Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #8-7

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#8 – Edward Scissorhands (1990) 
Tim Burton’s fourth film is a solid choice for Christmas and a bit of a gimme for this list, but it’s one that doesn’t insist upon itself as a holiday film because of the absence of snow.  Ever the imaginative one, Burton sets the film in snowless suburbia, letting the spirit of the story take center stage.  And what a sweet story it is, a contemporary fairy tale with that Burton edge; Johnny Depp is iconic as the titular silent protagonist, nonthreatening despite his bladed fingers.  His romance with Winona Ryder covers the sentimental requirement, and Burton’s trademark sly sarcasm toward the cookie-cutter neighborhood makes this a year-round treat.  But lest you forget why Edward Scissorhands makes this list, keep your eyes peeled for the ubiquitous Christmas lights and reindeer decorations, and the fabulist explication for why it snows during the frame story is as touching as they come.

#7 – Goodfellas (1990) 
I’ve already lavished praise on this film, one of Martin Scorsese’s gangster epics and quite possibly one of the greatest films of all time.  It’s sharp, it’s witty, it’s thrilling, and it’s downright entertaining, cementing Robert De Niro’s reputation and forging one for Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci.  But what’s it doing on a Christmas list?  It’s not exactly a festive film, what with the strong bloody violence and general criminality.  After the film’s major “Lufthansa heist” segment, in which the mobsters successfully pull off the score of their lifetime, they celebrate with – what else? – an office Christmas party, all set to The Ronettes’ “Frosty the Snowman.”  Though the décor is festive, the demeanor of Jimmy Conway (De Niro) is anything but; in fact, he’s downright Grinchy as he demands that his goons take back the mink coats and Cadillacs they’ve bought with their share of the loot.  You could even argue that this Christmas scene is the pivotal turning point of the film, for when the soundtrack shifts to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” you know that scowl on Jimmy’s face bodes ill for his little elves.

Come back tomorrow for #6-5!

Charlie St. Cloud (2010)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Depp Week programming to bring you Charlie St. Cloud, Zac Efron's latest - and lightest - box office outing.

Efron plays the eponymous Charlie, taking off his dancing shoes and donning a winter coat of angst as the troubled teen who blames himself for the car crash that killed his younger brother Sam (Charlie Tahan). Charlie would have died too, were it not for the prayerful intercession of paramedic Florio Ferrente (Ray Liotta), but now that he's alive, Charlie has the unique ability to communicate with ghosts - particularly with Sam, with whom he had promised to practice baseball every day before college. But as Charlie wallows in his grief, working as a caretaker in a graveyard and throwing away his potential, he meets Tess Carroll (Amanda Crew), a spirited sailor who teaches Charlie the meaning of life - and letting go.

Allow me to first begin by saying that there is a very specific type of audience for whom this movie will hold almost unanimous appeal - and I'm not referring to the two old ladies I met this weekend who raved up and down about how "fantastic" and "spectacular" this picture was. For fans of the emotional catharsis, for Lifetime subscribers who can't get enough "life is for the living" morals, for people who just want to see Zac Efron take his shirt off - this movie offers all that in spades. But for more discerning viewers, I think Charlie St. Cloud comes up wanting.

Let me also add by way of preface that this isn't necessarily a bad movie. It's not terrible, but it's just not very good; on a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably a four or a five. The film itself is not very well-made, consisting mostly of fluffy emotions and hints of a story with more potential (potential perhaps lived up to in the Ben Sherwood novel on which the movie is based) than is acted upon. The biggest distraction in the film is Efron himself; I've admitted that I'm a fan of his career, and I think he's on his way to at least B-list stardom. But Charlie St. Cloud as a movie seems determined not to let him advance; for all the emoting and performing that Efron seems willing to do, the film spends far more time on shots that director Burr Steers (of 17 Again fame) must have consciously orchestrated in order to elicit maximum attractiveness out of Efron. There are a myriad of shots such as Charlie walking toward a window as soft light streams from the drapes and brings out the baby blue in his eyes; college students may one day craft a drinking game in which participants imbibe each time Efron takes his shirt off - two shots if the disrobing is not essential to the plot (which is, to say, always).

