The Nostalgia Cage

Nic Cage is a controversial figure in Hollywood.  Not for any terrible reason, at least not that I can think of, and I’m not willing to Google it at the moment.  But, as far as I know, other than his library of terrible movies, he’s not done anything quite wrong.  It’s not like he has the desire to eat people or a history of hate crimes that could turn him into either an outcast or a Hollywood darling, but still, “Starring Nicolas Cage” became three words that told me to stay away from a movie, no matter how enticing the trailer cut may have been to my teenage self (I remember once, briefly, wanting to watch Bangkok Dangerous, before the title and Cage’s presence snapped me back to reality).  When I heard that a film version of Uncharted was going to be made, I immediately thought “Oh no, what if they turn my beloved video game series into another National Treasure?”  I haven’t seen it yet, but it seems like they may have actually done worse; I’m sure I’ll be reporting on that the second I’m able to see it, but I refuse to spend money on a movie that stars Mark Wahlberg.  Anyway…

Dinner was delicious, but the wine had a bloody aftertaste

So Nic Cage’s name is a warning, yes.  Until it’s not.  If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me praise both the film Pig and Cage’s work in it; what I thought was going to be another hollow John Wick clone, like the woefully underperforming Nobody, turned out to be a solemn examination of grief and loss that affected me in a way I was never expecting and not prepared for.  Nic Cage made me feel feelings.  I didn’t know that was possible.  But I’m not here to dissect Nic Cage’s career or critique his ability as an actor; I saw what happened to Abed when he tried in Community, and I have no interest in going through the same breakdown.  No doubt Cage is an enigmatic figure with an insanely varied career.  He’s an Oscar winner who’s made a movie about a guy who can see slightly into the future; he’s played characters so ridiculously named they’re actually called Benjamin Franklin Gates and Stanley Goodspeed; he was in multiple movies where the best thing about them was that his face would be set on fire multiple times.  The guy’s not easy to figure out.  

Pig was great.  If you haven’t seen it yet, carve some time out to watch it.  Not really a popcorn flick, but if you must, at least sprinkle some truffle oil or truffle salt on it, that’ll be thematic.  Cage’s new film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is getting stellar reviews, with an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score and 86% Flixster audience score at the time of writing.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I can’t wait to.  That’s right.  I just praised a Nic Cage movie and expressed desire to watch another.  I’m not sure I believe what I’m writing myself.  But do not adjust your radio, dear reader.  It’s still me.  No interference, no enraged Nic Cage standing over my shoulder threatening to give me one of his patented volume-swinging rants if I don’t comply.  I’ve not been tied to a chair and forced to watch Left Behind over and over again.  There’s a reason Nic Cage broke Abed.  Because he’s occasionally good.  Occasionally really good. 

Perhaps my favorite moment in National Treasure, where Nic Cage explains what a watch is

And much more often than that, he’s actually quite likable.  I know I just as recently as the opening paragraph took a swing at National Treasure, but truth be told, it’s a movie I can pop on at any time and just watch it if I need to turn my brain off from the 24 hour news cycle or whatever else is going on in my head.  It’s not quite so bad it’s good, but it’s also not quite so bad it’s unwatchable.  Nonsensical, yes.  Silly, of course.  Preposterous, unavoidably.  But it’s kind of fun enough to keep on in the background as I work on a project or cook or fold laundry.  And that’s not even the peak of Cage’s power, at least not over me.  I’ve always said there’s a difference between a good movie and a bad movie and a difference between a movie I like and I don’t like.  I like some bad movies.  I hate some good movies.  That’s fine, I can see the difference and admit it.  Take Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler, for example.  Undoubtedly a good movie, well written and confidently made, but I didn’t like it.  Perhaps it was a bit too uncomfortably real for me to enjoy it as entertainment.  But that doesn’t mean it was bad.  It just means I didn’t like it.  And just because a movie is bad doesn’t mean I can’t like it.  Right, Prequel Trilogy fans?  

Perhaps the real star of Gone in 60 Seconds

I’m irreparably a car guy.  I have been my entire life.  In home movies of me as a toddler, I often had a Matchbox car in each little hand as I ambled about.  This blog, in its first iteration from almost a decade ago, started life as a blog about cars and driving.  The zeitgeist changed over time, the industry changed, and cars began to appeal less to me.  It also became pretty apparent that this thing I loved was not so wonderful for the planet.  It was hard to reconcile.  I still love getting behind the wheel, popping the clutch, and really driving, but I do it less and less.  Partly because of practicality—I live in a city where it’s much easier to get around without a personal car than with one—and partly because I’ve tried to minimize at least my impact on the damage the car’s done to the environment.  But I still love cars.  And I love a car chase.  Especially a good car chase, but there’s value in a bad one too.  

“I’m retired,” said car thief Memphis Raines. “The benefits are excellent.”

So now that you know that about me, it’s time I finally confess to you all that I love Gone in 60 Seconds.  Yes, that forgotten remake of that 1974 stunt man’s fever dream, starring Nicolas Cage.  It’s just so much damn fun to watch.  From Cage’s preposterously named Memphis Raines (though this is a marked improvement over the original’s Maindrian Pace) to his even more preposterously named brother Kip Raines, to the silly “Lowrider” scene from the trailer, to the Cage Rage, to the partially CGI’d Eleanor chase, I just love this movie.  If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this.  Retired car thief, a term I didn’t know existed, who has never been caught, finds out his little brother has taken a job to steal 50 cars and is dangerously out of his depth.  The options become either to come out of retirement, Jordan-style, and boost the cars, or be murdered by a Dr. Who along with his brother.  Now, both of those options sound pretty unappetizing, especially when you factor in Delroy Lindo, the detective who has spent his career chasing Memphis is clued in to the fact that he’s back in town and now is all over him like sour cream and chives on a baked potato.  Memphis reassembles his crew, including a mute Bullet Tooth Tony and blond-haired Angelina Jolie and they plan a one night boost of all 50 cars.  

