24 Days of Christmas: Childhood Memory Edition

by Rachael Nisenkier

In honor of Home Alone, a movie I must have watched fifty four thousand times from age 3 to age 13, and not a single time since, I’m going to do this whole review in the form of random observations, and let my rampant, 24-year-old ID take the reins:

• Holy Shit, Macauley is young. Wait a second, MACAULEY CULKIN IS NOW 31 YEARS OLD. WHAT?! I’m ooooooooooold.

• Oh jeez, these early 90 fashions are painful.

• The McCallisters are going to Paris? What kind of fancy ass family are they?

• For all the hate I would like to pile on Christopher Columbus as an incompetent director, he’s pretty great here, effortlessly capturing the hustle and bustle of the McCallister household pre-Christmas.

• “Mom, does Santa Clause have to go through customs?” actually, little girl with strange glasses, that’s a great question. Does that communist bastard get to carry his goods across borders without taxes?!

• I’m not a parent, and I was an awful teacher, but I’m pretty sure it is not appropriate to call an eight year old a “jerk.”

• Also not appropriate? Calling your mother “dummy,” even if she is probably the world’s worst mother.

• My last movie may have been Bad Santa, but I think this family is crueler to Kevin than anyone in that movie was to anyone else, including when they tried to shoot each other.

• “There’s no way we’re going to make this plane. It’s leaving in 45 minutes.” Just be grateful this is pre-9/11. OH the 90s, a heady time when you got to just sprint, fully shoed through airports without having to worry about being tackled by airport security.

• A side story could be told about the neighbor child who apparently went on vacation with the McCallisters.

• This movie, if it were written today, would take five minutes: Kevin gets left behind, Mom calls him from Paris on his cell phone, he takes a cab to a senile uncle’s house and spends the holiday weekend playing Angry Birds. Wam Bam done.

• How many kids do you think had a really hard time staying home alone for the first time because of this movie?

• “This is ridiculous. Only a wimp would be hiding under the bed. And I can’t be a wimp. I’m the man of the house.”

• The scene of Culkin narrating his beauty routine reminded me creepily of the similar (although far more adult) scene in American Psycho. Is it possible that all this familial abandonment leads to Kevin becoming the next Patrick Bateman?

• Another thing that wouldn’t fly today? Shoplifting. That shit will get you pepper sprayed faster than sitting down at a UC Davis Occupy event.

• Kevin could be the smartest kid ever. I want to have a mannequin party with a ridiculously youthful Michael Jordan cut out.

• I’ve got to say, I feel Kevin’s pain on the cheese pizza thing

• Ooooh, the robbery has begun. This is, weirdly enough, the only part of this movie I really remember.

• “I know you’re not the real Santa Clause. I’m old enough to know how it works. But I also know that you work for him.”

• A good lesson for kids: even people who seem creepy can be good people with their own tragic history. A bad lesson for kids: please befriend the strange man with the overgrown beard who walks around with a shovel.

• I feel like Kevin’s ridiculous mastery of physics, chemistry, and invention is a testament to his elementary school science teachers. Oh the joys of the suburbs.

• I think I have this movie to blame for my love of staying up past everyone else’s bedtime and laying alone in my super-decorated living room

• Least credible part of the movie, according to my mother: the fact that Kevin cleans up all the mess he made. I think that is more of a statement on myself and my brother than I am comfortable with.

• Fine, I’ll admit it, I got teary eyed watching the end of movie reconciliation scenes. So sue me, it’s Christmas!

• I wasn’t planning on watching Home Alone 2 as a part of this experiment, but I might have to now. Damn it.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: 
Home Alone definitely belongs in that category of films that felt light and endearing as a kid but absolutely horrifying as an adult. Still, it remains endearing, witty, and fun, even when you see yourself reflected more in the hapless parents than in the eight year old Kevin.

24 Days of Christmas: Inappropriate For Family Viewing Edition

by Rachael Nisenkier

From the first moment of Bad Santa, the film is fully defining its viewpoint. Billy Bob Thorton, looking alcoholic skinny with a cigarette in his hand and a Santa suit hanging angrily off his lanky frame, provides voice over narration to a scene that is set at a bar and which ends with Billy Bob Thorton puking. All the while, overly sincere Christmas music builds to a glorious crescendo. In the course of the monologue, Thorton lays out just how messed up his titular Bad Santa is, talking smack about children, exploring his crappy upbringing and tendency towards crime, and showing how misanthropic and angry his character is. By the time (five minutes in) we watch his little person companion run around in a snow man suit and help Thorton to rob the department store, we’ve pretty much established just how far this movie lives from your usual “love and good tidings” Christmas fare.

