Past Lives (2023)

 

Past Lives (2023)

Director: Celine Song

Stars: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro

Short Review, no spoilers

Affairs limited by heart-wrenching barriers between would-be lovers are nothing new in drama, however Past Lives is a modern take on the kind that are devastating for their polite restraint. This one clings by a slender thread stretched across South Korea to the USA via stuttering video call connections and childhood memory, and is problematised by personal ambition and cultural difference. The intelligent performances of the two leads that are masterclasses in subtle emotional punch as well as character definition are worth the watch alone. It is also an illuminatingly personal perspective of migration and how it affects an individual psyche.

Full Review (spoilers)

Past Lives is a disarmingly small story told through several tendrils – through the poignancy of a love affair distanced by both time and geography; through the differences between one nation and another; and through distinct personalities that show influences of gender and culture but are nevertheless drawn to each other by something perhaps indefinable, maybe not even real in a flesh and blood sense.

At the beginning, Seung Ah Moon demonstrates the naïve brutality of a bold little girl that takes things as they come when she bids a flippant goodbye to a boy that she likes very much. To him it cuts much deeper. Later in life, she’s now Nora and flying high in New York when she stumbles upon a social media reach out from her long-lost friend and responds. They embark upon a relationship via regular video calls, which lasts until both have to call time as they respectively have personal ambitions they can’t ignore, and so ends a potentially powerful romance. Each drift in to committed relationships and know no more of each other until another 12 years pass and Hae Sung contacts Nora again – he’s broken up with a long-term girlfriend and has finally decided to come to New York, but it’s just a vacation as Nora assures her husband. Until she meets Hae Sung that is and with dubious/admirable candidness, tells husband Arthur that yes he has come specifically to see her, is an attractive man, and has stirred memories of the land she was born in but hasn’t seen since she left over 20 years previously. Naturally perhaps this is what an insecure Arthur hears most loudly when to be fair, Nora also speaks of the intensity of memory that inevitably stirs feelings that can be skewed and misinterpreted, as well as reassurances that she does indeed love her husband and is a practical woman who has no desire to throw her carefully assembled life away for one that could have but didn’t happen.

Dinner between the love triangle is excruciating, with Arthur firmly on the outside but hanging in there while the reunion plays out. This is no period drama with old-fashioned constraints, rather an apparently emotionally mature modern tale of restricted love where we are all to understand that of course you would choose career over love and dilute desire to make the sensible decisions in life. Arthur and Hae Sung are cordial with each other and Nora is seemingly breezy. She strolls away with Hae Sung to wait for his Uber and they stand together with barely a word, slowly turning towards each other until they are abruptly interrupted by the taxi. Nothing has happened, nothing will happen, but finally repression is crushed when Nora breaks down in tears and is comforted by Arthur waiting on the steps to their building. Arthur showed surprise when she told him she was always a cry-baby and had to be comforted by Hae Sung in the past, but now finally the visit from her long-lost love has opened up the person she used to be to the one who worries that he doesn’t know that side of her enough.

Past Lives is in some senses a very traditional romance, a story of lost love troubled by physical distance and social obstacles. It’s disguised by modern sensibilities and objects however, not only technology and geographical remoteness, but also the now commonly accepted drive for ambition and professionalism. In place of previous social restraints to love, passion, emotion, risk that came from above, we now appear to do it to ourselves.

Differences in cultural values are highlighted when Nora observes how ‘Korean Korean’ Hae Sung is, as opposed to American Korean, that he still lives with his parents, and Hae Sung tells the couple that work for him is hard as he does his boss’ work as well as his own, as is the accepted way in his home country. Both characters are associated with their opposing cultural values – Nora is creative, competitive and emotional while Hae Sung is associated with obedience and practicality. But lest there be any danger of superiority from the Westernised Nora over Hae Sung, it is worth noting that as wry, confident and career-successful as Nora is, it is Hae Sung that has the bravery and emotional disregard for risk to put himself out there alone, to make the grand romantic gesture, whereas Nora is never prepared to even go to Korea let alone open herself up to the possibility of a different life with perhaps the one she is meant to be with.

Of course there are always other possible readings, like perhaps Hae Sung is less a fully-fledged character and more a ghost-like fantasy figure that represents Nora’s longing for a part of herself left behind in the country of her birth. Either way, it is a beautifully performed piece, with Teo Yoo as Hae Sung particularly commendable. Sensitive but dignified, masculine but vulnerable, he is the image of solidity yet represents the intangibility of psychic loss.

