HOLIDAY MOVIES: GOING OUTSIDE THE BOX

                                       Instead of rewinding of "It's A Wonderful Life,"or "Miracle on 34th Street,"or
                                       giving-in to that yearly sexy-leg-lamp fix with "A Christmas Story," take up
                                       something different this holiday season and try some of these alternate 

                                       titles on DVD. They'll energize your season in curious and surprising ways, and
                                       best of all, do it without the wrappings and ribbons of squishy sentimentality.

THE CLASSIC

Of the bazillion versions of Scrooge populating our screens 

every year, pass'em by and seek out this restored print, two-disc 

DVD of the 1951 British  CHRISTMAS CAROL with Alistair 

Sim as Scrooge. It's the true original, topping all the others for pulling

you in with that Dickensian mood and ghostly atmosphere. You'll
never get tired of seeing it. Close second: 1993 TV-movie with
George C. Scott. 

NOTHING BRINGS FAMILIES (DYSFUNCTIONAL) TOGETHER LIKE THE HOLIDAYS

First saw THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a 75 minute British 

gem from 1952, about twenty years ago at a repertory 

theater -- and have never forgotten it.  A village clergyman gathers 

his family at Christmas in an attempt to help with the emotional 

scars left over from WWII, and each other. Perfectly acted by 

Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton, the script  

moves the characters forward, and back, as emotionally mature 

adults without any sappy nostalgia. But, and  it's a 

big but, the movie is not available on DVD in this country. 

C'mon Amazon and Blockbuster, I'm lobbying. There's a market 

here, a movie worthy of becoming a seasonal classic. 

C'mon Turner Classic Movies: schedule it in December.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

If you haven't noticed, Jodie Foster has been quietly and steadily building a career as a top-notch director. "Little Man Tate," was a poignant mother-son story, and, coming out in January is "The Beaver,"with Mel Gibson. But her impressive second feature, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1995), is hard to top. Here, she lifts that seasonal staple of a comic-dysfunctional family-coming-from-afar-to-get- together movie, to a precise mix of moving vulnerability and zaniness. HOME is actually a Thanksgiving movie. But movies in this genre so rarely capture that awkward sense of being around family, those people you love and know better than any other, yet can make you feel so lost, with such realness and authenticity, that HOME works just as well, even better, for Christmas. The great cast of Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, and Robert Downey Jr. make family neuroticism and narcissism not only funny, but understandable -- no straining to be hilarious here. And, as lead neurotic Claudia, Holly Hunter has never been more likable and appealing. Foster's rhythm and timing keep the jokes funny all the way through. But most of all, HOME holds up because it feels like your family and mine. As Claudia says: "We may not like each other, but we're family."

There's a wonderful scene in A CHRISTMAS TALE where a mother and her adult son are talking in the backyard. "Still don't love me?" he asks her. "Never did," she says directly. Yet we know,watching  their manner and faces, and the rest of their conversation, these two have deep affection for one another. French director Arnaud Desplechin's 2008 film is rich with the improvisations that bring on these sudden understandings. He turns the family-gathering-at-Christmas story into a thick egg nog of characters bursting with the complex flavors of dysfunction: at once funny and loving, selfish and obnoxious, perplexing and nonsensical. The magic in this two-and-one-half hour film is how you're always anticipating, never knowing what to expect, so it doesn't feel long. And holding it together as the matriarch, the grand dame of the family, is Catherine Deneuve, mixing imperial air with needy vulnerability as one who has been stricken with leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. She has never been better.  

CHILDREN'S MOVIE

PRANCER (1989)

Got to have at least one movie for the kids and what's better than a boozy, bearded Sam Elliot as a full-fledged Christmas killjoy single parenting his nine-year-old Jessica (Rebecca Harrell). When she imagines a limping reindeer in the woods to be the flying Prancer, her Dad threatens to shoot it. Jessica takes matters into her own hands, doing what she can to save not only Prancer, but Christmas. Formulaic? Yes. But the characters aren't stereotyped, acting true to their personalities, while the sugar plum plot line holds the sweetner to low-cal. Skip the TV showings and get the DVD so you don't have to sit through commercials. It's a great watch with the kids.  

