THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES (2018)

 The magic of Santa Claus.

Those of you who know me outside of the internet and social media are aware that I am famously a curmudgeon when it comes to all things Christmas. The holiday just brings me down for many reasons, most relating to family dysfunction and childhood trauma, with this past Christmas being my worst, most depressing Christmas ever. So it was with some trepidation that I watched Netflix's THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES (2018), solely to see what I heard was Kurt Russell as the best Santa Claus in movie history. Well, I just finished watching the film and I just have to come out and say it: THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES gets my sincere vote as the best, most fun Christmas movie ever made, and Kurt Russell is everything I ever wanted in a Santa Claus. 

Kurt Russell, one of my favorite actors since I was a kid, as a surprisingly perfect Santa CLAUS.

It's a Christmas movie that I would write if tasked with coming up with a Christmas story that featured no violence and other scabrous elements. I loved everything about it, from its dysfunctional sibling protagonists, to its examination of the lore of the how-to of Santa's magic, to ordinary people encountering the real Santa and being presented with concrete evidence that he's EXACTLY who he appears to be, to arguably the best Christmas elves yet committed to celluloid. (Extra points for them being Nordic and speaking with subtitles.) In short, it's the movie I wish I'd had at my mother's house this past Christmas.
It made me feel good, even to the point of making me believe in this specific Santa.

All my life I have believed in the power of stories and storytelling, and when I really get into a story and its characters, it moves me, and by the time THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES reached its very satisfying climax, I felt genuinely Christmas-style good for the first time in ages, and I was shocked to find out that I had tears running down my face. The film offered me a much-needed dose of fun and emotional release without being cloying or nauseating in the way that far too many holiday films are.

Final verdict: THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES will be added to my DVD collection as soon as possible, and it will become a Yuletide perennial alongside VIOLENT NIGHT, KRAMPUS, and SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, only wholesome instead of savage or scary. Even a dyed-in-the-wool Christmas bah-humbugger like me can get with the spirit when a story truly speaks to my head and heart.

 Promotional image from the original release.

HARUM SCARUM (1965)

Leave your brain at the door for this one.

Finally saw HARUM SCARUM (1965), one of the top contenders for the dubious distinction of being Elvis’s rock-bottom worst film, alongside the equally maligned KISSIN’ COUSINS (1964). While KISSIN’ COUSINS very much played into its era’s trend toward “cornpone” comedy, HARUM SCARUM harks back to the B-movie genre of “exotic” Arabian-set adventure/romances of the 1940’s and 1950’s, with California unconvincingly standing in for Middle Eastern locations. 

Originally released as a double-feature with the classic Toho kaiju flick, GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER, 

I swear this actually happened. Talk about tonal whiplash... 

HARUM SCARUM finds Elvis starring as Johnny Tyrone, a nightclub entertainer and movie star on a goodwill tour of the Middle East, who is kidnapped and tasked to use his karate skills to murder the king of an isolationist desert nation that has kept Western influences at bay for two millennia. If he does not murder the king, a league of assassins will kill a troupe of performing thieves and orphans that Elvis has befriended. (Why the league of assassins don’t just dispose of the king themselves is never addressed.)

Elvis as Johnny Tyrone. Rudolph Valentino he ain't.

There are escapes, double-crosses, mild derring-do, Michael Ansara (I DREAM OF JEANNIE's Blue Djinn and Klingon captain Kang from the original STAR TREK and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE), the always welcome Billy Barty, and romance with the king’s gorgeous daughter, all accented with a steady roster of forgettable musical numbers.

When compared against KISSIN’ COUSINS, I have to say that I find HARUM SCARUMto be the superior film. Yes, it’s incredibly stupid, but it’s as mindlessly entertaining as any of the many faux Arabian exotica flicks that Hollywood had cranked out for the previous twenty years, and Elvis and company all look like they had a blast filming it, unlike the somnambulistic performances in KISSIN’COUSINS. The comedy, though moronic, does not insult one’s intelligence in the way that KISSIN’ COUSINS did, and the songs are all definitely better (though it's an admittedly low bar). However, the one disturbing trend of several Elvis films of the early/mid-1960's that pops up again here is Elvis engaging in a musical number with a pre-pubescent girl that, though intended to be "cute," comes off as douche-chills-inducingly borderline-pedo. (You'll know that scene when you get to it, so have your thumb on your remote's fast forward button.)

Seriously, this sequence made me squirm.

When you add it all up, it's a lot more breezy and fun than KISSIN' COUSINS and I would actually recommend it as a passable waste of 85 minutes. So, for now in my estimation, KISSIN' COUSINS retains the crown as the worst Elvis movie that I have endured. Will I find one of his other works to be somehow even worse? I intend to make my way through all of the King's cinematic oeuvre as the mood strikes me, so STAY TUNED.

