The Christmas Movie B-Team (2020 Edition)
In the greater movie macrocosm, I can’t think of a single subgenre more beloved, more passed down, more celebrated over time than the Christmas movie. Year after year, millions have gathered in joyous communion to take part in this cultural pastime that has set festive vibes since TV first became widely available. Besides creeping your kids out with the strange little man you put on a shelf, watching Christmas movies has been one of the most time-honored annual traditions, upheld by countless families worldwide.
HBO cord-cutters weep in festive unison at the thought of missing out on Chris Pine in a Members Only jacket.
To put things into perspective: since 1997, Turner Broadcasting Network has aired A Christmas Story on repeat for 24 straight hours on Christmas day. Over this two-and-a-half decade span, they accumulated viewership averaging around 40 million households per year. With metrics like that, you’d think this delightful tradition seems everlasting but in a frightful turn of events, this year stripped that possibility from all of us. While we cope with this radical change, many of us are left with no choice but to find ways to celebrate alone. And if the stranger whose HBO Max account you’ve been mooching on these past two months finally decided to change their password, the Wonder Woman 1984 premiere is officially out of the question. So…what now?
Well, in the spirit of optimism, watching Christmas movies alone can still be a lot of fun—if anything, no one’ll be around to judge you for that ninth Hot Toddy you just drank. But if watching those cherished Christmas classics doesn’t quite feel right, consider trying something new and approaching it from a curator’s standpoint; subgenre movies have an appeal that is best explored when we reconfigure our notions of what they typically look like. And of all the obscure subgenres out there, few have generated a cult-like following like unconventional Christmas movies have; it’s become somewhat trendy to spot out Christmas movies that some might have to think twice about. While Die Hard is commonly referred to as the king of lowkey Christmas movies, there are far more out there that expand the scope of the many ways we can celebrate the moviegoing experience this holiday season. So put on a snuggie, pour yourself another Hot Toddy like the filthy animal you are, and join me in taking a festive holiday dive into the wider Christmas canon.
You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) - dir. Renny Harlin
Plot Synopsis: A suburban mom’s life goes off the rails when she begins having amnesiac flashbacks of her past life as a deadly CIA operative. When a private investigator uncovers a villainous plot for her former employers to re-stake their claim by any means necessary, they find themselves trapped in a desperate fight for their lives.
Why It Belongs: Renny Harlin and writer Shane Black’s forgotten classic is as underrated an action movie as they come. Despite being lost in the fray of the 90’s action renaissance, The Long Kiss Goodnight is everything you could ask for in a Christmas/action hybrid: ice skates, machine guns, dysfunctional family affairs, people plummeting into exploding gas trucks—y’know, the usual.
Santa Sam puts a big fat F-bomb in your stocking this Christmas.
Renny Harlin, best known for his seminal works Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea, is a director who has mastered the formula for a particular brand of action movie that requires precisely zero brain cell function. Being grounded in this base of mindless movie anti-logic allows for a considerable amount of freedoms: it appeals to a wider range of casual moviegoers who just want to see bullets fly, where the reloading is virtually nonexistent and the line readings strike a perfect balance between corny and cool. Speaking of which, Samuel L. Jackson brings his trademark foul-mouthed fury as P.I. Mitch Hennessy, which might be the single greatest action movie name of all time. Jackson brings an irresistible energy to the role reminiscent of Jules from Pulp Fiction if he finally found his niche on the right side of the law. At its core, this movie actually owes a lot to Tarantino—from the quippy dialogue to the offbeat chemistry and a literal Mexican standoff, viewers can clearly see the resemblance to the style of 90’s filmmaking that inspired it.