If the movie’s only joke was pairing cheery Christmas movie iconography with really, truly deplorable behavior, it would get old fast. But it’s much more interested in exploring the depths to which Thorton’s Willy has fallen to, and that kind of humor is funny at any time of the year. Or not. By the time you’re watching the way-too-smart-to-be-playing-this-character Lauren Graham screaming “f--- me Santa” at Billy Bob in the backseat of a car, you already know whether or not you can like this movie.

It gets a lot better after that, but if you can’t deal with the first set of jokes then you can’t deal with the rest of it either and should probably just turn the TV off and go watch The Christmas Shoes (starring Rob Lowe, natch!). I personally have a ridiculously high tolerance for stories about shitty people saying awful things, so I am actually capable of enjoying the awfulness surrounding the sweet story of a fat ostracized kid finding a connection with a complete shithead of a man. The trick of the story is that the joke is absolutely never on the good (or at least “less bad”) people surrounding Thornton, but rather on Thornton himself and on other people who are awful to their fellow human beings.

The cherubic kid at the heart of the movie is a simpleminded sweetheart, but the jokes aren’t about how much he eats or how dumb he is. Instead, they’re on overly PC store managers and self-destructive thieves. It’s one of those things the media is often reporting as controversy: people unable to understand the difference between the target of a given joke and the subject. A lot of the things that Thorton says throughout this movie are awful, but the movie doesn’t support his actions. It’s a nice offset to the traditional Christmas jollies in more ways than just its R-rated mouth. 


Bad Santa ends not with a wedding, or a revelation of the reality of Santa Clause, but with a shoot out, a betrayal, and a tiny pink elephant. Thorton isn’t so much redeemed as he is rescued by one good act in the midst of a thousand awful ones. The child at the movie’s center isn’t so much saved as he is given a ridiculously hot and inappropriate nanny. But it’s still pretty damn sweet, all the same.

Random Observations: 
• “F--- the loofah, let’s go.” The word loofah is never NOT funny.
• “Don’t get me wrong, I was against the Clinton impeachment. What a man does with his own penis, in the oval office, in a woman’s big and tall, is his own business.”
• Even if you’re looking for pictures to put with your article on the movie Bad Santa, don’t google image search “bad santa.” There are some things you can’t unsee.

24 Days of Christmas: Cheesy ABC Family Movie Installment

by Rachael Nisenkier

When I say to people that I love all Christmas movies, the good, the bad, and the really bad, I think that I mean it. That doesn’t mean they’re all equally entertaining or anything, but I can sit through pretty much anything if you put a Santa hat on it. I decided to test that theory because a) buying all these classic movies on iTunes is expensive and b) my DVR isn’t full yet of all the movies I want to watch. So I sat down and watched one of those wonderfully odd Christmas films that channels like ABC Family and Lifetime put out every year, starring a b-to-z list celebrity and following the exact same hackneyed plot as a thousand other Christmas movies. I’ll probably throw one or two more of these into the mix before the end of my 24 Days of Christmas experiment.

Today’s offering was Christmas Cupid, streaming for free on Netflix and playing semi-ubiquitously on ABC Family. It stars Christina Milian as Sloane Spencer (that’s an awful name), a PR rep whose habit of “trading up” people like they’re increasingly expensive cars leaves her on the verge of losing everyone in her life. It follows the basic plot of A Christmas Carol, adds in a vodka-swilling, recently deceased ex-starlet (Ashley Benson), and somehow tries to convince me that the safe, kind-hearted romantic choice can be played by Chad Michael Murray (sorry, Chad, you’ll always be Tristan to me).

It’s a lightly comic trifle of a Christmas movie that rings pathos out of a familiar tale while making pop culture jokes that feel dated, and semi-edgy sex comedy. Milian is serviceable as the star, although she never quite gets the bad girl thing down, so her redemption comes across more as someone in need of a good talking to, rather than heavenly intervention. The whole parade of hot guys in this film are all pretty much interchangeable, but Murray is particularly badly cast.

