No Christmas movies are being released this year …
It’s just as well.
Some of the Christmas releases have been awful in recent years.
The Jim Carrey 3-D Scrooge was CGI gimmicky in the extreme but okay, and it’s not on my list of Xmas films worth seeing every year.
The Tim Allen Santas were mostly cliche-riddled awfulness. No Christmas movies should ever be released that don’t offer redemption from the evils of everyday life.
Good films are so good you don’t have to even like Christmas to identify with an epiphany or a character’s transformation.
The bad ones don’t seem to even be self-aware, and most Santa movies fall into this pit.
My list includes only ten films. There was not an eleventh that wasn’t so riddled with sweetness or cliches it was worth seeing a second time.
And, finally, two films on this list will never be mistaken for “family fare.”
A Christmas Carol (the black and white 1951 Alastair Sim version) achieves greatness in the re-telling of an oft-told Charles Dickens tale. No other version of this Christmas classic rises to the level this one does. Every re-make is a “lesser babka” as Elaine says on Seinfeld. Sim is perfect as Ebeneezer Scrooge. His redemption is your redemption. You get it when he gets it. The supporting cast is mostly unknown and equally perfect. The special effects are not CGI but pretty darned good for their time (better than most of that era, as a matter of fact). This film has an intense redemptive quality. It feels good seeing it once a year.
It’s a Wonderful Life, the Frank Capra 1946 sleeper flick, languished in late-night television-programming hell until station managers realized companies were buying ads in that time slot and an audience was waiting for the film every year. Also a black and white film, It’s A Wonderful Life shows that color is not a fix for a bad script, bad acting or bad direction. This is another film that delivers a psychic elixer of transformation and redemption. Nobody is better than James Stewart as George Bailey, the reluctant hero and the glue that holds an entire town together. Nobody is more evil than Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) who really does nothing more than most bankers or real estate developers, but whose evil comes to the fore when he fails to do the right thing (return the envelope of money that George’s uncle Billy, played by Thomas Mitchell, has mistakenly lost on his way to make a deposit). A heart-warming script that never fails to leave you feeling good about life in general. Donna Reed, Ward Bond, Frank Albertson, and Henry Travers (Clarence) are among the familiar faces who make this film work.
Miracle on 34th Street is the grand daddy of Santa Claus films. Its magic is always magic, no matter how many times you see the film. It has memorable performances by Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood (her fifth film role as a child).
A Christmas Story … this film was shown to a class at Judy’s school when she was teaching. We have watched it every year since. A Christmas Story contains no redemption (unless there are redemptive qualities in owning a Red Ryder Lever Action BB Gun). The innocence in this film delivers a ton of humor. It never gets tiring. The “furnace fighter” father, his lamp, the bar of soap in the kid’s mouth, the department store Santa, the kids fantasies, the classroom dramas, the Christmas dinner at the local Chinese restaurant. This film delivers funny from first frame to last. Most of it is a true story.
Home Alone, the first one, delivers redemption on several levels. The kid comes to realize how important his family is when he thinks he has eliminated them from his life. He comes to realize, too, that his fear of the old man is based on a bigoted preconception he has of the man. The old man is reunited with his daughter in a redemptive way. The second and third version were greedy Hollywood rip offs that cashed in on the fresh qualities of the first one. The subsequent plots were awful and not worthy of seeing at Christmas.
Elf is sweet. The absurd premise works: Santa raises a real kid (Will Farrell) among his elves and then lets the over-sized elf know who his real father is. The elf goes in search of dad in New York City, meets a girl (Zooey Deschanel) and learns about the outside world. Elf holds our world up to the light of day. It has some really funny scenes (my favorite is the book meeting with the children’s author). It has some good music (two songs by Zooey Deschanel). And, it has Amy Sedaris, one of the funniest people on the planet.
Scrooged with Bill Murray contains the original redemptive qualities of A Christmas Carol, only modernized in a hilarious way. Murray delivers as the out-of-touch anything-for-a-buck TV producer, but memorable performances by supporting actors elevate this film to greatness and make it worth seeing every year. All of the supporting actors raise the level of intensity. Karen Allen, John Glover, Alfrie Woodard (one of her earliest film appearances), Robert Goulet, John Forsythe, Robert Mitchum and Michael J. Pollard in their last performances). The list of memorable appearances in this film goes on and on. Bobcat Goldthwait delivers repeatedly in this film as Eliot Loudermilk. This film would be a lesser product without his pathetic rendering of a character whose life is completely trashed by Murray’s self-serving bullying. Goldthwait’s directing these days, having virtually disappeared as an actor after setting fire to his chair on the Tonight Show. Carol Kane delivers in a small performance as the spunky angel/spirit of Christmas Present. She’s a riot in probably her most memorable performance (her hilarious rendering of the receptionist’s hippy-dippy mother in Two and a Half Men is good, but not as good as this). David Johansen also delivers, perhaps, the performance of a lifetime as the cab driver/spirit of Christmas past (he also appears in 200 Cigarettes, which is on this list).
Bad Santa will never appear on a list of family Christmas Classics. This is strong stuff, sort of the toxic waste of Christmas movies … lots of swearing, suggestive sex scenes and bad behavior by the most insane Santa you can imagine. Watch it to cleanse your palate. It is the antidote to the saccharine nature of other Christmas films. This is the worst Santa to ever grace the big screen or a DVD. No Tim Allen cliches here. The redemption is sort of tacked on at the end as an after thought. The badness of this Santa — taken to extreme by Billy Bob Thornton — is the story. Every time you think this Santa can’t get worse, he does. He’s awful! Scenes are included in this script to only show how bad this Santa can get before he gets better. Tony Cox plays the department store elf who is the mastermind behind the reason this Santa even exists. Brett Kelly plays the overweight boy whose innocence is the counterfoil to Santa’s bad behavior. Chloris Leachman plays the grandmother. Bernie Mac is the department store security guy. John Ritter is the department store owner. It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion, only funnier.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas is pure Christmas fantasy. It is funny. It contains extreme cuteness on its way to the Grinch’s redemption. It also contains extreme Jim Carreyishness, and some fantastic makeup. Carrey, in fact, is totally out of control, but he is never “over the top” in his portrayal of the Grinch. No matter how absurd he is, the character seems to want him to do more and be even more outrageous. The humor connects on several levels.
And, finally, the only “New Year’s Eve” film on this list (or, perhaps, any list) is 200 Cigarettes. I watch this film every year. It is funny. It is quirky. It avoids all the traps of most holiday films. This is an independent film directed by Risa Bramon Garcia with an amazing ensemble cast. It is New Year’s Eve on New York’s Lower East Side. Monica (played by Martha Plimpton) is having a party. She’s got everything but her guests, who all seem to be arriving fashionably late. The film tells the story of the tardy guests, who cross paths with one another smoking the 200 cigarettes that give the film its name. I dislike smokers, dislike cigarettes (as only an ex-smoker can) but I love this film. The film includes performances by Ben Affleck as a law-student bartender, Casey Affleck as Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle as one cool taxi driver, Elvis Costello as himself (a presence, seldom seen but often referred to), Janeane Garofalo (no surprises here), Kate Hudson as a ball of pink fluff whose job is to get really dirty, Courtney Love whose job, as always, is to deliver a surprise or two, Jay Mohr, Christina Ricci and Paul Rudd. This film is lot of fun … and so much happens in its 90 minutes that you can never remember it all from year to year. At least I can’t.
John Shinnick's Heat Noise ... 