There are other people in the film, too; chief among them is Amanda Crew, who isn't asked to do very much in the film but who seems like she might be the next Jessica Biel if given the opportunity and a better haircut. Tahan is similarly unchallenging as ghostly Sam, but there's a sense of sibling chemistry between him and Efron which lends their scenes a genuine sense of authenticity and are some of the less improbable scenes in the film. As is often the case, Ray Liotta is criminally underused; though he makes the most of his two scenes in the film, the fact remains that he is only given two scenes in the film - hardly the stuff of a comeback, though he's an able caretaker of the film's "second chances" message, which is hammered repeatedly throughout the movie. Oh, yeah - and Kim Basinger's in here too, though I think the crew forgot about her during production as her character simply disappears with little more than an oblique "She moved" reference.

For a discerning viewer, a lot of the film will come off as very unsubtle. Dialogue consists mostly of characters shouting morals at each other - "Life is for the living!" and "You have to let go!" and "You were given a second chance for a reason!" among them. More notably, there's a plot twist borrowed wholesale from The Sixth Sense (no, Zac Efron's not actually dead, so I didn't spoil it... or maybe I did), but it's so blatantly obvious that the textbook foreshadowing barrels through the film like the freight train from Inception. But the most important lesson the film can teach us, it seems, is that Zac Efron has dreamy good looks that will plop ticketholders into seats faster than Dennis Miller can craft a metaphor.

If you've got a craving for eye candy, please see Charlie St. Cloud, if only to send a message that we're done with this whole Twilight business. Discerning moviegoers? You can still catch that Inception matinee.
Charlie St. Cloud is rated PG-13 "for language including some sexual references, an intense accident scene and some sensuality." I actually thought the innuendo was pretty tame, though parents might not like the "romantic interlude in a graveyard" scene, in which nothing but shadowplay is seen. The accident scene is startling but in a way that's been done to death; some mild blood accompanies this and another accident scene.

Stay tuned, folks, because your regularly scheduled programming for Depp Week continues next on The Cinema King as we go south of the border for Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Youth in Revolt (2009)

It's been said that Michael Cera only plays the same character - the gangly, awkward teenager with his unrequited emotions on his sleeve and a mouth full of verbose non sequiturs. In a sense, Youth in Revolt is a response to that theory; here Cera plays a character desperate to reinvent himself as a "dangerous" casanova. This reinvention is fascinating, but much else about Youth in Revolt is otherwise fairly forgettable, marking potential but leaving the audience with little more than in-the-moment laughs.

Cera stars as the unfortunately named Nick Twisp, the standard Cera character, forced to relocate to a trailer park after his mother (Jean Smart) and her lover Jerry (Zach Galifianakis) are involved in selling a dud car to a few sailors. There Nick meets Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), a girl he recognizes instantly as the love of his life despite the fact that she's already seeing someone. Sheeni's less convinced, encouraging him to "be bad" so that the two can move closer together once Nick is forced to move in with his father (Steve Buscemi). In order to be Sheeni's dream man, Nick crafts a "supplementary persona," Francois Dillinger (also Cera) - a chain-smoking, mustachioed arsonist. Oh yeah, and Fred Willard shows up a few times as Nick's uber-liberal neighbor Mr. Ferguson, who's more often than not eating those kinds of mushrooms.

First, the bad news. Zach Galifianakis isn't even in this movie. Sure, he has screen time, but his trademark stage presence is nowhere to be found; he plays a much more subdued, muted version of himself for the twenty minutes he's in the movie. That's right; it's sort of a spoiler, but the-man-who-would-be-Alan disappears from the film before we've had a chance to get to know his character. It's sort of a letdown, but it's a problem that plagues the rest of the film, too; Buscemi is almost a non-presence in the film, Justin Long peeks his head in for a bit of overplayed stoner humor, and the only thing genuinely funny about Willard's near-cameo is that Fred Willard is on the screen - otherwise, it's a part that could have been played by anyone capable of lying face-down on shag carpet. I haven't even mentioned Ray Liotta, who's also here. Liotta plays another cop, this one a potential paramour for Jean Smart's character, yet my problem here is the same one I had in Observe and Report - namely, that Liotta seems to be slumming. He's obviously talented and does a good job with what he has, but between this and a bit part on Hannah Montana, I'm close to putting Liotta on the "could have been" pile.