The best part about Christmas Cupid is Ashley Benson. She plays Caitlin Quinn, a Lohan-esque party girl whose untimely demise right before Christmas sets off the film’s events. The character is stale, but Benson brings enough light and joy to her scenes that it helps to offset the by-the-numbers performance Milian is giving. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, this movie is unnecessary, but not without its joys. The dialogue may never get towards any “truths,” but it can be surprisingly witty at times. Plus, the movie’s free.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:
• From Ashley Benson’s IMDB page, which I just thought was too precious not to include: “Ashley was born two months early weighing 2 pounds 8 oz. She was in ICU for a month. Her parents were told she would need heart surgery on Christmas Day. Prayers were answered when her parents went in Christmas Day and were told by doctors that her heart had closed up. Ashley never needed any surgeries. She was released to go home at 4 1/2 pounds after being hospitalized two months. She has been healthy ever since!.” Awww, she’s like her own Christmas movie.
• There’s something kind of ooky to me about the film’s casual use of the word “slut,” even if it does turn out to be a mostly sex and lady-positive film.

24 Days of Christmas: Divorced Edition

by Rachael Nisenkier

Half the battle with watching The Santa Clause is just ignoring the late 90s parade of former stars (Judge Reinhold!) and future stars (David Krumholtz) and stars that inexplicably have stuck around long after their usefulness (Tim Allen, although he actually gets a lifetime pass for Toy Story) that litter the pathways. Add to that the very 90s humor (whereby Tim Allen grunt-and-weird-noises his way through awkward social interactions) and the SUPER 90s plotline (overworking parent has to learn how to love his son the way he deserves to be loved in the middle of a divorce*), and The Santa Clause immediately feels about forty years old where it’s really less than 20.

But God am I a sucker for “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”-style movies, even while they sort of boggle the logical part of my brain. How do parents not realize that some of the presents under their tree didn’t come from them? Are they just that stupid that they assume they bought the extra presents? I have no problems believing that Santa’s magical suit gives Tim Allen magic powers and unusual weight gain, but I can never seem to completely jump this logical hurdle (and couldn’t when I first saw this movie at age 7). I have a similar problem with Elf and Miracle on 34th Street, although the first of those is so damn charming that I can’t even think about my issues with logical consistency.

Anyway, the plot. Divorced Dad Tim Allen has his son, Charlie, for Christmas Eve. Divorced Dad doesn’t have a good relationship with Charlie (or anyone for that matter), so he’s desperate to convince Charlie of the truth of Christmas. After Charlie hears a “clatter” on the roof on Christmas Eve night, Divorced Dad heads on out to check out the noise, accidentally knocking Santa off the roof, and causing him to have to engage in a series of hijinks in order to put on the Santa suit and deliver toys. This relies on one of my all time favorite devices: the adorable kid who insists upon his father doing really, really stupid things until his dad has no choice but to say yes. It allows the film to quickly leap past the narrative jump from realistic divorce dramedy to a film where Tim Allen gets in verbal altercations with Comet the reindeer. After a night of delivering presents, Tim Allen inexplicably thinks he gets to go back to his normal life. But fate and David Krumholtz have other plans.

A hard and fast rule: if a character is played by a former 80s star or by a woman with a name pronounced wrong (in this case, Laura is pronounced as Lara), then that character is a douchebag who will stand in the way of our protagonist’s wishes. So the middle part of the movie features Allen’s inopportune descent in Santaism while his ex-wife and her current psychiatrist husband take his son away*, until finally Allen and the elves kidnap Charlie and head to the north pole to prepare for his second year of Santa Claus’ing duty.

Once Allen’s Claus gets locked up by the police, to crying children’s dismay, and Charlie and the elves are left to rescue them, the movie molds into a “everyone needs to believe” fest, which, again, I kind of love. The Santa Clause may not be my favorite in the genre, but around the time the adorably precocious elves started gift wrapping policemen, I’ll admit I was ready to give myself over to this very dumb movie.

At the end of the day, The Santa Clause is a supremely silly movie hampered with a really not silly plot. For me, the whole divorce and abandonment thing was never really able to be overcome. As an adult, it doesn’t really work for me, and if I’m remembering correctly, six year old Rachael didn’t buy it too much either. It’s entertaining, but the emotional underpinnings of the story never really clicked for me. But I do wonder how it would feel to someone (kid, parent, or other) dealing with divorce and family issues, to see such a gosh darn optimistic movie about the whole situation.