Nope, this scene is not okay. Not now, not in the year 2000.

Now you’re up to speed, so to speak.  And I know, it sounds ridiculous, and it is.  But there’s just so much charm about this movie.  One, it’s about two brothers.  That usually gets me, as I have a brother myself, and if you told me I had to steal 50 cars to save him, I’d mask up and Google “How to steal cars” so fast it would make your head spin.  Two, it actually has kind of an all star cast that does way more than you’d think with the script that they’ve got.  We’ve already gone over Nic Cage and Angelina Jolie, as well as the underrated Delroy Lindo, but there’s also Giovanni Ribisi, Will Patton, Timothy Olyphant, Chi McBride, Robert Duvall, Christopher Eccleston, and Vinnie Jones.  There’s even a fairly fun cameo by Bodhi Elfman, who was great in Enemy of the State.  That’s a lot of acting talent packed into this little B-movie.  I mean, Giovanni Ribisi made me weep like a small child in Saving Private Ryan and Timothy Olyphant went on to play Raylan Givens in Justified and Cobb Vanth [Vanth Refrigeration] in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.  How could there not be so much charm in this movie that you just can’t stand it?  Okay, sure, there’s a handful of casual racism in the script, but it was the year 2000.  Humanity had just survived Y2K, personal jet packs zoomed through the air, and we all got flying cars.  Racism just wasn’t on our minds back then.  Still, pretty diverse cast for 2000, if you don’t count the lack of any Asian characters other than a young girl who can’t pass her driver’s test and the fact that there’s really only one woman in the cast other than a pair of ancillary mothers and wives and the aforementioned failed driver.  I know, you can practically see me bending over backwards to make excuses, but it was a different time.  No one complained about Friends until way later, either.  

But, despite a few problematic moments, Gone in 60 Seconds represents that special kind of bad movie I just can’t help but like.  All the vroom vroom noises and the pretty cars, I go into a sort of trance.  The same thing happens when I watch a Fast and Furious movie, although to a lesser extent now that they’re so out of touch with reality that they’re essentially superhero movies where everyone’s superpower is a denial of basic physics (2 Fast 2 Furious was the peak of that franchise, come at me).  Part of it was that I saw this movie at the right time.  It was a PG-13 film that came out when I was 14.  A precious few excruciatingly long years before I got my driver’s license, at the height of my love affair with these gas guzzling machines.  Gone in 60 Seconds is probably why I wanted to learn how to drive stick shift, it’s probably why I fell in love with Mustangs (the notorious Eleanor, the one car Memphis has never been able to successfully steal, is a 1967 Shelby GT500, a performance version of the Ford Mustang tuned by legendary Carroll Shelby), it’s why I have such a respect for movies that did it better.  If it weren’t for Gone in 60 Seconds, I don’t think I’d have gone back and watched a classic like Bullitt, which started my lifelong appreciation with Steve McQueen and truly cemented my love of Mustangs.  I really don’t want to credit that to Nic Cage or Gone, but now that I think about it, if not the causal link, it’s certainly in the chain of events that led me there.  

For all its faults, this impossible CGI trip over a traffic jam is its biggest sin

So is Gone in 60 Seconds a good bad movie?  Is it a bad good movie?  Is it just a bad movie that I like?  I’m not sure it matters.  Will it ever be Ford vs. Ferrari?  No, definitely not.  But it doesn’t have to be.  It just has to be fun.  And, for me, it really is.  Gone in 60 Seconds represents that kind of media that just lets you escape for a couple of hours, and as much as the world needs media that scrutinizes and critiques, as much as it needs movies that matter and are full of meaning, as much as it needs films that make you feel, it also needs movies that make it so you don’t.  You can just munch on your popcorn and enjoy.  It’s just a fun movie.  It doesn’t take itself too serious, it’s well aware of how silly it is, and despite all that, there are some good performances, some snappy one-liners, and decent action scenes.  The final car chase lets itself down when it indulges in a CGI feat of physical impossibility, but if you ignore that, it’s quite a good car chase.  Does it hold a candle to car chase classics like Bullitt or Ronin?  No, not at all.  It can’t touch the tension of Bullitt’s chase, more the visceral, low camera angles of Ronin, which didn’t put you in the drivers’s seat as mush as it park you right on the front bumper.  But a movie doesn’t have to be the best of its kind to be enjoyed.  Part of watching and appreciating better films is important too, but it’s movies like Gone in that lay the foundation.   So, if you haven’t seen it yet, at the time of writing, it’s available for streaming on multiple platforms, including Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.  Maybe it’ll provide for you the necessary escape it’s been providing me for the last 22 years.  If only for about two hours, at least.  

Let’s Talk About Bruno

[Spoiler Alert! While I don’t go into deep detail for the movie Encanto, major plot points will be spoiled in this article.  There’s also a high risk that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” will get stuck in your head again, and for that I don’t apologize.  It’s a bop.]

We’ve all heard the song by now.  Like the plague that was “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the latest ear worm from an animated movie to permeate basically every facet of life.  But there’s so much more to Encanto than this (admittedly) very catchy tune.  

I’m always skeptical when it comes to movies that get such unabashed praise.  Most of the time, I’m justified in this skepticism.  So much of my brain just responds with “Really?  It can’t be that good” and most of the time, I’m right.  Phantom Thread is all I need to say to that.  If I can ever force myself to sit through that movie again, I can tell you in detail why it was such a horrible love letter to domestic abuse, but let’s not go into that now.  When I was finally convinced to give Encanto a chance, I got about through the opening number before shutting it off. 