The film belongs almost entirely to the two Ceras, who are more than capable of supporting a movie on their own weight (it's just that I hate to see people like Buscemi, Liotta, and Willard reduced to being extras, when they're capable of so much more). Though Cera's definitive role for me will always be Superbad (George Michael on Arrested Development garners a close second), he does a very good job here, mumbling his way through the more awkward parts but doing it all with a sincerity that almost makes you forget this is but a variation on the same character he's been playing his whole career. His turn as Francois Dillinger is the more inspired of the two roles, since Dillinger is cool and confident (inspired, the film implies, by the iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard's Breathless), and it demonstrates there's a little room for growth in Cera's resume. Indeed, Dillinger provides the most laughs in the film, both because it's slightly incongruous for Cera to be speaking lines like "Thanks for breakfast" before overturning his cereal bowl and spitting on the carpet and because Dillinger is so cool about it that he himself seems almost a non sequitur in the movie.

So Dillinger is the star, and his role alone is worth the price of admission, but there are serious problems with the film's own identity. I referred to Sheeni as a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" with my tongue firmly in cheek and a note of disdain because I'm growing tired of this stock character that's overstayed her welcome. Perhaps, then, that is the best thing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did for me - put nails in the coffin of the MPDG by exposing her as a fallacy. Early in Youth in Revolt, Nick tells us that the difference between real life and movies is that "In the movies the good guy gets the girl. In real life it's usually the prick." Fair enough; one might expect the movie to go the route of (500) Days of Summer, deconstructing the conventional plot threads while grounding the film in a sense of realism. And it seems to do that for a while; Nick remains obliviously in love with Sheeni while she seems to be willing to dismiss him as a "summer fling," but somewhere near the halfway mark the film becomes the same old story we've seen a million times before - boy overcomes obstacles to be with girl happily ever after. It's frustratingly inconsistent, both because of what the movie has already told us (these endings don't happen) and because of what the movie has already showed us (Sheeni is unwilling to leave her boyfriend Trent for Nick). I'm not averse to changing gears mid-stream, but here it seems purposeless, forced, and implausible. (See Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist for a way to do this shift correctly).

Youth in Revolt, then, is a little like a chocolate chip cookie. When you look at it on the shelf, it looks like exactly what you've been craving. As you're indulging in it, it's delicious. As you're almost done with it, you start to become disappointed. Once it's gone, it doesn't wash so well because you realize it's insubstantial - almost exactly like all the other cookies you've had. But it tasted good doing down, so perhaps that's all that matters.
Not for the kiddies, Youth in Revolt snagged an R rating "for sexual content, language and drug use." Frank sexual dialogue and implications and F-bombs fly freely, and a few scenes revolve around psychotropic mushrooms and marijuana.

Goodfellas (1990)

Every once in a while, I like to cleanse my palate by watching a really good movie, a tried-and-true classic, a flick that deserves to be on a "greatest movies of all time" list (a category so rare I don't have a tag for it, but I probably should). This time around, the entry is Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

The true story of the rise and fall of American mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Goodfellas is a biopic that borders on the epic. It begins with the simple declaration, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." Soon Hill's dream comes true: he finds himself a mobster in league with the legendary Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) and the unbalanced heavy Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci, in the role that rightfully earned him an Oscar). Life is glamorous, and times are good for Henry Hill - his suitable-for-a-romantic-comedy courtship with Karen (Lorraine Bracco) even results in an initially happy marriage. But soon the walls start closing in - financial and domestic pressure make him take bigger and bigger risks, Tommy's encounter with an old rival (Frank Vincent) culminates in disaster, and members of a significant heist start getting sloppy - and Henry begins to crack under the pressure of the crumbling Mafia institution.

