Christmas Archives - Page 2 of 3

Better Off Dead (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

August 1, 20111980s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Teen

Better Off Dead…
***/**** Image B- Sound C-
starring John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Diane Franklin, Kim Darby
written and directed by Savage Steve Holland

by Jefferson Robbins Better Off Dead… probably wouldn't have outlasted its peers among cheaply-made '80s teen comedies minus three crucial factors. There's John Cusack's extraordinary Everyguy deadpan: He reacts to absurdity without visibly reacting, a still pivot for the scene around him and the best possible audience surrogate for a vehicle like this. There's writer-director Savage Steve Holland's visual wit, rooted in classic cartoons and well-abetted by editor Alan Balsam (Revenge of the Nerds). And finally, there's Holland's clearly-demonstrated understanding of what it's like to be a teenage male–collapsing in the face of spurned love, so immersed in one's own fantasies and neuroses that everyone, even relatives and close friends, seems a grotesque. This internal state gets externalized in Better Off Dead…, as no matter where Cusack's Lane Meyer goes, he's confronted with such bizarre contortions of humanity that he might as well be an astronaut among aliens.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) [Blu-ray + DVD] + The Fourth Kind (2009)

November 9, 20102000s, 2010, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

DISNEY'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Robert Zemeckis

THE FOURTH KIND
ZERO STARS/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

by Ian Pugh If Robert Zemeckis hasn't quite left the Uncanny Valley behind, at the very least, the heart missing from his latest effort–what seems like the trillionth retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and the billionth animated one–correlates directly to its absence of personality, rather than to an absence of humanity. A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the character designs finally resemble something closer to artistic interpretation than to a failed attempt at replicating human beings exactly as they are, with Marley (Gary Oldman) and Scrooge (Jim Carrey), for example, rendered almost expressionistically to evoke rotten apples and hunched skeletons. From that standpoint, the actors' sudden bursts of acrobatic grace, no longer so incongruous, capture some of computer-animated cinema's wonder, the kind at which Zemeckis has grasped since The Polar Express–a true example of bringing the impossible to life. The only problem is that Zemeckis's own script isn't worth more than a shrug, and the film relies too much on its visuals to carry the extra weight.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) – DVD

December 8, 20091940s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family

***/**** Image F (colorized)/B+ (b&w) Sound B Extras C
starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart
screenplay by George Seaton, based on the story by Valentine Davies
directed by George Seaton

by Alex Jackson George Seaton's Miracle on 34^th Street isn't my Christmas movie of choice. My most potent movie memory of Christmas is actually watching the Star Wars trilogy when it was broadcast on the USA network however many years ago. Accordingly, I make it a point of marking the holiday by watching some kind of Star Wars-like "deep reality" science-fiction or fantasy film, such as The Lord of the Rings, or Blade Runner. A couple years back, I watched The Passion of the Christ. But I digress. Of all the major Christmas movie cults–including those surrounding A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Elf, and 1951's A Christmas Carol–the Miracle on 34^th Street cult is the one with which I'd most want to spend the holidays. The film manages to be irreverent without becoming sacrilegious and sentimental without becoming saccharine. It's a pretty silly film, but I guess you could say that it's serious about being silly. It values silliness for its restorative, therapeutic quality.

Go (1999) – Blu-ray Disc

July 29, 20091990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Crime, Drama

***½/**** Image B Sound A Extras C+
starring William Fichtner, Katie Holmes, Jay Mohr, Sarah Polley
screenplay by John August
directed by Doug Liman

by Walter Chaw I saw Doug Liman’s Swingers at the right age to recognize it as a pretty fair portrait of me and my buddies a couple of years removed from college, playing Sega hockey against each other into the small hours and doing our best to score with as wide a variety of women as possible while responsibility loomed. The dialogue struck us as true and hilarious. Three years later, 1999, I had met and married my wife and was taking for granted a genuinely great year at the movies. I remember loving The Matrix, and The Iron Giant; Fight Club changed my life a little, The Phantom Menace broke my heart, Being John Malkovich blew my mind, and Sleepy Hollow and The Blair Witch Project provided portholes backwards and forwards into beloved genres. It seems strange to say it, but without thinking much about it, I saw more films at the theatre in 1999 than I probably had in any year since the matinee of my movie-love in high school. And my wife and I have complementary tastes, always have; in retrospect, that film cemented our relationship in those first few years makes a lot of sense. But we were drawn to it insensate.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

