Twelve Christmas Movies That Don’t Feature Tiny Tim, Linus, Bing Crosby, the Grinch, Clarence the Angel, or a Leg Lamp

Posted on December 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm

I love the Christmas classic movies and watch as many as I can every year. But there are many great Christmas films that don’t get mentioned as often and I like to remind families that these are worth making time for as well.

1. The Nativity Story This sincere and respectful story is a good way to remember that Christmas is about more than presents and parties. “Whale Rider’s” Keisha Castle-Hughes has a shy but dignified and resolute air and she glows believably as the very young woman who is selected as the mother of Jesus. And “Drive’s” Oliver Isaac effectively conveys tenderness, doubt, courage, and transcendence as Joseph.

2. A Christmas Memory Truman Capote’s bittersweet memory of his childhood Christmas making fruitcakes with his elderly cousin, the only relative who cared about him is beautifully filmed with the magnificent Geraldine Page and Capote himself reading the narration.

3. Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas The California Raisins guys put together this Christmas special, with the highlight the funniest-ever performance of “Carol of the Bells.”

4. Come to the Stable Loretta Young and Celeste Holm are French nuns trying to raise money to build a hospital. Their faith and goodness transforms those they meet.

5. Little Women “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents” is the first line of this classic novel based on the loving if sometimes tumultuous family of author Louisa May Alcott. The movie opens with an important Christmas lesson about the joy of giving.

6. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Based on the classic book, this stars Loretta Swit as the mother of six rambunctious kids who insist on playing roles in the church pageant.

7. This Christmas I love this movie about a family with five adult children who return home to celebrate Christmas with their mother and youngest brother. The outstanding cast includes Regina King, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine, and Chris Brown. Be sure to watch through the credits to see a great dance number.

8. Desk Set Before Google, companies had human beings to track down information. Katherine Hepburn plays the head of the all-female research department for a television network and Spencer Tracy is the engineer who is installing the company’s first computer, which takes up a whole wall and uses punch cards and vacuum tubes. Sparks fly — and not just in the equipment.

9. Die Hard Bruce Willis plays a cop visiting his estranged wife at her office Christmas party when the building is taken over by bad guys led by Alan Rickman in this action-movie classic.

10. The Polar Express Tom Hanks stars in this animated story based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg about a magical train ride to the North Pole.

11. Home Alone This comedy smash hit stars Macauley Culkin as a little boy who is accidentally left home when his family goes away for the holidays and has to take care of himself and guard the house from a couple of inept thieves. The slapstick is a bit over the top but the message of Christmas is surprisingly touching.

12. Annie The story of the plucky orphan from the comic pages became one of the biggest Broadway musicals of all time and one of its highlights is Christmas with Daddy Warbucks.

Thomas the Tank Engine: Rescue on the Rails

Posted on December 9, 2011 at 3:57 pm

Rescue on the Rails is the new adventure from Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. When Bertie gets stuck on Shake Shake Bridge, Gordon is derailed, and Thomas’ firebox is on fire, who will come to the rescue? Being heroic is more than speed and strength — it is about courage, heart, and teamwork, as every Really Useful Engine knows.

I have one copy to give away. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Thomas in the subject line and don’t forget your address. Tell me which engine is your favorite and I will pick a winner on December 16. Good luck!

New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 8, 2011 at 6:41 pm

Something seemed familiar to me as I watched Garry Marshall’s New York-based follow-up to his multi-star, multi-story LA-set romantic comedy, Valentine’s Day. It was something that went beyond the predictability of its sitcom-ish formulas and check-list of romantic comedy conventions, and it finally hit me when the wonderful Sofía Vergara appeared on screen. Part of what makes “Modern Family” so delightful is the way its characters address, tweak, and transcend the usual comedic stereotypes. But it became sadly clear that all Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate can think of to do with this beautiful and talented actress is make her into a caricatured Latina hot mama. And that was when I figured it out. She was Charo and we were on a big budget version of The Love Boat. Like the television series that ran from the late 1970’s to the mid 1980’s, “New Year’s Eve” is an assortment of stories about love featuring a lot of big stars and with depth and imagination and sincerity that can only be measured with micrometers.

But that doesn’t mean that it is not entertaining, first for the fun of seeing so many stars cross the screen and second because so much is going on that the weakest parts are over before you realize how weak they are. It would be quicker to list the stars who are not in this movie than those who are. Oscar-winners Robert De Niro (as a terminally ill patient in the hospital), Halle Berry (as his nurse), and Hillary Swank (as the person in charge of the ball-dropping, Ryan Seacrest-led festivities in Times Square) are joined by Tony-winner Cherry Jones as owner of a music company, plus television luminaries Seth Meyers of “SNL” as an expectant father, Sarah Jessica Parker (as a wardrober who works with the Rockettes), and “Glee’s” Lea Michelle. Then there’s “Little Miss Sunshine’s” Abigail Breslin in way too much mascara as a young teen who rebels when her mother says she cannot go to Times Square, rom-com princess Katherine Heigel as a caterer at a fancy party, rocker-turned-actor John Bon Jovi as a rock star, rapper-turned actor Common, and “High School Musical’s” Zac Efron as a delivery guy who delivers more than the mousy secretary played by Michelle Pfeiffer expects. Returning “Valentine’s Day” stars (playing new characters) Ashton Kutcher is a guy who hates New Year’s Eve and gets stuck in an elevator and Jessica Biel is a woman who wants to have the first baby born in 2012 so she can win some money. And Josh Duhamel is the guy who is trying to get back to Manhattan to find the mystery woman he kissed at midnight a year ago. And we also get Hector Elizondo, of course, who is for Marshall what John Ratzenberger is to Pixar, a lucky charm who appears in every film and is always welcome.

