5 Flicks for Christmas

Dig your couch groove - it’s the holidays!

For some distressing reason - apparently the ten year anniversary, but I suspect a plot to drive me to the brink of madness - Richard Curtis’ inexplicably popular Love, Actually is bounding across social networks as the most popular Christmas movie this season. Clearly It’s A Wonderful Life’s reign as the must-watch holiday movie has well and truly ended (does anyone even watch Capra anymore…?)

Well at least people are not queuing up to watch Santa Claus The Movie, so give thanks for small mercies. I only recently learned Australia never had a cinema release of this product-placement stuffed ‘holiday classic’ - truly this is the Lucky Country.

At any rate, here are five films that happen to be both seasonal and not so cloying you’ll want to drown in the egg-nog.

Bad Santa [Terry Zwigoff (2003)]

The more acceptable 'Christmas' offering with Billy Bob Thornton that doesn’t happen to feature some lazy attempt at global politics commentary - and instead serves up an alcoholic con-man who poses as a department store Santa Claus while getting his end away with as many shopping complex customers as he can, before ripping off the holiday takings.

Not exactly suitable for watching with the kids, so.

Despite the foul-mouthed shenanigans of Thornton’s visibly pissed Claus - clearly the man is a method actor - there is actually a sweetness buried deep, deep, within this film. Willie Stokes is a great part for Thornton to show off his ornery charm, becoming a reluctant father-figure to an abused young boy (not that it stops him taking advantage). Able support is given from an ensemble that includes Parenthood’s Lauren Graham and Bernie Mac as a corrupt security guard.  Sadly Bad Santa is also John Ritter’s swansong on the big screen. Terry Zwigoff’s film inspires many a guilty gut-laugh, but is no guilty pleasure. Great fun.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang [Shane Black (2005)]

The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang', which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this. - Pauline Kael.

In the movies of Shane Black it is always Christmas. This self-aware comedic thriller manages to drop sly references to Sunset Boulevard and poke fun at the conceited Hollywood community at large, all the while gunning along on great dialogue banter between stars Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan.

Throw in a pointed dig at Peter Jackson’s bloated Lord of the Rings trilogy and you’re set.

From the gorgeous Saul Bass inspired opening titles, to the riffing on film noir tropes, Black has produced a tightly  packed love/hate-letter to the movies full of magic, missing digits and wordplay loving henchmen. Tarantino wishes he could be this disciplined.

Scrooged [Richard Donner (1988)]

Bill Murray survived the debauchery of the Saturday Night Live years, became the comedy star of the 1980’s and had enough taste to not piss away his talent multiple cash-in pics (paging Chevy Chase…). Scrooged is a satirical look at the greed is good mentality of the 1980’s and commercialism posing as holiday good cheer that had reached its apex by then, with Murray playing the gleefully Gordon Gekko-esque ‘Scrooge’ who is visited by three ghosts in a modern update of the Dickens fable.

Richard Donner was inspired by the sad fate of Margot Kidder following her Superman success, hence the homelessness subplot of the story. The film walks a thin line between sentiment and mockery – the Richard Pryor joke still leaves a bad taste in the mouth – but when it gets it right, Scrooged nails it, descending into pantomime by the end.

Trading Places [John Landis (1983)]

Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd work beautifully together in this film. It’s a sign of John Landis’ sense of comic timing that their characters, Valentine and Winthorpe, only meet in the third act of the film. Their two lives turned upside down by a bet between the Duke brothers (Golden Age matinee idols Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) to decide whether it is nature or nurture that is the deciding factor in a person’s life.

The Christmas backdrop of the film serves to emphasise the casual excess of the Duke’s lives, contrasted sharply with the poverty of life on New York’s streets. Winthrope's incredulous reaction to being framed and stripped of his privilege is a thing to behold - as a comedian Ackroyd had already perfected that marvelous machine-gun delivery - whereas Valentine’s sudden transport into the upper echelons of the wealthy leaves him at first paranoid that this is a con, only for a sense of entitlement to quickly develop. Trading Places remains razor-sharp and very, very funny.

Die Hard [John McTiernan (1988)]

Think of it as the worst Christmas party ever. Terrorists take prisoner the revelers at the Takanomi Plaza, with Alan Rickman’s Hans a sharp-suited, silver-tongued villain, playing a long-game that accounts for every possible response of law enforcement. What he did not plan for is the presence of New York cop John McClane.

Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho ho.

Bruce Willis has never been better as the anarchic McClane, an all-too-human unstoppable force, who begins picking off the terrorists guerrilla style. Sadly the sequels have long since spoiled the appeal of the original, with McClane becoming a callous Terminator who can leap on fighter jets and destroy Moscow at a whim. However, here he is a frightened and desperate man fighting to save his estranged wife and outwit the deadly Hans.

Still thrilling, still the pitch-perfect action film - it is easy to forget that at the time, Willis was cast against type in this role.

- Emmet O'Cuana