Poor Things (2023)

 

Poor Things (2023)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Stars: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef

Short Review, no spoilers

Who needs Barbie when you have Bella Baxter? Both are artificially constructed and both enter the ‘real’ world baffled by societal restrictions upon their femininity, but these two icons of empowerment differ wildly in their approach – while Barbie lapses in to existential crisis, Bella launches in to her circumstances with unapologetic lack of restraint. Emma Stone’s character is also a lot more fun and adult as a saucy and generally badly behaved Frankenstein’s monster in Yorgos Lanthimos’ version of Alasdair Gray’s novel. A well-cast and excellently performed, bawdy slice of artful eccentricity, Poor Things sits in arch light relief amongst its rivals for awards glory and deserves success.

Full Review (spoilers)

One of the most delightful aspects of Poor Things is it’s address to corporeality through both science and humour, which perhaps surprisingly helps us to view the human more humanely. Dr Godwin Baxter has salvaged a suicide victim from the river in to which she plunged herself and reanimated her using the brain of her unborn child. As dastardly as this sounds it is all part of a tenderly, objectively administered experiment, the results of which we bear witness to as the film unfolds. Opening in the household of the doctor and his ward, we see a tall and gothically attractive young woman with the mind of a child who is boisterous and unpredictable but nevertheless tended to with patience by the man himself as well as a housekeeper. Invited in to the fold is a young medical student to make notes on Bella’s progress while the busy doctor continues his day job, however Bella is rapidly growing from toddler state (disturbingly playful stabby stabby games in the doctor’s autopsy room) to an id-happy one - sexually aware, cognitively demanding and desperate to see more than the inside walls of the doctor’s house. In response, Dr Godwin decides that the average but kindly student Max can marry her as long as she stays behind closed doors, however the lawyer employed to draw up the contract is Super-Cad, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who immediately explores his sleazy curiosity by finding Bella in the house and poking her between the legs.

Again, the mad scientist who gave birth to all of this – affectionately called ‘God’ by Bella – proves himself to be less the control freak we may have expected when he reluctantly but reasonably allows Bella to leave. Henceforth an adventure in Lisbon with her equally randy accomplice – apparently though as Bella actually proves to be less vulnerable than expected and way too much for this notorious lover and leaver. Pushing Wedderburn’s limits beyond what he thought was controversial and leaving him as consternated as those he had used and abused himself, Bella enjoys and explores and Wedderburn loses his mind. There’s a dance scene during which Bella’s typical abandon matches weirdly and wonderfully with Wedderburn’s desperate attempts to temper it, resulting in a chaotically compelling display.

To his horror, Wedderburn finds himself besotted with Bella and the next man to try to imprison her. However, suit-casing her on to a cruise ship and trying to sell it as just the next step on the adventure she had so much wanted to embark upon, Bella is not fooled but disgruntled and instead finds expansion through philosophical thought from a couple of bohemians on board. This is also where she is first introduced to the concept of societal suffering, as the more cynical of these new companions literally shows her (from a distance) extreme poverty as it is playing out below the decadence of the upper decks. Bella cries and promptly sends Wedderburn’s gambling winnings to the dying babies via a couple of sly cruise staff who steal it and ensure Bella and Wedderburn’s removal from the ship. Next is Bella’s dalliance with prostitution to enjoy her favourite thing and sustain herself financially – sex?! and have money to survive?! Oh joy, who knew life could be so easy. Extra-curricular activities are ‘socialism’, a satisfying lesbian partner, and the last straw in Wedderburn’s dedication to the woman he has become infatuated with. She spits ever more poshly and verbosely in his face, and he ends up in a padded cell.

Meanwhile back home, dear old God is missing his wantaway daughter but attempts to scientifically assuage his pain by making a new one. She is much more lacking however, and God’s cancer that Max offers to cut out is too far gone – a genuinely tragic acknowledgement that is as poignant as it is matter of fact from this emphatic man of science. Word is sent to Bella and the homecoming to ‘Father’ and betrothed would seem to wrap things up, but … up turns husband of the woman Bella was before she was reanimated, a sociopathic military general who enjoyed a life with his wife as well as random cruelty wherever he could direct it, mostly at the end of a pistol to servants etc. Interestingly, Bella decides to leave Max at the altar and give life with Alfie Blessington a go, where she learns of a miserable existence which likely provoked her vessel’s desire to end itself, along with the child she carried. Strangely, she tells her ‘husband’ all about God’s experiment without pointing out that reigniting marital relations with him would result in a form of incest – she inhabits the body of Alfie’s wife but has grown through the brain of their child – you might have thought this would put an end to things instantly. Nevertheless, she succeeds in putting a bullet in Alfie’s foot and making good her escape with the assistance of Max, also instructing him to patch Alfie up and make him in to a new addition to her beloved God’s surgically spliced animal menagerie.

