People have many different holiday traditions. All of mine seem to center around the solemn viewing of Christmas films. Obviously, the best of these is “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But there are only so many times that you can watch these movies (about 40, in the case of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”)
Still, it doesn’t feel right somehow to pop in “Reservoir Dogs” after an evening of wrapping Christmas presents. There are plenty of holiday-ish films to fill in those cold winter nights so that you don’t have to resort to baking cookies, singing carols, or other meaningful Yuletide pursuits.
It may not center entirely around Santa Claus like “Miracle on 34th Street, but Tim Burton’s weird yet tender 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands” culminates in a Christmas Eve climax. Although everyone remembers Johnny Depp’s Edward chopping up shrubbery and giving wacky haircuts to women and dogs, the film’s most romantic scene is when he uses those scissor hands to makes an ice sculpture for Winona Ryder, causing snowy flakes to flutter around her over a dreamy Danny Elfman score. The whole film is in the hallmark daffy-Gothic Tim Burton style, making it enough of a fairy tale for Christmas season viewing.
This is also an excellent time to check the somewhat obscure 2002 Hugh Grant film “About a Boy.” This is vastly superior to that silly Hugh Grant movie that takes place at Christmas, “Love Actually.” This silly movie is actually very funny, very moving, and fairly Christmasy, covering the span of two Christmases and concerning a man who lives off the royalties of a Christmas song his father wrote in the ‘50s.
Its success is probably due to the fact that it is based on a novel by Nick Hornby and that Hugh Grant has never been better than here as an immature guy who grows up when he befriends a rather pathetic teenage boy. Warm enough for holiday viewing, but funny enough to enjoy independently of the season, it also features a fake Christmas song you can learn and sing, called “Santa’s Super Sleigh,” plus a great soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy.
Woody Allen’s 1996 musical “Everyone Says I Love You” is usually discussed in terms of the spotty singing performances of some of its many stars, but it also culminates in a rather charming Christmas scene in Paris. The rich family, composed of Allen, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Drew Barrymore, among others, attend a rather fabulous Christmas ball in which everyone dresses as the Marx Brothers.
While the aforementioned “It’s a Wonderful Life” is, as I said, the ultimate holiday, three-hanky film, there is no reason you should have to limit yourself to a single James Stewart movie.
1958’s “Bell Book and Candle” begins with a typical Christmas Eve in the life of a glamorous witch, played by Kim Novak. She and her eccentric cohorts hang out in a dim jazz cavern called the Zodiac Club, where she sets a plan in motion to woo a handsome mortal. At home, she has a terrific abstract Christmas tree that you may be inspired to recreate. If the plotline sounds familiar, that’s because this film was the source for the television series “Bewitched.”
And let’s not forget “The Shop Around the Corner,” (1940.) In this one, Stewart plays a man working in a shop with a woman he can’t stand, but with whom he’s unwittingly carrying on a correspondence and with whom he’s unwittingly in love. The whole thing takes place during the Christmas season, and, if this too sounds familiar, that’s because they remade it in 1998 and called it “You’ve Got Mail.” If you have TBS, you’ve no doubt caught this one, but if Tom Hanks thinks that he’s our new James Stewart, he’s got another think coming. Let’s pray he doesn’t remake “Harvey.”
And, if you’re tired of crying from happiness and feel like crying because you feel bad, rent Ang Lee’s 1997 “The Ice Storm.” This film, most certainly not based on a former incarnation starring James Stewart, is a painful look at two families during the Christmas holidays in the 1970s, and will probably make you realize how ill-advised that holiday key party really is.
This film is full of great performances, including a pre-muscles Toby Maguire, a pre-Hobbit feet Elijah Wood, and the incredible Kevin Kline. To watch this wonderful film is to marvel at how amazingly different and amazingly assured each of Ang Lee’s films are- and to feel really depressed. This one is a sure tonic to any holly jolly buzz brought about by the films before it, or by eggnog, or both.
Contact Asia Frey at afrey@lagniappemobile.com.
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