This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Dec 8-14 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
This week was a very middle of the road collection of films for the 2024 project. While only one film was truly great, half of the films were either entertaining and charming enough but the other half of them were annoying, cringe, and flat out repellent. What I learned this week was that if your story doesn't have a deeper meaning then you have to at least craft compelling or relatable characters. This was the lesson from several of the week's films, because even when some of these films had so-so stories as with Surviving Christmas and Home for The Holidays, it was the character work and the performances that cut through and made them worthwhile. The best films did both well, like The Ref or Christmas in Connecticut. Mixed Nuts and Four Christmases however were both failures in that regard, even though Mixed Nuts had a somewhat decent score it was very close to scoring less than three stars if I'm being honest. Santa Claus Conquers The Martians was easily the most fun movie of the week even though it was technically the worst made film. Hey, sometimes you just need a very silly B-movie, it's good for the cinematic soul.
December 8th
Mixed Nuts (1994)
3/5
This was a strange one. Mixed Nuts is a dark comedy set during the Christmas season written and directed by Nora Ephron starring Steve Martin in one of the lead roles as a quirky guy with the case of the doldrums that works as Lifesavers, a Suicide Hotline run by people more depressed than their callers. It's just such a strange assortment of actors and actresses in bizarre roles, like Jon Stewart and Parker Posey as Roller Bladers that get into a quick and frenzied altercation with an ex-con and his pregnant girlfriend carrying a Chritsmas tree that Steve Martin's character runs into and tries to break up the fight. It all feels slightly exhausting and awkward. That tone extends to the remainder of the film. There's a serial killer out and about called “The Seaside Strangler” that eventually comes into play.
Liev Schreiber plays a tormented Trans person beset by their aggressive family that deadnames them in a chant at the Christmas party and just needs an escape. Adam Sandler has a small role where he basically plays a riff on his SNL character that sang goofy songs in the 1990s blended with what would eventually become parts of his Waterboy character. Rob Reiner plays a Veterinarian eventually visited to fix somebody up while he makes Zoloft-infused Seinfeld level jokes about married life. It's all just too zany, there is an undeniable amount of talent on screen, but it never blends adequately. Roger Ebert described the characters in this film as a combination of slapstick and heartsick and I cannot think of a better way to describe them as a whole. Mixed Nuts wasn't really for me, but I have seen far worse Christmas films.
December 9th
Surviving Christmas (2004)
3/5
There was a time when Ben Affleck played an annoying rich asshole too many times, and all too well. This film may be the epitome of that era. Affleck stars as Drew Latham, an eccentric Billionaire who has burned all of his bridges right before Christmas and when he can't find anyone to stay with over the Holiday, his therapist tells him to go to his Childhood home and burn a list of his grievances to move on from his past. As he was setting a small fire outside the house, Tom Valco (James Gandolfini) sneaks up behind Drew and knocks him out with a shovel. When he awakens and explains himself to the Valcos who now live there, they reluctantly let him take a walk down memory lane through the house. Once the tour is over Drew offers Tom $250,000 to let him stay with the family for the Holiday season and pretend to be his family, doing all of the traditional Christmas things.
Tom agrees and as you can imagine, Drew pushes the whole family to their limit in cringe fashion while occasionally revealing a real person underneath all of the fanfare and surface level antics. I enjoyed this one almost solely due to James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara's performances as the Valcos. Their daughter is played by Christina Applegate and she gets wrapped into the romantic plot with Drew but this is the weakest part of the movie in my opinion. Surviving Christmas was alright, but only because I related incredibly hard with James Gandolfini's exhausted rage at Ben Affleck's antics. This one won't make it into my Christmas movie rotation, but it had its moments.
December 10th
Four Christmases (2008)
2.5/5
Four Christmases was insufferable if I'm being honest. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon star as a couple created in a film studio lab, engineered to be “hip”, and “cool” by intensely rejecting all tradition and then end up being forced to realize their mistake by having to interact with all of their families over Christmas as each of their parents were divorced and then remarried. Thus the Four Christmases. Just imagine all of the dumbest stereotypes across political spectrums and state lines, and these are the families. Occasionally there's a good joke here or there, like Vince Vaughn's character's real name being Orlando, not Brad. The script was lazy and weak, and it felt like everyone involved was just winging it for a paycheck. This one wasn't for me.
December 11th
The Ref (1994)
3/5
The Ref exists as a vehicle for Denis Leary to play against Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis as a bickering married couple in a fun dark comedy based on a good concept. Leary stars as a Cat Burglar on the run from the police who kidnaps the constantly arguing married couple of Spacey and Davis. He essentially acts as a marriage counselor while forcing the two to keep up appearances under the gun, which gets complicated when people begin to arrive for their Christmas Party. This one is well organized in script, tone, and performances with creative evolutions thrown in as the runtime goes on. The banter between Spacey and Davis can get a bit exhaustive after a while, but Leary reigns them in and makes his casting the crucial aspect of the film. The Ref could certainly make it into my Christmas rotation depending on the year, I enjoyed it.
December 12th
Home for the Holidays (1995)
3.5/5
In my defense, Home for the Holidays looked and felt like a Christmas movie right up until Thanksgiving was mentioned. Ah. Oh well, it was a decent film directed by Jodie Foster starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr, and Anne Bancroft. Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) heads home for Turkey Day loaded down with the bad news that she had just lost her job and that her daughter didn’t want to come with. There’s a lot going on with this film. Every character has “something” going on emotionally that they’re either ignoring, stifling, or suppressing- it was the ‘90s after all. Tommy Larson (Robert Downey Jr.), for example, is the neurotic, talkative, and chaotic brother to Claudia and they share a recognizable kinship but even she had not realized that he was gay. Overbearing parents, emotionally abusive siblings, and kooky aunts abound in this family dramedy. It makes for a decent, if somewhat off putting and occasionally cringe Holiday movie that’s worth a watch for the performances.
December 13th
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)
1.5/5
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians may not be peak cinema, but I did not regret my time with this ridiculous B-movie for even one minute. At 80 minutes long this cheesy sci-fi flick was just what I needed as I neared the end of the year, something to laugh at. Bad costumes, terrible set design and endearingly awful dialogue, this one is the epitome of “so bad it’s good”. The plot as it exists is that the parents of a couple Martian children are worried that their offspring are spending too much time watching television from Earth and when they become obsessed with Christmas he orders this “Santy Claus” to be kidnapped and brought to Mars. Unfortunately for him a few kids from Earth are caught in the trap and dumped on the Martian planet as well. Look, this one is very stupid, but after the long year that was 2024- it was nice to completely shut my brain off and let the slop pour in for once.
December 14th
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
4/5
Christmas in Connecticut was easily the best Christmas film of the week. This black and white romantic comedy follows Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck), one of America's most popular lifestyle writers whose articles are widely beloved for her homemaking tips and recipes. The thing is, it's all a farce. She's not a married farm wife with a baby in her arms, she's a single New York City writer who gets her recipes from her “Honorary” uncle Felix (S.Z. Sakall). So when her publisher, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), insists that she host a notable wartime Hero returning to America- she races to create her imagined life to save her job as Yardley isn't aware of the truth of the matter. To complicate things further, she actually falls for the war hero (Dennis Morgan) when he does arrive. The script is very tight and the story beats interlock like clockwork as the chaos of the circumstance escalates. I quite enjoyed Christmas in Connecticut, and I can definitely see myself returning to this one every season or so.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.