May 1, 20092000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Breckin Meyer, Michael Douglas
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by Mark Waters

by Walter Chaw Watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a musty relic of Eisner's reign at Disney that first dreamed Ben Affleck as its star and a decade later settled on Matthew McConaughey (opposite, in some weird nepotistic recompense, Mrs. Affleck, Jennifer Garner), is excellent justification for the crib death of cynical, Eisner-hijacked, RKO-minted philosophies like Commerce over Genius. It's a retelling, I'm embarrassed to need to articulate, of Dickens's A Christmas Carol that substitutes Scrooge with serial womanizer Connor Mead (McConaughey) and Marley with old philanderer Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas, doing a broad lounge-lizard caricature the spitting image of a mummified hybrid of Robert Evans and Howard Hefner). On the eve of brother Paul's (Breckin Meyer) marriage to shrill harridan Sandra (Lacey Chabert), Connor is visited by Wayne and the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past/Present/Future to show him that true love exists in the world beyond one-night-stands with supermodels–that it in fact exists between oily Connor and first love Jenny (Garner). What this means for the audience gaping in slack-jawed awe at this thing is a good thirty minutes of unearned sentiment tacked onto the end of a noxious payload of open misogyny, fag jokes, and gags that fall square on their face. Very simply, it's the most appalling, hateful, reptilian, inept film I've seen since Love Actually, and I wish I could say that I'm surprised that it was directed by Mark Waters and written by the braintrust behind Four Christmases.

Black Christmas (1974) – Blu-ray Disc

December 5, 2008****/****, 1970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, FFC Must-Own, Horror

****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon
screenplay by Roy Moore
directed by Bob Clark

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. At the beginning of Bob Clark's other yuletide favourite, the influential horror classic Black Christmas, college student Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin) is getting ready to go home for the holidays. The sorority she belongs to receives an obscene phone call; when her "sister" Barbie (Margot Kidder) humours the pervert, sensible Clare–at the risk of making them sound one-dimensional, these characters are deftly drawn with a minimum of brushstrokes–suggests they not antagonize him. She then goes upstairs to pack, investigates a noise coming from her closet, and is asphyxiated with a plastic bag. A dread-bound dissolve from some hideous nativity scene in the attic in which Clare serves as a mummified Madonna takes us to a spot on campus the following day, where Clare's father (James Edmond), a prudish but decent man, is waiting to pick up his daughter. Not knowing what we know but indeed perplexed when Clare fails to materialize at the appointed time and place, he absently scans his surroundings, only to be struck hard by a snowball like a cosmic pie to the face. The fates clearly have it out for this family.

The Polar Express (2004) [Two-Disc Widescreen Edition] – DVD|The Polar Express Presented in 3-D – Blu-ray Disc

October 29, 20082000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg
directed by Robert Zemeckis

by Walter Chaw Robert Zemeckis's The Polar Express seems to be the culmination of a lot of his weird obsessions: his celebration of middle-class Aryan heroes; his tendency towards the tense and anxious; his love of casting an actor in multiple roles; Tom Hanks; Eddie Deezen; and that subtle quality of nightmare that infects even the most innocuous of his movies. (Zemeckis produces horror films in his spare time under the "Dark Castle" imprint; I wonder if he'll ever, What Lies Beneath notwithstanding, just cut the bushwah and make a straight shocker.) When Christopher Lloyd's Nazi-esque Judge Doom from Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit "dips" an adorable animated shoe into a corrosive sludge, Zemeckis foreshadows the engine that drives all of The Polar Express. It's infernal entertainment and comparisons to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will are unavoidable (particularly in a disturbing rally scene), but it's hard to know how much of that intense martial creepiness is intended as satire, and how much of it is just what lies beneath.

TIFF ’08: A Christmas Tale

August 29, 20082000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Christmas, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, TIFF

Un Conte de Noël***/****starring Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Cosignyscreenplay by Arnaud Desplechin, Emmanuel Bourdieudirected by Arnaud Desplechin by Bill Chambers A Gallic collision of The Family Stone (ugh) and The Royal Tenenbaums (woo) but far more palatable and novelistic than that might suggest, Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noël) unfurls over Christmas in bourgeois Roubaix, where the dysfunctional Vuillards have congregated to weigh their options now that matriarch Junon (Catherine Deneuve) has been diagnosed with cancer. She needs a bone-marrow transplant, and the only potential matches are black sheep Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and Henri's…

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – DVD|[Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

August 25, 20081990s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Musical

***/****
DVD – Image A Sound A
BD – Image A- Sound A+ Extras A-
screenplay by Caroline Thompson, based on a poem by Tim Burton (adaptation by Michael McDowell)
directed by Henry Selick

by Vincent Suarez You know the feeling: too many movies, too little time. You walk down the corridor of your local multiplex, relishing the titles on the marquees and posters, and you know that many will unfortunately have to be seen on home video. If you're lucky, you'll make wise choices, but, occasionally, your home viewing includes that film you regret not seeing theatrically. For me, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (hereafter Nightmare) is one of those films. Having grown weary of Burton's quirkiness after the disappointing Batman Returns, I passed up Nightmare in favour of movies I now cannot recall; what a shame. Fortunately, Touchstone's optical disc presentations of this magnificent film (the previous LaserDiscs and last year's DVD release) provide more than a glimpse of what was surely a wonderful theatrical experience.

