Friday, December 13, 2013

Netflix This Movie! Vol. 55

This week's offerings include some new holiday classics and some of this year's underappreciated indie movies.

Adam Riske: The Polar Express (2004, dir. Robert Zemeckis) The Polar Express is a fascinating misfire that would be just as appropriate for Scary Movie Month as it is for Christmas. Based on a really great book by Chris Van Allsburg, Robert Zemeckis, Tom Hanks and co. fashion it into a spectacularly animated Freddy Krueger nightmare for kids with a seemingly bipolar train conductor drugging a bunch of kids with hot chocolate and making them hallucinate roller coasters, evil toys, pissed off elves and a skiing hobo. These kids are in constant peril. If you had a drinking game each time one of these kids almost dies falling off that train, you would be smashed by the end of the first act. And I haven't even mentioned the pod people who have possessed all of the children and bled the life out of their eyes. This movie is fucking crazy. I kind of love it and I kind of hate it. Either way, I feel the need to watch it once every few years. Stay in bed kids! There is nothing positive happening happening outside in the middle of the night. The Polar Express does for the North Pole what Jaws did for the ocean.
Heath Holland: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989, dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik) So, a few days ago I was not feeling the Christmas spirit at all. Then, boom, over the weekend I just turned all ho ho ho and holly jolly. I've been giving candy canes out to strangers and wassailing (I don't know what wassailing is). There aren't a ton of Christmas classics on Netflix, but National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation definitely ranks as one of the Christmas movies worthy of the label "classic." Also, this may be the last time I really enjoyed a Chevy Chase performance. *quick trip to IMDB* Hey, what do you know, it SURE WAS! So fire up National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation sometime in the next week or two in honor of jolly old Saint Nick and the really funny guy that Chevy Chase USED to be.
JB: Crystal Fairy and the Magic Cactus (2013, dir. Sebastian Silva)
Frances Ha (2013, dir. Noah Baumbauch)
The Iceman (2012, dir. Arial Vroman)

All of three of these films are worthy of your attention and seem to be ideally suited to Netflix Instant. All three received limited distribution and might not have been considered worth a drive downtown, high-priced reparatory theater tickets, and parking. While not perfect films, they are all perfectly entertaining and feature performances that deserve to be seen. Gaby Hoffman in Crystal Fairy, Michael Shannon in The Iceman, and Greta Gerwig in Francis Ha were among the best performances I saw this year. Gerwig just got nominated for a Golden Globe. Pour yourself a margarita for Fairy, a cup of Irish coffee for Frances, and a stiff belt of whiskey for Iceman this weekend and enjoy.
Patrick: Sightseers (2013, dir. Ben Wheatley) I couldn't decide how I felt about Sightseers when I saw it earlier this year. It pulls off the dark comedy, which is notoriously tricky to do, and has a definite low-fi, deadpan charm. Like every Ben Wheatley movie I've seen, though, I want it to be something a little more, or to go some other place. I suspect that's my hangup. The movie is interesting and different and worth seeing, and if nothing else it will give us a chance to talk about it in the comments.

8 comments:

  1. I know it is just a movie, and maybe it was the mood I was in at the time, but the dog shenanigans in Sightseers really upset me. I guess that means it was very effective. It kinda reminded me of another British dark dark comedy "Four Lions". I was chuckling yet horrified at the same time. This movie will stick with me for a while.

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  2. I appreciate your take on The Polar Express, Adam. I really don't like that movie, but not for any of the very good reasons you state. It's another in many songs, films, books, etc. that enshrines the "Childhood = Magic; Adulthood = Death" idea. How is The Polar Express like the Mellencamp song "Jack and Diane"? They both express the twisted belief that the joy of life dies as we age. Now, I have no doubt that's true for some people - but I can't stand movies or songs that state it as a given. I'm probably being too hard on The Polar Express - after all, the narrator can still "hear the bell." But it still pisses me off that the narrator is somehow better (even than his poor sister!) because he "still believes."

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    1. You raise a lot of good points. The movie sort of sidesteps that as adults we still believe but instead of in things like Santa it's stuff like Family etc.

      I so want there to be a line when the kid with no friends gets back to his house where his dad is all "where the hell have you been????"

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  3. Polar Express is indeed a strange movie. I still have not figured out the true nature and significance of "the hobo". Least of all the Leni Riefenstahl esque imagery of the elves and Santa at the north pole.

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    1. Your movie is weird if the hobo is the least scary adult. I think the whole point of that character is that you should believe in things you can't see/can't explain.

      Those elves seem nefarious for sure. Like when the sad kid won't give up his present and the elf says "trust me, it's in good hands", does he have to say it like such a sketchball?

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  4. Another 2013 release that needs to be caught up (just saw it this week): What Maisie Knew, an adaptation of a Henry James novel that's pretty damn wonderful. You're going to want to slap around the parents in the movie (Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, both acting their ass off), I enjoyed my first exposure to Alexander Skaarsgard and the kid playing Maisie is pretty damn good.

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  5. I also love the book The Polar Express. As I get older, the appeal of material presents, Christmas church services, and going with one of my parents to another family's evening of togetherness and celebration (yay for being an only child of divorced only children!) fades a bit more each year, but amidst all my bahing and humbugging, nothing, not even the movie, diminishes my esteem and affection for that book, even if I don't actually even read it anymore - I know it's there for me whenever I choose to return to it.

    Same goes for actor William Hurt's audiocassette reading of the book, complete with beautifully eerie 80s-tastic synth music and background effects; it's really wonderful. (Liam Neeson has also done a more recent recording, but with a much bouncier orchestral score, and his otherwise awesome Irish brogue doesn't fit nearly as well as Hurt's sublime murmur.)

    I also once made a sort of 5-minute music video fan edit of the movie once; it can be viewed here. There are some golden nuggets here and there in the general muddle of the flick, most notably Alan Silvestri's beautiful theme. Also, apart from some extra string lights, I appreciate that the movie mostly honors Allsburg's vision of the North Pole as a sort of forbidding industrial Soviet nighmare-scape. I was at Navy Boot Camp outside Chicago for all of December 2011 - an awesome way to avoid Christmas commercialism and overused tunes, by the way - and especially at night and with snow on the ground, its red brick buildings reminded me of/made me miss the book like crazy.

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  6. Beat me to THE ICEMAN, JB! Excited to see it. I have an excellent Glenrothes that will go down smooth with that movie.

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