Mainlining Christmas

Morning for the Osone Family is the rare war story that doesn't show the war at all. Instead, this is interested in the ordeal of two women dealing with family politics, cultural constraints, and grief as the war claims those they've loved and threatens their hope for the future. It's a fascinating film, though I want to acknowledge my background leaves me underqualified to discuss it in any real detail. This is, of course, a Christmas blog, so that's going to color how I approach the film. But while this has a great deal to offer in that context, the holidays are really more a side thought. They serve enough symbolic and tonal purpose to warrant discussion here, but this certainly wasn't intended as a "Christmas movie," nor would I describe it as such. I'll do my best to at least touch on the other themes, but anyone interested in the film's place in Japanese culture or post-War cinema will probably want to find a resource more equipped to discuss...

I'm stretching to discuss this here - the combined time spent on the holidays (in this case a couple different New Year's Eves) accounts for a minuscule portion of the overall runtime. Granted, those moments are thematically important and one of them closes the film, but even so, I wouldn't review a modern movie with this little seasonal screentime. But The Divorcee was released in 1930, making it one of the earliest talkies with any holiday connections I've located, and it was extremely successful at the time, picking up nominations for Best Picture, Director, Writer, and winning Best Actress for Norma Shearer. And while it feels very different than later Hollywood genres, elements of the structure resonate with modern romantic comedies (though this is definitely a drama). And seeing as one of those elements is the aforementioned New Year's Eve conclusion, I felt like I should discuss it. Shearer plays Jerry, a woman destined to be the titular divorcee, though the ...

From the perspective of a Yuletide nerd, this is an interesting case. I actually wouldn't consider this a Christmas movie, despite the fact it technically passes my litmus test. The entirety of this film is set around the holidays, which is usually more than enough. But the specifics of the setting and story render the timing moot for the majority of the runtime, and neither the story or the themes are particularly connected to the holidays. Both those points could probably be debated. The premise uses the holidays as an excuse to bring the characters together, and some of the themes - connecting with old friends and growing older - have a history of being associated with Christmas media, but I don't really buy that these are causally connected to the frame story visibly being set over the holidays. Frankly, I think the Christmas connection appears here for the same reason the last movie included a coda set during the same time: this series has always been released at Christmas...

Dead of Night is a British horror anthology film with a strong frame story that shows up occasionally on lists of alternate holiday films. I first watched it a few years ago, and I'll tell you upfront I don't agree with that designation - only one of the five segments (six, if you count the frame, which you probably should) takes place at Christmas - which is why I didn't review it at the time. So why am I rewatching and reviewing now? Well, that's a little complicated. Over time, the purpose of this site has changed, as have the questions we've been exploring. We're no longer solely focused on Christmas media, but also the history of how that media evolved and the ways media and society look at the holiday. Occasionally, that means considering media that may have been pivotal in shaping future holiday entertainment. And, while Dead of Night isn't something I'd consider a Christmas movie, it was extremely influential. It's also a damn good classic ho...

Disclaimer up front: I would not consider this a Christmas movie, and was on the fence about writing it up at all. The holidays are never discussed until a character unexpectedly mentions it's Christmas Eve around the 35-minute mark, and less than twenty minutes later, the New Year's Eve section ends. Aside from some scattered decorations and a lot of snow, there's not really anything else to even superficially tie it back to the holidays. A few years ago, I wouldn't even have considered writing this up, but our philosophy has shifted a bit towards examining how the holidays are used in media, as opposed to only focusing on movies that meet our arbitrary definition. In addition, well... there's actually something interesting going on here with the holidays I'll get to in a moment. First, let's talk about the movie itself. "Better Off Dead" is an '80s romantic comedy written and directed by Savage Steve Holland, creator of Eek! The Cat, and star...

I first watched this about a decade ago, after a friend recommended it as a Christmas movie. I recall being a little annoyed at the time, both because I didn't particularly enjoy watching it and because it failed to meet my tests for qualifying as a Christmas movie. Upon re-watch, I stand by my assertion this is not, according to any meaningful use of the term, holiday entertainment (though I do have some thoughts on how Christmas is used). As for not thinking much of it, well... I'm glad I didn't review it back then. This adaptation is quite good, whether or not I was capable of appreciating it when I first saw it. There are some fairly large caveats to that praise, which I'll get to, but it succeeds in what it sets out to do, which is to adapt the story for the era it was made for. In this case, that largely meant updating characters and feminist themes to be more relevant to girls of the '90s. The movie focuses more heavily on Jo's writing than earlier films,...

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...

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...

Along with The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music is one of two movies that have sort of broken into the canon of established Christmas movies, despite containing no scenes set at Christmas. Normally, we don't review movies simply because they've become associated with the holiday, but due to the significance of these two classics, along with the sustained connections they've formed, we're making these exceptions. For the time being, these are the only two movies we're granting this honorary status: maybe we'll revisit a few others in another decade or two. For Oz, we dedicated an entire article about the convoluted history between that and the yuletide season. I think The Sound of Music's Christmas credentials are a bit simpler, so let's get them out of the way upfront. The simplest and most straightforward holiday connection comes from the fact the song, My Favorite Things, has long been associated with Christmas and appears on numerous Christmas albums....

The Wizard of Oz is one of two movies that hold a somewhat unique place in Christmas media. It is not, by any real quantifiable measure, a Christmas  movie, but for somewhat complicated reasons it is heavily associated with the holidays. We've held off on reviewing it here for a long time, but finally decided there should be some sort of a review on this site, given how significant this is to both holiday tradition and to film history in general. Before going on, I feel should probably remind everyone that the writer of the book this is based on, L. Frank Baum,  was quite literally a proponent of genocide . He was a racist, an awful human being, and any discussion of his legacy should include that note. Fortunately, the 1939 movie isn't limited to Baum's legacy. In a sense, the story of the movie is secondary to the craftmanship that went into making an imaginary world real. The source of that world is fairly trivial: they could have selected any fairytale or kid's book...

The Peanuts Movie somewhat breaks our litmus test for Christmas movies, in that it objectively passes despite the fact it's pretty clearly not a holiday film in any meaningful sense of the phrase. For those of you who don't want to read through my treatise on the subject , there are a handful of binary questions we can ask, and any movie receiving a "yes" on one or more those questions is considered, for the purposes of this blog, a Christmas movie. The most basic of those questions is whether or not more than 50% of a movie is clearly set at or around the holidays, and The Peanuts Movie passes. In fact, the vast majority of the film - everything except the ending - is adjacent to Christmas. But the reason for this is, well, pretty trivial. As far as I can tell, The Peanuts Movie's setting is just an homage to A Charlie Brown Christmas . Beyond that, the holidays really don't come up. I've seen a few other movies where Christmas seemed to be more a...

First of all, The Detective is not in any way, shape or form, a Christmas movie. It's not set at Christmas, and it isn't about Christmas, and I'm not claiming anything to the contrary. So. Why am I talking about it? While this isn't a Christmas movie, it is indirectly connected to one of the most significant Christmas movies ever made. The Detective is based on a book by the same name, and that book has a sequel called Nothing Lasts Forever which would be adapted into a movie two decades after this one. Unlike The Detective, the name "Nothing Lasts Forever" didn't survive the adaptation: they changed it to Die Hard. In other words, The Detective is John McClane's origin story. Well, sort of. The main character in The Detective was named Joe Leland, and several details about his relationship with his wife were notably different. But other details, like him being a New York police detective who breaks rules, are consistent. In some ways, I fou...