If Die Hard is the crown jewel of the Christmas/action hybrid, The Long Kiss Goodnight is a diamond in the rough. It’s affectionately flawed, though executed with maximum effort so it keeps your attention when it needs to. The ideal Christmas movie should establish a vibe, create an ambience that viewers can make a routine out of coming back to. This movie, much like Die Hard, is propped up on the strength of its set pieces and quippy action movie-isms. It doesn’t demand complete attention, it doesn’t request expenditure, you can zone out blamelessly and peer back to the screen at the moments that catch your eye. This self-aware, alternate take on subgenre fusion is dripping in outlandish pulpy flair that might just surprise you as to how far it slipped from the radar of popular knowledge.
When Santa Comes to Town
Rare Exports (2010) - dir. Jalmari Helander
Plot Synopsis: When a team of researchers in a remote mountain village excavate a mythological deity buried under depths of snow, a local boy and a band of locals must stop the unimaginable evil that comes lurking in search of it: a demonic envisioning of Santa Claus—and this year, everyone’s on his naughty list.
Why It Belongs: So I admit, I didn’t do the film any favors by describing it like one of those terrible movies you’d find in the back of a local video store. No, not those videos. But on paper, Rare Exports sounds outlandish. Strangely enough, that’s also its greatest strength; though it certainly treads into grindhouse territory, the film is compelling, original, and pulled off with total dedication to the world it’s built. If you don’t want to take my word for it, its Rotten Tomatoes score would like to chime in, for whatever that’s worth.
Rare Exports might be built on a gimmick but its true feat is how easily it transcends that gimmick—sure it’s about evil Santa Claus but as you can probably imagine, it’s not the one you’d expect. The film builds depth by establishing a rich mythology, a surprisingly layered narrative that’s written with succinct clarity that serves as an allegory for corporate greed. Its world is populated with a likeable cast of characters that feel fleshed out; their motivations are clearly presented, but they never outshine the ideas we’re given to play with. In terms of sheer enjoyment, this film is an absolute blast to watch from beginning to end and much like its more recognized contemporaries Krampus and Gremlins, it morphs genre by playing with conventions most commonly assigned to horror, adventure and Christmas movies all at once.
The revisionist Santa second place ribbon goes to..
This Finnish production was directed by Jalmari Helander, a filmmaker and country that are overwhelmingly underrepresented in mainstream conversation. Rare Exports was crafted to evoke scale, it transports viewers to a snowcapped Scandinavian vista and traps you in it. Much like John Carpenter’s The Thing, the cold isolation of our setting creates dreadful unease but instead of smashing the pedal, it reels you back in with enough whimsey and intentional humor to keep viewers cheerfully engaged and eager to return to it—an essential hallmark of the Christmas movie. This begs the question: despite its grindhouse status, is Rare Exports a future classic?
The Naughty and Nice
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) - dir. Shane Black
Plot Synopsis: A stroke of dumb luck lands a petty crook the lead role in a detective movie, but his mandated training with a bumbling Private Eye proves to be more than he bargained for. When he finds himself caught in the middle of a seedy murder plot, he’s whisked from the dark alleyways of Downtown L.A. to the sun baked hills of Hollywood in a frantic scurry to solve a case he’s comically unqualified for.
Why It Belongs: Because Shane Black’s stylish envisioning of a neo-noir is everything you could ask for in a Los Angeles detective movie with a modern touch. And yes, it also happens to take place during Christmas—a frequent signature of Shane Black’s directorial style. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang boasts an exceedingly witty script and a peerless cast who run amok in the concrete jungles of L.A. getting into all kinds of trouble. It’s darkly humorous, outwardly self aware and incredibly fun to re-watch, if anything to commiserate on the lighthearted fun it pokes at the self-serving emptiness of vapid L.A. culture.
This film catches lightning in a bottle with its cast; Robert Downey Jr. makes his triumphant return to godlike form as the bumbling smartass Harry Lockhart. The role proved so iconic, it famously won him the role as Tony Stark in Iron Man just three years later. His counterpart Michelle Monaghan plays off Downey’s neuroses with an equal measure of eccentricity and likeable charm. Throw in Val Kilmer as the catty private eye whose unsavory snark teeters between blunt and bitter, creating hilarious frictions between the trio. Their zany, dysfunctional interplay is in stark contrast to the cool, hardboiled noir detectives we knew from films like Chinatown and The Big Sleep.