Nothing to see here, just normal uncle stuff

I should preface this by saying I’m not much of a musical fan.  I love Hamilton, yes, and even Moana too, to a lesser extent, but I think all that means is that I’m a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda (who is also all over the writing and songwriting credits of Encanto and his enchanting, hip-hop-influenced songwriting style bleeds through just about every track).  I don’t know what it is about an opening number, but I shut off La La Land midway through its first song and I barely made it to the end of Encanto’s before I turned it off and started watching Better Call Saul from the beginning again.  I’m not anti-music, by any means; I love music and listen to just about every genre to some extent, but musicals just don’t work for me.  Maybe I live a less magical life than most, but even in a fantastic setting, watching people spontaneously break out into perfectly choreographed song and dance takes me out of the moment in a way that’s generally irreparable.  Once I’m pulled out of a film, once I’m watching it rather than being able to experience it and lose myself in it, the magic of film starts to slowly fade away.  I can put myself in a lot of shoes and relate to a lot of things.  But my imagination has a big empty space in it where others are singing their feelings at me.  

Most of the time, I find musicals a complete bore too.  Grinding the storytelling to a halt so a character can reiterate their innermost thoughts to me as expressed by melody and dance rather than action is the definition of telling over showing to me.  It sucks the momentum out of the film, it pulls me out of the movie, and I just generally don’t care for it.  Lin-Manuel’s songwriting is different, however—he often uses the songs as diegetic pieces that drive the story forward rather than just rehashing what I’ve just seen.  Even when the songs are personal revelations, they’re ones that we’re seeing for the first time, not simply punctuating what I should have learned through character interactions to begin with.  So I gave Encanto another chance at the recommendation of a surprising number of friends from all walks of life.  Recently I’ve been diving into kids’ movies; some I missed the first time around, some I just haven’t seen in a long time.  I don’t have children myself, but now that so many of my friends do, I find myself in the conversation a lot and thinking about what children’s entertainment can do, is supposed to do, and should do.  On any given day, you can find me ebulliently praising Hilda for its messaging and creative delivery of its message through story, and that’s definitely a kids’ show, despite the fact that it’s relevant to people of all ages and told in away that anyone can enjoy (I’ll stop here—this isn’t another post about how great Hilda is, but if you haven’t seen it, I beg you to go on Netflix and watch it).  I mean, I started this blog with the idea that entertainment is important because it helps shape our view of the world, and what could be more important than how the world is shaped in the eyes of the most naive and malleable, the eyes of the people who would be the next caretakers of the world we leave behind?  So I gave Encanto another chance.  And I’m so damn glad I did.  

While there’s adventure on the cards for Mirabel, it’s the stakes of the situation that really makes Encanto stand out

The last time I watched a Disney animated musical, it was Moana.  And like I mentioned, I really liked that one.  There are some similarities, besides just super-composer Lin-Manuel, but the movies struck me so differently.  My goal here isn’t to compare and contrast the two, but since I also watched Moana recently, they’re both on my mind.  Moana’s journey was enormous—not just in scale, but the survival of so much was at stake.  Moana was the chosen one who basically saves the world.  What’s at stake in Encanto is very different.  It’s not about saving the world from destruction, it’s not even about saving lives.  It’s so much smaller in scale than a movie like Moana that it could seem insignificant through the wrong lens.  Mirabel’s a young woman who has nothing but her family at stake.  It’s as insignificant as it is relatable.  Call it magic if you will, but it’s truly pedestrian.  Normal.  Shoulder-shruggingly common.  

And yet, that’s why it’s so important.  That’s what makes Encanto such a special film.  That’s where the true magic lies.  This isn’t one young adventurer against the world—her sisters and cousins aren’t evil, they aren’t opposition, they don’t want to stop her.  Mostly, they’re all dealing with their own shit, as their songs tell us.  And the empathy with which these characters are handled is astonishing for a Disney movie, which so very often relies on flat characterizations of good and evil.  Luisa’s song, while not the catchiest or most pleasing to the ear, shows shocking maturity for a kids’ movie.  Luisa isn’t just the strong one afraid of becoming weak, she questions her own value as a person if she’s not useful—despite her physical strength, she’s crushed by the weight of expectation, of a world where productivity defines your worth.  Usefulness to others is the only metric by which Luisa feels measured and it’s utterly heartbreaking.  Isabela’s pressures are a little different.  There’s still that element of usefulness and expectation, but more than that, Isabela lives the life of the old school princess.  Normally Disney’s bread and butter, its meat and potatoes, its grilled octopus and olive oil, Isabela sings of her lack of agency and pressure to be perfect.  She has to be what others want her to be.  Another external locus.  Who can’t relate to that?  Another surprise.  Usually in a story like this, the pretty sister is an antagonist and her complaints frivolous, but Isabela is also approached with empathy and a level of maturity I didn’t expect.  There’s no evil stepsister here.  And let’s talk about Bruno.  Other than the grandfather’s ultimate sacrifice, no one makes a bigger one than Bruno.  He gives up his life and family because of how they treated his gift.  They took his visions as causal and turned him into a living ghost, haunting the literal spaces between walls in their magical home.  His whole story is just damn sad.  It makes for a catchy tune, though.