Poster for the original theatrical release.

KISSIN' COUSINS (1964)

Twice the Elvis, infinite awfulness.

KISSIN’ COUSINS (1964) was Elvis’s fourteenth film in eight years — he averaged two or three films per year from 1960 through to 1969 — and by this point his movies were virtually interchangeable, distinguishable from one another only by the setting and Elvis’s vocation in the story. This time around he plays a U.S. Army lieutenant who is forced into helping the Army  obtain permission to use an area of Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains as the location of a top secret ICBM missile base. He’s pressed into this task because the area is owned by an ornery hillbilly stereotype who hates outsiders, especially representatives of the government, but Elvis’s character’s family were once native to the area and he’s related to the hillbily’s family because one of his elder relatives married one of the hillbilly’s relatives, so Elvis is kin and therefore not a target for murder upon entering hill country. 

With a small platoon of fellow soldiers and his commanding officer in tow, Elvis attempts to broker the land deal while fending off the hostilities of his blonde lookalike cousin, and also contending with the attentions of two cornpone cuties, one of whom is played by a pre-BATMAN Yvonne Craig, who spends much of the film running around in a yellow bikini. Oh, and the cuties in question are his cousins.

 

 The all-natural, puberty-enflaming wonder that was Yvonne Craig.

 

There’s a time limit on making the deal, and if it does not go as planned, Elvis’s commanding officer is threatened with getting reassigned to Greenland instead of the cushy Pentagon gig that he aspires to, and if he fails he’ll take Elvis down with him.  

 

The old hillbilly proves to be stubborn about relinquishing the land, even for good compensation and a number of accompanying perks, so Elvis has his work cut out for him. And while all of this is going on, there’s romance, assorted hillbilly shenanigans with moonshine and revolting country vittles, terrible musical numbers that Elvis pretty much sleepwalks through, and, my favorite of the film’s many stupid elements, the “threat” of the Kittyhawks, a roving band of hot man-starved nymphomaniacs who roam the mountains in search of men to knock them up so they’ll have boy babies. All these idiotic elements come together at the end, when every problem is solved by a massive drunken party, with the Kittyhawks getting it on with the servicemen.

 

Elvis versus the Kitthawks. The hills are alive with the sound of nymphomania.

Considered by many to be the rock-bottom worst in the lengthy Elvis filmography, and definitely the worst that I have seen thus far. KISSIN’ COUSINS is aggressively brain-dead but is fun to sit through for its we-don’t-gove-a-fuck utter idiocy. Like most other Elvis films of the 1960’s, it runs out of steam about halfway through, but stick with it just to see the ridiculous conclusion.

 

 "You gals ever hear of buggery?"

When I ran the film for Lexi and Ginna (Lexi’s older sister and Bad Movie Night regular), Ginna noted that she, like me, had received her education on the cinema of Elvis via the times when the late, lamented 4:30 MOVIE would do an “Elvis Week” showcase, and though she had seen and enjoyed many an Elvis flick for their sheer mindless entertainment value, she had never seen KISSIN’ COUSINS. When it was over, she remarked that it was likely the worst one she had ever seen, thanks to its stagebound visual cheapness, terrible dialogue and performances, and a roster of unlistenable dreck that passed as songs.

The next Elvis outing that I plan on subjecting the sisters to is HARUM SCARUM (1965), in which Elvis goes to Arabia and engages in Arabian Nights shenanigans. It’s another strong contender for the crown as Elvis’s worst, so I can't wait to endure it.

 

 Poster for the original theatrical release.

HERCULES (2014)

Dwayne Johnson, making for an impressive Hercules.

Finally got around to checking out HERCULES (2014). Taking place after the completion of the famous twelve labors, this gives us a Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) who leads a band of mercenary heroes, including Ian McShane as a skilled spearman who sees visions of his death,  

and the athlete Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), here reimagined as an Amazon archery badass.  

Though widely lauded for his amazing feats and status as a demi-god, Hercules bears the guilt of having killed his wife and children, a state of mind that holds him back from true greatness, but he nonetheless leads his companions when they are hired to lead the army of Thrace against savage marauders. But all is not as it seems, with neither Hercules's culpability for his family's murders nor with the people he and his stalwart crew were hired to rout. And, interestingly, there is question as to whether the mythic hero is actually the son of Zeus, or is he just a figure whose legend grows with each retelling?