A Christmas Carol (1951) [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – DVD

December 25, 20071930s, 1950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, UK

Scrooge
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns
screenplay by Noel Langley, based on the book by Charles Dickens
directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

by Alex Jackson Would you believe that my enthusiasm towards Brian Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol is significantly tempered by my familiarity with Scrooged, the 1988 partial retelling of the classic novella? That Richard Donner film is a bit of a perennial favourite, having come out the perfect year (1988) for it to enter my consciousness. (For our third grade Christmas pageant, we even led the audience in a sing-along to Tina Turner's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart"!) While I never quite thought it good enough to add to my collection, I do feel genuinely disappointed that few cable stations appear to be re-running it. Scrooged does the obvious thing by putting Ebenezer Scrooge in charge of a television network, but the update actually works and the film feels particularly relevant to contemporary viewers.

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

December 5, 20072000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Tim Allen, Martin Short, Elizabeth Mitchell, Judge Reinhold
screenplay by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss
directed by Michael Lembeck

by Bill Chambers Much like a TV show that's been on the air too long, the Santa Clause films have accrued an unwieldy supporting cast (including those old harbingers of cancellation: grandparents and babies) and begun hitting the reset button on characters thought to be at or near the end of their arcs. Here, workaholic Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is reminded via the frustrations of his second wife that he might not be husband material–which, all things considered, isn't a bad direction for the series to take, if only because we rarely see remarriage grappled with in any context on the silver screen. Still, as the house style has evolved such that it can no longer accommodate even the quasi-realist, Oh, God! Book II trappings of the original, we get that reductive trope about a family man who takes pride in his work being a man who's asking for karmic retribution. Never mind that he's fucking Santa Claus and the needs of the many would appear to outweigh the needs of the few in this case. I suppose it's progress or innovation that Mrs. Claus (Elizabeth Mitchell, whose role as one of the child catchers in Running Scared retroactively renders her a subversive presence in these films) is expecting and in her third trimester at that, thus upping the asshole quotient when Santa allows his attention to drift towards other impending deliveries for five-nanosecond stretches–but at the risk of applying logic where it isn't wanted, why would Santa impregnate his wife nine months before Christmastime? It's counterintuitive at best. And if it was an accident, surely there's an 'Abortion Clause' he could've invoked. Maybe they're saving that for a future instalment.

Bad Santa (2003) [The Unrated Version and Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

November 27, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Germany

Badder Santa (The Unrated Version)
*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
Bad Santa (Director's Cut)
**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham, John Ritter
screenplay by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
directed by Terry Zwigoff

by Walter Chaw With a premise and producing credit for the Coen Brothers and direction by Ghost World's Terry Zwigoff, the film with the best pedigree of the season is Bad Santa, making its failure particularly depressing. Its tale of ace safecracker and dangerous drunk Willie (Billy Bob Thornton), brought on board an annual mall Santa scam by criminal mastermind Marcus (Tony Cox), isn't all that inventive upon closer scrutiny, with Zwigoff's interest in the peculiarities of loneliness exhibiting themselves this time as caustic to no end and displeasingly bitter. Worse, there are two shots in the film that appear to be direct cribs of Coen Brothers shots–the first a crash zoom into an alarm clock, the second a collapse by Willie identical to a shot of Frances McDormand falling into bed in Blood Simple; what alarms isn't the instinct to borrow from innovative filmmakers, but rather the feeling of desperation that flashy camera movements in an otherwise statically shot film indicates.

Black Christmas (2006) – DVD

April 17, 20072000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Christmas, DVD, Horror

*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C+
starring Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Andrea Martin
screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the screenplay by Roy Moore
directed by Glen Morgan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The worst thing about Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas is that there’s too much of it. The original, by the tragically late Bob Clark, was a small masterpiece of economy, relying on little more than its one major set (a dormitory), an unseen killer, and some sorority sisters. But that was 1974, when nobody was paying any attention: by 2006, Hollywood had exchanged the cheap and the grungy for the overwritten and over-produced. The industry now demands rounded character arcs, and for this reason alone we’re given a backstory for the film’s slasher that nobody needed in addition to a padding-out of the action with forced cynicism and phoney characterizations. It’s an overstuffed mess that fails miserably to evoke the fear and melancholy of a spectacularly defiled Christmas.

