Nationals Baseball: MOVIES

Thursday, December 07, 2017

MOVIES

So here's my quick take on most of the "classic" Christmas movies. Unfortunately when Santa's elves are putting out literally a couple dozen new made for TV Movies every Christmas, not to mention Christmas episodes of TV shows, Christmas specials and the rest, my made for TV recommedations to end that post are already woefully outdated just 3 years later. So let's revisit.

We'll start with some classics I didn't address

Elf

I didn't care much for it at first (I'm mostly miss on Will Farrell) but it's grown on me.  It's kid friendly when surprisingly a lot of the more popular Christmas movies aren't exactly.

Miracle on 34th Street

First one is better but if you have an aversion to B&W the Mara Wilson one is the rare good remake. I don't go out of my way to watch these but if I catch it, it can happen.

Love Actually

I know it's pretty Christmasy but in my head I don't consider it a Christmas movie. So I don't feel any great need to watch it during the holidays. Do I watch it otherwise? Well, I acknowledge it may actually be bad* and we might be fooled by accents but I still enjoy it in parts. So I guess, yes, but it's not like a favorite or anything.

Santa Clause (s) 

Never actually watched one.  I've tried to watch the first one several times and it never keeps my attention.

How the Grinch - Movie

That looks terrible. I'm not watching that.

Jingle all the Way

It is terrible. I am watching that.

White Christmas 

You know - it's also not a real good "Christmas" movie but for some reason I do make time to watch this one every year. I do have an affinity for old movies but there are certainly better ones I could make time to watch. I can't really explain why.


OK now that we're done with the preliminaries what's going on with the schlock! First off I'll recommend a great terrible watch Christmas movie. A lot of people say these movies are bad but really they aren't. You may not like them. They may be sappy and predictable. But that's different. Bad is special. And hitting that sweet spot of being bad but still somehow watchable that you can laugh at the craziness of it is hard. But there are some out there.

#1 on the list is Christmas Belle which will air on ION a couple times. I recommended it before and if the phrase "so much shirtless running" doesn't get you in the Christmas Spirit I don't know what will.  The plot is weirdly slow. Like not time wise but like they had 30 minutes of material but needed to fill two hours. So there's a lot of shots of things not happening. The male lead plays everything very melodramatically. The dialogue is overwrought and at times insane. I can't exactly remember why it's a Christmas movie but I'm sure that's in there somewhere.

Also enjoyably bad for a pop-in is Mariah Carey's Christmas Melody.  The non-Mariah parts are pretty standard but every time she's in a scene she's filmed in a soft-focus close-up that's both jarring and brilliant and worth seeing.

While, like I said this has become a factory product at this point I'm very hopeful for the Tara Reid vehicle A Royal Christmas Ball. to fit the bill. I mean Tara Reid and a budget Christmas movie that involves royalty? The trailer on the site alone involves a terrible photoshop, a terrible attempt at creating a picture on a blank page in a book and neither of the other two leads saying a word! That's very promising. 

For a bigger movie that's garbage yes watch Jingle All the Way. It's horrendous


I'll do some reviews tomorrow barring any actual baseball news.

*Except the Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman parts because they are both awesome. 

16 comments:

Chas R said...

Scrooged with Bill Murray is my favorites Christmas movie

Mick said...

Always loved The Ref. (Though the Kevin Spacey news takes a bit from it for sure)

JE34 said...

Harper- where do you come down on the burning question: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

JE34 said...

Crap! Disregard my question which you already answered thoroughly. Just looked at your linked post. Sorry about that.

JE34 said...

The Bells of St Mary's is a rock solid B&W Christmas movie. It's the base plot from The Blues Brothers - save the orphanage - without the R&B cameos, action, and hilarity. Replace John Belushi/Dan Akroyd with Bing Crosby/Ingrid Bergman, and make them a priest/nun respectively.

The Polar Express is a nice story marred by creepy looking animated humans.

Joyeux Noel is a GREAT movie about the Christmas truce during WWI... if you're OK with the subtitles.

I came of age while MST3K was running, so in my mind, no so-bad-it's-good Christmas movie list is complete without Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and the Mexican made Santa Claus which must be seen to be believed.


Harper said...

Chas R - I watch it every year even though I'll not like most of it while watching it. Various bits are worth seeing and they are sprinkled in it so you can't just say - skip 30 minutes. Also I love me some Karen Allen

Mick - Never seen it but maybe if it's one I'll give it a try

JE34 - yeah - as you saw it IS a Christmas movie though not a CHRISTMAS movie but few movies actually are CHRISTMAS movies (usually ones with Santa).

I forgot about the MST3K ones. As a Team Joel I prefer SCVTM it also has Patrick Swayze Christmas - the 2nd best MST3K musical interlude IMO. (Best? Here you go - https://youtu.be/yzhEnz2MhHI?t=4074)

SM said...

Mariah Carey in soft-focus close-ups? C'mon, man: The cinematographer put denim over the lens.

Josh Higham said...

Ohtani to the Angels, which is just fine with me.

JE34 said...

No disrespect here, as the Patrick Swayze Christmas is a true work of art... but the Godzilla Genealogy Bop belongs in the best MST3K song discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jpra-LB5W8&t=233s

Jay said...

Ohtani signed with the Angels. Now Angels in the Outfield. I have to say I was very surprised. So much for going small town or small market. Plus, the Angels have a long way to go in my opinion to be competitive.

11Zimmerman11 said...

Nakatomi Plaza - 12/24/88 - Never Forget!

notBobby said...

Looks like Stanton is going to Yankees. You must be ecstatic Harper. An early Christmas for Yankee fans.

Kubla said...

We've avoided the pain of Brcye going to the Yankees and now get the pain of him going to the Dodgers and hitting a million postseason dongers off Scherzer.

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