This week the girls take aim at... Not So Christmas Movies

Sarah opens this week's topic with an explanation as to what a Not So Christmas Movie is.  These movies are also known as Christmas adjacent movies. These movies are set on or around the festive season but the storyline has little to nothing to do with the holidays and could be set at any other time of the year and the storyline would flow the same. Some examples of these types of movies are, Die Hard, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Batman Returns, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, In Bruges, and Ironman 3.

Sarah then jumps into her chosen movie for the night, Gremlins. This movie was released in 1984 and has been entertaining kids and adults ever since. The storyline starts with small mutant green monsters tearing through the small town of Kingston Falls. Shenanigans ensue as a mild-mannered bank teller accidentally releases these hideous monsters after getting a new pet and violating two of three simple rules: no water (violated), no food after midnight (violated), and no bright light. It is then up to him with the help of his friends and new pet Gizmo to save the town and the people in it.

Amy decided to discuss a movie that always gets a run at her house around the holidays. Lethal Weapon was released in 1987 and is set around the holiday season with many scenes of the movie featuring Christmas elements. She discovered that it is no coincidence that this Christmas action movie was set during the holiday season on purpose. 

Was it pivotal to the plot? No. Could the movie be set at any other time of the year without changing much to the plot? Absolutely. However, the writer of Die Hard the movie, Steven De Souza explained in an interview that the producer of both Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, Joel Silver, liked movies set at Christmas so they would be played on TV around the holidays. 

Bianca chose L.A. Confidential as her movie of the night and makes the argument that it should have won the 1997 best picture Oscar, instead of The Titanic. This terrific drama, based on the novel by James Ellroy, delves into police corruption and cover-ups in the LAPD in the early 1950s. It actually begins on Christmas Eve, with a violent police-station brawl, as several cops, juiced up on massively spiked eggnog, beat several Hispanic and black suspects in their cells. The headline splashed across the newspaper the next morning is “Bloody Christmas” (which happens to be the title of another movie that isn’t on this list). This leads us to the main plot: Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, and Kevin Spacey work to figure out who killed several people at a diner, including Crowe’s partner, who was involved in the Christmas Eve scandal.

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Episode edited by Sarah

Theme music by Joseph McDade https://josephmcdade.com/music