The Year Without a Santa Claus (2006) – DVD

December 21, 20062000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Christmas, Comedy, DVD, Family, Musical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Goodman, Ethan Suplee, Delta Burke, Chris Kattan
written by Larry Wilson and Tom Martin, based on the book by Phyllis McGinley
directed by Ron Underwood

by Ian Pugh I'm not really sure how anyone could consider Santa Claus the cure for December commercialism in this day and age, but it appears to be a popular sentiment right now. Before I knew that the network-television abortion The Year Without a Santa Claus existed, I suffered through The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, a film that carries the same awful message in a way that's worth mentioning. Tricked by Martin Short's Jack Frost into relinquishing the job of Santa Claus to him, Tim Allen's Scott Calvin returns to the North Pole to discover that Christmas has become "Frostmas," an overwrought celebration of capitalism with all the child-screaming and toy-grabbing that implies. With Jack-Santa having literally taken the "Christ" out of Christmas, Tim Allen strangely becomes a surrogate Jesus figure attempting to reclaim his holiday from the money-grubbing fat man of false jolliness, who of course represents the holiday season as we know it in reality. The Santa Clause 3 essentially amounts to an episode of Allen's sitcom "Home Improvement", which is to say not only that it's terrible, but also that its attempt at a metaphor is crude and obvious–come on, Santa Claus saving Christmas from himself? In retrospect, though, I have to admit that its joyfully malevolent predisposition to be such a balls-out hypocrite is a real head-scratcher worthy of further dissection.

The Holiday (2006)

December 13, 20062000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black
written and directed by Nancy Meyers

by Walter Chaw There are bad movies, and then there are Nancy Meyers movies (first What Women Want, followed by the similarly excrescent Something’s Gotta Give): chick flicks in the most damning, insulting sense of the patronizing term and reason enough to question the wisdom of ever spending money to see a movie. If you go to Meyers’s latest, not only are you about to watch what is easily the worst movie of the year–you’re most likely going to do it in the company of people who’ll actually like it. The Holiday is appallingly written and icky besides in that familiar way of this brand of Love Actually/The Family Stone yuletide romantic refuse, casting Cameron Diaz and Jude Law as lovers fucking away the hours inside a Thomas Kincaid painting while Diaz’s frumpy house-swap buddy, played by Kate Winslet, finds meaning in Santa Monica by propping up a fossil (Eli Wallach) and falling for a James Horner-esque composer of horrible soundtracks (Jack Black). Parliament on the Thames is featured as prominently as the Pacific Coast Highway to underscore either how vacuous the filmmakers are or how stupid they think the audience is while Hans Zimmer’s soul-sucking, teddy bears-humping score saps away the last hints of credibility anyone has after participating in this gingerbread death march. If the opening voiceover narration by Winslet’s lovelorn Iris isn’t warning enough, consider that the narrative crutch used by Diaz’s emetic movie trailer editor Amanda is a series of fake movie trailers about Amanda’s romantic imbroglios.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – DVD

October 30, 20061940s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Christmas, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

***/****
OUV DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
AE DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi
screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra
directed by Frank Capra

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The year was 1990. I was 17, and had managed to elude the silver-backed beast known as It's a Wonderful Life for most of my young life. Having heard of the corn factory known as Frank Capra, I, a hard-bitten cynic, naturally feared the worst–I was more interested in corrosive (and recent) films like Do the Right Thing or Drugstore Cowboy than in some schmaltzy old battleaxe starring Jimmy Stewart. But I was working in a video store at Christmastime, which meant only one thing: the constant rotation of It's a Wonderful Life on the store monitor. And I was shocked to discover that the movie is pretty disturbing; it may have come dressed as the lamb of sentimentality, but inside it was a howling wolf, seething with failure and loneliness and wishing for something to take it all away.

