Are you tired of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, Home Alone, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and A Christmas Story a dozen times a year because you don't know of more non-traditional titles?
Never fear; WiseWolf is here to help. The following are unconventional choices for Christmas movies which nevertheless deserve more attention.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
This one is known, but doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. It's the Muppets performing Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, pure and simple. A stroke of genius was in casting Gonzo as Charles Dickens, giving us a narrator who travels along with the action but does not interact with anybody. He is accompanied by Rizzo the Rat, performing the role of himself, whose cluelessness and sarcasm (and quest for jelly beans) balances out Gonzo's--Dickens'--pretentiousness. At one point Rizzo asks how Gonzo-Dickens could know what's going on inside a house when they're outside it, and Gonzo-Dickens replies it's because "storytellers are omniscient. I know everything." Including Dickens as a character also enables the film to utilize the prose from the novella as well as dialogue.
The mixture of Dickensian dialogue and Muppet humor works effectively. It's always a pleasure when opposites that seem like they should never work together come together and work brilliantly--Firefly's mix of Western and science fiction, film noir and science fiction in Dark City, and the science fiction/comedy/Western/romance/action/bildungsroman mix that is Back to the Future Part III. Adding Muppets humor and musical elements to the first time-travel drama novel somehow seems totally appropriate. The songs are memorable and filled with energy (at least to me). The movie also follows the novel closely, omitting a few scenes from the novella while retaining its essence. The parts are cast well, matching up the Muppets with their Dickens counterparts (in the process creating a brother for Jacob Marley so that Statler and Waldorf aren't separated). With A Christmas Carol being one of the world's most filmed books, The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best with its unique take on the story.
The Dead
This is actually an Epiphany movie, which is refreshing because there aren't many movies about that holiday. It takes place in a single night during a family party in Dublin in 1904. It's a pure example of slice-of-life: the film treats us to a little piece of a family's life during the holiday season. It has a leisurely pace and conveys many things about its characters through dance, song, recitations, dinner, and gives us one revelation made by a couple near the end. One word of warning: do not watch this on DVD if the DVD says the runtime is 73 minutes. The movie is 83 minutes long, with the DVD cutting ten minutes for no discernible reason. Go with the tape on this one, unless an unedited version ever makes it to DVD. Lionsgate should be ashamed for destroying John Huston's last film.
A Midnight Clear
I've watched this movie every year since I discovered it in 2006. It's about an intelligence squad of six men who, during WWII, are scouting an area in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944. While there, they encounter a group of Germans, whose motives aren't so malicious. In fact, they're just as scared as the Americans. And I really don't want to give anything else away. I've seen this movie five times, but I'm not really sure how to describe it. It's quiet mostly, cold, dreamlike but realistic, and thoughtful without being pretentious. It addresses the war from the perspective of six soldiers who were only chosen as an intelligence squad because they had high IQ scores. It's anti-war, but not overtly so. Stick around for the credits for the most haunting version of "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" you will ever hear, sung by Sam Phillips.
Speaking of Christmas truces, there's also...
Joyeux Noel
This film tells the more-or-less true story of a spontaneous Christmas truce between French, German, and Scottish troops during World War I. They cease fire, sing carols, hold a service, play football (soccer), and exchange addresses to get in contact with each other after the war. The paths the two films take are quite different, but they both convey the idea that soldiers fighting on opposite sides of a war really have nothing against the individual persons and probably have a lot in common with them, as one of the veterans at the beginning of part 9 of Band of Brothers says.
The Lion in Winter
There's no snow in this Christmas movie. King Henry II has called a Christmas court in 1183. He's invited his three sons, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, his mistress Alyss, who is sister to the King of France, who's also coming, and he's let his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine out of prison. They all just want Henry to choose a successor--Eleanor wants it to be Richard, Henry wants John, and King Phillip just wants Henry to marry Alyss to one of Henry's sons or return her dowry. This film has excellent acting and dialogue. The dialogue is up there with I, Claudius, with witty comebacks and biting humor. The only bad thing about watching this movie is that once you've seen it, you've sort of seen the best medieval film. Well, that and Branagh's Henry V. I'd peg those two as the best medieval movies. The look of the film is also welcome; Henry doesn't particularly look like a king with his brown tunic, which humanises him greatly. The castle also isn't that clean. Dogs roam freely, straw is spread on the floor of the dining hall, and peasants loiter around the steps of the castle. It's far from the squeaky-clean Middle Ages portrayed in other works like BBC's Robin Hood. (seriously, I had no idea outlaws from the 12th century bathed and styled their hair every day.) The writing, dialogue, and acting are what's really on display here, and those deliver.
Try these if you're looking for something a little different this year.
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