12/16
The Lemon Drop Kid (1951, Sidney Lanfield & Frank Tashlin, dvd) - 7.5
Bob Hope is a conman who needs to make a bunch of money quick, so he sets up a fake old women's home, and dresses up as Santa on the street to get donations. It's good.
12/17
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005, Shane Black, blu-ray) - 8
Robert Downey Jr. robs a store, but then he poses as an actor to escape police, but then as an actor, he and Val Kilmer end up involved in a murder mystery as research. Something like that. Some of the dialogue occasionally tries too hard to be clever, but it's mostly pretty funny, with good performances.
12/19
Cobra (1986, George P. Cosmatos, dvd/vhs) - 9
The poster tells you everything you could ever need to know about this movie. Crime is a disease, and Sylvester motherfucking Stallone is the cure. On the Christmas episode of Popcorn Dangerous (as opposed to any of the other episodes), I listed this as my 12th favorite Christmas movie, rationalizing that because there are a few Christmas decorations in the background toward the beginning of the movie, that makes it a Christmas movie. But then the day after we recorded that, I watched Showgirls again, and realized that Showgirls also takes place on Christmas, and so if I go by guidelines that loose, it would mean Showgirls is actually my favorite ever Christmas movie, which is very unfair to Silent Night, Deadly Night, which actually pertains to Christmas. So, anyway, I was wrong and Cobra is definitely not a Christmas movie, but I was right when I said that it's totally fucking awesome, which I assume I probably said during the episode, cuz it's true.
12/24
Elves (rewatch, 1989, Jeffrey Mandel, dvd-r) - 10
Speaking of awesome, Elves is fucking full of it. It's about way too many things to even bother explaining. Just watch it. Hopefully, it'll get a DVD release someday.
12/25
Christmas Comes But Once a Year (short, 1936, Dave Fleischer, youtube) - 8
Some kids at an orphanage get a bunch of fucked up toys that fall apart, so Grampy comes and makes them new ones. It's great. Thanks to
12/26
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964, Larry Roemer, dvd) - 8.5
I had never seen this. It's about a misfit reindeer with a red, glowing nose and a misfit elf who wants to be a dentist, and they skip town to have an adventure. It's really good.
12/31
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984, Edmund Purdom, dvd) - 8
Someone is killing people dressed up as Santa, and the police are trying to solve the case. Some of the murders are fucking awesome, and it's real sleazy. I liked it a whole lot. I also really love the poster. What do you think was in that present that would bleed when stabbed? Either a severed head or a puppy, I guess.
Susan Slept Here (1954, Frank Tashlin, tcm) - 6
For some reason, I became completely obsessed with seeing this movie before Christmas, knowing only that Frank Tashlin directed it and Debbie Reynolds starred in it. But it's not on DVD, and the video store didn't have it, and I couldn't find it anywhere to download. TCM showed it on Christmas Eve, so I set it to record, but I was out of town, so I didn't actually get to watch it until I got home. It turned out to not be nearly as amazing as I had convinced myself it would be. Debbie Reynolds plays a juvenile delinquent who, on Christmas Eve, gets arrested, but instead of taking her to jail, the cops take her to a struggling scriptwriter's house, figuring he could use her for inspiration, and they end up falling in love, but they can't get married because she's underage and he's like 40 or something, which is fucking gross. I love Frank Tashlin, and he does a decent job of making an inherently creepy premise not seem too creepy, but I don't know, I never really bought it, and it also wasn't funny enough.
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