I watched some Christmas films.
Better Watch Out
An interesting black comedy curio, it plays as a sort of Malcolm in the Middle meets Funny Games. It mixes up a fairly standard formula with a few pretty wild ideas (that red-yellow paint scene is alarming), some genuine nastiness and riffs on Home Alone, Scream and Michael Haneke. It has a unique tone and confounds expectations. One of the better recent Christmas horrors.
8 Jesuses out of 10
Home Alone 1 and 2
It'd been a few years, so I watched these films back to back and found them as fresh as ever. MC and the supporting cast kill it and the scripts are the perfect mix of seasonal sentiment and close to the bone anarchy. When adjusted for the target demographic, release season, age of the performer, etc. these must rank amongst the most violent films ever made. Punctured flesh, concussions, electrocutions, bricks beamed from roof tops, scarring, brain damage and 3rd degree burns. The Angels With Filthy Souls video props are glorious, and seamless in a way that most retro footage rarely is. My favourite John Hughes movies.
10 Jesuses out of 10
Mickey's Christmas Carol
Up there with Sim and the Muppets for me, the ablaze coffin at the end has freaked me out since childhood.
9 Jesuses out of 10
Babes in Toyland
Likeable fairytale pageant featuring Stan and Ollie, quite creepy in places which seems only partly intentional.
7 Jesuses out of 10
Christmas in Conneticut
Fairly uninteresting christmas screwball romance made watchable by it's star cast.
6 Jesuses out of 10
Elf
High concept low quality jerk off comedy. Shoddily cobbled together in a way that makes its romance and father son estrangement plots seem insincere and its ablist jokes cheap. A typical slightly-below-decent Favreau effort.
4 Jesuses out of 10
Miracle on 34th Street
A really sweet Christmas fantasy. Really likeable characters and solid performances all round. It is an odd film though. It takes a big verbal swipe at the callous commercialism of Christmas (thumbs up), yet the film bases the ideas of good will and Christmas miracle around the receiving of stuff. The most egregious example sees a young girl asking for, and recieving a fecking luxurious house in the burbs.
8 Jesuses out of 10
Love Actually
Smug, patronising, nasty piece of shit. It opens with Hugh Grant extolling the virtues of the very selfish, evolutionary-directive tribal love, and the very selfish, evolutionary-informing sexual love. The film bottles these up and mis-sells them as milk of human kindness. So within the context of the movie the love that Hitler has for his dogs represents a moral bearing and the primal lizard brain lust becomes the love-conquers-all redemption theme.
Within the first 5 minutes the film has made its first hilarious transphobic gag - at the expense of Brazilian prostitutes no less, and exploited a woman's body as a prop for male awkwardness. Both these things become a trend. The film's range of female characters - from the ditsy to the fat, the lower class to the topless - are all presented as obedient objects to smug male power. All this is apparently allowed when it's a product of upper Middle class liberalism, that sells sexual permissiveness as faux subversion.
Utterly shit filmmaking as usual but here It wasn't saved by a likeable script. I wasn't expecting anything amazing, maybe a naff, light hearted Christmas comedy. Instead I got two-plus hours of complete shit. I didn't want to turn this into a rant but it is such an awful film, made for awful people by awful people. It's a film that celebrates an insidious cultural and communal corrosion, and it genuinely angered me.
No compassion, no charity, all greedy self serving, masturbatory love. Love actually? How about you feck off Actually Richard, you fecking horrible, hateful, cnut.
Herod massacring babies out of 10
The Shop Around The Corner
Another nice but odd Christmas movie. It features a secret admirer romantic mix up. The performances from Stewart and co. sell it. The romance doesn't really work but it has a very nice spirit of Christmas moment late on.
8 Jesuses out of 10
Scrooged
Christmas comedy that doubles up as a satire on the tv industry. Largely good fun with some nice cutting comedy but it doesn't really know how to do sincerity.
6 Jesuses out of 10
