About a Boy; Nut Loaf with Parsnip Gravy

About a Boy (2002)

Directors: Chris and Paul Weitz

Had I seen this before: No

December absolutely got away from me this year, which is surprising because after twenty Decembers in a row getting away from me I really thought this was the year I would have it under control. But here we are, and my tree is still up, which means it's still The Holidays and therefore plenty of time to slide another non-Christmas Christmas movie into your stocking where it will go unnoticed and get packed up to the attic until next year because who adds things to stockings on December 29th?

I wonder if this is a movie that I would have lingering fondness for if I had first seen it twenty years ago, the way I do, say, Bridget Jones's Diary, because it is not entirely devoid of charm and it is very much in the category of British dram-com that I sometimes have a soft spot for. Even now it's pretty watchable and moves from scene to scene quickly enough that it's easy to not overthink things when you're in the midst of it. But I can't say time has been especially kind to this one, and I suspect time has not been especially kind to Nick Hornby properties in general if you happen to be someone who considers women full-fledged humans and not just sexy irritants buzzing around insufferable man-children, who are the real heroes at the end of the day.

About a Boy is basically a sitcom plot stretched out to 101 minutes and spiked with weirdly heavy drama and era-appropriate rampant sexism. Hugh Grant plays Will Freeman (get it? he is a free man), a middle-aged playboy who has never had a job because he lives on the royalties from a Christmas song that his father wrote in the 1950s. He is sad about this. He is happy, however, about his lifestyle, which involves owning and doing anything he wants all the time and trying various proto-pick-up-artist techniques to sleep with beautiful women. One of my main issues with this film is the fact that it never succeeds in making Will's life seem in any way unappealing, no matter how many two-dimensional female characters abrasively harp on him about its meaninglessness. If I could live in a nice London flat with a top-dollar espresso maker and smoke cigarettes all day while I watched British game shows and shopped for CDs (I am also being transported back to 2002 in this scenario) and ate out at restaurants every night, would I really need the loving stability of substantial emotional connections? (This is 100% a failure of the film's storytelling and not of my own moral weakness in the face of on-demand espresso drinks.)

Through a series of cynical lies in which Will passes himself off as a single father in order to sleep with all the single mothers in the area (haha, just kidding--not the sad average-looking ones, as indicated by a jokey smash cut), he is introduced to Marcus, played by little baby-faced Nicholas Hoult, a 12-year-old outcast whose social crimes include having a bad haircut and an offbeat wardrobe and a mom who is depressed. The degree to which he is bullied for these things gives me real concerns about the British secondary schools of 2002. Said sad mom is Fiona, played by Toni Collette in a role so thankless that the subtle in-movie reference to The Sixth Sense in which she plays an emotionally compelling character feels offensive. We know that Fiona is depressed because she cries all the time, famously the only way major depression manifests in real life. She is also a touchy-feely hippie who earnestly sings Roberta Flack with her middle-school-aged son. The movie genuinely hates all this about her. The movie hates her. Just, so much! Toni Collette does have a very appealing pixie cut in this, and that's the only nice thing I have to say about the rendering of Fiona.

The film plays out in the most obvious way, which is that Will and Marcus discover that they both needed each other in their lives, but there are just so many strangely mean-spirited stops along the way to this destination. I know I indicated earlier that I did not hate watching this in the moment, which you might be starting to question at this point, but the fact is, Hoult and Grant's chemistry and individual charisma sort of paper over a lot of weak spots. Anna spent some time working out her feelings about Hugh Grant, whom she has previously only seen in Paddington 2 and a very quick cameo in a recent popular movie that I will not spoil: "I'm only rooting for this guy because his face...it's not kind, but it is interesting." "Maybe he has the hair of a jerk and the face of a nice guy. But with a jerk expression." Which is basically this whole movie in a nutshell: the face of a nice guy with a jerk expression.

Line I repeated quietly to myself Exchange that made my eyebrows go the highest, like almost all the way off of my head: Ellie: You like rap? Marcus: A little. It's by black people mostly. And they're pretty angry most of the time. But sometimes they just want to have sex.

