solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

I can't say that this will still stand in a weeks time, but If I pre-suppose today is christmas day, and I have to think about the films I'd most like to watch, these are them. Ok so not all of them are straight up christmas movies, but all are close enough in my mind to make the list.

So here's the first part of my list (numbers 10 - 6), and accompanying each movie is an excellent trailer (some complete with gruff voice-overs) via youtube.

Counting down from 10 to 6… here's the first part of the list.

10. Scrooged
I love Bill Murray; Ghostbusters, Meatballs, Ghostbusters 2, Lost in translation, Stripes, Groundhog Day, I could go on. The guy just cracks me up, and making him a character where for a good portion of the film he gets to be rude to everyone he knows is a good move. Throw that in with some great direction from Richard Donner and some funny cynical takes on christmas programming "Lee Majors in … the Day the Reindeer Died" and you have a great movie for the most festive of days. 

The trailer for scrooged here (your forget how good It is until you actually watch this trailer again)

9. White Christmas
I'm really not a big fan of musicals, I have very little love for them, but 'White Christmas' is one of the few i'll make an exception for. The thing you really notice about this film straight off (and something that gets more breathtaking all the way through) is just how incredibly beautiful it is, the colours in this film are incomparable. It's all that was good about the old Hollywood system thrown up on the screen and is so un-ashamedly schmaltzy you just need to roll around in it. The film also has that great look from the days when everything looked like, and was a set (especially the outdoors scenes) and they knew it, so they perform it like a stage play. There's no crazy camera angles or experimental techniques here, it's straight up celluloid portraiture. A beautiful thing to behold.

The trailer for 'White Christmas' here

8. The Thing
Maybe it's all the snow, maybe it's the big winter jackets or maybe it's just the spider heads and exploding huskies. If this was a horror movie list, 'The Thing' would be much closer to number 1, but because it's not strictly a christmas movie it gets bumped down a couple of pegs. I love this movie and it really does remind me of christmas, the special effects, Kurt Russell, wintery tundra… Why don't we just wait here for a little while… see what happens?

The trailer for 'The Thing' here

7. Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Most people (If they want any respect from me at least) have love for the first 'Die Hard' movie, but the 2nd film is often ignored. Yes ok so the director Rennie Harlin is a hack, and would have a hard time forging a plotline through a beer advert but Die Hard 2 is a work of near genius. Take plot of first film, add different group of terrorists, keep wife in peril, keep Bruce Willis, subtract shirt, add dirtier vest…. where are you? that's right…. awesometown. The thing I most love about watching it at christmas is you can watch it back-to-back with the first film, and it's like just re-watching the first film but different enough to keep you watching. Also…. Sipowicz is in it.

Check out the Die Hard 2 trailer here

6. Lethal Weapon

If you can watch crazy-Mel's disturbed performance as Riggs, and not think that it was an ironic vision of things to come then you're a bigger person than me. Crazy or otherwise Danny Glover and Mel Gibson set the new bar for buddy cop teams, stealing the crown from '48 hours' and in the process starting up a great series of films (well… maybe not 4). Shoot-out in christmas tree lots, jumping from buildings … car chases… shoot-outs…this movie has it all… and it's set at christmas so it counts.

Check out the wicked trailer here

Posted in News | | Share This

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:27 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.