BAH HUMBUG

BAD SANTA (2003)

All that jingle, jangle, jingle and goodness and light have you ready to gag, then BAD SANTA  answers as the perfect Christmas-sucks movie. A stylishly vulgar and tasteless comic classic, this story of a reprobate thief and department store Santa, Willie Stokes (Billie Bob Thornton), is a cynic's delight. He's "an eating, drinking, s***ting, f***ing Santa Claus" who hates kids, doesn't care if you're naughty or nice and lets the f-word fly every couple seconds. Then, along with pissing in his pants and puking in the alley, he's operating a theft ring. The movie delights in being disgusting and disgraceful. But director Terry Zwigoff isn't a one-trick pony here -- just being disgusting makes for a pretty dull movie. He sets the tone by letting us take in all the shenanigans in real time; not that revved-up gag upon gag pace that wears you out, so the narrative and the jokes are a surprise instead of predictable. And Thornton is so compulsively watchable -- can't imagine anyone else in the role. Good "I-hate-Christmas" movies are so rare and this one is so enjoyably cathartic, it's a  seasonal must. And get the BADDER SANTA DVD, the uncut version not shown in theaters. Not necessarily better than the original, but more of it. And when it comes to slapping the gooey sentiment of Christmas in the face -- more is better. 

BEST PICTURE WANNABES, SHOE-INS, AND LONG SHOTS

THE WAY BACK

TRUE GRIT

FOR  movie lovers this is the season. Studios go into full heat, pulling out the stops to jockey, schmooze, and outright beg for their films be one of the 10 nominees listed as "Best Picture of the Year," on February 27. And we get to watch all the nutty fun.

It's also the season when marketing machinations drive audiences crazy. Distributors cook up  indecipherable release dates with  "special" showings, or "limited releases." But the good news is many potential nominees are still in theaters and many are already on DVD. 

Here's an overview

RABBIT HOLE

LONG SHOTS

Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer winning play brought to the screen by John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch") boasts a remarkable screen performance by Nicole Kidman as an angry mother struggling with the accidental death of her young child.  Too stagy for my taste, as is The King's Speech, about King George VI overcoming a debilitating stammer. It's much,much better than it sounds, but will surely get Colin Firth his deserved Best Actor after losing out last year for The Single Man.

Lisa Cholodenko's affectionate and comic The Kids are All Right, about a lesbian couple calmly raising two children until the kids' biological father enters their life, lets the entire cast shine, particularly Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. And it has more depth than you'd first expect. From dinner table repartee to close personal interactions, her dialogue cuts to the heart of those hard won compromises we all struggle with in family life. And it's really funny.

I'm a big fan of Never Let Me Go, video director Mark Romanek's adaptation of  the much-praised Kazuo Ishiguro novel. The story of unwanted children raised to be part of medical experiments (won't say what), the movie is subtle and surreal, making us alert to the transient nature of our own lives -- the consciousness of mortality. I've seen people walk out on it -- now how powerful is that? Then there's Darren Aronofsky's The Black Swan, a movie I haven't seen, yet. Fumblingly described as a combination of "The Red Shoes" and "All About Eve," but only more, and different, and overwhelming those two put together, critics and bloggers I know and trust are freaking out in praise for this movie. Just the poster of Natalie Portman, well... words fail me.         

WANNABES

The Wannabes -- popular movies with that extra something to warrant a nomination, but little chance of winning. 

Made In Dagenham is a true story about a 1968 strike at a Ford motor plant in England. The wonderful Sally Hawkins leads the women workers to close the assembly line until they get equal pay. One sided and too rah, rah along the lines of "Norma Rae," Hawkins performance saves the movie from preachiness and stereotypes. And if you haven't  seen her in Happy-Go-Lucky, do so right away.

MADE IN DAGENHAM

THE FIGHTER

Another true story, Mark Wahlberg's personal film project The Fighter.  About a boxer's dysfunctional family and drug addicted brother who use him as their only source of personal financial support, it hasn't been screened near me, but those in the know tell me it's one tough drama. And has a stand-out, remarkable performance by Christian Bale as the brother. 

Our third true story comes from Danny Boyle of "Slumdog Millionaire." 127 Hours about a mountain hiker who is trapped under a boulder for days, and cuts off his arm to escape, is literally excruciating to watch -- at the the same time you dare not take your eyes away. Boyle has made a remarkably directed film, holding you fascinated even though you know what happens. That's my problem -- too much flair and flamboyance for this basic, simple story. 

And what more can said about Inception? I saw it twice and still didn't get it all. Who would have thought this dreamlike,curve- in-on-itself-access-to-the-subconscious movie could stimulate such rousing action set pieces. But as I felt, and many have told me, the visual grandeur leaves you grasping, somewhat distant, instead of fully embracing the dream.

THE SHOE-INS

FIVE MOVIES WITH THE BEST CHANCES OF WINNING

TOY STORY 3

WINTER'S BONE

Disney-Pixar is going full out, passionately marketing Toy Story 3 for Best Picture instead of Best Animated Feature. It's time animation ranks with the big boys -- a great movie is a great movie, animated or not. Given Pixar's ground-breaking cinema wonderfulness over the past decade, I agree.