A sadly happy ending there is indeed, whereby Bella and Max embrace God and lovingly see him in to death, and Bella accepts Max as her husband through her own will. On top of this, Max supports her in becoming a surgeon as they exist happily in the curious domain built by God.

The production is visceral and pretty, and the soundtrack of very special note. Performances all round are wonderful, including sound confirmation of the underrated Willem Dafoe as an immensely versatile actor dedicated entirely and admirably to the beauty of film acting.

One complaint is the invasion of political nervousness when it comes to race and the characterisation of Bella – I couldn’t help but notice her lack of reaction to what would seem to be her first encounter with a person of non-white skin colour. Sadly, it would appear that the peculiarities of gender, sexuality and age are fair game to explore in today’s world, but even the naïve ponderings of a child-like individual cannot be tolerated when it comes to a first meeting with someone of a different ethnicity. I wondered at what someone like Terry Gilliam would have done with the same material, a fellow surrealist but one never governed so heavily by the demands of today’s sensitivities. A shame to compromise the exploration of Bella’s impetuous innocence by shying away from possible responses to racial difference – beware the comments of your children, they will be implanting ‘right-think’ directly in to their brains next! Direct God-like meddling with the brain rather than the natural exploration that is (mostly) allowed in Poor Things.

Poltergeist (1982)

 

Poltergeist (1982)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Stars: JoBeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Craig T. Nelson

Short Review, no spoilers

Incredibly, this 1982 haunted house thriller came about when the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the director of ET united to make a film not quite as scary as it could have been but an icon of the genre nevertheless, and worth watching for a strange combination of talents at work together.

Full Review (spoilers)

Although taking role of producer on this one, evidence of Steven Spielberg’s family-orientated influence is more present than Tobe Hooper’s, whose contributions are most likely behind the darker aspects of the film (a man hallucinating clawing his own face off, hints at ghost rape). There’s the naturalistic, Spielbergian approach to family life with a scatty and angular but devoted mother, and signposts to the film’s contemporary context – Star Wars, Reagan. In fact, the dope-smoking parents reading books on the recently elected president seems like a reference to hangover hippies, holding on to the liberal pleasures of the past while embarking on the yuppie dream of the future – in this case, rampant and irresponsible real estate development.

Otherwise, it’s debatable how original and significant Poltergeist actually is – The Exorcist and The Shining had already covered creepy children and possessed bedroom gymnastics pretty well, and are far superior films generally. There are some decent scares here however – a swim with skeletons, and a nasty encounter with a creepy clown toy.

 

Nil by Mouth (1997)

Director: Gary Oldman

Stars: Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laila Morse

27 years after its release, it's remarkable that Gary Oldman’s one and only director credit is for Nil By Mouth, a searingly personal and accomplished film that is now a classic of British cinema.

Remaining the rawest slice of London underclass life committed to film, Nil by Mouth is also a work of art – an assembly of career best performances framed by tight, shaky, fly-on-the-wall camerawork, like the view of a nervous child peeking at what the grown-ups are doing. It’s by turns intimate and claustrophobic – when family are at peace it’s comforting, but when things are kicking off there’s nowhere to go. Switching between dark, smoky bars, blue-grey bleak day-time and the sickly neon green of streetlighting and council flat corridors, ironically one warmly-lit scene is of heroin addict Billy injecting himself with something that likely feels better than his environment. The depiction of domestic violence remains as some of the toughest stuff you’ll see on screen, but gradually the line of matriarchs that stoically form the backbone of this family emerge in place of the brash and aimless chatter of pained and frustrated men.

The Unforgiven (1960)

 

The Unforgiven (1960)

Director: John Huston

Stars: Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish

Short Review, no spoilers

An unusual, folk-western shot through the lens of a big character director but reluctant auteur, The Unforgiven was abandoned even by John Huston himself as the one he liked least of all the films he made. In awkward opposition I find it to be one of my favourites. Of the many aspects I find fascinating about the film, I advise to look past any cynicism with regards to the casting of Audrey Hepburn, because it is one of the many curiosities that make the film so disarmingly unique. A mixture of quirky artistry, high melodrama and surreal fable, its ending is flawed but overall, I find it to be another unsung gem of the western genre.

Full Review (spoilers)

Despite director John Huston’s condemnation of The Unforgiven and also general disregard for any claims that he could be described as an auteur, it’s arguable that his singularly eccentric style and fondness for ambitiously hopeful but romantically flawed characters shines through as distinctly in The Unforgiven as in any of his other films. It is perhaps also this combined with the commercially driven forces of star Burt Lancaster’s production company that Huston was so against that actually produces a quite fascinatingly contentious fable of a community torn apart by racial tension. As a result, a mixed environment grasping for authenticity, loyalty and heritage is whimsically realised in a compelling drama with moralities explored in all their rightful complexity.

