Have Yourself a Bloody Little Christmas

Cameron has a theory that the first movie you see in the new year dictates how that year turns out. If that's really the case, then this year will be pretty damn good for me.

My first movie of the year was a nice little film noir called The Ice Harvest. Not only is it a genre that is rarely explored nowadays, it does it quite well too. You have your basic noir archetypes: the femme fatale (Connie Nielsen), the everyman loser that's drawn into all the shit (John Cusack), the gangsters (led by Randy Quaid) , and the slimy backstabber (Billy Bob Thornton). They even threw in the ultimate loser best friend (Oliver Platt).

I've always had a soft spot for John Cusack, who has a way of making his everyman characters seem endearing and identifiable, even when they're complete assholes. Billy Bob Thornton is typically reliable, delivering lines like, "He said, 'Tell me where the money is or I'll shoot her (his wife).' I think he was counting on a level of commitment that just wasn't there," in a beautiful deadpan. Connie Nielsen hit every note, with just the right mix of seductiveness, vulnerability and danger.

The humor, of which there's quite a bit of, is as dark as you'll find. This makes it the perfect contrapuntal note to the manufactured cheer of the Christmas season. But yet, beneath its black, throbbing heart, there is still a shred of warmth and humanity to be found. It's precisely because it exists in a world that's so fucked up, that it's all the more precious, and that makes this a much better Christmas movie than the feel-good crap studios churn out during the season.

The most unfortunate thing about this movie was the marketing. It seemed to be marketed as a comedy - the poster and the trailer all screamed "Generic Holiday Comedy" when it couldn't be further from the truth. You're not going to find easy, brainless laughs in here. It's funny, for sure, but there's so much sadness in the humor, especially in Oliver Platt's character. These men have no fucking clue what the hell went wrong in their lives, and the realization of this brings them over the edge. You can't help but feel conflicted even as you're laughing at their pathetic attempts to make their grand statement. Oh yes, and you'll be laughing at the multiple killings too. They're funny.

So yeah, the marketing sucked, and probably resulted in a lot of unhappy customers. Apparently this was the marketing strategy in the US as well, which makes me think that they simply did not know how the fuck to sell this movie and resorted to slapping something together and hoping audiences fell for it. What a tragedy.

Director Harold Ramis blew me away with Groundhog Day over 12 years ago (still one of my favorite movies of all time). Sure, he's made mostly shit since then, but this is a definite renewal of my faith in him. Here's hoping he'll continue to make good movies, regardless of genre.