A common trait of film noir is its signature pacing: known for being calculatedly slow, their simmering stories unfold in segments, with each new bit of information forwarding the plot until the revelation reveals itself. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang hastens the pacing with lighthearted humor and self-aware silliness. Though it never treads into parody levels of lampooning, Shane Black crafted a deeply lovable detective movie that feels more like an homage than a flat out farce. Armed with wit, personality, style and charisma, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is one of the greatest unsung entries to the extended Christmas universe and I’ve no doubt in my mind that in time, it’s bound to be recognized as such.
Gather Round the Fire
The Lodge (2019) - dir. Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
Plot Synopsis: A Christmas vacation takes a dreadful turn when two siblings, still reeling from the suicide of their mother, shack up with their dad’s new girlfriend in a remote winter cabin. Strange and chilling events begin to unfold and the trio must confront a long-suppressed darkness that’s clawing its way to the surface.
Why It Belongs: To say 2020 has been a downer year is an understatement, but for sickos like me, sometimes existential terror is exactly the kind of vibe we want to immerse ourselves in. This movie is despicable, vile and shockingly effective, while also totally qualifying as a Christmas movie. As a matter of fact, you might be hard pressed to find a more twisted Christmas movie than The Lodge, but for fans of the modern horror renaissance, it checks every box that genre heads salivate for: mortality, family crisis, inconsolable loss and last but definitely not least, a fascination with the occult.
Without spoiling anything—because the plot does twist in some pretty wild directions—The Lodge is a solid Christmas candidate for the drafting class of 2020 because, while it doesn’t have the joviality of Happiest Season or the whimsey of Jack Frost, its ominous tone grants catharsis to viewers who intrinsically feel a little more grim about holiday spirit this year. While I understand that many look for the lighthearted movies to distract them from problems of the real world, in art that builds a world of bleak hopelessness, many viewers might strangely find solace to know “things might suck but at least my Christmas will never be that bad”.
The movie is directed by Austrian filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Though they’re relative newcomers only having directed one feature film prior to The Lodge, their art clearly indicates that their instinctive chops are natural. Their latest entry is meticulously constructed with an artisan’s touch, building strong atmospheric tension with slow burn pacing, but delivers a fiery payoff that’ll leave a massive hungover for hours after the film reaches its conclusion. The plot rests on the backs of a minimal but talented cast led by Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh and indie darling Riley Keough as the enigmatic Grace. The film is a soulless plunge into the human experience and seeks to explore the destructive ways in which we choose to process grief. To describe the film in comparisons: think The Shining meets Yours, Mine and Ours with a touch of Hereditary—the unholiest of unholy trifectas, because sometimes the only thing scarier than axe murderers or cult worshippers are step families.
Making Spirits Fight
Rocky IV (1985) - dir. Sylvester Stallone
Plot Synopsis: When a terrible tragedy befalls a legend of the ring, the Italian Stallion must put it all on the line against his toughest opponent yet—the formidable Ivan Drago in the icy tundras of Soviet Russia.
Why It Belongs: Because the only thing scarier than a pandemic is the imminent threat of nuclear destruction; at the height of Cold War panic, Rocky Balboa brought home a gift that can’t be quantified with any price tag—he pummeled intolerance and fought his way to diplomacy between the U.S. and the USSR. Our country owes him this eternal debt of gratitude: for Rocky IV to forever be memorialized as a definitive lowkey Christmas movie. When you boil it down to the framework, you’ll find that this vascular specimen of cinematic entertainment features touchstones of any great Christmas movie: family values, tragic human flaw, a musical number, introspection on the error of our ways, but most importantly, a robot servant wearing a Santa hat. It’s basically a fireside Yuletide fable with baby-oiled biceps.
