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You’re in for a holiday treat if you’ve never seen what’s often referred to as “the Drew Barrymore Babes in Toyland.” Drew (perhaps even more adorable in this than she was in E.T.) plays Lisa Piper, an eleven-year-old who spends all of her time taking care of her siblings and cooking for her family — a lady with such “grown-up” responsibilities certainly has no time for things as frivolous as toys. But “believing” in toys is going to be essential after she’s transported to Toyland during a Christmas Eve blizzard, where she stops the wedding of Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen) to the villainous Barnaby Barnacle (Richard Mulligan); she soon teams up with Mary, her true love Jack Be Nimble (Keanu Reeves!) and Georgie Porgie (some dude named Googy Gress) to stop Barnacle from taking over Toyland, a task for which they entreat the help of the Toymaster (Pat Morita!). Okay, watching this is like being force-fed a stocking’s worth of candy canes, but how can you not love a movie where Mr. Miyagi ends up being revealed as ol’ St. Nick himself?
A sort of inverted take on Charles Dickens’ classic holiday yarn and depressingly cynical even for Blackadder, A Christmas Carol follows Ebenezer Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson), a shop proprietor who’s probably the nicest man in Victorian England; unfortunately, everyone takes advantage of his kindness and generosity, rendering him constantly broke and miserable. The Spirit of Christmas (Robbie Coltrane) shows him visions of his powerful yet cruel ancestors, men that Ebenezer comes to admire for their wit and success — when asked what would happen if he behaved more like them, the Spirit shows him a distant descendent, General Admiral Blackadder, the ruthless official of a Universe-spanning Empire. Ebenezer wakes up on Christmas morning a changed man: mean, miserly and convinced that “Bad guys have all the fun” — this sudden turn, of course, backfires on him horrendously. Every incarnation of Blackadder was trembling with existential dread behind all of the jokey-jokes, but A Christmas Carol feels more like the warning sign of an upcoming moral apocalypse than anything that had come before or after it.
The director of Back to the Future takes on a more classical time travel tale with this adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella that showcases the motion-capture performance technology that Robert Zemeckis was (somewhat unfortunately) so fascinated with throughout the first decade of the 21st century. This style of animation makes for an occasionally dazzling yet often emotionally soulless experience, turning Dickens’ amazing story into little more than a series of XBox 360 cutscenes — thankfully, Disney made Zemeckis realize that this gimmick is ultimately a creative dead end when it mercifully pulled the plug on his planned remake of Yellow Submarine. However, there are traces of a rich imagination at work peppered throughout this strange experiment, particularly in a sequence where Scrooge’s journey with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come involves him shrinking in size and going on a kind of frantic Honey, I Shrunk the Kids adventure on, above and below the streets of London. Some of the performances are fun, too, with Jim Carrey doing good work as not only Scrooge but all three ghosts as well (particularly the mesmerizing, ethereal Ghost of Christmas Past), and Gary Oldman‘s frightening Marley is somewhat reminiscent of his 1992 turn as Dracula (Oldman also doubles as an inexplicably dwarf-like Bob Crachit). Anyway, it was kind of fun and all, but back to good old-fashioned moviemaking with you, Mr. Zemeckis.
Okay, yeah, for all of the praise it gets for being one of the best action movies ever made (if not the best), Die Hard should also be called out on a few things as well. First of all, the entire initial premise is bogus — what company, no matter what business it might be in, would hold its office party on Christmas Eve? Does Nakatomi only hire single people without families and friends or something? And another thing‚ ah, on second thought, why gripe? It’s Christmas, and it’s Die Hard! The first (and, to date, best) cinematic adventure of New York cop John McClane has become as much a holiday classic as It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story — and those movies don’t have Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman, who comprise one of the most entertaining, intriguing and satisfying hero-villain team-ups in the history of the action-adventure genre. Except for a handful of aesthetic details (like Bonnie Bedelia’s extra-large ’80s hair), Die Hard has also aged remarkably well — it’s hard to believe that this is, as of this writing, a movie that’s pushing 24. Throw another log on the fire (or mag in the machine gun) and spend another Christmas with ol’ John.
