Christmas flicks

Christmas came and went and with it went my hope for to find a new good Christmas flicks. What is it with holiday movies?! You'd think that putting together a warm family film isn't a difficult task but faced with the selection of crap served around this time of year you realize that the simplest things are the hardest to reinvent year after year. 

I can count all the good holiday movies, according to my standards, in the last dozen years i one hand. Amongst them are Bad Santa and The Family Stone. The former is by no means a traditional story but it still manages to embody the spirit of christmas and ultimately leaves you feeling good afterwards. The latter, which I just saw again for the first time since it came out in 2005, leaves the same impression. Utilizing a family get-together is a great way to represent different personalities into one film and Family Stone does a good job of fleshing out these various characters into individuals that the audience can relate to despite the limited amount of time and plot space. I find that films that manage to do this leave the biggest impression because we are able to sympathize with most, if not all, characters, therefore accentuating the gray that is the human condition. 

Now contrasting the good with the bad, The Holiday, which I saw when it came out in the cinema, is one of those films that manage to only go down hill. Of course this is a matter of taste but personally I've never gone to see a film with low expectations and was still left disappointed, the fact that the drivel cost money just made me feel worse and embarrassed for Kate Winslet, cause well she's way too good for it. Besides the superficiality aspect of the film (i.e. the acting and the story), the fact that Christmas was just a backdrop of time where the narrative takes places is the biggest reason why it's a subpar holiday film. 

Poorly made Christmas flicks do the opposite of what they're supposed to. You're supposed to feel warmth and joy and hope after seeing those stories not discouraged and disappointed. I miss the days when they made movies like Home Alone (1 and 2 only), the first Santa Clause or Miracle on 34th Street (unfortunately I haven't seen the original but I'm guessing it's great if the remake is good) They were genuine holiday entertainment where you sense family, a lil bit of Christmas magic and a lot of joy at the end. Happy tears, that's all I want, maybe it's too much to ask for...