Whereas many characters in classical westerns are elevated as romantically historical and cultural figures, what is pleasing about the protagonists of The Unforgiven is their rustic and authentically accented hick charm. These are the real pioneers – stoic families attempting to sow roots in the middle of nowhere under constant threat of Indian attack, with belief more than right spurring them on. They talk plain, are unabashed in their manner and they dance and clown with the unselfconsciousness of an isolated community unjudged by outsider eyes. They are not actually from this land at all, something acknowledged in Momma’s appreciation and ability to play Mozart on the ‘piani’. Played by veteran doe-eyed darling of the silent era, Lillian Gish, she’s also a tough old buzzard, wielding a shotgun with the naturalism of an experienced survivalist. As seemingly straightforward as these folk may seem to be however, secrets and lies have been accumulated in the building of their small patches of white American colonisation. This is alluded to from the outset with the arrival of a dust-covered ghost in the form of a mad, wandering war veteran on horseback, Kelsey. Waiting for the menfolk to return from a trip, young Rachel and Momma are alone at the homestead, and at first Momma speaks with sad sympathy of him as one of many traumatised post-war vagrants drifting through the desert before recognition is sparked and with it the threat to their familial harmony. Discord is temporarily suspended when beloved son and brother Ben returns with siblings Cash and Andy in tow, but Kelsey haunts their celebration and it is clear that trouble is on the horizon. In a stunningly eerie and surreal sequence, Ben and Cash go after a howling, warbling Kelsey through the swirl of a dust storm in a cactus field, only to lose him when he comes like a banshee with sabre aloft and Cash stumbles away in his wake.

As the family get back to business, we gain further understanding of the characters and their relationships with each other, something that is established by excellent performances, particularly by Lancaster, Hepburn and Murphy. Lancaster’s typical gravitas is here channelled in to a portrait of a charismatically bombastic if naïve man, fiercely loyal to his family and to the land they call their own, a man whose sheer self-belief and courage against all reason is endearing even as his bluster is so dangerously uncompromising. Despite this, he is a natural leader of men and still has the capacity to demonstrate diplomacy, not least when handling boozy racist Cash - Audie Murphy in an older, more rugged role that nevertheless here plays younger brother to Lancaster. And then there’s dark-haired sister Rachel, doted on by all but brought to the family a Native American foundling - the big secret only Momma and Kelsey know and which will ultimately blow the family and community apart when it is revealed.

The idea that Audrey Hepburn, an icon of sophisticated European elegance as depicted by Hollywood, could pull off playing a Native American girl and one that scrubs around in a 19^th century Texas western might seem unlikely, but it’s actually a fascinating piece of casting. It’s a refreshing change to see her dancer-trained athleticism used not for a stylish mannequin but instead to portray a scrappy, hillbilly wild child, her physicality moulded in to a beautiful, wiry and impish youth with an uncultured and naïve but wittily provocative girlishness who is direct in her demands for courtship and marriage, but also playful and free in her impulses to jump on her beloved horse and ride bareback across the prairie. She adores Ben and the playful mocking banter of ‘brother and sister’ lies lightly over an underlying and building romantic tension.

The character of Johnny Portugal – a surprisingly cool John Saxon - lays bare the racial tensions in the community. As a Native American working for Ben, he laconically out-machos a bristling Cash by throwing a knife in to the side of a wagon and then sauntering over to hang his hat on it, then shows the bumbling whites how to break a horse with gentle respect and patience. However, his innocent removal of a burr from Rachel’s hair is a step in the wrong direction for Ben - who had previously defended him – and he jealously chastises both him and then Rachel for hanging around the menfolk. Later though, Portugal is the best man to chase down Kelsey and the horse he stole from Rachel in an exhilarating scene when Portugal takes 3 horses to breathlessly pursue the mad, troublemaking thief.

Such is the rough and tumble of these characters and their dealings with and in front of each other. Ben’s emphatic declarations of power inspire awe and delight when he delivers the piano to his beloved Momma by lifting it from the wagon using only his back, but the same spirit is shown to be dubious when he calls the land and sky above him his and his alone to the Native American warrior that comes to collect his natural born sister, Rachel. Kelsey appears and chillingly speaks of avenging angel madness and howls hymns of God and country in lost lunatic tones, however it is he who is the link with the past and the truth that our heroes try desperately to avoid. The music, composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, weirdly complements the wayward eccentricity of the film, sometimes playfully and sometimes melodramatically evoking the spirit of a bullish, prancing, warrior-peasant.

