Cinematical Seven: Dramas with Inappropriate Christmas Settings

Movies ordered at Christmastime hit been a long tradition; who crapper resist every that great imagery, lights, snow, Santa Claus, Christmastime trees, wrapped presents, candy, stockings, etc.? (It even looks beatific in black-and-white.) But for every It's a Wonderful Life, there hit been another movies with definitely darker dealings, sometimes ordered direct in oppositeness with the gleaming pass season.

1. 'R Xmas (2001)
Combine the text "Abel Ferrara" and "Christmas" in the same declare and you're extremity to become up with a heartwarming pass tale like this one. A well-to-do wealthy dweller dweller couple (Lillo Brancato Jr. and Drea de Matteo) spends the days before Christmastime disagreeable to road down the hottest newborn chick for their woman (Lisa Valens) as substantially as packaging and commerce a shipment of heroin. They're just your typical, bright New royalty family, until the economise is kidnapped. Ice-T plays the kidnapper. 'R Xmas is rattling poorly regarded in the United States -- mainly thanks to inferior distribution, both theatrically and on DVD -- but it's digit of Ferrara's best films.

2. Morvern Callar (2002)
Poor Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) wakes up to encounter a departed boyfriend low her tree (he sworn suicide). She opens every her presents from him, takes the money from his wallet, goes to a party, comes bag and signs her name to a autograph he completed. She then takes a road activate hunting for "someplace beautiful." That's the Stygian first to Lynne Ramsay's genre film, but though it stays Stygian and death-obsessed for whatever time, it's finally just a tiny taste hopeful.

3. Far from Heaven (2002)
Todd Haynes gives us Christmastime in 1950s suburbia, pretty as a postcard, but roiling with accusations and guilt low the surface. A wife (Julianne Moore) water for her African-American plantsman (Dennis Haysbert), while her economise (Dennis Quaid) sneaks off to encounter fuck in underground gay nightclubs.

4. All That Heaven Allows (1956)
Douglas Sirk's Technicolor work was the inspiration for Haynes' flick (as substantially as for Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) and also features whatever glorious, snowbound Christmastime imagery on crowning of its desperate, heart-rending emotions. In this one, an senior woman (Jane Wyman) water for her younger plantsman (Rock Hudson); in real life, she was a whole eight years senior than him. Gasp! Her uptight children give her grief over her friendship, and she staleness decide between genuine fuck and decorum.

5. The Unholy Three (1925)
One of Tod Browning's most coiled dramas has Lon Chaney as a ventriloquist and a master of disguise, posing as "Granny O'Grady." Together with a circus strongman (Victor McLaglen) and a faerie (Harry Earles), they hit a foolproof pillage scheme. One important environs takes place at Christmas, around the Christmastime tree no less, but the time is anything but cheery. In fact, it's pretty earnestly demented.

6. The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
One of my favorite movies, Val Lewton produced this when a supplement to Cat People (1942) was ordered. He brought backwards the "cat girl" (Simone Simon) from the first flick as a ghost, but convergent the story on a little woman with a coercive imagination. The parents constantly worry most her and monish her to snap backwards to reality, but she can't support it, and things move effort weird when she begins sight her father's departed ex-wife in the backyard. The directorial debut of Robert Wise, this is an uncommonly gorgeous and intellectually Byzantine B-movie, rank with deceive and Christmastime carolers.

7. Doubt (2008)
What meliorate way to fete the pass season than paraphilia and backstabbing? John Apostle Shanley's flick attained whatever attending last assemblage for its performances, but I conceive it's a pretty solidified package, and it held up to a ordinal viewing this year.

Other considerations: Baby Face (1933), Batman Returns (1992), The Merry Gentleman (2009).