A terrific premise almost completely undone by bad direction and an appallingly wretched script, Die Hard 2 finds John McClane spending Christmas Eve a year after the events of Die Hard at Washington D.C.’s Dulles Airport, where he takes on terrorists led by a traitorous U.S. Army colonel (William Sadler) that have seized control of the air traffic control system. There’s some good action scenes here, though Renny Harlin’s crude directing style has him focusing on every single bullet hitting flesh, every blade puncturing skin and every body crashing through glass in close-up and/or slow motion, making for an appallingly and needlessly violent film; Harlin’s work is Oscar-worthy, though, compared to the horrendous screenplay by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson, which is made even worse by worthless one-liners that were obviously added during post production (nothing worse than ADR that sounds like ADR) probably because the producers thought the movie suddenly needed to be “funnier” — the worst examples of this being McClane’s “Where’s the fu**in’ door?” as he struggles to get untangled from a parachute and a buffoonish airport cop complaining “Fu**in’ tourists — oughta be a law” (um‚ is it usually only locals that hang out at the airport, officer?). The saving grace of all this is, of course, Bruce Willis, who manages to make even this near-disaster watchable and reasonably entertaining with his effortless charisma.
More a creepy self-portrait than a gothic fantasy (or suburban satire), Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton letting it all hang out, purging all those feelings of anger, fear and frustration that come with being an “outsider,” a cinematic cleansing that was probably prompted after what must’ve been the exhausting, soul-crushing task of bringing Batman to life. This is Burton’s first collaboration with the man who would become his muse and alter ego, Johnny Depp; it’s also his first — and last — project with one of his personal heroes, Vincent Price (simply wonderful as Edward’s inventor/father). Winona Ryder plays the hot cheerleader Burton never got to have, a popular hottie who comes to love the wild-haired freak who’s got a knack for creating startling and unique pieces of art; Anthony Michael Hall is the hunky jock who used to be a nerd (in Sixteen Candles,The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, etc.) and is therefore a traitor, one who must be (spoiler!) killed. Yeah, it’s all a little icky when you look at it like this, isn’t it? Still, Edward Scissorhands is nothing if not a brave and original piece of work, featuring astonishing production design and a particularly excellent performance by Depp.
An anthology film that probably looked a lot better in the imagination as its makers thought it up while drunk in some L.A. bar (hey, it’s a theory as to this thing’s origin), Four Rooms features four talented directors slumming it as they each tell a story taking place in a different room of a five-star hotel on New Year’s Eve, all linked by an ever-mugging, cartoonish bellhop named Ted (Tim Roth, not so much slumming as lost without not just one but four directors). Allison Anders’ “The Missing Ingredient” has a coven of witches checking into the Honeymoon Suite to perform a ritual to reverse a curse put on their goddess; the “missing ingredient” for their potion is semen, and one guess as to who they get it from. Alexandre Rockwell’s “The Wrong Man” has Ted being forced to participate in a fantasy hostage situation between a weirdo husband and wife (David Proval and Jennifer Beals), a scenario that involves the bellhop narrowly missing someone’s vomit coming from the floor above. Speaking of vomit, Ted explosively upchucks when he sees what he describes as a “dead WHORE!” in the bed of Room 309 in Robert Rodriguez’s “The Misbehavers,” the director’s pre-Spy Kids portrait of youngsters getting into grown-up trouble (which features a fun, Gomez Addams-style performance by Antonio Banderas as their dashing father). Finally, in the Penthouse, Quentin Tarantino‘s actually-not-too-bad “The Man From Hollywood” features a movie star (Tarantino himself) and his entourage indulging in alcohol-fueled bets with rather macabre conditions. Tarantino and Rodriguez would later find much greater success with their drive-in double bill, Grindhouse; everyone else stayed far away from any variation on this type of format following this disaster.