In the final battle scene, the beleaguered Zacharys bravely and foolishly defend their little home, and family loyalties are thrown in to the wind to resettle where they may. Truth and blood is spilled, and love wins out over birth kin. The Zacharys meet the Indian war drums with Momma’s piano, then having to leave it to the spears of the warriors but fighting with admirable spirit that sees death but battles it anyway. Nevertheless, there is no sense of glory or triumph in the killings of Native Americans who initially come with peace and reason and are attacked on the orders of Ben. Rachel kills her own true brother and at first it appears that this might be a turning point as she walks in conflicted anguish past Ben and Andy. But in the end, she is ultimately reunited with the only family that she has ever known and the one that risked everything to stand by her.

There is an aching sense of doom in the finale that appears to build towards what would have been a more understandable ending of the heroes perishing: Andy’s regret at never losing his virginity in Wichita and the bittersweet confirmation of Ben and Rachel’s love. The fact that they survive is inexplicable, although the rousing return of Cash to help save them papers over some of the unfeasibility. The last moment of the film is a reference to Rachel commenting on migrating geese being like humans but only flying a little higher, and seems like a conclusion thrown on after an exhausting production that the director had had enough of by the time it came to it. This is unfortunate because despite its troubles, the film really isn’t as bad as Huston thought it was, and at the end of it all is actually probably even more complex than he had hoped for and as enthralling as Lancaster wanted.

Overall, The Unforgiven is a strange, flawed treasure and a misfit, but I would argue that this just makes it that much more surprisingly compelling.

Next Goal Wins (2023)

 

Next Goal Wins (2023)

Director: Taika Waititi

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana

Short Review, no spoilers

A typically funny and endearing film from Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director ventures in to the tricky realm of sports film and wins. In expanding his interest for elevating the little man from Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Jojo Rabbit, he demonstrates that he’s very well placed to honourably portray a redemptive story about what were once described as the world’s worst football team, the American Samoan national side. The performances all round are delightful and a dedicated Michael Fassbender strikes a perfect balance between comedy and pathos as the previously successful but troubled coach sent to turn things around. Although a standard David and Goliath story where the Goliath is the team’s aim to score their first goal of all time as well as other things, it’s also a non-elitist diversion that playfully contrasts the easy-going ethos of a tiny country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with the high stress, high-aiming ambitions of the white western world.

Full Review (spoilers)

Taika Waititi’s brand of goofy humour may not be to the tastes of all but the open-minded will be rewarded if they allow themselves to enjoy the director’s attention to daft but irreverent and affectionate detail. Waititi himself opens proceedings as the character of a priest and representative of the island’s deep-seated faith, but goes on to allow the rest of the colourful ensemble cast to build a picture of a small, characterful nation. Wiry, highly strung Thomas Wrongen (Fassbender) arrives from the US after a humiliating meeting with national football top dogs to a warm greeting from the American Samoan team president, Tavita, who also serves as a restaurateur and cameraman for the local news program. This dopy, cosily benign overseer introduces him to a team of varying shapes, sizes and talent, including one of their top players who also happens to be transgender, the beautiful but unfocused Jaiyah, and an endearing but hopelessly gentle current coach with the woefully inadequate name Ace. As the project progresses, Wrongen discovers that all of the individuals involved in representing their nation need to have other jobs, revealing a view of the bottom end of a football spectrum increasingly driven by lop-sided millions.

The training montage is hilarious and opens Fassbender’s remarkably authentic turn as a stressed-out football coach. Sports movie cliches are sent up in references to Any Given Sunday but overall there is surprisingly fresh and entertaining new life brought to the genre without resorting relentlessly to knowing nods. Kaimana as Jaiyah is charismatic and the inevitable obstacles faced by her character are handled sensitively without topical contrivance, and there is tear-jerking pathos in an unexpected revelation from Wrongen when forced to admit his own tragic hang-up.

Gratefully there is no use of the word togetherness but instead a much improved and stirring pre-match war dance that demonstrates the sentiment rather than describes it. Here the standard climactic contest that proves improvement is a qualifier against rivals Tonga, a finale that maintains the ongoing humour with a well-constructed dramatic tension, and even finds an inventively oddball way to convey success – for instance, look to the background and you will see a relaxed man waiting for treatment for a knife injury as we discover the team’s fortunes. Don’t worry, it’s all good – he raises a bottle of beer to the team triumph.

Next Goal Wins isn’t a life-changer but it’s a lot of fun and a significant entry in to the sports movie genre. It also offers the opportunity for some pleasingly light relief from Fassbender that betrays a talent for comedy, much as it did for Scarlett Johanssen in Jojo Rabbit.