It benefits from dropping some of the cruder elements that marred “Valentine’s Day” but even as a fairy tale it goes over the top with not one but two characters called on for impromptu televised appearances that has a tired, crowded, over-excited and tipsy New York audience aww-ing and applauding like parents at a kindergarten Christmas pageant. All these people and situations leave no room for stories or characters, just snippets that barely have time to make an impression and the casting itself becomes a distraction with meaningless “wait, wasn’t that…?” appearances in the briefest of roles. That’s just as well, as the stalled elevator and race to give birth at 12:01 do not have much to offer and the dialog has some syrupy lines about forgiveness and second chances that got unintended laughs from the audience. Even at just a few moments, Duhamel’s efforts to get back into the city drag on too long with a pointless segment about an RV ride with a preacher’s family. But by the time he makes it to his mystery date, though, we are on his side. (Am I the only one who thought it was not a great match, though?) As in the last film, there is poignant scene involving military fighting overseas. Pfeiffer, Berry, and De Niro manage to create some genuinely touching moments out of sheer star power. The outtakes over the credit sequence at the end are the best part, though they remind us how much more these stars are capable of. A better title might be “Groundhog Day” because it sure feels like we’ve seen it all before.

(more…)

Related Tags:

Comedy Date movie Romance Series/Sequel

The Sitter

Posted on December 8, 2011 at 6:22 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, drug material, and some violence
Profanity:	Constant crude and strong language, sometimes in front of children
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use, drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, some involving children, guns, explosions, chases, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, some racial and gender stereotyping but supportive discussion of sexual orientation
Date Released to Theaters:	December 9, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004LWZW5G

Basically “Bad Santa” crossed with “Adventures in Babysitting,” “The Sitter” stars Jonah Hill as Noah, an ambitionless doof living with his mother who cannot be bothered to answer the phone, much less find a job.

Overlong at 80 minutes, it is the intermittently comic story of a wild night when, pushed into agreeing to babysit three children, he decides to take them out so that he can pick up some cocaine to bring to a girl who has promised to have sex with him. Noah’s charges are Blithe (Landry Bender), a little girl obsessed with celebrity who disturbingly calls things “hot” and wants to go clubbing, Slater (Max Records of “Where the Wild Things Are”), a 13-year-old with anxiety medications in his fanny pack, and Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), a recently adopted firebug who enjoys throwing M-80’s down toilets. Ignoring every direction from the children’s mother and every basic tenet of good sense and responsibility, he puts them in the family car and takes off for the big, bad city.

Noah picks up $150 worth of cocaine from a drug dealer named Karl (Sam Rockwell) who surrounds himself with body builders and stores his drugs in irreplaceable and very fragile dinosaur eggs. When Rodrigo takes one of the eggs and spills $10,000 of cocaine all over the car, Karl gives him an hour to get the money. Noah and the kids have encounters with a store clerk who wonders why Noah is hanging around the little girls’ underwear department (you don’t want to know the answer), the gala Noah’s mother and the kids’ parents are attending, a fancy restaurant, a bat mitzvah party, Noah’s estranged father and his jewelry store, and a skeevy bar. Noah runs into a former classmate and the ex of the girl he is trying to, let’s use the polite word here — woo.

Even for a silly comedy, the carelessness of the racial and gender stereotyping is distracting. A sweet inter-racial romance and a heartening pep talk to a kid struggling with being honest with himself about being gay is not enough to make up for not one but two sassy/angry black women, a pool-hall full of black gangstas who are way too easily impressed with Noah, and Rodrigo, a pint-sized Scarface-in-training. The script is just a lazy series of set-ups and its two premises collide uncomfortably. The comedy, slight as it is, of the first half of the movie is based on Noah’s disregard for the most basic notions of decency and responsibility. He then somehow turns into SuperNanny, resolving all of the kids’ issues with cheery little pep talks, as though he is about to start singing about a spoonful of sugar. But this is no jolly holiday.

(more…)

Related Tags:

Comedy Movies -- format

Pearl Harbor Day

Posted on December 7, 2011 at 2:34 pm

Skip the Ben Affleck movie and watch these to commemorate the anniversary of the day the Japanese bombed the US Naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

As news of the attack reached the world, everyone waited to hear what the President would say. Franklin Roosevelt’s stirring response is still remembered:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VqQAf74fsE

Attack on Pearl Harbor: A Day of Infamy Japanese pilots and American sailors, eyewitnesses and participants comment on the events of the attack accompanied by newsreel footage, and analysis by military historians.

The History Channel’s Pearl Harbor The History channel provides background to understand what led to the attack and information about the military tactics. The documentary includes coverage of the Harvard-educated Japanese Admiral who planned the attack and interviews with both Japanese and American survivors.

Pearl Harbor: Legacy of Attack This National Geographic documentary follows Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the remains of the Titanic, as he explores the first casualty of the attack, a Japanese midget submarine that was sunk by an American destroyer an hour before the Japanese airplanes made their appearance.

Related Tags:

War