Luisa’s strength covers hidden depths in a quickly cracking facade

Enter the true villain.  No, not Abuela Madrigal.  A lack of generational compassion.  All too often, parents forget that their children are people too, with their own hopes and dreams for their own lives, with their own journeys to travel.  And this is the particular sin that Encanto tackles; as Abuela Alma berates Mirabel for ruining everything and harming the family, Mirabel replies with words that felt as if they’d come out of my own mouth before.  Even as an adult, they sound like words that come out of my mouth still.  Families are complicated, families can be harsh.  And here is where Encanto began to truly exceed my expectations.  As I’ve stated about Hilda many times, it’s an act of storytelling genius to impart a message to children that is also well taken by adults; but here, Encanto doesn’t bother to tell this to children.  Rather, this lesson is strictly for the adults watching.  Your kids aren’t extensions of you and they don’t exist to meet your expectations, nor fulfill your unfulfilled desires; they are people in their own right, with agency that shouldn’t be denied, with value that transcends any utility they can offer to other people, and that their wants don’t have to align with yours to be what’s right for them.  As the flashback rolls and we see how Abuelo Pedro paid for their gifts with his own sacrifice, it becomes clear—it’s not Isabela who needs to embrace Mirabel, it’s Alma.  The older generation has to embrace the younger, come as they as are.  And it’s up to the younger generation to forgive the older as they realize their mistake.  Not the hollow, guilt-driven forgiveness given to avoid self pity (see Lucille Bluth and her children’s weak protestations at the realization she’s been a bad mother), but real forgiveness that’s earned by coming to a mutual understanding and a change in behavior.  I’m not going to lie, this lesson hit hard.  I never thought I’d see a Disney musical where a character can flit about magically on conjured roses that depicts familial relations so brutally honestly.  I didn’t think such a realistic depiction of family was on the cards when I hit play.  I just assumed it’d be another cog in the Disney machine—a movie built to sell a soundtrack, a singalong disc, tickets to the ice show, tickets to the musical, lunchboxes (do kids still use lunchboxes? I didn’t even when I was a kid, I always bought the school lunch), and toys—and while it may actually be that, this isn’t just some fairy tale bogged down by endless songs like Frozen and Frozen 2 (which are fine, I like the first Frozen, it’s got some bops and a good story about being yourself).  Where other movies of this kind are simple and boil down to a fairly digestible statement, Encanto leans into the complicated nature of family.

Isabela’s lack of agency comes to a head as she starts to take control of her life

That’s not to say that Encanto is a perfect film—there are so many characters that even now having seen it twice and going over my notes, I don’t see characters referred to by name, rather by description.  There’s Flower Girl (Isabela), Atlas Lass (Luisa), Dr. Doolittle (the kid who talks to animals), Silenzio Bruno, Wilmer Valderrama (Augustín), Sonic the Headscarf (Dolores), Storm (Pepa), and others.  It’s easy to get lost in just who is who because the names come at you so fast and often in song.  I also definitely got the feeling that Bruno was meant to be played by Lin-Manuel Miranda himself.  It’s not that Johnny Legs doesn’t do a fine job as Bruno, but I hear so much of Lin-Manuel’s Alexander Hamilton in his singing and dialogue that I can’t help but wonder.  He even kind of looks like Miranda during the Hamilton days.  And I know this is fairly nitpicky stuff, I know.  But I love that the Spanish language songs play without subtitles—I speak only a little Spanish, but the universality of music made it so I was able to understand what was conveyed without fully understanding what was being said.  I love the visuals and the animation style.  I love Lin-Manuel’s songwriting and just about every performance was able to keep up with his hip-hop-influenced music.  Sure, Luisa’s song may have had a whiff of the one time they let The Rock sing in Moana, but it’s delivered with such honesty that it doesn’t matter that Luisa’s not the most talented singer (she’s still far better a singer than I am, so who am I to judge?).  

What’s that sound in the walls? It’s not a ghost, it’s your long lost uncle watching everything you do.

Encanto is such a lovely film and such a wonderful film that when it ended, I wanted more of it.  And that’s just about the highest praise I can give a movie.  It’s one of those that when you turn it off, the world seems a little quieter than it was before you turned it on; as if it’s now devoid of a sound that should have been there the whole time.  I know it’s early to say and recency bias is a real thing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the dust settles, Encanto starts to top the lists of the best Disney musicals of all time.  I’m racking my brain for one I think was better and I can’t come up with a name.  

And, as the family Madrigal (hopefully unrelated to the conglomerate from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) rebuilds their literal foundation, I don’t need to tell you that it’s their metaphorical one that receives the true renovation.  Of course, in reality, families don’t always stick together and don’t always make it through the hardships and the differences.  Sometimes families break; sometimes differences can’t be overcome, sometimes blood is a curse and not a source of strength.  It’s not like Disney hasn’t gone with a darker ending before (queue up The Fox and the Hound if you doubt me), but in our current world, where we’re surrounded by so much darkness as is, I’m glad that they wrapped it up so neatly and positively, cloaking the audience in hope and warmth rather than slapping them with cruel reality.  Reality will be there when the credits finish rolling.  

It doesn’t always end like this in real life, but it’s damn sure heartwarming when it works out in a film

The Study Room Christmas Special

It's that time of the year again.  Depending on who you are, this season can last anywhere from six months if you’re in charge of the Hallmark Channel's programming schedule, to as little as one day if you’re completely uninterested.  For me, it's about a month, starting after Thanksgiving and really ramping up as I approach the Prime 2-day shipping threshold.  I almost hate to admit it, though, this time of year is kind of magical.  The leaves have just turned, so we had all that color (if you happen to live near trees, which I do not, but I read about fall in a book once), that first nip in the air, the first time pulling out a nice, warm scarf and sipping on a hot chocolate (or, if you’re me, just a coffee or tea, hot chocolate is too sweet), that first snow, when you can get back in your childhood shoes and see snow as a pretty white blanket for the world and not a massive frustrating form of persistent precipitation that makes getting around a pain in the ass.  

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Christmas.  I’m not Christian; in fact, I wasn’t really raised with any particular religious teaching, though my parents tried, my brother and I formed an unbeatable alliance of tantrums and made it really not worth their while to try anymore.  But we always celebrated a form of secular Christmas.  My mom didn’t want us to feel bad or left out when all our friends were talking about their Christmas and Hanukkah presents, so she granted us a yearly Christmas, on December 25th, believe it or not.  We even used to put up a tree when we were really young.  What a coincidence!  