Best Christmas Films? No light without darkness

 

Best Christmas Films? No light without darkness

The majority of Christmas films are gaudy, commercial and overly sentimental. They purport to tell us what true happiness is, but how can this be known without knowing the absence of it? The best seasonal films acknowledge some of the pain of real life as well as universal aspirations for joy, and go against the grain in terms of traditional and specific notions of family and harmony. Instead, they embrace the potential for comfort in what we actually have, however small and imperfect that may be.

Conversely, the best Christmas films either deal with a darker interpretation of the season or are at least tinged with something less simplistically joyful to the sentimentalised ideal. Please see below:

1.                   A Christmas Story (1983)

This was a revelation to me when I recorded it from television many years ago based on nothing more than a 4-star rating in the Radio Times, but this film is so beloved in America that there is a channel showing it 24 hours a day around Christmas. I limit my viewing of it far more with the aim of preserving the sanctity of a very precious thing, but I cannot praise it highly enough as the ultimate Christmas film. A seemingly simple and under-assuming story of a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas in the 1940s, it tracks the everyday travails of lower middle class family life with exquisite charm and humour throughout. Based on radio DJ Jean Shepherd’s musings and life stories, further reading on his philosophy that consumerism merely taps in to desires that are already there rather than imposing drives and wants in to innocent beings can be found here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/betrayal-jean-shepherd-and-a-christmas-story/

2.                   Black Christmas (1974)

Inexplicably, the best family Christmas film and the scariest horror film were directed by the same man and both are set in what should be the most merry of seasons. Bob Clark is a director that deserves more attention - see https://www.popmatters.com/bob-clark-films-2646125288.html for suggestions of a surprisingly influential filmmaker. Black Christmas is considered by those in the know to be the true benchmark American slasher film, coming four years before Halloween and providing such inspiration to John Carpenter that Clark apparently advised him. It may seem ridiculous to try and find auteuristic similarities between this and A Christmas Story however, both are shot in a low-key Clarksian style with relatable characters and the same warm, grainy aesthetic that creates nostalgia in A Christmas Story but that becomes perversely warped in Black Christmas. In the latter, a serial killer is picking off sorority girls one by one at Christmas in the creepiest way imaginable, making the most hideously weirdo prank calls in between murders. And aside from its seasonal context, it’s a classy horror with interesting, sometimes tough female characters including Margot Kidder and Olivia Hussey, an old movie that set a tone before the cliché became one of busty screamers and contrived slaughterhouse plots.

3.                   It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Frank Capra’s rightful classic exudes small town, anti-capitalist values with endearing, old school charm and is propelled by performances led by expert everyman James Stewart. It’s the opposite of A Christmas Carol in that an exceptionally good man rather than a bad one has to be taken in hand by supernatural forces to save himself and a community. For a film hailed as the ultimate Christmas movie it’s incredibly dark, dealing with various issues that are potentially life-sinking in reality, and in fact the whole story is built around a prospective suicide. It’s crushingly heart-breaking pretty much from the get go – at the corner of every happy moment is a tragedy to the point you could cry throughout the whole damned thing. But trust me, if you are willing to take the rough with the smooth, it’s worth it. Hot dog!

Spoiler alert - it drifts slightly at the end and is disappointing when George sees Mary as – yarg! an unmarried woman wearing glasses and working in a library!? - as the terrible outcome if George had never lived. Gratefully though, it’s a minor blip that we can overlook in an otherwise truly wonderful film.

4.    Scrooged (1988)

The 1980s TV exec context is cleverly utilised for a re-examination of the morals of A Christmas Carol, whereby a man with wealth and power achieved by cold-blooded heartlessness is forced to confront himself and the impact of his actions on others.

Although Scrooged seems to have divided critics since it’s release – and Bill Murray himself has derided it – there are those who feel it has become a Christmas classic, and I’m unashamedly one of them. Marking a sensational comeback after a four-year hiatus following Ghostbusters, it’s right up there with Groundhog Day as an excellent showcase for the Murray brand of sarcastic wit that he balances impressively well with the more sentimental side of things. Highlights are an endearing love story and nice chemistry with Karen Allen as the girlfriend, a host of cameos including Robert Mitchum and David Johansen of New York Dolls, the tear-jerking fate of a homeless man, and a ball busting fairy who makes sure Frank feels some of the pain he causes others. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, Yule love it!

5.    Carol (2015)

Meticulous in period detail while also a very grown-up Christmas film for the modern age, this is also my second favourite film directed by Todd Haynes behind Safe. A key auteur from the 1990s American indie era, Haynes’ characteristic subtlety and empathy reaches its peak in this Patricia Highsmith adaptation of a love affair between a young shop girl and a wealthy older woman in the 1940s. Beautiful cinematography with performances that are affecting in their delicate, restrained power assist a story loaded with heartbreak and poignancy. And in a film so decorated with the trappings of the Christmas period, it is profoundly meaningful that the big day itself passes without acknowledgement, appropriately denying the hypocrisy of a celebration built around being with the ones you love when our heroines are denied it themselves.