Is it under two hours: Yes

Is it actually a Christmas movie: Two Christmases briefly occur in this film, including the final scene, and the protagonist (?) is hilariously haunted by a novelty Christmas song that only serves to remind him what a piece of shit he is. The lessons about needing other people are vaguely Christmasy, but overall the Christmasness of it makes up a very tiny percentage of the movie. 3/10

Classic Vegetarian Nut Loaf from The Kitchn with Parsnip Gravy from Affairs of Living

When Will attends Christmas festivities at Marcus and Fiona's house, he is served nut loaf with parsnip gravy. This is very funny to us, the audience, because Fiona's vegetarianism is one of the ways that we are alerted to the fact that she is a crazy person and possibly also a bad mother. Lol hippies and their plant-based diets!! She probably has some sort of ethical and/or ecological basis for her life choices, what a loser. Anyway, now that I know that this meal took two and a half hours of work not counting the amount of time I spent trying to find parsnips at my grocery store, I am even more mad about it. Good thing I have a tasty nut loaf to soothe me.

Up next: Anybody's guess!

Catch Me if You Can; Chopped Salad with a chilled fork

Catch Me if You Can (2002)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Had I seen this before: Yes

'Tis the season for everyone to give the beleaguered FBI agent for whom you have a complicated mix of adversarial and filial feelings in your life a quick phone check-in! That's right, Christmastime is here and, as we all remember, that's when our beautiful scamming boy Frank Abagnale Jr. touches base with lovably gruff fed Carl Hanratty, year after year. Or maybe if you, like me, had not seen this movie in a long time, you don't actually remember the Christmas motif that runs through it--maybe you just remember Leonardo DiCaprio in the pilot uniform, surrounded by grinning flight attendants, with Tom Hanks closing in on him in a way that somehow seems as friendly as possible. If you're lucky, what you remember is the superlative opening credits sequence, a combination of Saul Bass-inspired animation, a jazzy 60s John Williams score, and a minimalist recreation of the plot of the movie that lights up the reward center in my brain so aggressively I'm afraid to revisit it too many times for fear of burning out my dopamine production. But whether you recall it or not, this is in fact a film in which Christmas seems to roll around every 20 minutes or so, and that's why we're here.

It's interesting that this movie opens with not one but two flash-forward scenes: first, here is Frank appearing on an episode of To Tell the Truth, introduced as one of three potential Franks, looking spiffy and enigmatic and being grilled by Kitty Carlisle. Next, we go backward from there to a dire Christmas Eve when Hanratty arrives to take Frank from the French prison where he is in very rough shape and makes one last escape attempt before collapsing. So when we zip back several years to a 16-year-old Frank picking up his first lessons in mild con artistry from Frank Sr., played by Christopher Walken, we as an audience already know two things about his impending schemes: 1) they end badly; but 2) maybe not all that badly in the long run. It's like if Double Indemnity had an extra scene in the beginning where Walter recovers from his wounds and ends up on television where a celebrity panel is fascinated by his exploits. And that's because Catch Me if You Can is no noir, it's Steven Spielberg in fine crowd-pleasing form, and Stevie knows that unless the crowd is made up entirely of 2016 Oscar voters, they are probably not all that interested in watching Leonardo DiCaprio suffer too brutally.

I think the structure of this film gives us permission to root for both Frank and Hanratty at the same time, because on some level we know that they both come out of this thing winners. It also makes it all feel more like a game, which is a quality that I consistently enjoy in movies. When Hanratty first tracks down Frank in a Miami hotel room filled with check counterfeiting equipment, the question is not whether Frank is going to jail at that moment, because we know for a fact that it's simply too early in the story for that to happen. The questions is, instead, how on earth is he going to get out of this situation? And the answer is as delightful as it is unlikely--he just talks his way out. It's more thrilling than any shootout, more satisfying than any car chase. When Frank is successful in his lies, it's sublime; when he is less successful it's often funny. As a person who is abysmal at lying or making phone calls or talking to strangers or doing very detailed paper-and-glue crafts, I watch Leo's performance as Frank the same way I would any other of Spielberg's alien movies, such is the vast and mysterious distance I feel from such a creature. And I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Spielberg is great at making alien movies.

