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Scrooge follows the basic tale somewhat faithfully, at least in the beginning. But it rapidly morphs into something Dickens probably wouldn’t recognize, a production that suffers from its theatrical roots and its need to not only make its antihero see the error of his ways but go way overboard in making up for his past.
You’ll produce a movie about how the humdrum lives of quiet desperation that the vast majority of people live aren’t really so bad after all. It’s not like it isn’t true — you do kinda miss your three-year-old daughter’s giggles, after all, and the smell of baking cookies. It’ll be a real feel-good movie celebrating the joys — honestly, there are some! — of ticky-tacky suburbia. And it’ll be a Christmas movie! Yeah! Christmas is good for making people feel all warm and gooey.
I am very happy to report that Cast Away is terrific. And touching and smart and willing to grant the audience a modicum of intelligence. I will never again be able to look at a purple and orange FedEx logo and not think about Tom Hanks and Cast Away. This is an unforgettable film, full of imagery and emotion that lingers, one that far exceeds even the high expectations that accompany it.
If A Simple Plan was Sam Raimi’s Northern gothic, then The Gift is his Southern gothic. Beautiful in its spareness and simplicity, it spins a chill-inducing tale from a seemingly mundane story by mixing in supernatural elements and treating them with a refreshing down-to-earthness.
So what the Coens did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? is this: They transported Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey to this filmic otherworld of theirs, turning what is perhaps the original on-the-road story into a Depression-era fantasia that wants more for you to recognize the clever fun they’re having with filmmaking conventions of the 1930s than whether you know the least thing about ancient literature.
It’s a story oft told: the star-crossed lovers separated by circumstance, but rarely has it been related so dramatically as in Im Kwon Taek’s Chunhyang. Combining the theatrical and the cinematic, Im draws on ancient Korean operatic traditions while utilizing some of the lushest, most gorgeous cinematography this year to create a film that is poetic and lyrical, both visually and aurally. If only it were as engaging of the emotions as it is the senses.
If you’d like to really scare a child out of the Christmas spirit, plop her down in front of Santa Claus, the Movie. Just be sure to set aside sufficient funds for a lifetime of therapy afterward. Truly, this is perhaps the mind-numbingest, most incoherent, most amoral Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, and that’s including Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Not only is the so-called story a disjointed mess — there are at least three different movies jammed in here — but this disgusting film turns Santa into an idiotic, heartless bastard.
The House of Mirth — based on the Edith Wharton novel and written for the screen and directed by Terence Davies — is a strikingly beautiful film about the discreet ugliness that characterized proper society at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how petty inhumanity set women up, almost inevitably, for ruination.
The Emperor’s New Groove demonstrates how stale the Disney formula had become, and how successful the Mouse could be by daring to break an old mold… even if it isn’t obvious at first that anything new is happening here.
One of the Warner Bros short features, aimed at young audiences, about the teen-girl detective’s adventures, though she’s cast as a rather interfering little brat. Still, it’s good clean fun for kids.
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