6.            Tangerine (2015)

Pretty much the ultimate anti-Christmas film in that, although it takes place on Christmas Eve, aesthetically and thematically it goes against everything apparently held dear in terms of the traditional wintry, family-affirming ideal. Here instead we have the non-travails of two transgender prostitutes trawling the Strip in sun-baked LA as recorded via smartphone by excellent American indie filmmaker, Sean Baker. Swear-ridden and frankly depicting street-bought sex, it is refreshing in its address to the experiences of those not normally featured in holiday fare, but also in its humour and a finale in which not everything is tied up in a happy bow. The warm feelings do come for anyone who understands outsider-ness, and from an ending where the two leads share a quietly powerful moment in which true friendship - defiant in the face of poverty, social status and heterosexual-based family orientation – wins out.

 

 

7.            Gremlins

This is the unusual story of a Christmas present delivered to an adult child, and one in which seasonal merriment is all but destroyed by the deviousness of some small but extremely destructive creatures. Set in a Bedford Falls-esque scenario, a young, small-town man receives from his failing inventor father a Mogwai, a cute critter sold to him by the young grandson of a Chinese man, and all is adorable until the rules that must be followed when caring for the strange animal are broken - then all hell breaks loose. A stand-out scene is Billy’s mother defending her kitchen and home with the bravery and ruthlessness of any domestic warrior queen. Massively Christmassy but with some very dark twists on the season as well as on the small town, family-oriented backdrop in typical Joe Dante-fashion, it’s now an iconic ‘80s classic and cult Christmas favourite.

8.            The Snowman

Another 80s childhood favourite in a far more wistful sense, this one brings with it an ocean of tears like the one James and his wonderful snowman friend fly over in the iconic scene. Delightfully sketchy in its hand-drawn animation aesthetics and cosily ordinary in its quintessential Englishness - even a woolly jumper-clad David Bowie in the haunting introduction – The Snowman has come to perfectly represent the poignancy of disappointment as it comes so hard on the heels of fleetingly transcendent joy.

9.            Die Hard (1988)

“Yippee ki-yay mother****er!” This one’s for grown-ups only - the dark side of Die Hard is that it is a classic 80s trigger happy and tongue-in-cheek action movie in its approach to rampant violence, but it’s also some of the most fun you can have watching a Christmas film. Bruce Willis as John McClane is an unashamed throwback to all all-American tough guy movie heroes who get shit done against all the odds, taking on villainous Europeans, a building under construction, as well as dumbass police chiefs and stoopid, suit-wearing FBI agents. Just as quotable and iconic is the excellent Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, the German nemesis looking to rob a whole load of bearer bonds by staging what he had hoped would be a quietly elaborate siege on an office block until New York cop McClane singlehandedly makes himself a serious fly in the ointment. It’s actually really smart stuff, directed with visual style by John McTiernan and featuring assured, compelling performances by all. And it gave birth to the best Christmas jumper ever.

10.          Edward Scissorhands

If there are both horrors and pleasures to be found in either city living or suburban dwelling at Christmas or otherwise, the worst of small-town existence is brought to the fore in this now classic modern fairy tale from Tim Burton at his very best. Here the small-town community is ultimately dastardly, intolerant of otherness when it no longer suits its own purposes and presented in ghastly hues of pastel horror in contrast to the gentle Goth boy Edward, who is ushered in to town by twinkly, well-meaning Dianne Wiest. Brought in to being by inventor Vincent Price as a vulnerable, caring and creative humanoid with ‘hands’ that suggest the complete opposite – elaborate and savagely sharp giant scissors – Edward’s accidental weapons are first used to the delight of the townsfolk he arrives in the realm of before hysterical small-mindedness turns the former welcomers in to a witch-hunting mob. Johnny Depp is perhaps underrated for conveying so subtly well a sense of Edward’s capacity for love, sorrow and burgeoning humanity underneath the make-up and Robert Smith hair, before he’s so emphatically rejected by the comparatively weird community at the bottom of the hill his gothic mansion home sits atop. There is also wry humour peppered throughout, but a haunting and mournfully beautiful Danny Elfman score, along with visions of snowy heartache make for an exquisitely bittersweet Christmas classic.

11.          Home Alone

The respective heroes of Home Alone and A Christmas Story are strangely similar in that both are cute blonde little boys whose wants and desires are frustrated by adults, and both imagine themselves far more capable in life than any of said adults give them credit for. The crucial difference is that trying and failing is an inevitable and relentless part of life in A Christmas Story, whereas in Home Alone, Kevin gives us an emphatic demonstration of how, with enough tenacity and optimism, he can successfully triumph over those who would doubt or even destroy him.

