Post by johnnywest on Dec 25, 2023 13:10:15 GMT -5
How about that 3-hour 1999 film that its entire storyline happens in a few days around Dec. 25th? “Eyes Wide Shut”. But don’t go to subchannels eg. Christmas Hallmark-like streaming services to look for it or its director: “Stanley Kubrick” (of 2001 Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, etc.). I am familiar with the original story that was an Austrian short published in the 1920s and happened not during Xmas but around Mardi-Gras like carnival. But this updated weird adaptation has its own ”Christmas setting” subsection in its wikipedia article and is in IMDB Xmas lists)!! So much for a film that barely escaped NC-17 rating (but eventually was rated R.) Recently I caught it again on Showtime, but I think even for a basic-cable channel (at least in North America) it is still too risque & Recall when I first saw it in a mall in suburban Philly in 1999, the manager of the multiplex I went to, was adamant not letting anybody under 18 into the theater. Reportedly some call it “Christmas movie for grownups”; but to me it is anything but (with vague story full of dream sequences and/or flashbacks, not unlike films like “Mulholland Dr.” or the ending of Kubrick’s own “2001: A Space Odyssey” some 30 years earlier.)
But less intelligent films like “Black Christmas” series (the remake of an original 1974 movie), to me, are like bad Halloween slashers only its subjects replaced in a Xmas season environment. Its themes are as familiar as above-mentioned Hallmark Christmas series (but obviously on the other side of the scale); For me Hallmark movies Xmas storylines also seem like slight variations of Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons’ (that incidentally its pilot was a Christmas movie-of-the-week on CBS); only the place or background period might have changed.
My other beef is with the so-called end of the year blockbusters, superficially with a Christmas scene shoved in. Case in point, last year’s “Spider-man: No Way Home”. While overall I thought it was one of the better Marvel films, I was bothered by the last minutes’ Xmas scene (talking about MIT in Cambridge, MA in a coffee shop). Anything to boost the movie during year-end holidays…
I tried showing the original “Black Christmas” to a friend recently but he was so bored with it, I had to shut it off. It moves along pretty slowly but I enjoy it.