Christmas Marathon
Sleighing them in the aisles
ITV1’s feeble Ross Kemp-laden offerings not quite hitting the spot? Cruise through Christmas Day with our non-stop Movie Mood Matcher. By Adam Lee Davies
9.00am “A Charlie Brown Christmas’ (1965)
The calm before the storm: pea-headed masochist Charlie Brown and his muckle-mouthed chum Linus, repelled by the crass commercialism and gale-force pandemonium of the festive season, attempt to divine the true spirit of Christmas, bumming everyone else out in the process. The ideal film with which to gird your loins for the hate, bile, recriminations and crippling alcohol abuse to come…
9.25am ’Gremlins’ (1984)
The kids are up, the presents are out and the shit’s already nearing the fan. Joe Dante’s gleefully unhinged slice of anarchy makes the perfect accompaniment to the carnage escalating around you. A criminally irresponsible dad buys his son a cute little rodent from a wizened old Oriental shopkeeper in an ethnically sketchy Chinatown. Unfortunately, the Yuletide reverie of their cloying, picture book town is destroyed when the furry little bastard spawns a pack of punky, flesh-eating terrorists with scant regard for authority.
11.11am ‘Trading Places’ (1983)
Time to bring it down a notch with a few brazil nuts and John Landis’s acerbic but stately life-swap comedy. Here, Christmas is exploited as the paradisiacal backdrop against which his capricious employers strip Dan Akroyd’s snooty commodities broker bare. The presents are done, lunch is a little way off and you’re at something of a crossroads in the big day. Like Aykroyd, you are presented with the option to resign yourself to your plight or take arms against the river of shit to come.
1.07pm ’The Poseidon Adventure’ (1972)
Everyone’s fannying about in the kitchen, so best to slap on something undemanding and/or you’ve seen a thousand times before. But even while you’re buttering your parsnips and changing Gran’s colostomy bag, out of the corner of your eye you’re bound to catch sight of the Poseidon’s Christmas cruise capsizing and, in the pit of your stomach, know that your day is destined to follow much the same course. Open another bottle.
3.04pm ’On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ (1969)
A Bond film is the cornerstone of any Xmas viewing experience. The Asti Spumanti and simmering ill-feeling served up at the dinner table are starting to take hold as 007 takes his brand of pointless mayhem and Christmas cracker punning to Austria for festive fun with Telly Savalas and a harem of lissom tarts.
5.26pm ‘Batman Returns’ (1982)
Christmas in Gotham and the dark half of Yuletide is exposed after one to many egg-nogs and a cheeky line or two off the back of your new Coldplay CD. It’s just all so fake; so patently contrived. Nobody’s what they seem, none of it makes any real sense and you can’t wait for it to end. The film’s a bit iffy too.
7.30pm ‘Die Hard’ (1988)
Christmas at Nakatomi Towers is a brutal experience. Bruce Willis is bloodied, bruised and forced to parade around in his undies, but it’s a walk in the park compared to the powderkeg of spite, resentment and brandy butter speedballs that’s inevitably about to blow your Christmas Night wide open.
9.28pm ‘L.A. Confidential’ (1997)
The Bloody Christmas beatings of 1951 lights the touchpaper of Curtis Hanson’s peerless adaptation of James Ellroy’s diamond-hard noir procedural. While it’s all kicking off onscreen, the havoc is mounting in the front room as one too many Tia Marias have sent everyone over the top.
11.01pm ‘101 Reykjavík’ (2000)
They’re shouting, they’re swearing, and you’re drinking wine straight from the bottle. We’re through the looking glass now people, but things can’t get as bad they do for Hlynur in this boozy Icelandic gem. Not unless you manage to somehow impregnate your mother’s lesbian lover in the next hour.
12.57am ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)
Mum’s gone to bed so it’s time to put the ‘X’ into Xmas with a Christmas mucky. Or so you’d hope. Kubrick’s last roll of the dice is a spectacularly loopy skin-flick that displays precious little nudity, a preponderance of pondering and takes for-fucking-ever getting precisely nowhere. Cruise and Kidman spend the holidays wandering around Pinewood’s feeblest approximation of Manhattan while your cinematic Christmas grinds to a confused and flaccid halt.
3.12am ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968)
By now you’re sitting alone in a pool of crapulence, sweet wrappers and fomenting regret. Your siblings have deserted you for their PS3s, your parents are already preparing the hideous déjà vu of Boxing Day and every notion of joyful nativity has been inverted. Christmas with the junior antichrist offers the only remaining option for you now.
Happy holidays.