The first Friday (1995) is a curious piece, a sort-of South Central variation on Clerks that suddenly turns into Boyz N the Hood in the final act — a schizo shift that ended up foreshadowing the career of producer-star Ice Cube, who’s since veered wildly from stoner comedies to violent dramas to family-friendly flicks with no clear idea of where he’s going with all this other than feeding his bank account. By the third film in the Friday franchise, Friday After Next, any and all gangsta shit had apparently been purged (most of it, anyway), satisfied with simply being a live-action cartoon in which a mean ol’ landlady will threaten to sick her homosexual ex-convict son on you if you don’t pay the rent on time and the cops won’t shut down your house party if you bribe them with weed. Actually, the opening scene is rather funny, featuring Craig (Cube), who’s finally moved out and gotten his own crib, spending the early morning of Christmas Eve wrestling with a robber dressed as Santa Claus (Rickey Smiley) whilst frantically trying to wake up his sawing-logs roommate, Day-Day (Mike Epps). Santa ends up running off with their money and Christmas presents, which forces the roomies to get jobs as security guards — and, later, to throw a “rent party” in an attempt to recoup the stolen cash. Ridiculous and pointless, but also endearingly so — how can you not but feel the holiday spirit with a movie in which there’s a shop called “Pimps and Hoes?”
A rural satire that’s a lot more clever and subversive than it’s given credit for, Funny Farm stars Chevy Chase as Andy Farmer, a New York sports writer who moves with his wife, Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith — whatever happened to her?), to the seemingly picture-perfect town of Redbud, Vermont so he can write a novel. There’s trouble from the start, as they don’t get along with the suspicious, cranky locals and their own marriage is put to the test when Elizabeth tells Andy that she doesn’t like his book — and that she’s been secretly furthering her own career as a writer of children’s books. They finally decide to divorce and make a deal with the residents to create a large-scale charade in making Rosebud look like the town Normal Rockwell always wanted in order to lure prospective house buyers, which includes pulling off the best small-town Christmas celebration you could ever imagine. A smart dark comedy misleadingly marketed as a showcase for Chevy Chase’s pratfalls, Funny Farm actually features some of the former Saturday Night Live player’s best acting work, which probably comes courtesy of director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, Slap Shot), calling the shots on his last feature film.
It’s Christmas in L.A.! Director Doug Liman’s Pulp Fiction-ish tale of drugs, sex and mayhem is one of the most underrated films of the ’90s, a wicked rush of a movie that features scene-stealing turns by Timothy Olyphant and William Fichtner. There are several interconnecting stories here, one of which features Olyphant as a shirtless, Santa hat-wearing drug dealer who (rather menacingly) quotes The Breakfast Club simply because one of his new customers is named “Claire” (Katie Holmes) getting swindled by a (semi-) clever supermarket cashier who’s grown sick of the minimum-wage life (Sarah Polley); meanwhile, there’s trouble in Vegas when ne’er-do-well dealer Simon (Desmond Askew), the only member of his party who didn’t get food poisoning from the buffet, hooks up with two girls from a wedding party — Simon’s actually being staked out by Officer Burke (William Fichtner), an oddly creepy cop who’s enlisted two of Simon’s customers (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr) to help him make the bust. Funny, smart and downright dangerous at times, Go needs more people to love it — won’t you join our awesome club? Warning: Cats can see your soul if you get too high, a lesson hard learned by the hapless Mannie (Nathan Bexton).
A superhero film that serves as the ultimate fantasy for any Jewish kid who grew up in a non-Jewish school and/or neighborhood, The Hebrew Hammer stars Adam Goldberg (perhaps playing a grown-up version of his Dazed and Confused character) as Mordechai Jefferson Carver, a Certified Circumcised Dick who dresses like a cross between a pimp and a Hasidic Jew and has dedicated his life to defending his “people.” The Hammer lives in a world where Christians and Jews have shared a tenuous peace for decades, a peace that is now threatened by Damian, the evil son of Santa Claus, and his plan to destroy Hanukkah and make everyone celebrate Christmas. It’s up to Mordechai and his allies (which include his love interest, Esther, and a gang of Kwanzaa supporters) to save Hanukkah and restore the mutual trust between Christians and Jews. The Hebrew Hammer is nowhere near as offensive as it sounds — and, unfortunately, nor is it anywhere near as funny, even though it certainly scores a lot of points just for its completely outrageous and original premise (and for a particularly hilarious Melvin Van Peebles cameo in which he reprises one of his famous blaxploitation roles). Ultimately, it’s Goldberg who keeps it from falling apart, completely committed to his character and the weirdo world he inhabits.
