Nov. 25, 2007
Here's To The Disturbing Movie!
David Edelstein Says Forget Holiday Cheer — Go For The Creepy Films
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No Ho Ho Ho here: Laurie Holden, Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble star in the new horror movie, "The Mist." (AP Photo/MGM)
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Javier Bardem is not someone who is bringing holiday greetings, as a savage killer in the Coen Brothers' "No Country For Old Men." (AP Photo/Miramax Films)
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I have a theory about holiday movies.
People get more depressed in this season, so it follows they should see "feel-good" pictures, right?
No.
See, I think you should gravitate to the most depressing movies because then, when you come out, you think, "Hey, my life's not so crummy!"
So, I have wonderful news. There are movies out there that will make you feel horrible, and by "horrible" I mean "great."
Take "The Mist." It's based on a Stephen King book; it's about people trapped in a supermarket while all these thingies wait to swoop in and disembowel them.
It's clunky material, but director Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption") drills for fresh nerves. All along you think you know what's coming; all along what comes is worse than you can dream.
It's the feel-bad movie of the millennium: hideous carnage plus heartbreak, the mist a miasma of up-to-the-minute anxieties: technology amok, a disintegrating ecosystem, religious mania, the end of the family. It will leave you a wreck, but stronger for it.
After "The Mist" breaks you in, try Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men," based on a Cormac McCarthy novel with an ending that's bleak even by his standards. An aging Texas sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones is summoned to a slaughter in the desert.Photos: In "The Mist" Of Horror
Josh Brolin as a likable trailer-park loser finds a suitcase with millions and gets hunted by a psycho Terminator played by Javier Bardem, who uses the kind of air tank used to blast the brains out of cows. His freaky stare in the foreplay before his killings is to die for.
By the time you get to two movies about normal misery, they'll feel like larks.
"The Savages" is director Tamara Jenkins's bleakly funny - or is it funnily bleak? - look at aging misfit siblings, played by the marvelous Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, never more soulful. They team up to take care of their father, played by Philip Bosco, who's only intermittently lucid. He abandoned them - screwed up their childhoods - but they feel a sense of duty. Too bad they can't have it out with someone who ain't there.
"Starting Out in the Evening" stars Frank Langella as a forgotten novelist contacted by a vivaciously pretty graduate student played by Lauren Ambrose. She wants to spur his rediscovery - and maybe something else.
People who talk like writers, a May-December romance: It might have been insufferable. It isn't, though. It's haunting. Langella stares out from a body too lumbering for his nimble brain and has never been more expressive.
Facetiousness aside, there is a kind of comfort in dredging up our worst fears in these scary times and confronting them before they begin to fester. So, here's to a holiday season in which your greatest woes are on the big screen.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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- You can''t even count all of the Christmas-theme movies that have been made: feature films & made-for-TV. They never seem to stop making them. Why? Who is watching this stuff? They have exhausted EVERY possible Christmas/Santa/Rudolph/Elves/Frosty idea. "Fred Claus"? Gimme a break. How many "A Christmas Carol/Scrooge" movies have there been? 15? 20?
They took a nice 30 minute "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" cartoon & made a godawful, overhyped, stuffed-to-the-gills feature film out of it with Jim Carrey.
There is more than enough going on during the holiday season for the precious kids. Can''t you hear me playing the world''s smallest violin just for them? - Reply to this comment
- Your right, X-mas isnt all about kids. Its about humanity, making/spending time with loved ones, giving to those less fortunate, etc. As a child, we had x-mas''s with no ''gifts'' under the tree, we made cookies, and other goodies, that we shared with family & neighbors. Sometimes, we swapped toys, to get something ''new''. We learned early there wasnt a man in a red suit from the mall coming down our chimney with a few grand in toys on the 25th, but there was such a thing called the ''x-mas spirit'' that means alot more to me today, than any toy ever could have.
- Reply to this comment
- Yes...please...stop with the Christmas movies that children might enjoy. Let''''s just focus on the miserables who love being miserable and find it cute to walk around complaining about holiday cheer. I do believe they were the basis for the first holiday movie ever made. How ironic. Do go on.
Posted by likeitis5050 at 11:39 AM : Nov 25, 2007
It''s always about the kids...Well! I got news for ya $krew the kids...The world doesn''t revolve around those stupid little rugrats... - Reply to this comment
- Isn''t reality the reason media escapism was created in the first place?
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- I wish Hollywood would Quit the stupid Reality shows that aren''t real at all !! Ten theres thr Dumb Soap Oprea Crime Dramas, like CSI, and all the others, aand that Quirky Stupid TV Show VEGAS, that went to the dogs, after 1 season, their hollywood writers should be replaced ! Anymore half the shows on cable are nothing but junk, reruns of shows that are worthless, you think they could find something besides krap to put on TV !I''m about tired of paying for it and ready to Cancel my CABLE ALL TOGETHER, if things don''t change fast, I''ll just do without TV !!! I wanna watch a movie I''ll either go to the show or reant one a put it in the DVD Player,, but I''m about thru paying for this Junk yheir shoving at us for the price it costs !
- Reply to this comment
- Yes...please...stop with the Christmas movies that children might enjoy. Let''s just focus on the miserables who love being miserable and find it cute to walk around complaining about holiday cheer. I do believe they were the basis for the first holiday movie ever made. How ironic. Do go on.
- Reply to this comment
- Anything BUT movies with a Christmas theme. ANYTHING. Please. I beg you, Hollywood. Stop releasing Christmas movies!
- Reply to this comment
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