The plot may seem formulaic by now, twenty years on, but that's because Goodfellas set the standard for what a gangster biopic needed to be in much the same way that The Godfather (another Greatest Movie) had defined what a Mafia epic looked like. As such, the only word I can think of to describe Goodfellas is "definitive." (Well, that's actually not true. I can think of many more superlative adjectives, so stay tuned.) Everything about this movie - the performances, the script, the direction, the soundtrack - just clicks, and the two-plus hours simply fly by. As with all of Scorsese's great movies, there's not a scene here that's wasted, not one moment where you think, "I could go to the bathroom here and not miss a thing." Though not every scene is of critical importance to the film's plot, there's something to enjoy in each moment; if the plot isn't at the forefront, it's a knockout performance or dynamite direction to hold your attention.

In praise of the performances, I can only say good things. Each actor/actress, big role or small walk-on (keep your eyes peeled for an early Sam Jackson), is incredible in his/her part. The three leads - DeNiro, Liotta, and Pesci - are all at the top of their respective games here. While I loved him in The Godfather, Part II, here DeNiro is at his best: mildly subdued but with a simmering don't-cross-me attitude that conveys menace with each insincere smile. Liotta, of course, is the undisputed star (despite what movie marketing might suggest), and he's explosively exciting; even his narration (a cinematic technique I often find heavyhanded and lazy) is entertaining in a way that propels the movie forward while often providing an ironic counterpoint to the events on-screen (as when he narrates about the respect and happiness his new career brings, while showing us his unique way of destroying a parking lot filled with cars). And if DeNiro and Liotta are "simmering" and "explosive," Pesci is downright nuclear, a full-on H-bomb on two legs; though small on stature, Pesci is big on energy and absolutely lethal if provoked. Each of his scenes is unforgettable, the very definition of a supporting character who almost steals the show. That much of the film's dialogue was improvised is an even greater testament to the skill of the actors at play.

But I've long contended that Scorsese is the real star of his movies, because all his films have an undeniable stamp of Scorsese-ness that's compelling in a way that isn't showy (I'm looking at you, Tony Scott). With Goodfellas in particular, I found myself sitting up straighter - even though I've seen this movie dozens of times - and saying to myself and to the fellow viewers who straggled in after being seduced by the film's siren-like magnetic allure, "Man, Scorsese is directing the daylights out of this picture." Goodfellas features one of my all-time favorite scenes of any movie ever: a three-minute take (with no cuts or tricks) in which Liotta and Bracco stroll through a nightclub's side entrance, mingling with gangsters and the kitchen staff before getting a front table at a Henny Youngman show. It's a mesmerizing scene, made all the more breathtaking once you realize midway through that all you see has been coordinated in one Steadicam shot. And the movie is littered with moments like this that prove what a stellar director Scorsese truly is and how brutally mistreated he was by an Academy that honored the snoozefest Dances with Wolves and its "director" Kevin Costner.

But if you're not up for all that aesthetic mumbo-jumbo -- if you're just looking to have a good time with a movie -- Goodfellas is a perfect choice, because it's a lot of fun. Even many viewings and several years down the road, the film is nuanced enough that there's still something to excavate, digest, and enjoy. The film has a strong sense of humor, balancing dramatic gravitas with comedic levity, the perfect hybrid of which comes in Pesci's iconic "How am I funny?" scene; here Pesci grills Liotta about a glib remark of "You're funny" and quickly takes a bawdy laugh fest from zero to "ruh-roh" with speed that'll give you whiplash. The scene rebounds and oscillates several more times before its end, which solidifies it as one of the most audacious examples of cinematic synecdoche, perfectly summing up the movie's attitude about its characters and about itself. But what separates this from any other mob movie is the moral compass which governs Goodfellas and its director Martin Scorsese; violence has consequences (guilt being the worst of all), and no one lives "happily ever after" in a world of all take and no give. So while we can laugh at absurdly violent moments like Henry Hill walking brusquely across a street to bludgeon a would-be rapist, the repeated violence and the recognition that this is part of a cycle makes the laughter uncomfortable, opening our eyes to the idea that this isn't all fun and games.

But it is still exuberantly fun. There's something funny in almost every scene - a discreet look, a clever delivery, an editing cut that punctuates with (often dark) irony - and if you're not enjoying yourself on a visceral (much less intellectual) level, the fault lies not in the film but in yourself.

