'Happiest Season,' 'Fatman,' and the state of Christmas movies
No Content for Old Men
with Matt Craig
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
First off, news! It's no exaggeration to say Thursday's announcement that Warner Brothers was releasing all of its 2021 movies onto HBO Max on the same day as their theater release may have been one of the most monumental moments in movie history. Movie theaters did not die on that day, but their fate was officially sealed. Overall, the Warner Brothers slate is looking really bad for next year, but I will note for the purposes of this newsletter that it includes In the Heights and Dune.
In this week's newsletter: It's all about Christmas movies. There's more coming out this year than ever before, but I found two of the best...for very different reasons. In this week's "Trailer Watch," it's not a trailer at all, its a vide from Ryan Reynolds' Instagram page.
Word Count: 518 words
Reading time: 3 minutes
Happiest Season
(Hulu)
Christmas movies are as infinite as they are replaceable. There's a This Christmas and a Last Christmas, The Night Before Christmas and Knight Before Christmas, A Christmas Tale and A Christmas Story and The Christmas Chronicles, which are all different things, apparently.
Hallmark and Netflix are locked in an annual war to create the most cookie-cutter, algorithm-friendly holiday movie about love and family and that good ol' "Christmas spirit."
These movies keep getting made because there's a demand for them. Throw in some pine trees, some string lights, and some mistletoes and the bar is extremely low for success. Yet time and time again, most of these offerings still fail to clear it.
Which is why Happiest Season was such a breath of fresh air. All it took was making the central relationship be between two women (gasp! you can do that?) and suddenly new life was breathed into this formulaic holiday rom-com.
It's very easy to envision a bro-d out version of this movie. Very little would have to change. Truly, this is the least gay "gay movie" of all time. But that's kind of what makes it awesome. The fact that the main characters are lesbian, which is the reason this movie exists, hardly factors in to the story at all. They're just people who are in love.
The arc of their love is exactly what you're used to from other Christmas movies. There's a central "lie," that Harper (Mackenzie Davis) hasn't come out to her parents, so Abby (Kristen Stewart) has to pretend to be her plutonic friend when they go back to Harper's parents' house. Hijinks ensue, as they always do, the couple drifts apart through some light melodrama and then comes back together at the end.
Stewart and Davis are, on their own, both extremely capable performers. They're just a poor match, to the movie's detriment. It's difficult to believe in them as a couple, and not just because Davis towers at least eight inches over Stewart. That makes for an interesting dynamic, but it's easily overcome by an absolutely incredible supporting cast.
Seriously, the reason why this movie is such a delight are the people around our primary couple. There's Allison Brie, hilarious and charming and overqualified in every bit part she's played recently. Dan Levy in that classic rom-com best friend role produces some of the best laugh lines in the movie and arguably the genre. Mary Steenburgen (you might know as the mom from Step Brothers) is a mother who recently got instagram, a bit that never gets old throughout the movie. And perhaps most improbably, Aubrey Plaza playing a character who's actually somewhat normal and likable?
This movie does absolutely everything that a good holiday movie is supposed to do, and not one single thing more. It rises above the enormous crop of mediocrity, but does not rise to the heights of holiday classics.
It's fun, and surprisingly really funny, which in 2020 is always a welcome relief. If you're on Hulu I definitely recommend this Christmas movie over the hundreds of others you've seen before.
Streaming Suggestions!
Something New
Fatman (VOD): This was without a doubt one of the funniest trailers I've seen, and you all seemed to love when I featured it in "Trailer Watch" a few weeks back. Mel Gibson plays Santa Claus, a.k.a. "Chris" Cringle, a pretty normal looking dude with a dirty beard and a constant scowl who quite literally gifts bad children coal (at an increasing rate, he despairs). One of those bad children hires a hit man, played by the always-hilarious Walton Goggins, to kill Santa. Oh, and did I mention that somewhere in there Santa and the elves get hired by the U.S. military to produce weapons??
I went in wanting to make fun of the movie, then realized pretty quickly that that was the whole point. The characters are ridiculous, played incredibly fervently by Gibson, Goggins and the rest, and the plotting values a cheap laugh over making sense 10 times out of 10. You're laughing at it, not with it, but the farce has to be intentional. It's almost an instant cult movie, one that I could see myself rewatching during future holiday seasons.
Something Old
The First Annual Die Hard Memorial Best Christmas Adjacent Movies Award: Everyone has their list of holiday classics, and you don't need me to tell you to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Elf" or whatever. Let's be honest, most of them are trashy Hallmark B-movies or really kitschy rom-coms. I prefer Christmas adjacent movies, like the infamous "is it a Christmas movie?" classic, Die Hard. Here are five of my other favorites:
5. You've Got Mail (HBO Max): Tom Hanks' company is trying to put Meg Ryan's bookshop out of business during Christmastime in New York. They fall in love online (unknowingly), which was as much a fantasy back in 1998 over AOL Instant Messenger as it is in 2020 over dating apps.
4. Trading Places (VOD): This 1983 comedy showcase for Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd gets set in motion when two rich bankers decide to play Santa in the lives of a privileged kid and a homeless person. It's the '80s, so lessons will certainly be learned.
3. Little Women (Starz): I'm personally very excited to revisit Greta Gerwig's criminally overlooked 2019 update on this classic story, which has aged like fine wine in my memory. Both the Christmas holiday and the "Christmas spirit" factor into this coming-of-age story of a headstrong woman and her sisters. The casting is incredible (Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothy Chalamet, Meryl Streep Laura Dern and on..) but Gerwig's script is the real winner here.
2. L.A. Confidential: The investigation of a Christmas eve "riot" leads exposes the corruption of the L.A. police department in beautifully rendered 1950s Los Angeles. It's is a classic golden age noir story told with modern sensibilities. Great performances from Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and an Oscar-winning role for Kim Basinger.
1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (VOD): My immediate answer anytime anyone asks me what my favorite Christmas movie is! The holiday is an inessential yet always-present element of Shane Black's ultra-meta adventure comedy starring Robert Downey Jr. with Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan. It simultaneously showcases and satirizes the best of the neo-noir genre, providing equal parts laughs and thrills.
Something to Stream
New releases; Mank (Netflix), Freaky (VOD), Nomadland (VOD): Hopefully by now you've completed the homework I assigned you, to rewatch or (for most of you) watch for the first time the all-time classic, Citizen Kane. Now you can fully appreciate and enjoy David Fincher's Mank, likely to be a favorite for Best Picture and other awards this year. It's on Netflix starting Friday. Also coming out on-demand today (Dec. 4) is Blumhouse's horror comedy Freaky, in which Vince Vaughn plays a serial killer who body swaps with a teenage girl. And Nomadland, a sort of fiction/non-fiction mixed story about people who live in vans and migrate across the country, which features an apparently awesome Oscar-worthy performance from my favorite actress, Frances McDormand.
Trailer Watch: A Match Made in Hell
Ok it's not a trailer at all. It's a video made for Ryan Reynold's Instagram page. But the suckyness of 2020 has never been captured better than this short video personifying Satan dating "2020" set to Taylor Swift's song "Love Story." It's hilarious.