Reel Talk Vol. 2: Movies Released on Christmas Day

 by Adam Riske and Sonia Mansfield

Sonia and Adam chat about Django Unchained, Galaxy Quest, The Illusionist (2010), I.Q., and more!

Sonia: In this month’s Reel Talk, we’re writing about movies that were released on Christmas Day, some of which are our favorites and others that don’t fit into that description exactly. I’m sure this goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway … We’re talking favorites, not best. If you slide into the comments with “The best movie released on Christmas Day is To Kill a Mockingbird,” well, you’re probably right, but that’s not what we’re doing here. I know F This Movie peeps would never.

So, I’m gonna kick off our list with a real holiday classic, Django Unchained, which opened Christmas Day in 2012. I’m sure a lot of people don’t remember that Django opened that day because it was at the same time as Parental Guidance, starring Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, which is a movie that definitely exists, and people still talk about all the time.

Lately, and for reasons *waves arms around* I’ve been watching a lot of movies in which people brutally murder nazis, racists, and fascists. Quentin Tarantino has a lot of movies that scratch that itch.

I’ll be honest, Django Unchained isn’t one of my go-to Tarantino movies. I liked it when I saw it in the theater, but it’s (understatement alert) uncomfy. It’s not fun to rewatch like Pulp Fiction or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Still, a lot of racists get murdered. That’s pretty fun.

One of the things I appreciate about this movie is you can go as deep into it as you want. If you’ve seen a lot of blaxploitation or spaghetti westerns, I’m sure you get a lot more out of a movie like this. I like this movie purely as a revenge movie, and I liked it more on this rewatch. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance hit harder this time. He’s a smug and cruel person, but he’s also insecure and can’t handle any criticism. Very presidential. Of course, Christoph Waltz is doing his Christoph Waltz thing, and he won an Oscar for it. I don’t know how you nominate Waltz and give him the award without even nominating Jamie Foxx. But I could write an entire other column about how the Academy Awards disappoint me.

Adam: So many thoughts. First and most important, I was obsessed with Parental Guidance when it came out in 2012 because it was a Billy Crystal/Bette Midler star vehicle in a time where that no longer made as much sense. I wanted it to clear $100M domestic but it didn’t, despite doing surprisingly well as counter-programming that holiday season. Truth be told, I saw it in theaters and walked out halfway through (back when I did that a lot) because I thought it was pretty lame and disappointing.

I’m a fan of Django Unchained but when talking to FTM’s own Rosalie and Andy this past weekend, I found myself ranking it last among the Tarantino oeuvre. It’s just not one I feel great (re)watching or want to revisit all that often. It’s very well-made and the performances are solid (DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson for me are standouts and should be commended for stripping themselves or any actor vanity and unflinchingly being the people they were cast to be) and the movie has a righteous vengeance streak that’s impossible to deny. I think what holds me at arm’s length about this movie (aside from what I’ve already said) is that it’s much shaggier than a lot of Tarantino’s other movies and maybe 25% more impressed with itself than I am (e.g. the Christoph Waltz performance). I dunno…I have complicated feelings about this movie even though I think it’s one of the best of 2012.

My first pick is Fred Schepsi’s 1994 Christmas Day release I.Q., starring Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, and Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein. This is not in any way one of my favorites. I just felt like revisiting it because it’s a movie that sort of has autobiographical infamy for me. On January 13, 1995, I went with my friends to the movie to see Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight on its opening day but was denied entry because we were only 12 years old. The only movies playing at the theater we could be admitted to were Street Fighter or I.Q. We had all already seen Street Fighter, so we picked I.Q. and I was enraged so I didn’t give that movie a fair shake at all. Having now done so, I can say unequivocally that I.Q. is not as good as Demon Knight. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying it’s my least favorite Meg Ryan romantic comedy of the '90s that I’ve seen (I haven’t seen French Kiss). There’s something so dopey about the movie with Einstein and his friends playing Cupid for Robbins’ inquisitive mechanic. My big issue with the movie is that it feels like Ryan doesn’t have any choice in her matters of the heart. It’s like Tim Robbins sees her, says “HER!” to himself in his head, and then just wears her down while Matthau and his boys further manipulate her. There’s no great chemistry between Ryan and Robbins, so I didn’t really want them to get together and then in the scene where she tells him she loves him, it feels so thrown away and false that it pretty much sinks a movie that was otherwise in danger of falling off the rails. For something as seemingly innocuous as a movie like I.Q. presents itself to be, it’s a tad bit annoying.

Sonia: I like to imagine someone pitching this movie to Tim Robbins’s character in The Player. “Einstein has this niece, see. And she’s really smart but not about her own thoughts and feelings …” I love romcoms, but I don’t love romcoms that are about people lying to get someone to fall in love with them. It gives me the ick. And I.Q. gave me the ick before using the term “the ick” was a thing, and it’s for the exact reason you described. The Meg Ryan character has no agency over herself, and she bends to the will of the men in the story.

My next pick I can truly say is one of my favorites that opened on Christmas Day, and that’s Galaxy Quest. Never give up, never surrender! This 1999 comedy is special because it’s a parody that genuinely loves the thing it’s making fun of. It’s never mean-spirited or punches down at the people who created Star Trek or the Trekkies who love it.

Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shaloub, and Sam Rockwell all commit to the bit. They play it sincerely, so a movie that could’ve been Spaceballs feels more like a successful Star Trek movie. It’s poking fun at Star Trek, but it also kinda works as a Star Trek movie.

