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Exquisitely understated, this is an instant classic, not in the sense that the word is typically applied to movies, but how we use the word to describe cars and clothes, embodying clean lines, subtle elegance, and a sense of timelessness.
It’s no Braveheart, but while I wait for The Patriot, The Crossing is a tasty appetizer. Sure and steady, this stately original film from the A&E cable network focuses on a brief moment of the seven-year-long war for American independence: the Battle of Trenton, when the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington, averted the imminent end of the colonial rebellion and handed the enemy his first defeat.
I have a gut feeling that The Nightmare Before Christmas may be the movie closest to Burton’s subconscious. This Edward Gorey phantasm of a film, I think, is Burton’s id come to life.
The king of 80s teen angst, John Hughes will be forever be venerated by Gen-Xers as the writer/director of our Holy Flick: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But his favorite movie with the rest of the world is probably Home Alone, which Hughes wrote. One indication, admittedly drawn from an extremely tiny sampling of moviewatchers: To this day, ten years after the release of the biggest-grossing film of 1990, my mother — who tends to refer to actors as ‘the guy from that TV show’ or ‘the one who was married to that other one in that movie’ — calls Macaulay Culkin, adoringly, ‘Home Alone.’
Edward Scissorhands is an anti-Christmas movie, I suppose. Here we have a creature whose “handicap” separates him from human contact — the scars on his face attest to the fact that he can’t even touch himself. At the time of year when the ideas of spreading cheer and opening our hears are meant to be the dominant ones, the “good” people of an all-American suburbia reject his plea for love and companionship, and cast him out.
Maybe because A Christmas Story, based on writings by humorist Jean Shepherd, concerns itself with the universalities of childhood, at least as it existed in America in the 20th century. From the mysteries of life — like, Does a human tongue stick to a frozen flag pole? — to the ‘unthinkable disasters’ of youth that are hilarious in adult retrospect, A Christmas Story taps into the bewildered and not-so-innocent child still in all of us.
Just as those who don’t understand the appeal of Star Trek will never get it, the charm of Galaxy Quest is probably limited to those of us already within the geek realm. So, it’s one more bit of fun we’ll hog for ourselves.
In fact, Dickens might have written something like Scrooged, an 80s, greed-isn’t-good update of the Dickens classic. The wittiest satire of television since Network, Scrooged gives us Frank Cross (Bill Murray: cradle, rushmore), the ‘youngest president in the history of television,’ the maniacal — and megalomanaical — head of the IBC TV network.
I still mourn for Kermit — and for Jim Henson — though. The lamentable Bob Cratchit seems the ideal character for the creature who sang the melancholy and winsome “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” The Muppet Christmas Carol never achieves the delicate pathos it might have if Jim Henson had still been there for his froggy alter ego.
Okay, so it’s not a movie. But Blackadder’s Christmas Carol is my favorite variation on the beloved Charles Dickens story of one man’s dramatic change of heart. Remember, though, dear reader, to take into account that I am a heartless bitch — anyone with an ounce of sentiment will be thoroughly appalled by this entirely mean-spirited black comedy.
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