiment). The Grinch

While Invasion U.S.A. isn't the worst movie we've seen for Mainlining Christmas, it could be among the most stupid. Almost every element of the film is awful. It's an idiotic piece of schlock crammed with every imaginable 80s cliche that astonishingly believes it has something important to say. Oh, and it's set at Christmas. The film stars Chuck Norris as Florida man, Matt Hunter, a former special... something... who's retired from a career killing bad guys in developing nations to a humble life of riding around the Everglades in an airboat. He's asked to come out of retirement when the government learns that a Soviet agent has aligned with communist terrorists from Central and South America in order to launch an assault on the U.S. Matt Hunter turns down the job but reconsiders when his old nemesis, Mikhail Rostov, blows up his home and best friend. The terrorists kill a boatload of refugees, murder a drug dealer, kill a couple of teenagers on a beach,

Mainlining Christmas reviews the surprisingly good Netflix Original movie, The Christmas Chronicles, starring Kurt Russell. References: Get Santa Transcript: Erin: Welcome to a very special Black Friday’s Eve installment of the Mainlining Christmas podcast. As always, I’m Erin… Lindsay: And I’m Lindsay. This is going to be a mini-episode looking at the new Netflix live-action movie, The Christmas Chronicles, starring Kurt Russell as Santa Claus. Erin: Let’s cut to the chase - I think I love this thing. Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. The trailers were fun, but I really didn’t expect it to be this good. It might be the best American made live-action movie about Santa Claus I’ve ever seen. Erin: I wouldn’t go quite that far. I enjoyed this a lot, but I wouldn’t rank it above Elf, and I certainly wouldn’t say it’s better than Miracle on 34th Street. Lindsay: Well, you know I’m not a huge fan of either of those. I’ll take Kurt Russell over Will Ferrell any day. Erin: We’l

Watching Christmas movies that you've never heard of is always an adventure. Sometimes you find something awful. Sometimes you find something astounding. Something wonderful. The Great Rupert (later repackaged as A Christmas Wish) is a family film starring the inimitable Jimmy Durante, a ton of other talented comedic actors, and several living and deceased squirrels. Don't worry, it's not macabre. The plot hinges on the actions of a trained squirrel named Rupert, who is variously represented by live animals and extremely skillful stop-motion animation. It's a hilarious movie, with a really sincere, charming quality to the humor. Erin even found the musical numbers compelling. There is very little wasted time - it's tightly plotted and beautifully made. We have no idea why this movie has been mostly forgotten. It's easily as good or better than many "classic" Christmas films. As a bonus, the plot concerns an apparent miracle with a very prosaic,

Mainlining Christmas tries to decide whether there's any merit to the new Grinch movie. References: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) Transcript: Lindsay: Welcome to another movie review on the Mainlining Christmas Podcast. As always, I’m Lindsay… Erin: And I’m Erin. Today, we’ll be talking about The Grinch, the new animated remake of a 52-year-old adaptation of a 61-year-old classic children’s book by Dr. Seuss. Lindsay: Not to be confused with the theatrically released live-action Jim Carrey vehicle from 2000. Erin: Oh, I disagree. This is destined to be confused with the 2000 movie for decades to come. Lindsay: You’re probably right, and that’s a shame. Because this one is better. It’s a lot better in fact. Erin: No argument there. I’m not sure I’d call the new movie “good,” but it’s about as good as a feature-length production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas actually can be. Lindsay: There are definitely things

Mainlining Christmas reviews the surreal new film, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. References/Background: Nutcracker Fantasy (Now Available on DVD) The Nutcracker and the Mouse King Transcript: Erin: Welcome to the first ever mini-episode of the Mainlining Christmas Podcast. We just got back from watching The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, the new holiday-themed fantasy film from Disney. Lindsay: For those of you who missed the advertisements, this is the live action sequel to the animated Disney Nutcracker movie from the 60’s that doesn’t… actually… exist. Erin: It’s weird because it’s structured as a sequel in the exact same way Tim Burton’s live-action Alice in Wonderland was. Lindsay: Like, the EXACT same way. Erin: But Disney never actually adapted the original, unless you count those segments in Fantasia. Lindsay: The makers of Four Realms certainly seemed to. There’s an extended homage to Disney’s Fantasia in the middle of the movie and a callbac

