Christmas Movies For When You Can't Stand To Watch Anymore Christmas Movies #3 Gremlins

What with all the commercialism, annoying relatives, over eager neighbors and people telling you you’re going to hell, I bet there are times when you wish you could just take a flamethrower to the whole thing. Well don’t dream it be it. For anyone who ever felt a bit Scrooge like around the holidays, Gremlins in which a pack of the titular demons run around dismantling a town brimming with Christmas cheer, should feel cathartic.

The product of a cute little creature voiced by Howie Mandel, who come alive and wreck havoc once the specific rules for care and feeding for it are disregarded, thus proving that Howie Mandel is the source of all evil. Something I’ve been trying to tell you for years. Gremlins started out as a straight up horror movie, but Spielberg deciding he didn’t want another nasty movie staining his reputation as a family filmmaker so soon after Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom (AKA the one that’s just as silly as Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull) passed duties onto Joe Dante in what turned out to be a stroke of genius. Dante’s best films feel like a Mad Magazine parody of themselves brought to life and I've written about my affection for his films before.

Everything exaggerated, there’s a rude gag in every corner of the frame. Dante’s dedication to cramming as much mischief into his movies as humanly possible has made him one of my favorite filmmakers and the livewire energy he brings to the film, first by building up a perfect Capra town (complete with its own Mrs. Potter whose dispatching is one of the films funniest gags) and then by burning it down, makes for a great watch. Gremlins is one of the few eighties movies that holds up on more then a nostalgic basis, partially because of the conscience aping of the forties in its Christmas scenes, and fifties in its sci fi conventions and partly because of Dante’s quick but never frantic style Gremlin’s retains a surprisingly timeless feel and never becomes just another game of “spot the mullet”. And its funny and surprisingly gruesome to boot, kind of like a kids version of Evil Dead. The perfect film for those days you can't help but feel Christmas would be improved by a bunch of rampaging demon spawn.

Christmas Movies For When You Can't Stand To Watch Anymore Christmas Movies #2 The Bishop's Wife

(On a sidenote you have to love that tag line. Only in marketing can they take a movie as purely innocent as this one and smuttily turn in a leering tagline that suggests Cary Grant is fucking a Bishop's wife.)

The line between sincerity and sappiness can be perilously thin, and The Bishop’s Wife walks it perfectly. Though the story of an angel who is sent by God to teach a Bishop to stop being such an jerk to his family sounds like the kind of thing that might actually kill any diabetics that happen to be watching, it doesn’t do credit to the tone of melancholy and sophistication the movie actually presents.

Sure it’s a little corny it’s the story of an Angel sent to teach someone a very special lesson fer Christ sakes (If you want to see how bad it could have been try watching the remake, a ghoulish Whitney Houston Vanity Project, I say try because no one has succeeded yet). But the tone is closer to Wings Of Desire then It’s A Wonderful Life. It’s a fine example of Hollywood craft at its very best bolstered by performances by some of the most charming human beings ever to grace God’s green earth.

The film stars David Niven as the titular Bishop, whose trying to raise funds for a new Cathedrial, while dealing with finicky backers, parishners, and the demands of his family, after praying for a way to raise the money for his serious house on a serious earth, he’s visited by Cary Grant proof of the divine if there ever was, who ends up gently falling for Niven’s wife and just as gently letting her go. There’s no huge master plot to The Bishop’s Wife no false crisis to drum up the tension, it’s all quite low key, playing off the inherent charm of its actors to carry it through. It’s a wistful movie, filled with some surprisingly heady ruminations on the pleasures of being mortal, and the difficulties of faith. But I’m making the film sound like a chore when its really as true a cinematic pleasure as I know. A charming, moving, dryly funny, adult film, with a nice anti materialistic message to boot (Anti consumerism at Christmas? Bah Humbug, now if you’ll excuse me I have some money changing at the temple to attend to) as comforting as a down coat on a cold winter’s afternoon.

Christmas Movies For When You Can't Stand To Watch Anymore Christmas Movies #1: Batman Returns

I know I know, the decorations have been up since Oct. 15th, terrible music is being piped at you twenty four seven, a hideous rubberly computer generated likeness of Jim Carrey has already shown up to terrify your children and take your hard earned money.

The fact is that even if you’re Ned Flanders by the time Christmas Rolls around you’re probably feeling a little Holly Jolly’d out. Well I’m here to get you back in the spirit of things, with a couple of Christmas films off the beaten pack. No “Wonderful Life” or “Miracle On 34th Street”. No these are some Christmas movies that won’t be played non stop on a loop for the next month.

If there’s one person more popular then Jesus its Batman. Burton had the brilliant plan to mix the two, by making what’s quite possibly his strangest movie, which is saying something, the sequel to one of the biggest money makers of all time. People hated the movie at the time criticizing it for its dark tone, transgressive characters, and bizarre visuals, having apparently never seen nor heard of a Tim Burton movie or Batman Comic before.

I'm in the minority here but I personally feel Returns is a superior movie to Burton's original Batman in just about every possible way. While I still love that movie on a nostalgic basis, actually viewing the thing means sitting through a WHOOOLLLLEEE lot more Bassinger then I'm willing. Even setting aside Nicholson's old fat and hammy performance (What Ledger's performance really did was made me wish Nicholson had played the part sooner, can you imagine if Last Detail/ Five Easy Pieces era Jack had taken a crack at The Joker) The Prince Music, The Bat suit that can't turn its head, the utterly static fight "choreography" and utter 80'sness of the whole thing, there is still major stuff bogging that movie down. I love it, but I need to be in the right move to watch it and look past its flaws, Returns I can turn on at just about anytime.

What I really feel threw people though was the earnestness with which Batman Returns dealt with its source material. Returns was really the first comic book movie that treated Comic books as something to be examined. While its ostensibly about a power struggle between The Penguin, Catwoman, and Batman, it plays much more like a demented character study, with every other person in the movie standing in for some part of Wayne’s twisted psyche.

The Penguin, played in a vile yet sympathetic performance by Danny DeVito, as the animalistic embittered orphan, Catwoman (Pfiefer still smoking hot in the PVC) as the part of Batman gets off dressing up in leather and beating the shit out of people, and Max Shrek (A more bugnuts then usual Chris Walken) as the driven industrialist. Everyone is Wayne adjusted a degree. Keaton plays Wayne himself as a shell of a man until he puts on the suit. The opening scene which has him sitting in his home blankly staring at a wall, only showing any sign of life when the Bat Signal hits him is one of my favorite depictions of the character. Had Bergman ever made a superhero movie it might have looked something like this.

At a time when stuff like Watchmen and The Dark Knight gets released every couple of months that’s no big deal. But back then it was unprecedented. Now what the hell does this have to do with Christmas? Well like 95% of Burton movies its set during the Holiday season, and Burton manages to make it more then window dressing, infusing the film with a real, yet melancholy sense of The Christmas spirit. There are some real lovely seen capturing the feel that this time of year gives, when even the freaks and misfits would like some company.