Anyway, over the years, I developed this love/hate thing with Christmas.  I couldn’t stand the phony good cheer and forced meaning on the day; it has all the major pitfalls of a major holiday and all the fake smiles of an unctuous and conniving underling.  I love to poke fun at the pressure we put on ourselves over Christmas—honestly, being a bit of an ass myself, I do enjoy poking fun at anything I find to be held arbitrarily sacred, which, well, includes a lot of holidays.  But I also like Christmas.  Sometimes the good cheer doesn’t feel phony.  Sometimes I like the sense of togetherness and despite the inevitable tension of a 21st century family get-together, it’s nice to be able to connect with the extended family as well.  And frankly, I love giving gifts.  I love it.  I’m an incredible gift giver, if I do say so myself.  I used to keep a notebook with gift ideas for my closest loved ones (now it’s a note on my iPhone), listening to the things they talk wistfully about, as I jot down my thoughts like a private investigator, trying to sift through and find the perfect gift.  You know, that thing a person wants, but would never actually buy for themselves?  Like that one story my mom told me about her favorite pen that she had growing up in the village or when my brother couldn’t shut up about how cool nightvision goggles are.   

People have all sorts of opinions about Christmas—that it's too commercialized, that it’s the most wonderful time of year, that it’s embattled in a never-ending war (it’s not; it’s cool to say “Happy Holidays” to people if you don’t know if they celebrate Christmas, and there are other holidays than Christmas at the end of the year, shout out to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and any others I don’t know about in my own personal ignorance), but, if you’re like me and you weren’t raised Christian, but still celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday, Christmas brings one word to mind.  

Cookies.

I mean movies.  TV shows occasionally have interesting Christmas specials, but I grew up in the 90s.  Christmas episodes tended to fall into a small number of categories.  Christmas is lost somehow (parents trying to teach a lesson, intending to restore Christmas once said lesson was learned, some sort of Christmas thievery, et al), the accidentally got a seasonal employee fired and need to make it right, or the ever popular festive hostage situation (usually a down and out Santa Claus, but not always).  Christmas movies also fall into repetitive categories, but some really stand out.  So here are my top five Christmas movies of all time.  Perhaps, as you can imagine, growing up with a non-traditional Christmas, my tastes in Christmas movies may run a bit into the non-traditional as well.

5. Elf

I’m a late-comer to Will Ferrell fandom.  I never really cared for his SNL run and had seen him in little else at the time.  So I was properly skeptical when Elf came out, even though I liked him in Old School, I wasn’t sure he could carry a movie for me (though films like Stranger Than Fiction, Everything Must Go, Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys got me firmly on his side as time went on), but I am always a sucker for Zooey Deschanel’s manic pixie dream girl (it’s my trope weakness) so I was willing to give it a try.  But I was pleasantly surprised by what was a funny, charming, and surprisingly heartfelt movie.  I generally don’t like fathers and James Caan’s surly dad is no different, but I love the way that his family immediately takes to Buddy the Elf and all but turns on Caan.  Ferrell brings some earnest naïveté to the role which really endears him to you.  Maybe it’s no It’s a Wonderful Life, but I could easily see it becoming a future Christmas movie classic.  Also, it does showcase some of Zooey Deschanel’s lovely singing voice, which is always a plus. 

4. Home Alone

Every kid had a hand drawn layout of their home and possible traps once this movie came out.  Home Alone is the original Christmas movie to me, the first one I can ever remember watching, other than those old Frosty the Snowman film strips they had you watch in school.  Essentially Die Hard for kids, Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister was the gold standard for fully independent children in the 90s.  He could go grocery shopping on his own (a feat I still struggle with in my 30s), he was a crack shot with a BB gun, his cardboard standee game was second to none, and the kid knew his way around firecrackers like none other.  I was never clear as to why the McCallisters had so many cardboard standees, but he made lemonade out of those lemons all day.  Plus, he used Micro Machines as a self-defense weapon!  Need I say more?

3. Love Actually

So maybe this one hasn’t aged that well, and maybe there are some problematic depictions of love, but I’ve still got a soft spot for Love Actually.  As I’ve gotten older and fallen in love a few times myself, with the included subsequent heartbreaks, I appreciate certain aspects of this film more and more.  While I loved the hopelessly romantic cue card scene from the Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes and the little drummer boy/All I Want For Christmas/frightening airport security storyline, now it’s the stories without the happy endings that speak to me most.  Emma Thompson’s heartbreaking performance, Bill Nighy’s lonely realization, Liam Neeson’s grief, and Laura Linney’s devotion to her brother all thoroughly draw me into the film as I still wonder how the main characters somehow know Martin Freeman’s character when their paths seemingly never cross with anyone but Colin’s possibly porno director friend (that storyline was never really clear to me, I can’t tell if it’s softcore or they’re body doubles, or what).  So while people may be tuning to see Hugh Grant and Colin Firth charmingly befuddle themselves into finding their new lady loves in the end, it’s the quiet dignity of Emma Thompson and Laura Linney especially that make this one of my holiday favorites.  Seems like it’s always women who suffer and have to exhibit that quiet dignity in their suffering, but I didn’t write it, I just think it’s a cute movie. Although I’m not sure if Rick’s cards to Keira Knightley were romantic or creepy anymore.

