After surviving the busy road rage of the holidays, the hustle and bustle of finding that perfect gift, and feeling frostbitten after picking out the tree, who doesn’t want to just snuggle up in a crowded theater, full of buttery popcorn and soda stains and crying present-greedy toddlers? This reviewer didn’t mind one bit, and this year the holiday blockbusters took us all on a time-travelling tour.
For Christmas 2013, I got to sail down rapids with dwarves in barrels as we fought our way to the Misty Mountains of Middle Earth while fighting off elves and orcs in Peter Jackson’s latest J.R.R Tolkien adaptation, The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug.
And just when things got calm, the stock markets crashed in New York City. After snorting some lines of cocaine and popping back some ludes, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street took New York by storm by blowing away their wallets and the audience’s minds.
Next door to New York, we went back to 1970s New Jersey in American Hustle with scandals ringing just as loud as the Wolf’s. But these characters were thirsty for more than just drugs and sex: they seemed to have more life than Scorsese’s gang of New Yorkers.
As the cold winds continued to blow hard (both inside and outside the theatre), we shivered through a medieval kingdom in Disney’s latest flick, Frozen, where besides getting frostbite you might get some waterworks flowing. Really, this film hits you like Ottawa’s winter winds!
As the winds changed direction, a black umbrella was noticed floating mysteriously in the sky as P.L. Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins, tried to avoid 1960s Hollywood’s grasp in Saving Mr. Banks.
Speaking of storms, they were also brewing in New York and L.A, and in the economically-depressed Rust Belt of western Pennsylvania where two brothers in Scott Coopers’ Out of the Furnace were forced to decide what’s more important: justice or freedom?
If you’re confused by many of these titles, then you’ve spent way too much time in the tunnels, my friends. Christmas movies are usually simple and good-hearted. You have the eggnog, the snowball fights, and just when you least expect it, Santa appears! This year, the films didn’t just surprise, they struck gold.
In these flicks, Santa isn’t visiting the characters. Instead they’re faced with the long arm of the law, the brutality of New York stockbrokers, the slums of New Jersey and gritty, unromanticized drama. This Christmas, more than visions of sugar-plums danced through the heads of children snug in their beds.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale took on brutal, chaotic roles and played them to their full potential. Directors showed the true depth of these films without pulling punches (though in my opinion Martin Scorsese could’ve been a bit more tasteful: Wolf’s New York is a bit rough).
The Oscars are just around the corner and I’ve got a good feeling a lot of these actors/directors will be nominated. Happy holiday movie time-travelling!