Basically a matinee popcorn muncher, I can see why this flopped, as it's little more than a throwback to the seemingly endless Italian mythological muscleman flicks of the 1950's and 1960's peplum wave, only with the production values to make it look quite lavish. It's nothing great, but lovers of ancient world epics and mythic adventure will find it an agreeable way to pass just over ninety minutes. Dwayne Johnson makes an appropriately beefy Hercules, and his band of mercenaries are all a lot of fun. It's the kind of thing I would have absolutely loved if I'd seen it at age nine, and even at my current age of fifty-nine, I was entertained. Recommended as a minor diversion for mythology goons and peplum addicts.

                                                        Poster for the theatrical release.

RED ONE (2024)

Who knew I needed to see a slap fight between the Rock and Krampus?

It's just before Christmas Eve and Santa is kidnapped for a scheme that will usurp his annual duties and find all on the naughty list imprisoned forever, thus making the world a nicer place. It's up to Santa's hulking bodyguard and an amoral, world-class cyber-tracker/thief who can find anyone who doesn't want to be found to retrieve Santa and save Christmas while weathering all manner of obstacles, both fantastical and all-too-human, before the world must face a year without Christmas.

Since it was free on Amazon Prime Video, I just watched RED ONE (2024) and it was absolutely NOT what I expected going in. I anticipated a treacly Christmas movie for the kiddies, but what I got was a two-hour mashup of a TAKEN-style kidnapping rescue thriller, mismatched buddy movie, an examination of family dysfunction, monster movie, and PG-13-level violent superhero action flick. It's tonally all over the place and it's definitely not for the little ones, as it can get rather intense for a seasonal item, and that's why I'm going to wager that it will eventually find an audience of tweeners and older on home video. It's an antidote to nauseating Christmas family fare, despite wielding a number of heartwarming elements, and at its heart it's more of an action film than anything else.

I don't have kids but I would bet that at just over two hours, it's likely a tad too long for the endurance of the average moviegoing child, plus some of the concussive action, eerie visuals, and superb creature makeups may be a bit much for the really little ones, so know your kids' ability to handle such material before sitting them down with this.

Chris Evans is a lot of fun, playing a character who's the moral polar opposite of Steve Rogers, and Dwayne Johnson is his usual superhero self as the veteran head of Santa's security. They work well as a mismatched duo, and I enjoyed their dynamic quite a lot. Also, extra points for the diverse crew that populates the North Pole. There are humans (apparently), elves, trolls, and anthropomorphic polar animals, including my favorite, a polar bear security enforcer named Garcia.

 

The depiction of "Santa magic" is arguably the most interesting that this fan of fantastical tales has yet seen onscreen, and the tactical deployment of size-changing/reality-warping tech reminded me of how the Atom fights in the comics.

RED ONE is a flawed piece, but I was entertained because I took it in as a superhero movie about supers who are tied into the mythic lore of Christmas. It's definitely not for those who like their yuletide cinema to be all sentimental and sugary, though it does feature bridge-building to salve inter-familial rifts. Bottom line: At heart, this is a Christmas superhero flick, complete with powerful supernatural supervillain, and as such I say it was better than the past several MCU efforts (an admittedly low bar). Smoke a bowl, down some spiked eggnog, and enjoy it for the weird genre chimera that it is.

Poster for the theatrical release.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024)

FOLIE A DOO-DOO, more like.

Just made it through JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024). Talk about a slog...

This turd has already been dissected to death on the internet, so all I have to say is that it's a would-be opera that instead ended up as a bad, pretentious catalog of movie musical cliches, or it was intentionally crafted to troll the audience that so lauded the inexplicably overrated first film. It's a musical where the vocal performances should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, the romance between the protagonists depends on the audience more or less taking their love as a given without really doing much of anything to sell it (which did not work for me at all), and the damned thing felt as long as BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ. 

I didn't like the original, so whether this sequel fails or not matter not at all to me, as the only reasons I saw this were that it was free, and solely so I could see what the hoopla was about in order to be able to comment on it from an informed point of view. That said, it's a well-crafted disaster across the board. It's pretty and professionally realized, but a gilded turd is still a turd.

THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS, AND AN AMAZON COMES TO THE RESCUE

Back in the Slope, clearing my mind.

Got back to the Slope around 3:30pm, and upon dropping off my EMT pack, I left my apartment and went for a walk to clear my head. I had come back from my latest time in Westport an emotional and psychological train wreck. Though I made Mildred a belated Thanksgiving feast, I wanted to pick up some turkey wings and stuffing that I could make and have in my fridge, as fake Thanksgiving leftovers that I can enjoy over the coming week back here in the slope. But obtaining those items would come after my walk and its attempt at clearing my head.