The cast is so good in this, but I want to single out Alan Rickman, because his character (a classically trained actor playing a riff on Spock) consistently makes me laugh out loud. “By Grabthar’s hammer… what a savings.” He’s so deadpan, and he plays it straight. It’s funny, but you find yourself sad for him because he wanted to do so much more. Who can’t relate to the fear of not living up to your potential?

I was curious, so I went to check out Galaxy Quest on Rotten Tomatoes. I couldn’t imagine there was someone who doesn’t like it, yet it has 90%, which means 10% of the reviews are wrong.

Adam: I love Galaxy Quest. It gets better every time I watch it. You said it perfectly that the movie nails the difficult trick of being reverential to Star Trek while also ribbing it and being its own thing entirely. It’s a shame there was never a Galaxy Quest TV show. It might have just been The Orville, actually.

My next pick is The Illusionist (2010), directed by The Triplets of Belleville’s Sylvain Chomet and adapted from an original script by the late Jacques Tati. I saw The Illusionist at the Music Box Theatre in early 2011 and remember being pretty blown away by it. If I were making top 10 lists back then, it certainly would have been near the top of that list. I hadn’t gone back to it in a long time and…it’s not capital GREAT like I remember but it’s still very good.

The story is basically the struggles of an aging magician who gets a happiness boost from making friends with an adoring young girl interested in magic. Times get difficult, earning wages and sustaining a livelihood become impossible, and the two grow apart. I read this movie is at least partially about Tati’s own strained relationship with his daughter and it definitely feels autobiographical in nature. The animation is beautiful, and the mood is pretty transfixing if you give yourself over to the movie, similar to something like Mr. Hulot’s Holiday or Playtime. I think my liking it a bit less than before has to do with my general mood as I get older. This movie is so bleak that I think it registered with me more when frankly I was more depressed as a younger man. I’m still depressed at times these days, but I’ve learned how to manage it better and I think that in a weird way prevents The Illusionist from digging in deep like it did for me when I saw it originally. That’s good, I guess! And bad, I guess!

What did you think of the movie? Also, tell me about your past Christmases at the movies. Do you have any great memories of seeing a movie in theaters on Christmas Day? What was it like working in a theater on Christmas Day and dealing with tons of amped up moviegoers? Do you think movies released on Christmas Day carry any special significance? I think it gives them a certain degree of gravitas, especially the Oscar Bait dramas. And I like how there’s usually types of movies released on Christmas Day e.g. something for kids, something for gamers/action fans, something high-profile like from a big director/actor, etc.

Sonia: I liked The Illusionist the first time I saw it in 2010. But this time I actually get it and appreciate it, because I’ve actually seen some Tati movies since then. The movie also hits differently for me now because I’m a parent. The fact that the magician works extra jobs without her knowing to make her feel like life is still magical speaks a lot to what it can be like to be a parent (especially around the holidays). And as a parent, you get to a point when you kinda have to burst that bubble, and your child sees you not as a magical all-knowing figure, but an actual human being. I imagine that’s a very bittersweet feeling. I say “imagine” because obviously I AM A MAGICAL ALL-KNOWING FIGURE, so my son never needs to find out.

Most of my memories of Christmas Day movies involve working at the movie theater. I usually worked a 2pm to 10pm shift or an evening shift. It was slow in the morning and then it would get swamped in the evening. It was mainly huge families that were sick of each other, so they decided to go to the movies and not talk. There were also a lot of teenagers who got gift certificates and wanted to use them right away … and get away from their families and not talk. Honestly, working the Christmas evening shift was fun. My co-workers were usually really happy and the customers were happy to be seeing a movie, even if the movie was a full-on Oscar-baity bummer.

But the thing that would happen every year that always made me raise my eyebrows and say, “Good luck” when I sold them their tickets was when the family movie that they wanted to see was sold out, so they’d just pick another movie.

They want to see Father of the Bride but it’s sold out, so they see JFK instead. “Good luck. I’m sure the 10-year-old will learn a lot.” They want to see Grumpy Old Men but it’s sold out, so they see Philadelphia instead. I was always in awe of the people who would just see whatever with their families. I guess I don’t like living dangerously like that.

What are some of your favorite memories, Adam?

Adam: That’s amazing. I love movie theater employee stories. I worked Christmas Eve and New Years Eve at Blockbuster a couple of times (which was open from 10am to 5pm) and there was always a line from the front of the store to the back of the store with no slow period. My favorite thing about that was seeing all the new release titles that were never checked out otherwise be checked out because people were settling for their fourth or fifth choice and just took whatever was still available. Good times!

As far as in theaters, there’s two Christmas moviegoing memories that come to mind. The first is when I threw up all over the theater after seeing Hook because I got food poisoning from dinner earlier that night. The second is seeing a midnight show Christmas Eve of The Wolf of Wall Street thinking it would just be me and like five other Scorsese die-hards there and instead it was a theater full of me and seemingly hundreds of Gentle Minion type teen bros who were rowdy and learning all the wrong lessons from the movie. I also remember seeing Jackie Brown, A Beautiful Mind, Catch Me If You Can, and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on Christmas. I’m sure there were more.

What about you, our wonderful readers, do you have any formative Christmas moviegoing memories? Do you have any favorite movies released on Christmas Day?

Thank you, Sonia! Happy Holidays!