Some other big director trademarks make an appearance here, likely highlighted for me on this watch by virtue of having recently seen The Fabelmans--we've got a teenage boy distressed by his mother's infidelity, we've got divorce, we've got Sad Dad and complicated Father Figure. When teenaged Frank is confronted with his parents' divorce and asked to choose which one to live with, his reaction is to literally run away--to run, as fast as he can, down the street and away from his problems. I found the childishness of it all very touching on this watch, and still felt the sort of visceral appeal of it--what if you could just sprint away from your difficult choices instead of making them? Of course, escape is never really that easy, and Frank spends the rest of the movie frantically trying to glue his family back together with his ill-gotten gains. It's a string of glamorous adventures--pretending to be a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and (briefly) James Bond--punctuated by lonely Christmases, filled with longing and frustration and usually a phone call with Tom Hanks.

If you've never seen this movie you should watch it, if it's been a while you should rewatch it. Everyone should go watch the opening credits immediately. No one should inform me that the real Frank made up most of the stuff in his book because I could not care less. Merry Christmas to all and to all the agents on your tails.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "You're not a Lutheran?"

Is it under two hours: Nope

Is it actually a Christmas movie: *Slaps the roof of this film* this bad boy can fit so many Christmases in it! I wouldn't say this movie leans into any particularly holiday-related feelings other than melancholy, but it does contain: Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song," "Mele Kalikimaka," Leo wearing a Christmas sweater, and several chyrons informing us that it is either Christmas or Christmas Eve. 5/10

Steakhouse Chopped Salad from The Defined Dish

At his first reunion lunch with his father after leaving home, Frank Jr. has to inform him that the cold salad forks are intentionally chilled because it's a fancy restaurant. Frank Sr. seems uncomfortable, we assume for class-related reasons, but as my children can now tell you, it may have been entirely because chilled forks are actually very unpleasant.

Up next: I don't know yet because blog planning has slipped way down my to-do list this month, so it will be a somewhat Christmas-adjacent surprise!

Die Hard; Twinkies

Die Hard (1988)

Director: John McTiernan

Had I seen this before: Yes

I can't say with certainty where we are in the "Die Hard is a Christmas movie" discourse at the moment. It started as a lightly amusing observation--a sort of "huh yeah I guess so" passing thought--then due to the nature of the internet became a deeply annoying and weirdly combative stance, asserted with increasingly irritating confidence. But then, like many annoying internet things, it shifted into a sort of ironic "I'm saying the annoying thing but I'm winking" bit, and I suspect we may even be past that now--if anything we may have all memed it into the actual holiday canon. So I guess...good job, everyone. At any rate, here I am, bringing up the rear on this fading cultural quirk, ready to spend the month diving into films that are not necessarily traditional but do involve some level of Christmas ornamentation.

I feel like I should explain that I had seen Die Hard before this viewing but it had been a long time and it was never one of my go-to movies. My inordinate affection in this genre is reserved almost entirely for 1994's Speed, and usually all I have left to give other movies of its ilk is muted appreciation. Now, Speed director Jan de Bont was the cinematographer for this movie, which does give it a slight edge, because visually, the L.A. of Die Hard is 100% the same as the L.A. of Speed, so I am immediately in a comforting and familiar environment. You know who is not in a comforting or familiar environment? John McClane, who is looking pretty tense on an airplane, prompting the man next to him to give him some unsolicited post-flight relaxation advice: ditch the shoes and socks and "make fists with your toes" in the rug. Little does this anonymous frequent flyer know, he has just single-handedly bumped this film from very good to iconic, because Bruce Willis's bare feet are about to be the real star of this show.

One of my thoughts in the first few minutes of this movie was that it was surprisingly absent of any real 80s signifiers--the clothes are pretty muted, the plane just looks like a plane, the airport looks like an airport--and then about one second after my synapses had floated that idea, McClane lights up the first of I want to say 273 or so cigarettes right there at baggage claim. John McClane smokes more cigarettes in this movie than any of last month's noir characters ever dreamed of. This is fundamentally a movie about a man whose lungs exist outside any understanding of modern science. McClane, who is carrying a comically large teddy bear, is greeted by his limo driver, the enchantingly-named Argyle. We learn that John is a New York cop, here in L.A. to see his estranged wife and kids for Christmas, and hoping to salvage his marriage. First stop: said wife's company holiday party at Nakatomi Plaza.