Universally recognized for its fan friendly spectacle and high-octane energy, the fourth in the franchise is a crowning achievement of not just the series, but the sports movie genre as a whole. The fight scenes are choreographed with reckless abandon for any notion of boxing defense, instead we find ourselves just trying to comprehend the seismic power these greased up titans possess. In the hearts of many, the franchise’s epic revival in 2015’s Creed still plays second banana to Rocky IV’s mindlessly enjoyable yet painfully 80’s individuality. From the cheesy montage sequences to the cool synthesizer score, it somehow manages to achieve timelessness while simultaneously serving as a snapshot of an excessive time in American history when a man’s worth was measured by the amount of full-grown men he could pull on a sled through the snow.
Stallone took quarantine beard to a whole new level way before it was cool.
While Rocky IV isn’t unanimously known as a conventional Christmas movie, by approaching its premise with an open mind, you’ll find that its heart pumps with more than just illegal substances…but of holiday morality. Not only does the film’s epic showdown between Rocky Balboa and fearsome Ivan Drago take place during Christmas, but its anti-war sentimentality boils down to a simple yet resonating value that we can all relate to and reflect on: no force on earth can match for the weight of unity. Casting aside differences has been a massive point of contention this year but to unify for the sake of giving thanks is a core tenet of such timeless classics as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and even Home Alone, thematically. The immortal, marble-mouthed teachings of Balboa rings true all these 35 years later, “If I can change and you can change, everybody can change”. *cues James Brown*
Lighting the Tree
Friday After Next (2002) - dir. Marcus Raboy
Plot Synopsis: For fear of being evicted, underachieving cousins Craig and Day-Day must hatch a scheme to make back their rent money that was stolen by a burglar in a Santa suit.
Why It Belongs: With so much bad news to digest on a daily basis, sometimes a stoner Christmas movie is exactly the kind of altitude you feel like cruising at. Unanimously recognized as the forgotten Friday movie in Ice Cube’s iconic trilogy, After Next is not remembered for its achievements, but its memorable characters. With no shortage of outrageous supporting performances from the always funny John Witherspoon as wide-eyed Willie Jones, and Terry Crews in his breakout role as hulking behemoth Damon, this film harkens back to a simpler time when our biggest issues revolved around “which velour tracksuit should I wear today?”.
Though it lacks moral substance, Friday After Next is carelessly fun and terrifically quotable. Some films are remembered exclusively for being a good time and as I’ve explored in previous posts: there are almost always redemptive qualities to be found in objectively bad art. The film’s humor is vulgar and seems quite aged, though its appeal is rather charmingly dated, like it’s preserved in the amber of early 2000’s sensibility when hip-hop culture was still finding its way into the mainstream popularity—it dictated the way we talked, the way we walked, the way we dressed, the jokes we found hysterical. While Friday remains the catalyst for when that cultural moment became consummated, After Next was the overlooked carbon copy—undoubtedly flawed, though it retained a glimmer of its predecessor’s timely allure.
When a movie lacks in depth, you can sometimes look for its charm to take the lead. What Friday After Next is missing in substance, it more than makes up for in its raucous stable of kooky but lovable characters; Ice Cube and Mike Epps, at the height of their moment, reprise their roles from Next Friday as dysfunctional slackers with displaced stoner ambition. The late, great John Witherspoon as wide-eyed Willie Jones, always chewing up the scenery with his uniquely spastic intensity, Katt Williams during his moment of cultural relevance as a painfully dated pimp with a chip on his shoulder, but the biggest break sprung from Terry Crews in his breakout role as the hulking behemoth Damon. Where largely he was known for being the big, scary dude sort of just lingering in the background of movies like Training Day, this film lets him flex his muscles a little more candidly—quite literally so. The film’s lack of general direction is somehow a trait of its charm, because it gives these actors free reign to test the limits of their comedic chops. Sometimes, that’s the defining essence of the perfect movie you can curl up and maybe light your Christmas tree to.