2. Bad Santa

If It’s a Wonderful Life is the most Christmas-y Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, Bad Santa is the most anti-Christmas-y Christmas movie around.  And that is exactly what I love about it.  So much of this film is just plain wrong, but there’s something sympathetic about Bill Bob Thornton’s two-bit, piece of shit criminal Santa that makes me overlook the aspects of the movie that should bother me.  Maybe this is a movie I should be embarrassed about, like The Hangover or Gone in Sixty Seconds, but damn it, I just like it.  The foulmouth Santa juxtaposed against a traditionally wholesome time of year, when we’re supposed to come together and wish good will upon each other, just tickles me in that way a less mean-spirited movie just doesn’t seem to be able to.  I mean, we’ve all had a case of the holiday blues at one time or another, and sometimes it’s good to indulge in that negativity for just a little while.  I like the holidays just fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re not without their stressors.  I mean, who hasn’t wanted to drink their December evenings away in bar after bar at least once in their lives, right?  It can’t just be me…right?  Anyway, this movie also had the fringe benefit of getting me to try watching Gilmore Girls because Lauren Graham was positively delightful and then that became my guilty pleasure show for years.  But don’t tell anyone about that, it’ll be our secret.  

1. Die Hard

Let’s settle the debate right now.  I know some people are under the mistaken impression that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.  Let’s examine the evidence to the contrary.  

1. It takes place over Christmas.

2. It takes place at a Christmas party.

3. Almost all, if not all, the music is Christmas music.

4. Including Hans Gruber humming “Ode to Joy” in the elevator on the way to his various terroristic activities.

5. Sgt. Al Powell aka Carl Winslow aka Reginald VelJohnson was singing “Let It Snow” before being called to Nakatomi Plaza.

6. I have a machine gun, ho ho ho. It’s not like he said “I have a machine gun, Happy Arbor Day”. Need I say more?

7. The themes and motifs include the importance of family (John trying to mend fences with Holly, Karl getting revenge for his brother), sharing a nice meal together (John tells Karl that he’s going to kill him, then cook him, and then eat him), and the spirit of giving (John leaves Tony’s dead body as a gift to Hans and his team, he also gifts Sgt. Powell Marco by somewhat unconventional means, I admit).

8. Holly’s name is literally Holly; that’s as Christmas a name as you can get this side of nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones.

9. “It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles.”

10. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza even said it was, using White Christmas as a benchmark.

11. It’s basically It’s a Wonderful Life.

Okay, so it’s not exactly It’s a Wonderful Life and some of those points were a bit facetious, but overall, it stands that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.  I mean, how is John McClane really that different from Kevin McCallister and how are Hans Gruber and his merry band of international terrorists all that different from the Wet Bandits?  Not only that, it is the archetypal modern action film.  Every movie that came after it that was even remotely like it was held up to Die Hard as the gold standard.  The closest we’ve come to such a great standalone action film since was John Wick.  Everything about this movie is perfect—the lines, the delivery of the lines (if not the accents), the pacing, the stakes, the climax, the denouement, the false ending—it couldn’t have been a better constructed movie.  There are very few perfect movies—Jurassic Park, The Princess Bride, The Empire Strikes Back, and 2 Fast 2 Furious* come to mind—and Die Hard is one of them.  And the concept of a perfect movie is an interesting one that I will discuss, at length, another time.  And as such, Die Hard rightfully takes its place as my number one Christmas movie of all time.  

So, there you have it.  Those are my top 5 Christmas movies of all time.  Agree?  Disagree?  What are yours?  Any way you slice it, though, if you’re celebrating anything this time of year, I wish you all safe and happy holidays.  

*Look, I know it’s not good, okay?  I just like it.  

Lost luster or nostalgic security Blanket?

A lot has been said about the remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, as well as the originals, but I still feel the need to throw my hat in the ring here.  Pokemon Diamond was, until recently, my favorite Pokemon game.  I still think fondly on my time in Sinnoh, using my Pachirisu as a store-brand Pikachu and still cutting through swathes of opponents with the help of my Staraptor, Scyther, and Garchomp.  

But nostalgia and memories are strong with this one—I don’t remember much of the story, if anything, beyond the Pokemon title series mainstays; you are a young child of about 10 or 11, experiencing a wild act of parental neglect as you set forth into the world on your own with nothing but superpowered monsters by your side for you to unleash your wrath both with and upon, should you so choose.  Along the way, there’s a team of bad guys either trying to take over or end the world, commit some sort of genocide or another, or the like that you find a way to stop (as a small child, you are obviously the best situated to do something about it).  You’ll probably say something about revering the relationship between people and Pokemon, which is a nice proxy for talking about how humans need to be more respectful of nature rather than paving it all over and wondering why we have so many floods.  It’s a battle-hardened core story and that’s fine.

However, what I do remember is the multi battle co-op system.  Competitive Pokemon never felt right to me, and yes, when I was younger I liked battling my friends to show that I was a better trainer than they were, but as I got older, I found I enjoyed a more collaborative gaming experience.  I no longer wanted to beat my friends; rather, I wanted to team up with them to take on NPC trainers and show these smug virtual bastards which pre-pubescent pairing is the real boss (I know I’m harping on this a lot and it makes sense because kids are the main the audience for Pokemon, but if you think even a little bit about the situations you get into as a Pokemon trainer, the entire world should be done in for child endangerment).  

Some things did get an upgrade—Dawn has a Switch now, but that TV is definitely not 4K

By the time Diamond and Pearl came out, I was in college, desperately trying to figure my way through my own transitional period.  The law said I was an adult, the rest of me didn’t really feel like it, but there was one thing I knew for sure; as long as you hide everything about yourself, people will think you’re cool, and that’s the only thing that matters (thankfully, I know better now, and it seems the younger generation knows better as well).  My college roommate didn’t care about any of that; he wore Birkenstocks, had a ponytail, and would sing Jim Croce at the top of his lungs while walking around campus.  But he was a Pokemon nerd and got me back into the games after I’d either fallen out of love with series or determined them to be some sort of uncool thing I should eschew as I barreled irrevocably towards adulthood.  The Pokemon in the games were new and exciting, even if they didn’t feel like the Pokemon I grew up with.  The game still felt familiar enough that I was able to jump right in.  And most importantly, I spent hours and hours in late, late nights, sipping cheap whiskey and beer that felt fine at the time, but make me wretch now, playing this game with my roommate, battling our way through the post-game Battle Tower.  That’s the overwhelming memory I have of Diamond (he had Pearl, we coordinated); these hazy, slightly drunk nights that turned into hazy, fairly drunk mornings, playing Pokemon all night with a fellow who would eventually become like family to me.  I’m not saying we became such close friends solely because of Pokemon, but it helped.