Random observations:
• “You’re fatter this year,” is never an okay thing to say to someone, even if they are Santa
• “Most grownups can’t believe in magic; it just, sort of grows out of them.” Most holiday movies have this belief, but I like how unironically this film gives itself over to it.

*This is one of many 90s era divorce movies where a dad is on the crappy side of a custody battle, and where he goes to fairly illegal lengths to try to get his children back. It’s a fascinating little slice of national consciousness.

24 Days of Christmas: Christmas, Actually Is All Around Installment

by Rachael Nisenkier

I love Christmas movies. Actually, scratch that, I love everything about Christmas to an extent that is probably unhealthy. Growing up as a little half jewish, half not-ish girl, the month of December was probably my favorite time of year (except maybe for my birth month, but the fact that I insisted on a whole month to celebrate my birth become less and less socially acceptable as I aged, whereas my love for Christmas makes me quirky and endearing). The twinkling lights. The freshly cut (but not by us, what are we, peasants?) pine tree. The presents. The malls. Oh the malls.

But mostly, I love popular culture representations of Christmas. I love Christmas episodes of TV (check out this list of the best ever Christmas episodes), I love Christmas commercials (I still am not sick of the “they do exist/he does exist” M&M commercials), I love Christmas songs. And I love Christmas movies.

Last year I tried to share my love of Christmas movies with My Cinema as best I could, but this year I wanted to set myself a much harder test. Rather than just sharing a few of my favorites, I was going to spend the 24 pre-Christmas days watching a movie a day, so that I could go through popular Christmas movies, good, bad and fantastically bad. I basically looked through a bunch of lists, found convenient films, scoured the tv listings, and came up with a schedule that will keep me busy right up until chestnuts start roasting on open fires.

This is my first installment in my 24 Days of Christmas, and it’s also one of only two doubles from last year: Love, Actually.

50/50: Beating the Odds

by Kelly Bedard

It is amazing to me that the release and theatrical run of 50/50 came and went with very minimal hoopla. The film is everything Hollywood commentators love- clever and unexpected but somehow in adherence with current tonal trends, well cast, smartly written, genre subversive, thematically daring, backed by big names and based on a true story. 50/50 should have knocked Hollywood off its feet. I have no idea why it didn't, because I think it's a truly wonderful film.

Anonymously Making Stuff Up

by Kelly Bedard

In the weeks before Anonymous hit movie theatres I was asked no fewer than 20 times how I felt about the film. "Could it be true?" people wondered of the absurd tagline: 'Was Shakespeare A Fraud?'; "are you outraged?" demanded others, inquiring whether my bardolatry had me on the defense; "why is Xenophilius Lovegood in it?" some pondered, rightly wondering why the bright and witty Rhys Ifans was on the poster. "I don't know yet" was my answer to questions 2 and 3 since I'd yet to actually see the movie; question 1 has long had a definitive "no" attached to it, complete with a long rant about the gross pretentiousness that accompanies each and every theory positing that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wasn't educated or rich or respectable enough to be talented.

No, the outrage never came.  And as for Ifans, I suspect it had little to do with anything other than the studio's need for a familiar face who could speak in a straight line and the actor's need for a paycheck.

Why the Twi-hate?

by Rachael Nisenkier

I did not see the new Twilight movie at midnight. But I would have.

Here’s the thing. I get your point, hypothetical Twilight-hater. I don’t think that Bella and Edward have a particularly healthy relationship (in fact, I could and have written pages and pages on the anti-empowerment message the books so often embody). I don’t think the writing’s particularly good. The movies are essentially hours-long excuses to make Robert Pattinson look moodily gorgeous and Taylor Lautner take off his shirt. And the plot of Breaking Dawn could be the stupidest yet, with Bella losing her virginity, in a way that’s guaranteed to make even sex-positive feminists squeamish, before growing mystically pregnant. But my question remains… why do we hate on Twilight so much?

March 23rd: Be There

by Kelly Bedard 

The official Hunger Games trailer hit the world like a flaming District 12 tribute today after Josh Hutcherson (who plays fan favourite Peeta Mellark) introduced it on Good Morning America.

