Post by caucasoididiot on Dec 9, 2011 10:53:19 GMT -5
I had at first thought to explicitly restrict the Miracle on 34th Street type of actual "Christmas movie" from this list, but that seems too narrow.
However, what I actually wanted to go into here is the weird set of movies I tend to watch this time of year because they have some Christmas element to them. A classic example which will be filling my screen soon is Jacob's Ladder. Somewhat paraphrased, I think, but, "I'm gonna get Santa! My kid's only picture was in that wallet!"
James Coburn made a number of great movies over the years, and The President's Analyst is one I heartily recommend. This delightful comedy of paranoia and deception ends with a Christmas party. It also highlights Godfrey Cambridge, a talent who died far too young.
Speaking of dark, absurdist comedy, I watched The bed sitting room the other night. Now, there's really no Christmas moment in this story of the 20 known British survivors of the nuclear misunderstanding whose third (or is it the fourth?) anniversary opens the story, but until getting a nice widscreen DVD last year I used to watch it on a scruffy tape from the '80s laced with Christmas themed ads from the local waterbed store that hosted "Night Comfort Theater."
But veteran British actor Ralph Richardson, who played "Lord Fortnum of Alamein," as a much younger man played the post-apocalyptic "Boss" of Everytown in Things to Come. The Christmas connection? Everytown is smashed by a bolt-from-the-blue air raid on Christmas Eve, 1940. As an aside, the Wells novel from which this film was adapted is different in some significant ways and is--in my view--the best of Wells' later works.
The Japanese drama Love Complex was admittedly a TV show, but is my favorite piece of Japanese TV, bar none. Opening as what seems only a more quirky and offbeat version of a fairly typical workplace comedy, by the end it becomes a surrealistic psycho-drama in which "Room-Chief" Ryuzaki Gou (Karasawa Toshiaki from 20th Century Boys) is revealed to be a preternatural demon who is not only smashing the company from within but manifesting in the minds of his subordinates as an evil Santa who urges them to suicide. I've never heard the line "Merii Kurisumasu!" delivered with such gleeful malice. I recently ordered this one with subtitles and can't wait to share it with others.
Antonio Margheriti's Assignment in Outer Space has a brief, throwaway line at one point that it's Christmas on Earth. This one, though, I tend to use as the transition to his bigger budgeted Gamma I Quadrilogy, one of these opening with a New Yaer's Eve party. These movies are great cheese, real gorgonzola, and would have made great experiments.
♪ Let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year
Or I'll tear your throat out and kick you in the ear! ♫
Edit:
How did I forget Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence?
"What's he saying to us?"
"He thinks he's Santa Claus."
"Bonkers."
However, what I actually wanted to go into here is the weird set of movies I tend to watch this time of year because they have some Christmas element to them. A classic example which will be filling my screen soon is Jacob's Ladder. Somewhat paraphrased, I think, but, "I'm gonna get Santa! My kid's only picture was in that wallet!"
James Coburn made a number of great movies over the years, and The President's Analyst is one I heartily recommend. This delightful comedy of paranoia and deception ends with a Christmas party. It also highlights Godfrey Cambridge, a talent who died far too young.
Speaking of dark, absurdist comedy, I watched The bed sitting room the other night. Now, there's really no Christmas moment in this story of the 20 known British survivors of the nuclear misunderstanding whose third (or is it the fourth?) anniversary opens the story, but until getting a nice widscreen DVD last year I used to watch it on a scruffy tape from the '80s laced with Christmas themed ads from the local waterbed store that hosted "Night Comfort Theater."
But veteran British actor Ralph Richardson, who played "Lord Fortnum of Alamein," as a much younger man played the post-apocalyptic "Boss" of Everytown in Things to Come. The Christmas connection? Everytown is smashed by a bolt-from-the-blue air raid on Christmas Eve, 1940. As an aside, the Wells novel from which this film was adapted is different in some significant ways and is--in my view--the best of Wells' later works.
The Japanese drama Love Complex was admittedly a TV show, but is my favorite piece of Japanese TV, bar none. Opening as what seems only a more quirky and offbeat version of a fairly typical workplace comedy, by the end it becomes a surrealistic psycho-drama in which "Room-Chief" Ryuzaki Gou (Karasawa Toshiaki from 20th Century Boys) is revealed to be a preternatural demon who is not only smashing the company from within but manifesting in the minds of his subordinates as an evil Santa who urges them to suicide. I've never heard the line "Merii Kurisumasu!" delivered with such gleeful malice. I recently ordered this one with subtitles and can't wait to share it with others.
Antonio Margheriti's Assignment in Outer Space has a brief, throwaway line at one point that it's Christmas on Earth. This one, though, I tend to use as the transition to his bigger budgeted Gamma I Quadrilogy, one of these opening with a New Yaer's Eve party. These movies are great cheese, real gorgonzola, and would have made great experiments.
♪ Let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year
Or I'll tear your throat out and kick you in the ear! ♫
Edit:
How did I forget Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence?
"What's he saying to us?"
"He thinks he's Santa Claus."
"Bonkers."