So there you have it.  Life changing experiences that forged lifelong friendships.  Those aren’t big shoes to step into for a remake at all, are they?  Others have gone into more depth on the game itself, and I’d like to point you to Giovanni Colantonio’s review of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl if you want a deeper look at the games themselves.  It’s a great piece of writing.  

While the remakes aren’t going to take years off my life and give me a chance to rethink my choice to take Astronomy at the exact moment my $300 textbook became useless because Pluto stopped being a planet, they have sparked conversation as to what Pokemon should be and where it should go.  I’ve found Brilliant Diamond to be strangely engrossing, surprisingly.  The old formula still works once you get past the lack of updates (though the limited style changes, expanded Grand Underground, and use of HMs via the Poketch were all welcomed changes) and allow yourself to be swept up in the nostalgia.  But clearly, relying solely on nostalgia isn’t a long term strategy.  At some point, I will burn out on playing the same game with a different look to it year after year, even one as cute as Pokémon, and so will others. 

I’ve long thought the anime needed an update, but for even longer, I’ve been craving more from the games.  Sword and Shield were a good start, but I had a hard time getting excited for them because I couldn’t see past the disappointment.  Since those college years and even before, Nintendo was the Pokemon company to me.  I hadn’t owned a Nintendo console since the original NES, but I kept in handhelds generation after generation so I could continue to play Pokemon.  I had an original Gameboy, a Gameboy Pocket, a Gameboy Color, a DS Lite, a 3DS, and a 3DS XL.  Yes, I missed the Gameboy Advance years, that’s on me.  When the Switch came out to be the handheld to replace all handhelds and the console to replace all consoles, I jumped at it once I learned that it would be the new home for Pokemon games.  However, I set myself up for failure here.  I’m not a Zelda fan—like I said, no Nintendo consoles since NES, so I just never got into them.  In the midst of a worldwide Switch shortage, I happened to be living in Tokyo where I could easily get one.  My PlayStation tucked safely away back home in the US, I had nothing to game on and needed a gaming outlet that was more engaging than endless Angry Birds editions.  So I bought a Switch and Breath of the Wild.  Granted, I still couldn’t get into BOTW—I tried, I really, really did.  I just think it’s too open for me and I really hate the degrading weapons mechanic, but that’s a different story.  What BOTW did, though, was raise the bar for the next Pokemon game so high, there was no way it could ever make it over.  In my mind, anyway.

Breath of the Wild’s vast beauty set some unrealistic expectations for Pokemon Sword and Shield—for me, at least.

My mind ran wild—the world of BOTW was gorgeous, expansive, and highly interactive.  The puzzles were challenging (sometimes too challenging, as I remember many times trying to use the Switch’s motion controls to roll a ball through a floating maze), the combat satisfying and intense at times, but it was that world that got my imagination going.  I started to think about a more open Pokemon, similar to BOTW.  Not necessarily a massive open world the way Zelda was, but rather a more interactive one, where I could forge a path and really live in the world of Pokemon.  I hoped for more combat innovation; I had fanciful ideas of a Pokemon game where my little monsters could learn more than four moves, for example.  But, that’s not what I got.  I got a Pokémon game.  A rather good one, sure, but a Pokémon game that felt like it did less with more than it’s ever had before, but still cost me 50% more than the brilliant Pokemon Sun & Moon, which is now and still my favorite game in the series.  Sun & Moon revitalized the gameplay, took away things like gym battles in favor of other challenges, and took a lot of bold swings.  Maybe not everything worked, but the island setting and the flow of the game just drew me in.  

Player customization was pretty damn good as well, which is important to me, because representation matters in games, just as it does in any other form of media.  And then Sword and Shield came out and it felt more like a return to form—yes, there were some big changes and I was happy about a fair few of them (the Wild Area and Pokémon in the overworld really helped with immersion and were great innovations), but when it came right down to it, I had allowed myself to believe the game that I wanted to see would be the game that would actually be made.  Of course that’s not how it would happen; not only am I notoriously out of lock-step with many of the fanbases I “belong” to (try to find 10 other Call of Duty fans whose favorite game in the series is Ghosts, it’ll take a while), I’m also not the target audience for Pokemon, I’m not involved in game development, and frankly, it would be wild and worrying if all my private thoughts on the game were actually manifested.  

I do think there’s room for improvement here, though.  A lot of room.  Obviously, I don’t want to leave the core audience behind, nor would I expect Pokemon, a multimedia series about cute little animals, to start catering to the older generation of Pokemon fans.  I’ve said before that games are for everyone and, in a way, Pokémon embodies that more than any other single title or series I can think of.  One of the joys of Pokemon is that pretty much anybody of any age or ability level can pick up the game, find something endearing, and wrap their minds around the gameplay; sure, they won’t breed for maxed out IVs or engage with the competitive meta, but they can level up a well balanced team and stick it to the Elite Four with the same enjoyment that I get out of doing it myself.  So, as much as I’d want a Pokemon game that’s essentially Uncharted with superpowered thunder mice, I don’t think it should happen (well, maybe for a Pokémon Ranger side game…). 