The superb, pulse-pounding teaser kicks off with the serene Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen meeting her tried and true best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) in the woods for their daily hunt. It's as peaceful a scene as Katniss ever enjoys and the sense of foreboding in Gale's pleas for them to run away together gives just the right sense of unease. Then we're on to the grey-tinted Reaping and Elizabeth Banks' frothily icky take on Effie Trinket, Lawrence's screams, the face of her terrified young sister Prim. The rest is a flash- the train, the prep team, Cinna's designs, Haymitch's training, Caesar's interviews and that crucial scene on the roof when Peeta first shows us who he is. 

J. Edgar

by Rachael Nisenkier

It’s heartening to realize that we have officially reached the point as a country when a mainstream director known for his tough guy movies and a leading man known for making teenage girls watch Titanic fifteen times in one week can make a movie together about a homosexual love affair. It’s even more heartening to realize, about halfway through the movie, that J. Edgar is probably the most conventional (to the point of boring) gay love story ever made. That’s right, we’ve officially reached the point where gay love stories are not the purview of edgy independent films, but rather window dressing in a typical Oscar bait biopic. Progress.

The Ides of March

by Rachael Nisenkier

I walked into The Ides of March terrified I’d be bored by a political thriller lacking heart. Instead, I found myself nearly bowled over by a moral thriller playing with the language and heartbreak of politics.

The movie is essentially a moral tragedy. It tells the tale of idealistic campaign manager Steven (Ryan Gosling), who is working on the presidential campaign for the upstart democrat, Governor Morris (George Clooney).

It’s A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas

Underneath their makeup and awesome hats,
these guys are providing one of the most insightful movies
into our culture all year. No, seriously. 

by Rachael Nisenkier 

As we come upon awards season, we’re starting to see the rollout of prestige films- delicate beasts that tackle serious issues in intriguing ways. We get to see biopics, war dramas, and for some reason a movie from the world’s most famous director about a horse. All signs point to Oscar times ahead at the multiplex.

And then there’s It’s A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. Which is, honestly, fantastic.

Exclusive: Amy Acker talks Joss Whedon's Top Secret "Much Ado"

photo by Elsa Guillet-Chapuis

by Kelly Bedard

Two days ago my facebook wall started lighting up with friends reporting the latest impossibly exciting story to reach well-rounded geek ears: that TV god/brilliant writer Joss Whedon had used his vacation time post-Avengers to adapt and shoot a new version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I immediately dismissed the possibility- clearly someone was playing a trick on me. There's no way one of my favourite cultural icons could have cast a squad of my favourite actors to produce a film version of one of my favourite plays ever written; there was no way it was true. But by the time the story hit EW.com yesterday there was no denying it- this thing was real.

Back in 2010, our fellow My Entertainment World branch, My TV featured an exclusive interview with My TV Award nominee Amy Acker. Now, Whedon's newly minted Beatrice (Much Ado's word savvy leading lady) has graciously agreed to answer a handful of my giddiest questions about the film, the exceptional cast, working with Joss and the super quick and top-secret 12 day shoot that ended on Sunday.

Everybody Cut Footloose!

by Kelly Bedard

The opening scene of the new Footloose is toe-tapping great and followed by the excellent addition of the game-changing car crash that sets the no-dancing law in motion. The last scene is even better- it had me on a glitter high and dancing in my seat. The iconic montage of Willard learning to dance to the tune of "Let's Hear it For the Boy" is expertly copied almost frame-for-frame but given tiny modern tweaks and played with wonderful comic panache by Miles Teller. If they'd screwed up any of those three things (2 iconic, 1 tone-setting), the film would have had failure written all over it. As it is, a 70% mediocre film gets such a big boost from the excellence of that crucial 30%.

Style, Punch and a Whole Lotta Driving

by Kelly Bedard

Ryan Gosling is on top of the world. With no fewer than 3 major major movies currently in theatres and Oscar buzz starting up again, Gosling is named-checked as The Guy right now, the one that all other men are stuck never living up to. But Ryan Gosling is a gangly Ontarian with floppy hair and a goofy smile. Isnt' he? At least that's the kid I grew up loving on Breaker High back when I was the only kid I knew who knew his name. Then he conquered the world, making everyone fall in love with him in the process- and my possessive pride is kicking in.