The Family Stone (2005); Loggerheads (2005); The Dying Gaul (2005)

December 16, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

THE FAMILY STONE
*/****
starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Claire Danes, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams
written and directed by Thomas Bezucha

LOGGERHEADS
*½/****
starring Tess Harper, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Kelly, Michael Learned
written and directed by Tim Kirkman

THE DYING GAUL
**/****
starring Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott, Peter Sarsgaard, Ryan Miller
written and directed by Craig Lucas

by Walter Chaw An absolute freakin' nightmare: Imagine spending the holidays with Diane Keaton in full-smirk, full-chuffing, shit-eating laughter mode, then magnify that with a screenplay by hyphenate and former fashion executive Thomas Bezucha that never misses an opportunity to excrete a little dollop of quirk where silence would have spoken volumes. The Family Stone is an intensely middlebrow bath, dipped in warm sentiments and institutionalized ugliness–one half slapstick fish-out-of-water, one half chestnut-lit holiday perennial-hopeful. (The marriage works about as well as it does in other pieces of Yuletide garbage like Christmas with the Kranks and Home Alone.) Therein, eldest Stone boy Everett (professional piece of wood Dermot Mulroney) is home for the holidays (it's not as good, obviously, as Jodie Foster's film of the same name but it's cut from the same cloth) to introduce his girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) to his quirky tribe. Chief antagonist for the first hour is mousy (yeah, right) Amy (Rachel McAdams), who has an NPR duffel bag in a brief introductory shot, thus establishing her character as much as it's ever going to be established. She doesn't like Meredith because I don't know why but proceeds to brand her a racist and a boor when it seems that, mostly, Meredith is intensely uncomfortable and self-conscious. Maybe she has social anxiety disorder, or the more common stick-up-her-ass-ism. That's how appropriately-named evil mother Sybil (Diane Keaton) diagnoses her, except she calls Meredith a monkey and replaces the ass-stick with a silver spoon.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

November 11, 20052000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen
written and directed by Shane Black

by Walter Chaw The same kind of movie as Doug Liman's Mr. and Mrs. Smith but more so, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang marks the hyphenate debut of star screenwriter Shane Black, and it's the kind of movie his Last Action Hero would have been had they aimed it at adults (and cast actors). A meta-exercise taken to plucky, insouciant excess, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is nihilistic, misanthropic, and it just might hate its audience a little, but damn if it doesn't wash out as something as exhilaratingly lawless as Sin City and recklessly experimental as Rian Johnson's Brick (two other examples of noir's recent extreme makeover). Though it's not shy in its one agonizing scene of gore, the picture seems more concerned about the way we assimilate–and anticipate–sex and violence at the movies.

Eloise at Christmastime (2003) – DVD

November 26, 20042000s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Television, UK

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Julie Andrews, Sofia Vassilieva, Kenneth Welsh, Debra Monk
screenplay by Elizabeth Chandler, based on the book written by Kay Thompson & illustrated by Hilary Knight
directed by Kevin Lima

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Last year around this time, I was expressing my surprise (and perhaps embarrassment) at having actually enjoyed Disney's first Eloise TV movie, Eloise at the Plaza. For once, the Mouse House had perpetrated something that was cleverly conceived, skilfully shot, and lacking in the mushy sentiment that oozes out of many a Disney enterprise. But the jaded cynic in me was wary of the sequel, Eloise at Christmastime, which, if only to salvage my integrity, I hoped would be a cheap quickie riding on the success of the original. No such luck: Eloise at Christmastime is every bit the effervescent piece of fluff that its predecessor is. Once again director Kevin Lima has sized up the limitations of the material and obscured them with a fleet-footed visual wit, creating one of the few Christmas specials you can watch without wincing.

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

November 24, 20042000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Family, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julie Gonzalo, Dan Aykroyd
screenplay by Chris Columbus, based on the novel Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
directed by Joe Roth

by Walter Chaw Jamie Lee Curtis is looking alarmingly like Kim Hunter from Planet of the Apes and Tim Allen remains the single most aggressive, unpleasant personality who's supposed to be sunny and hilarious in the medieval endurance ritual that is Christmas with the Kranks. An act of self-flagellation like wearing a hair shirt, say, or whipping oneself with a cat-o-nine tails whilst chanting the liturgy, the picture has all the Christmas cheer of a reindeer carcass and is the finest evocation of being in Hell since The Passion of the Christ. People voting for "moral values" this last election should take a good hard look at Christmas with the Kranks, which purports to champion all those old-fashioned, God-fearing, middle-American moral landmarks (family, community, Christmas) but ends up championing consumerism, venality, hedonism, vanity, and intolerance. So much intolerance, in fact, that it plays rather well as a horror movie. A character is asked if a family not celebrating Christmas is Jewish or Buddhist: "No, none of that," he says. It reminds a lot of that "Twilight Zone" episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," where a crisis shows suburban everymen to be monstrous, tribal, and dogmatic.