The Coen Brothers‘ screwball homage to the shameless sentimentality of Frank Capra and the rat-a-tat dialogue of Howard Hawks stars Tim Robbins as Norville Barnes, a naive young man from Muncie, Indiana who manages to go from mail clerk to President of Hudsucker Industries in about a week’s time thanks to the scheming board of directors looking to plummet the stock — a plan that backfires when Norville’s invention, the hula hoop, ends up being a smash success. Jennifer Jason Leigh is the fast-talking, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter looking to get to the bottom of it all, with Bruce Campbell sneaking in a few good bits as her smirking colleague, Smitty. While it doesn’t always work the way the Coens (and co-writer Sam Raimi) probably intended, The Hudsucker Proxy is still a charmer, with a terrific ensemble cast that thankfully “gets” its retro style — especially Paul Newman as the cigar-chomping, villainous Sidney J. Mussburger. The film takes place n New York City around the holidays, with a key (and rather suspenseful) sequence taking place on New Year’s Eve that proves there’s magic afoot in the big city when ’tis the season.
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You forgot this was (kind of) a Christmas movie, didn’t you? The opening credit sequence sweeps across the Los Angeles skyline to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock” until we come upon a half-naked blonde on a high-rise balcony who ends up plummeting to her death; the Christmas cheer continues later when Gary Busey blows away a television set that’s playing the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol with a machine gun, exclaiming “Goddamn Christmas!” Meanwhile, there’s tension in the Homicide department of the LAPD as just-turned-50 Roger Murtagh (Danny Glover) has been assigned a new partner, a seemingly suicidal live wire named Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) — together, they take on drug dealers, prostitution rings, guys who want to jump off buildings and nasty Asians who specialize in electro-shock therapy. And so was the beginning of a beautiful friendship — and a hugely lucrative franchise, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that every subsequent sequel just got more and more goofy to the point that, by Lethal Weapon 4, we were all too old for this shit.
James Goldman’s terrific stage play gets a robust cinematic treatment thanks to an amazing cast of super-actors like Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn, John Castle, Anthony Hopkins (making his film debut), Jane Merrow, Nigel Terry and even Timothy Dalton. A highly entertaining portrait of one of the most dysfunctional families in history (but certainly nowhere near being historically accurate), The Lion in Winter is set in medieval France during Christmas 1183 and chronicles the various tugs-of-war between King Henry II (O’Toole), his wife, Eleanor (Hepburn, who won an Oscar for her performance), who he keeps locked in the tower, and their three sons, all of who want to inherit the throne and have their own individual plans of how to do so. Everyone’s playing everyone else for a fool in this wicked and witty holiday tale that plays more like a conspiracy thriller with a dark sense of humor than a traditional “costume drama.” Oscars also went to John Barry’s mischievous score and Goldman’s own adapted screenplay, which is regarded by many as having some of the best dialogue ever written.
This is actually more of a Thanksgiving movie, but you try telling that to the millions of people who watch it every year at Christmas. Miracle on 34th Street is a classic, which means you’re obliged to watch it at least once — and if you’re one of the few people who have never seen it, why not do do this year? Santa Claus is alive and well and playing himself in New York City’s annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a phenomenon that ends up being just the thing to make a true believer out of Susan (Natalie Wood), a little girl who’s way too young to be so cynical. The premise of Kris Kringle going to court and defending his own identity in modern-day Manhattan may sound ridiculous, but the movie pulls off its fantastical premise by playing it completely straight — and with the Oscar-winning performance of the wonderful Edmund Gwenn as Santa. The 1994 remake written by John Hughes is kind of cute (and Richard Attenborough makes for a pretty great Santa as well), but this original 1947 version is the real Christmas Miracle.
Yes, Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake is superior in every way, but the original Ocean’s 11 does have a fun party atmosphere that comes with five members of the Rat Pack (Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop) doing their thing in a New Year’s Eve setting. Danny Ocean (Sinatra) and Jimmy Foster (Lawford) hire a gang of WWII 82nd Airborne veterans to rob five different Las Vegas casinos — the Sahara, the Riviera, the Desert Inn, the Sands and the Flamingo — on a single night. Thanks to the team being made up of mostly vets, the heist is pulled off with the precision of a military operation — that is, until their electrician (Richard Conte) drops dead of a heart attack in the middle of the Strip, and a former gangster (Cesar Romero) gets involved in recovering all of the casino bosses’ money. Ultimately an argument against cremation if there ever was one, Ocean’s 11 isn’t half as cool and clever as it thinks it is — then again, maybe it is, and we’re just not cool and clever enough to realize it.