I've been tauting Debra Granik's haunting, Ozark mountain, thriller-noir Winter's Bone since it came out last summer. The movie seems on a course to repeat the path of last year's Best Picture winner "The Hurt Locker" -- small audience response, great critical response, then picking up buzz and audience when it's nominated and comes out on DVD. Winter's Bone is on DVD now. A right-on, tough it out performance by teen-actress Jennifer Lawrence (soon to be seen in Jodie Foster's "The Beaver") is not to be missed.

The movie everyone is talking about but no one has seen, True Grit, has stimulated so much Oscar buzz simply because Joel and Ethan Coen are on a can't miss roll since "No Country for Old Men" and "A Serious Man." Can this remake of the John Wayne classic starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon possibly not get nominated? 

THE WAY BACK

Then, the movie no one is talking about is the harrowing adventure epic The Way Back. Peter Weir finally returns after his masterful "Master and Commander" in 2003 to helm this David Lean like panoramic, cinematic, and nomination-automatic true story of a brave group (Ed Harris and Colin Farrell and many Russian and Polish actors) who escaped Stalinist labor camps in 1940. Timid distributors set up basic qualifying screenings the last week of the year, then are gearing for just a limited release in January. But maybe, somehow, several nominations will change their plans.

DAVID FINCHER REFERENCES CITIZEN KANE IN THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The real question remains: Can any of these movies beat out The Social Network?

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VAGINA MOVIES:NICOLE HOLOFCENER SAVES US FROM A SUMMER OFCHICK-FLICK HELL

FRIENDS WITH MONEY

Summer's just about over fellow cinephiles and we're all looking forward to this fall's coming pack of award-hopefuls -- like Robert Redford's THE CONSPIRATOR, Clint Eastwood's HEREAFTER, and the cinematic adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's excellent novel NEVER LET ME GO. But after seeing the the self-absorbed, narcissistic, no-guy-will-ever-understand-me torture that is the horrible  EAT PRAY LOVE (oh, that conceit of no commas), the MLB decided to look back, to the past hot months when he did something he's never done before: see every chick flick that came to area theaters.

JUST WRIGHT

Romance movies, women's movies, the three-hankie weepie, rom-coms, whatever you call them, they're a relentlessly successful, timeless genre: a harmonious melding of love, beauty, happiness and charm. There's shopping and clothes, shoes and purses, travel and  exquisite decor all wrapped in a mating ritual of longing and heartbreak, loss and tears. When they work (as in Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER), they're touching fairy tales, opening our hearts to embrace those sweet and special pleasures of self-indulgent masochism. When they don't, well...

TWILIGHT SAGA:ECLIPSE

You get what I saw this summer. And that was? There's, ah well, there's the latest from the TWILIGHT SAGA (West Side Story in the woods) with teenage girls going weak-kneed over "newborns" werewolves and vampires. Then, as the audience demo jumps to twenty and thirty-somethings, there's the preening condescension of SEX AND THE CITY 2, and the barely tolerable blandness of JUST WRIGHT. The demo jumps a decade or two (or three) with geezer-love in LETTERS TO JULIET. Then, back in February, there was the nothing to love in VALENTINE'S DAY -- the movie that inspired Roger Ebert's wonderful guide to dating: "it's a first date movie; if your date likes it, do not date that person again ..."(the negative reviews of this movie reached such high levels of hilarious inspiration they're listed in the blog of "Valentine's Day Massacre" of Feb. 15). And I'll add on the hard-to-remember DEAR JOHN, not really a movie as much as THE NOTEBOOK retooled as a music video.                                                                                                

SEX AND THE CITY 2

What's a discerning moviegoer, male or female, to do?
I whole heartedly recommend you seek out the movies of Nicole Holofcener.

She makes "vagina movies"( as she calls them), a right-on description of her character and dialogue driven comedies that offer insights and awareness way beyond that stuff at the Cineplex. Think Eric Rohmer, not Nancy Myers or Nora Ephron.

PLEASE GIVE (2010)

They're independent films, low budget with nothing fancy as to wardrobe or set design. But, since she writes some of the finest screenplays of the past decade, she attracts a bevy of high-end actresses such as Jennifer Aniston, Anne Heche, France McDormand, Joan Cusack, Rebecca Hall, and Amanda Peet. And all her movies star Catherine Keener.