Like many of my generation, I can’t help but have fondness for the film – it has a masterful soundtrack that is now iconic and inextricably linked with the season; visually, it exudes Christmas in spades with the warm glow of lights and cosy interiors contrasting with Christmas card snow scenes that invite serious sledding and decent-sized snowmen. And there is also some humorously authentic family discontent. However, as much as we celebrate the courage and ingenuity of little Kevin fending off the dastardly burglars in the final showdown, I always felt there was something a bit deranged about the super-violence he visits upon them. Inspired by the article on Jean Shepherd mentioned above and also this one on Home Alone - https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gkbjg/americas-favorite-child-soldier-home-alone-25-years-later  - it occurred to me that Ralphie’s fantasy in A Christmas Story of what he could achieve if he had a toy gun versus Kevin’s reality of the power he wields when literally armed in Home Alone is like comparing a form of liberal nihilism with the post-Reaganistic optimism referenced in the Vice article. The latter also makes interesting points about the dubious underlying class/racial issues detectable in John Hughes’ films generally, here identified as depicting Harry and Marv - respectively Italian-American and Jew - as grubby and despicable in contrast to the bickering but otherwise clean and New Money-rich McAllister family. Ultimately for me, Home Alone is a guilty pleasure, but give me the school of futility (in which one’s most fervent desires are rarely realised as one would want) in A Christmas Story over the playpen of triumph in Home Alone any day.

12.          Batman Returns

Tim Burton again and, like Die Hard, not so much a Christmas film as one that happens to be set at Christmas, Batman Returns utilises many holiday hallmarks in delightfully twisted ways. Snowy and present-filled, the context of Burton’s excellent Batman sequel only supports the loneliness, discontent and family fuck-ups of the Christmas experience suffered by many/some (delete as you see fit): the Penguin emerges to avenge his parental abandonment and Catwoman spits angrily in the eye of cosily celebratory hypocrisy in a movie where a huge bow-adorned gift offers violent carnage and a light switch-on results in crowd-viewed beauty queen assassination. It sounds disturbing but it really is a lot of fun – Burton before he and the world became so oppressively family friendly.

13.          Holiday Affair (1949)

Just as director Todd Haynes showed his appreciation for classic Hollywood melodrama in his tribute to Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows with Far From Heaven, it seems likely that he was familiar with Holiday Affair when making Carol. Carol is effectively the gay Holiday Affair – in both, a romance begins in the toy section of a department store at Christmas where the beautiful mother of a young child comes in to buy a train set from the salesperson who will trouble her prospective future with a more conventional, dependable lover. In Holiday Affair, the latter is a lawyer offering financial stability to war widow and single mother Connie (Janet Leigh), and is set up against the wry and naturally perceptive charm of rival Robert Mitchum as Steve Davis, a free-wheeling and charming bum with dreams of boat building in a role aimed at tempering real-life Mitchum’s marijuana-bust controversy by appearing in family-friendly fare. A Christmas romance with various twists and turns, it’s classy stuff thanks to the performances and chemistry between the leads, (spoiler alert) and a conversation between Connie and Steve about the train set he buys for her son again calls to mind Carol and its happy ending:

Connie:  But he shouldn’t feel that he’ll always get everything he wants.

Steve:  Well not always, no. But every now and then so that he’ll know that these things can happen.

14.          Remember the Night (1940)

Classic Hollywood doing it interestingly again in a Preston Sturges scripted film starring Barbara Stanwyck. She’s typically gutsy and problematic as a thief who ends up spending Christmas with the guy who will be prosecuting her once the holidays are over. Difference is that the film deals with her more empathetically than in her typical roles as femme fatale, and she shows she can deliver vulnerability as well as playing the diva, maybe even better. Nice chemistry between her and Fred MacMurray in the first of their pairings that would be repeated in the classic noir Double Indemnity, as he plays a guy from the same part of the country as her but with a loving upbringing unlike her own youth with a cold, judgemental mother. For once the period of inactivity between Christmas and New Year when usually nothing useful gets done performs the perfect function of bringing these two opposites together in heart-wrenchingly romantic fashion.

15.          Meet Me in St Louis

The most sentimental Christmas moment that has me properly booing is the scene in this film where Judy Garland sings ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, but again perhaps because of the melancholy behind her sad reassurances to a little sister crying at the thought of moving away from their beloved city. It’s a film that actually moves through all four of the seasons, but the winter scenes are at Christmas and form the crucial turning point in the fates of the Smith family in this vivid classic musical from Vincente Minelli.