Silent Night is a quasi-remake of the 1984 cult classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night, which - I'll be the first to admit - I really  need to see. Not that I really want to see it, mind you, but it's probably one of the more significant holiday films I've yet to get around to. At any rate, let's talk about the 2012 version, which - judging by the plot synopsis I just skimmed for the 84 - is probably is more of an homage than a remake. The only scene that reads the same is one where the killer impales a woman on deer antlers. To be fair, that accounts for a good 20% of the plot. Or, to put it another way, this movie is light on substance. The premise is pretty much summed up in the movie poster: killer Santa. The one innovation present is setting the killing spree during a "Santa parade", making it virtually impossible for the police to identify a suspect. That should have been an interesting twist to a cliched formula, but they didn't really use it t

Surprisingly good for a TV movie that first aired on Lifetime, this ghost story/romance still had a few missteps. First, we follow a man through the show. He sees a house in the distance; a woman comes out. A man comes out and appears to embrace her. And then THWACK. He's dead. And then an opening sequence! I'm ashamed to admit that after so many movies featuring B-roll of New York City in snow, I failed to notice that this sequence is actually supposed to be Boston. We just thought it was surprisingly snowy. Like many terrible rom-coms, this movie introduces its female lead by establishing that she "doesn't know how to love" and "works too much." Like few of them, this sequence is actually delightful. Kate is much better off without her wanna-be psychoanalyst boyfriend and seems to get real satisfaction from her job. Said job, for a law firm, is sending her out of town to visit a historic inn. The woman who owned it has passed away with no hei

Calling this made-for-TV movie "bad" doesn't really address the magnitude of just how awful it actually is. To even begin to do so, I'll try something a bit counter-intuitive: I'm going to compliment the filmmakers. Perhaps "compliment" is too strong a word - I'm going to acknowledge a possible explanation for the movie that's ultimately generous. Having just watched through Vacation 2, I am honestly unable to dismiss the following possibility: the movie was intentionally made as bad as possible either as an attempt to mock the audience, screw over the studio, or both. This is, of course, not the only possibility. Indeed, Occam's Razor would slice through this theory and leave us with a simpler one: that the filmmakers responsible for this mess are so bad at their jobs, they were unable to produce anything better. Those of you who haven't seen this movie are doubtlessly drawn to that explanation. But you don't yet understand

Collateral Beauty wasn't really marketed as a Christmas movie, but then its marketing was baffling in several respects. For one, the whole "he's interacting with Love, Time, and Death" thing permeating the advertising was quickly undercut by the fact that, in the movie, these three are actually actors hired by the lead's coworkers to portray Love, Time, and Death. I mean, sure, the ending reveals they were actually Love, Time, and Death masquerading as actors masquerading as Love, Time, and Death (and it's pretty obvious all along), but it still makes for an even more bizarre experience than it would otherwise. Let's back up. Will Smith plays "Howard," the CEO of a successful NY advertising agency. A few years before the movie, he loses his daughter to cancer and falls apart emotionally. His friends are executives at the agency, and they're trying to keep it from going under. In order to do that, they need to prove Howard's emotio

Saving Santa is a 2013 direct-to-DVD computer animated movie that's something of a paradox. I suppose that's appropriate, since the movie is about "a time-traveling elf," but that's not the kind of paradox I'm referring to - I'm talking about the writing, which is at once utter crap and impressively nuanced. More on that in a moment. First, the plot. Bernard D. Elf, astonishingly only the second-worst-named character in this movie, wakes up late for an appointment showing off his new invention to the North Pole's tech company. He races across town and gets them to watch, but in the process momentarily blacks out the elf city's power. The time the grid's down is just enough for Neville Baddington (and that'd be #1) and his evil package delivery company to determine the cloaked location of Santa's operation. Unaware they're on their way, Bernard heads to his day job, shoveling reindeer dung out of Santa's stables.

A Christmas Prince is Netflix's new tween-friendly movie that proves the internet giant is capable of competing in the crappy made-for-TV realm typically dominated by Hallmark. Personally, I kept hoping a few characters from  A Princess for Christmas  would show up in cameos, but no dice. Maybe they can make a sequel where their nations go to war or something - I hear shared cinematic universes are all the rage these days. You should be able to figure out at least sixty percent of the movie from the title, but I'll throw you a bone. The movie opens to a montage of New York just before Christmas. I often find myself wondering if there are film companies that send people out every time it's snowing in Manhattan in December and start filming for the sole purpose of selling that footage to productions looking for generic shots of flakes falling in Rockefeller Plaza. There must be, right? Amber, the movie's protagonist, dreams of one day making it big, but for the tim