But you can still change the gameplay for the better without alienating the core audience.  The formula for what Pokemon can do hasn’t changed a bit since the first game, with the exception of no longer needing HM moves to traverse the world; this means you don’t have to dedicate a Pokemon (or two, in some games) to housing these often underpowered, unforgettable moves (this is the worst part of going back to older installments).  Otherwise, it’s been six Pokemon, four attacks each, and little variation.  A few new types, a few new moves, but that’s about it.  We’ve had selectable options in conversations before, but they always end up in the same place, no matter what you say.  And despite the fact that the badge system is in place to keep you from becoming overpowered compared to your next gym, it’s relatively easy to make sure you grind your way up to a clean run.  

I get migraines too, Cynthia, I empathize. But I’m still going to knock you off your throne.

I think the first thing that Game Freak could do to add some depth to the gameplay is to implement difficulty levels.  Games are getting pretty creative with difficulty now, some of them having cute names even, but what I’m seeing a lot of now is that it’s no longer just easy, normal, and hard.  You see things like “story mode” as a difficulty level, which lets players experience the story without worrying too much about struggling through the game’s combat.  That’s pretty much where the Pokemon standard is right now, but if you add some higher difficulty levels, you’d be able to accommodate older players who are interested in having more challenging battles.  Rarely do I complain that a game is too easy (though I did have a season where Gabriel Martinelli scored 200 goals for me playing striker for Leeds United; that was definitely too easy), but I would welcome some harder battles.  I haven’t been knocked out in the middle of a battle since the first generation of game.  At the very least, gym leaders’ Pokémon could have dynamic levels, based on the levels of your Pokémon, always keeping them either in the same range or slightly above.  That would ensure the gym battles feel like they have higher stakes than your average trainer battle and would foster creative strategies to deal with these mini bosses, at higher difficulty levels.  Leave them be for easy and normal, but for harder difficulties, level those gym leaders up.  

Let’s keep it at six Pokemon, but I would like to see an expansion of the move set.  Allowing each Pokemon to have more moves would give players infinitely more strategies to utilize to take down gym leaders and the like.  I’m sure there are highly competitive players who have deep strategies going into battle, but for the main game, I generally play the same way I’ve played since I was a child.  All six Pokemon have all four moves set as attacking moves (since PP restoring Ether is always a rare commodity and there are often long stretches of time you go without being about to hit a Pokemon Center to restore your Pokemon), usually one is the top of the line big boy move, then the one that actually hits, and two others that do some damage, but are usually less effective or off-type to diversify the moveset. The gameplay can get a little boring that way; getting through the entire game basically using only Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, and Leaf Blade on every opponent the second I graduate from their weaker counterparts and only using the bigger moves in a pinch since they seem to always miss when I use them, but that’s another issue.  I’m not sure the best way to do this, but I think if they were to change it to six moves in total and have two of them be dedicated non-attack moves (status moves, healing, protection moves), it would really change up gameplay.  That would ensure players didn’t just load up on more attack moves while giving everyone two free move slots to change the way they approach battles.  

No Eevee until post-game, still!? Come on, I’m practically an Eeveelution trainer, I need a Leafeon and a Jolteon in my team, and I won’t say no to some Espeon, Umbreon, or Glaceon either.

And let’s get rid of the meaningless choices.  I’d like to see real decision trees that actually affect the gameplay and the story depending on the choices you make.  I’m not asking for a full on Paragon/Renegade system, nor do I want the extreme complexity of a game like Heavy Rain, with dozens of potential endings or something like that, but I would like to feel that making choices in the game could change how NPCs interact with my sprite and maybe put me at an advantage or disadvantage for gym battles, wild encounters, team battles, and the like.  I admit, this is the hardest of all my suggestions to implement; but I think this is the one that would give the game the most depth and replayability down the line.  I don’t know much about game programming—I’ve seen Console Wars and I wrote a couple text-based games in high school, but that’s about it—so I can only infer that this would be an undertaking.  And I understand why there isn’t much motivation to do so, as Pokemon continually has a renewed player base.  As the kids who grew up with it become adults and have kids of their own, they introduce their children to Pokemon and the cycle starts all over again.  So maybe this is the biggest ask of them all, but I can’t stop thinking about a Pokemon game where I actually get to jump into my character’s Running Shoes and get down to business and play and react the way I want to.  Pokemon has done a lot for immersion over the years—allowing players to choose gender, skin tone, outfits, and even allowing players to go hatless in recent generations has helped me feel represented and more connected to story—and this would be one huge leap towards an even greater level of immersion.  

And on a simpler note, how about letting me have multiple saves on the same game?  In the handheld days, the cartridge only supported one save, it wasn’t stored on the device.  But now saves are local to the Switch and the only way to have multiple saves with the same game on the same console is to set up multiple profiles.  There must be some sort of justification to restricting this, but I can’t figure what.  Long after defeating the Elite Four and the Champion, sometimes I want to boot up and start again with a different starter Pokémon and change the composition of the team I take to top of Victory Road.  But I’ve forged a relationship with these little digital traveling companions of mine; I’ve given them nicknames and earned accolades and have hours of NPCs telling me how important my relationship with my Pokémon are.  Wiping my saved game to start anew feels like taking my cute critters to a river and drowning them one by one like a villain in an old-timey novel.  I don’t like that feeling.  But I also don’t want to create multiple profiles on my Switch just for this purpose.  I’m kind of at an impasse. And lastly, how about a true multiplayer system so I can play co-op battles with my old friend again?

Walking with your Pokémon is back and expanded from the original game, much to my delight

Okay, so it’s a wish list.  Some of the things I wanted earlier, like a more open world, exploring experience seems to be on the menu already, as things like the Wild Area in Sword and Shield were the first step in that direction and I’m hopeful that the upcoming Pokemon Legends: Arceus will go even further towards a more Breath of the Wild-like experience in traversal, while still letting the story stay more or less on the rails.  I think these changes would help to ensure Pokémon’s relevance as its original fans grow older and its new fans grow up.  Let the game grow with them and I think Nintendo’s pocket-sized giant will continue to reign supreme for decades to come.