Often readers disagree with my take on the movies I review here (most recently, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sparked a bit of online and offline debate), but on this subject there can be no debate. Goodfellas is a fantastic film, one of the greatest ever made.
Goodfellas is rated R, undoubtedly for its nearly 300 uses of the F-word, grisly graphic violence, implied sexual (mis)conduct, and general not-appropriate-for-the-kiddies quality.

Observe and Report (2009)

The problem is that it's just not funny.

Observe and Report is perhaps best known as "the other mall cop movie," since it was released in fairly close proximity to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, starring Kevin James. Observe and Report is the considerably darker of the two, with Seth Rogen starring as bipolar head of mall security Ronnie Barnhardt. Ronnie becomes determined to catch a prowling flasher after the pervert exposes himself to Ronnie's sort-of secret crush, make-up counter girl Brandi (Anna Faris). As Ronnie aspires to be a real police officer and apprehend the pervert, he crosses paths several times with Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), who quickly becomes his nemesis.

I wanted to like this movie - honest, I did. I rented this one with the full intention of watching it with my father; after all, we've seen almost all of Seth Rogen's other movies together, but he scoffed at the idea and declined to watch it with me. He was the wiser of us. Observe and Report leaves a bad taste in your mouth like coffee that's been near a fish. The laughs are tragically sparse, nothing meriting the respect of any expression beyond a soft "hah." Aziz Ansari, rapidly becoming one of my favorites, appears for a small cameo, and he's funny as always, but the rest of the film just doesn't measure up to my comedic standards. The script is flimsy, comprised of equal parts scientific improbability and obvious filler.

Aside from the film being just plain not funny, each and every character is completely and utterly repulsive. Ronnie's not easy to watch, because his bipolar disorder makes his character uneven in an unmanageable kind of way; when he's up, it seems artificial, and when he's down we'd like to believe that's not the real Ronnie. His mother is a drunken mess, and his partner Dennis (Michael Pena) is irritating until we learn he's actually a bad person. Brandi is wholly repugnant, engaging in substance abuse, vomiting, and exploiting Ronnie whenever possible; kudos to Ms. Faris for creating such a wholly detestable character, but jeers to the filmmakers for suggesting that Ronnie's love for her is anything but pathetic. As for Harrison, I just feel immensely sorry that Ray Liotta's career has fallen so far; this is the same guy who was brilliant in Goodfellas?

The overall tone and spirit of the film is epitomized in several entirely unsubtle and brutally grotesque scenes that remind us how pathetic Observe and Report truly is. In one, a sex scene between Ronnie and Brandi blurs the line between consent and date rape. It's obvious the filmmakers are going for a cheap laugh, especially when there's a heavyhanded attempt at making the whole thing innocuous by revealing that Brandi's only asleep, but by then it's too late; any viewer with a modicum of decency has already turned away with a sneer of disgust. Later, when Brandi compliments Ronnie, he lashes out at her, shouting, "If anyone here wants a girl to have sex with you and then to [have sex with] your enemy, go to Brandi! Because she's the girl that does that." Rogen's delivery here gets a quick chuckle, but then we realize just how sad his situation is, and it's just not as funny anymore.

But the moment that sums up everything I hate about this movie is the treatment of Nell, a handicapped food court employee. In one unforgettably atrocious scene, Patton "Spence" Oswalt mercilessly teases Nell because her leg brace prevents her from functioning properly; this moment lasts far too long, it's uncomfortable, and it's a reminder of the mentality that governs the whole film. Nell declares herself a born-again Christian, vowing not to have sex before marriage, but Ronnie labels that "a promise I'm going to make her break." This is the man we're supposed to root for, a man who aims to corrupt the only thing innocent about this whole ugly picture? When the movie's not busy being unfunny, it's mean-spirited and sometimes downright corrupt. If Ronnie Barnhardt is the hero this world needs, stop the planet - I want to get off.
Observe and Report is rated R "for pervasive language, graphic nudity, drug use, sexual content and violence." The language is filled with F-bombs, the flasher is shown several times in fairly explicit detail, prescription pills and alcohol are repeatedly abused, and the film includes some exorbitant shots of gore exaggerated for effect.