There isn’t a more miserable day in Los Angeles than Christmas Eve in writer-director Timothy Linh Bui’s multi-character portrait of chance, tragedy and divine intervention, a film that has managed to escape complete obscurity thanks to being both Jessica Biel’s nude debut (a movie stripper that actually gets naked? The hell you say!) and the final film appearance of the late, great Patrick Swayze (who plays the sleazy owner of the club where Biel does her thing). Biel’s son is in a coma (?!) and there’s a mortician (Eddie Redmayne) who’s in love with her; meanwhile, her dad (Ray Liotta), an ex-gangster, is contemplating revenge against his colleagues, much to the chagrin of his former boss (Kris Kristofferson). Oh, there’s also a suicidal ex-priest (Forest Whitaker) who develops an unexpected bond with a tranny hooker (Alejandro Romero), too. Yeah, it’s kind of a lower-budget Crash (and Crash isn’t exactly the great film it fooled everyone into thinking it was), but Powder Blue has a sincerity that film doesn’t‚ and the sight of a topless Jessica Biel has a certain way of making your day.
Remember back when Ben Affleck was pretty much doing every half-assed movie offered to him to the point where his very presence became synonymous with both “tedium” and “overexposure” and he had to disappear for a while before re-emerging as a (rather good) film director? Reindeer Games is one of those movies. Actually, you can’t blame ol’ Ben for wanting to do this one — he got to work with director John Frankenheimer (this ended up being his final film), the twists and turns in Ehren Kruger’s ridiculous script probably at least read well on paper and he got to romp around naked with Charlize Theron in a rousing session of just-got-out-of-prison sex. All plusses in pre-production, though unfortunately this heist-gone-wrong thriller ended up being just too absurd to even qualify as a guilty pleasure, with Affleck as an ex-con getting roped into a holiday casino heist by psycho Gary Sinise and his idiot criminal pals. With so much talent both behind and in front of the camera, it’s truly a marvel (or is it a Christmas miracle?) that this thing ended up being so stupid and incompetent.
One of the supposedly worst movies ever made became one of the most popular after it appeared on a now much-beloved episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is about as stupid as a movie can get, but it also has a big stupid heart, making it difficult to dismiss it as simply a piece of bah-humbug — whether you’ve got Crow, Tom Servo and the rest of the gang making pithy comments in the bottom right corner or not. Martians kidnap Santa Claus and bring him to Mars to set up shop, but to reveal the why, the how and the what happens next of this startling sci-fi scenario would be like telling you what you got for Christmas before you opened your presents — you don’t want all of the surprises spoiled, do you (especially the harrowing polar bear attack)? This is truly something special; you’ll know if you’re up for it depending on how you react to the film’s opening shot: a pan from a television broadcasting “KID-TV” to a couple of seemingly lobotomized green-faced Martian kids watching in stoic silence. A remake has been rumored since 2000, with Jim Carrey supposedly attached to the role of Dropo, the King Martian’s assistant who ends up being the Martian Santa‚ actually, we wouldn’t mind seeing that.
Yeah, we’re talking about the Santa Claus: The Movie you’re thinking of, the one from the ’80s, and before you start making fun of it, just hold your horses (or, rather, your reindeer, buster). Yes, it’s hokey as all get-out, but you have to admit that David Huddleston (who would later portray the other Jeff Lebowski in The Big Lebowski) might be the best movie Santa ever; not only does he look the part, but he’s got the twinkle in his eye, the love in his heart and the cheer in his soul. Also, John Lithgow rules as a greedy toy company executive who conjures up a scheme to commercialize the holiday even more with a March-set “Christmas II,” and Dudley Moore as an elf is‚ well, Dudley Moore as an elf. The part of the story set in contemporary times, which involves a homeless kid who salivates and licks his lips whilst gazing into the window of a McDonald’s (ah, ’tis the season for product placement), is strictly hit-and-miss, though the film’s first act, which deals with how Santa Claus came to be and how everything involved with his mythos actually works is charming, imaginative and refreshingly earnest. There are much worse trips to the North Pole that you could take than this one.