Those who follow me here might not know that I do a fortnightly #film and #TV #review spot on #ABCHobart radio. Every second Thursday, 10am–10:30am I chat to host Mel Bush (and we try to avoid Spice Girls jokes).
Today was my last spot for the year so I wanted to mark it with a thread about what we discussed: #AvatarTheWayOfWater + #Christmas offerings on Australian #streaming services!
First we talked #AvatarTheWayOfWater: I really liked it!
James Cameron's sense of wonder, his taste for tropes and the moral clarity of his storytelling are easy to mock, but his work is earnestly CINEMATIC in a way that *gets* the medium's history as a spectacle of emotion!
If you're not into Avatar: The Way of Water then I'll never convince you otherwise. But it urgently responds to the key issue of our times: capitalist violence against both nature & culture.
Are you only a puppet… or are you truly inhabiting your body, connected to something mighty?
I have much more to say about the film but basically the best new character is a whale! If you are not here for whales communicating with humans via Papyrus subtitles then I can't help you!
Then I reviewed a film I think comes from the opposite impulse to Avatar: the unbelievably bad #GuardiansOfTheGalaxyHolidaySpecial!
I hoped it'd take the piss out of 'holiday special' sanctimony, but it's cynical, dull franchise filler. The best thing I can say about it is that it only goes for 45 minutes.
I used to find 'Guardians' a refreshingly funny, playful antidote to the self-seriousness of the rest of the #MCU but the gloss has pretty much rubbed off for me now, though Dave Bautista is still trying his best.
Special guest star Kevin Bacon gives it 200% although I was so annoyed that he sings a weird alt-country Christmas song rather than, say, doing an angry barn dance like in 'Footloose'.
After… that, I was relieved to endorse the charming #DisneyPlus miniseries #TheSantaClauses.
I'm a little too old to have been into the original 'The Santa Clause' film in the 1990s when Tim Allen was at the height of his cultural relevance as an American everyman. (insert Home Improvement grunt). So I was shocked to learn there have been two or three sequels.
Anyway, so I have no loyalty or attachment to this story and these characters, and I wasn't expecting much from this except the kind of tired cash-in you get from your average 1990s #reboot – but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was witty and well made family fare!
It was actually delightful and I binged the whole six half-hour episodes. The writing is decent (I surprised myself by LOLIRLing at a few points), and the child actors playing the elves are so good, especially Matilda Lawler (Station Eleven) as the very serious head elf Betty, and Devin Bright as Noel, Santa's right-hand elf.
Kal Penn has fun as the antagonist: the boss of an Amazon-like online retail business, who sees supply-chain potential in Santa's delivery magic, and is delighted to learn the elves aren't unionised.
I also want to single out Laura San Giacomo as the Italian Christmas witch La Befana & Liam Kyle as Gary the film-noir detective elf.
Recommended viewing for kids who've seen all the usual Christmas suspects but who are not old enough for, say, 'Die Hard'.
Closer to home, I enjoyed Stan's silly movie #ChristmasRansom. I have never understood the charm of Matt Okine, who's just an affable bland blur. But Miranda Tapsell, as the pregnant toy-store security guard, and Geneviève Lemon as the criminal matriarch Nan, get the kind of panto this is. I mean, there is a repeated gag about a fat kid who does big bad farts.
Actor and writer Adele Vuko's debut feature as director is not at all slick, especially by comparison to the classic blockbuster fare it references, e.g. a riff on 'Jurassic Park's famous velociraptor kitchen chase.
Also, the extreme mildness of its 'Die Hard meets Home Alone' homage makes this mostly for young kids – definitely not for film grinches. There is no sense that anyone here is ever seriously in danger.
But somehow I didn't mind it.
I had to wonder how recently it was made because there was a line in the script about a public holiday called "the King's Birthday".
I didn't get to this one on air, but I also saw the Lindsay Lohan 'comeback' movie #FallingForChristmas on #Netflix.
Extremely generic US festive cheese is lifted by Lohan's game physical comedy and willingness to riff on her public image. (A 'Jingle Bell Rock' joke is one of several 'Mean Girls' callbacks.)
'Glee' alum Chord Overstreet is kind of bland and forgettable as her sad single-dad ski-lodge proprietor love interest, but these Christmas movies always kind of need bland vanilla blokes.
There is an irritating comic-relief love rival played by George Young, who struggles with the one-dimensional 'vapid influencer' material he's given, but is perhaps more enthusiastic than Lohan about the slapstick stuff.
Lohan, however, still summons proper warmth. Her career trajectory has been compared to Judy Garland's in a negative way (child star gone bad), but here she channels Garland in a good way: a plucky searcher and believer in goodness despite life's travails.
Mel Campbell
Margaret, The Fell Omen 🏳️🌈