 

During my weekend with Mildred, it became clear that her breathing is becoming more and more difficult, with her wheezing sounding like she's swallowed several harmonicas and a set of bagpipes. It makes her miserable, plus she serially breaks out in fits of coughing that sound like she's trying to cough up her very soul, and the bouts of this can go on for hours at a time. I made sure she had water close by, but neither that nor repeated sessions on the nebulizer seem to do any good. According to Roger, this sort of breathing had been a thing but went away after Mildred's most recent hospitalization, but now it's back and I am very concerned. I will be calling Dr. V in the morning and alerting her to this, and I will also badger Mildred to get an appointment with Dr. V, in case something can be done. Seeing her like this is gut-wrenching, but I kept it frosty while at the house, and I did my damnedest to meet her needs. 

 

Mildred's capabilities seem to dwindle by the day, and she even has to have one of her professional helpers assist her with taking showers. I know my mother, and having to rely on someone to serve as the modern answer to a Roman body slave must be galling her to the point where she could bite a railroad spike in half out of sheer frustration and anger.

 

Lately Mildred sleeps a lot, and I do mean A LOT. Between my arrival on Friday afternoon through this morning, I would say she was asleep, either in her favorite chair in the living room or in her bedroom, perhaps 80% of the time. She can conk out in less than five minutes, and when she's just laying there wheezing, she reminds me of a naked and helpless baby squirrel. It's a truly disheartening state to bear witness to, especially when stacked against a lifetime of memories of her as a fierce and utterly indomitable force of rigid nature that I preferred not to be around, simply out of the need to protect my own mental health and self-esteem. What was once a 24/7 engine of vitriolic reproach, judgment, merciless criticism, infantilization, emasculation, condemning damned near everything I said or did is not a mere shell of a life-form, a creature to be tended to as its time runs out, and it's all just soul-crushngly sad. Those who know me best are aware that there were years when I openly opined that I wish she would just die and free me of her relentless harridan behavior, but now I see her as an entity to be pitied, which I'm sure she would hate. She raised me to be a warrior and, with full acknowledgement that the two of us have a "complicated" relationship, she likely would think it a sign of weakness for warrior to take pity on their arch-nemesis. Well, this is real life, not some cheap Conan knockoff, and this warrior just cannot harbor hatred for a weakened opponent. So I just maintained a level attitude while there, and I worked to make her time awake as pleasant as possible.

 

Last night's other-than-nicotinal smoke break with an old friend did me a world of good and soothed my hidden anxieties quite nicely (the two huge slices of blueberry and apple pie that I devoured side by side on one plate also didn't hurt), but once I was on the train home this afternoon, upon taking my seat, I attempted to read a thick volume of Gail Simone-scribed Wonder Woman comics, but I could not concentrate as my mind mulled over what I had witnessed over the past 48 hours. Instead, I publicly broke down and wept. I'm talking a textbook ugly cry, complete with sobbing, and the lady seated across from me offered me tissues and said "I know. I know. Holidays are rough..." I accepted her tissues, cleaned myself up once the emotional sluices finally closed, and then I was able to concentrate on and enjoy my massive chunk of Wonder Woman adventures. 

 

The volume in question.

 

It has been previously noted that it was Mildred who got me into Wonder Woman when I was an under-10, citing that Diana was her favorite hero when she was a child, with those stories being one of her few escapes from the restrictive and abusive household where she endured a miserable childhood and adolescence. The character's resilience spoke to her, and she imparted her love of the amazing Amazon to me. Unlike Mildred, I have been deeply versed in world myths and legends since age seven, especially the Hellenic classics, so Wonder Woman being a 20th Century take on the classical Greek mythic hero made me an easy mark. Since 1972 I have read countless tales of Diana, both good and bad, and I have to say the volume I immersed myself in on the train features some of the best of her stories from a recent era. It was just what I needed at the right moment of an emotional low, especially an arc in which Diana gets her ass savagely, and I do mean SAVAGELY, kicked by a creature named Genocide. She was battered, bloody, broken, and left for dead, but she soldiers past her defeat and shattered confidence, and soon returns to the fray, reminding me that a true warrior can break, but they possess the capacity to once more pick of a sword, axe, spear, what have you and continue to fight on. 

 

That four-color example was just the inspiration that I needed, and I will soon enough return to the battlefield of my mother's dwindling time on earth, frosty attitude and resolve freshly energized. Christmas is just over three weeks away and I expect more of the same, with the likelihood that Mildred's health will have declined even further, but so be it. All things must end and Mildred would have made for a miserable immortal, so it is what it is. I'm just going to strive to be the best that I can be for her and for those who have been helping her in so many ways. Quite a bit of character growth from how I felt toward her thirty years ago, but we all have to grow up at some point, I guess. Whether we read and enjoy superhero comic books or not.