Before you dismiss her with an "indy-arty" label, Holofcener does have commercial chick flick credentials -- episodes of "Sex and the City" and "Gilmore Girls" are on her resume. But her movies take us into a whole other realm, where women struggle with work and money, family and friends -- and themselves -- while trying to behave ethically, and conduct themselves like adults doing the best they can. Falling in love and getting the guy become just a part of everything else that's going on. Her characters are real and everyday -- definitely de-glam is the rule here. Couples fight in that knowingly cruel way that only couples can; children are decidedly uncute; and the dialogue about sex is as funny and straightforward as anything from the heyday of Woody Allen. One of the best things: each movie contains at least one simple but telling scene, illustrating an insightful difference between the sexes.

WALKING AND TALKING (1996)
Holofcener's first feature is personal movie-making in the best sense. Neurotic Amelia (Catherine Keener) goes all angsty as her roommate and life long friend, Laura (Anne Heche), moves out to live with her fiance. Admittedly, not much of a plot, but then, like Rohmer, plot isn't what Holofcener is about. The funny dialogue gets into the struggle of how these characters handle life's changes. It's a movie that's more insightful than most of this genre, and so comes off as a refreshing change of pace. The telling scene: where Bill (Kevin Corrigan), the guy Amelia is dating, confronts her  about calling him the "Ugly Guy" behind his back. It's priceless.

LOVELY AND AMAZING (2001)
 A film as variations on a theme of female body image, this is where Holofcener's style is most like Rohmer. The telling scene comes early on: Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) tells her boyfriend Paul (James LeGros) "I know you think my arms are flabby." he stares -- pushed to that no-win hell guys know so well. His non-answer is taken as agreement -- so he's out. Later, when Elizabeth is with another guy, she boldly stands full-frontal before him, asking his assessment of her entire body. That we can watch this full-on confrontation without hiding our eyes, that its funny, rueful tone hooks us, is what distinguishes this filmmaker. Every character dislikes their body: Elizabeth's mother (Brenda Blethyn) hates her gut, so is getting liposuction (we get a close up) and has a crush on her doctor; while Michelle

(Catherine Keener), a former beauty queen now bored as a housewife and mother, has grown so insecure she self-destructively falls for an underage adolescent (Jake Gyllenhaal) simply because he tells her she's beautiful. There's no cliche situations or predictable characters here -- the dialogue readily expresses what's human in the rest of us. We can't help but laugh and keep watching.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY (2006)

The movie that proved Jennifer Aniston can act.  Along with an all-star cast of Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, and, of course, Catherine Keener, Aniston plays Olivia, a doobie-loving ex-teacher who works as a maid. She may not have near the income of her three life-long pals, but they still hang out. They live LA- normal, without the glam clothes, make-up and big-time shopping: one of the group, Jane (McDormand) is making some sort of statement by refusing to wash her hair -- a smell so bad it makes her husband turn away in bed.  As all but Olivia have husbands, the group keeps trying to hook her up even as they struggle their own relationships.  The telling scene: after a party, as each of the married couples are driving home, all the husbands tell their wives they were the best looking woman there. None of the wives says a word, not falling for such a line. But their expressions say something else -- how great it feels to hear it.

PLEASE GIVE (2010)

The opening sequence: a montage of bare breasts going through mammograms -- the old, the young, the flabby and firm, they fill the screen, non-erotic and de-sexualized. At first, it seems to be just a visual stunt. But its relevance and meaning come later in the film's telling scene: the shy and withdrawn Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), the medical technician doing the mammograms ("you're not a doctor," her sister keeps telling her) is on a date. When he says her job of dealing with breasts all day is a guy's dream, her response is the honest, straightforward, "Well I see them as tubes of trouble." The gender gap, Rebecca's character, the budding relationship with this couple is summed up in one line.

Keener plays Kate, a well-off New Yorker who's liberal guilt about making money (I won't reveal why) has her dolling out twenties to every panhandler she passes on the street, while her teenage daughter Abby (a really clever and amusing Sarah Steele), and husband, Alex (Oliver Platt, a subdued scene- stealer here) feel she cares more for the poor than about them. Then there's Rebecca's grandmother, a hilarious Ann Guilbert, as the smart and mean old lady in the next apartment. And Mary, Rebecca's sister played by Amanda Peet, in perfect vulnerable-bitch mode, has what can only be called a "robotic" affair with Alex.

No doubt about it though, Keener is the center, holding our focus through all the machinations. But this is a cast where everyone gets into their characters, creating people you know and recognize. As with all of Holofcener, her people aren't totally likeable, but you can see sides of yourself in them, so they connect, staying in your mind long after seeing the movie.