Of course, McClane is only at the party long enough to be annoyed by everyone there and California in general, squabble with said estranged wife, and dig those feet into the carpet before the building is taken over by ostensibly German but uhhhh let's say "European" thieves who are preposterously well-supplied and prepared and led by one of the decade's great villains, Hans Gruber. One of the reasons this movie works is that it is smart enough to know when to just let us look at Alan Rickman's face for a minute. You're never going to go wrong letting an audience look at Alan Rickman's face. John, however, cannot see Alan Rickman's face because he was not with the rest of the party-goers when it became a hostage situation, so he is loose in the building and ready to cause some trouble for the bad guys, in between cigarettes.

Most of the rest of the movie is some fun cat-and-mouse stuff, a lot and I mean a lot of gunfire, things exploding, the LAPD being worthless, the Feds being straight up evil, the media being parasitic, and John McClane finding superhuman strength through the nourishing power of nicotine. I wasn't kidding about the bare feet being the elevating factor here--the jokes really hit and the action is, you know, actiony, but Bruce Willis' look is really the thing that makes this movie a classic. Being shoeless and having only an undershirt makes McClane more vulnerable but also more stealthy, and offers up an easily-assembled Halloween costume, which is a boon to any film's longevity. 

It's also not quite the copaganda situation I was dreading, it's really only about one resourceful and slightly insane man running up and down flights of stairs while breathing smoke like a dragon. As much as I rolled my eyes at John's whole bit in the beginning where he's like "I had to stay in NYC because I'm a New York cop, can't be supporting my wife's apparently very very successful career on the west coast," once you are actually introduced to how the LAPD operates in this movie, I have to say, I sort of understood what he meant. Is it partly just that the guy in charge of the scene is the "mess with the bull get the horns" principal from The Breakfast Club? Well, it doesn't help. There is of course one LA cop we are rooting for here, Reginald VelJohnson's Al, who is in communication with and supportive of McClane from the ground, and whom first we meet buying just a remarkable haul of Twinkies. I personally am a child of the golden era of ABC's TGIF programming, and therefore have a warm and nostalgic reaction to RVJ's face, so it was especially jarring to be reminded that his character arc is "cop we feel sorry for because shooting a 13-year-old caused him to not want to shoot people anymore" to "cop who overcomes his past trauma of shooting a child in order to triumphantly start shooting people again." So..a lot of high highs and a few pretty low lows in this one, but sometimes with movies of a certain age you just have to dig your toes into the carpet and get through it.

Odds and ends: most of the actors playing the "terrorists" are not actually German, but Bruce Willis was born in Germany; one of the thugs reminded me of a big angry version of James van der Beek; gas cost 75 cents a gallon in 1988; knowing how gray sweatsuit guy is going to end up does take some of the tension out of his scene; the "yippee kay yay motherfucker" line is tossed off much more casually and amusingly than I remembered; my favorite character bit is Bruce Willis admonishing himself with increasing volume to "think, THINK" throughout the movie; I would like Reginald VelJohnson to tell me to hang in there.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane."

Is it under two hours: No

Is it actually a Christmas movie: Just one long holiday party, when you think about it! It can be argued that McClane's major motivation, aside from saving innocent people, is to get back to his wife so that their argument isn't the last exchange they ever have, which could be categorized as an "importance of family" sort of lesson. 7/10

Homemade Twinkies from Brown Eyed Baker

Although Hans is hilariously munching on some party appetizers at one point in the hostage-taking, it was impossible to get a good look at what he had on his plate, so Sgt. Al's Twinkies it is. Please know that I individually crafted these cake molds from aluminum foil, in case you were worried that I had lost my ability to sacrifice significant amounts of time at the altar of deeply unnecessary blog posts.

Up next: He can learn to pass as a pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor, but can he learn the true meaning of Christmas?