12 Films of Christmas – or, a colloquial recounting of my mission (à la Santa) to watch and rank twelve 2024 releases
12. Red One – security guards guarding
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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson adequately stars as Callum Drift, the North Pole’s Head of Security in this latest downtrodden, gooey blockbuster about ‘the meaning of Christmas’, in which Santa (a rippling, ripped J. K. Simmons) is kidnapped on the eve of the big day. Why is it that Santa always has a hard time in Christmas films? He’s just doing his best. With little time to waste, Drift is forced to team up with notorious hacker (whatever that means) Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), who unintentionally hacked into and delivered the location of the North Pole to an anonymous buyer.
In theory, the concept works – whether it is executed well is a whole other story. Perhaps this could have worked as a light-hearted animation or, strangely, a thriller, but this somewhere-in-the-middle of action flick and kids’ film simply makes it come out weird, like that time I forgot to add butter to a cake mix. Fight scenes were inconsequential, and the strange medley of CGI North Pole-themed characters and humans working in the big guy’s control room felt off. The Rock is there, of course, but this is in the end just about him flexing his muscles and making gags about how strong he is (but not strong enough to beat up Krampus, apparently) – please note I do not say this lightly, as San Andreas, famously rubbish, is actually one of my all-time rewatch films.
Red One is in many ways a Christmas version of the 2021 Red Notice (coincidence in the name I think not), but Evans is not Ryan Reynolds, and does not have the script to pull off humorous but sneaky sidekick with a surprise heart of gold. Nor does this film have the guts to break away from the mould which sees a character (or in this case, two!) lose faith, only to regain it once they take a ride on Santa’s sleigh. My final point would be that if you are going to have J. K. Simmons in a film, and in this case, a ripped Santa J. K. Simmons who benches after one of his missions, don’t have him locked up in a magical imprisoning snow globe sleeping 90% of the time.
11. Miller’s Girl – writers writing (pretentiously)
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Here is yet another story about a “failed” writer who has turned his attentions to teaching and who, amidst a sea of unremarkable students, happens upon one whose, simply, “got it”. This student is, in all of her gothic splendour, Cairo Sweet (Jenna Ortega), who joins Jonathan Miller’s (Martin Freeman) class and who singles herself out as a literary prodigy (she’s read all the books on the reading list already, and has also checked out Jonathan’s rather unpopular book Apostrophes and Ampersands from the library). She dazzles him, she who lives alone in her wealthy family’s mansion, reading and writing draped in black mesh. It’s like Lydia Deetz, but unironic. Freeman, on the other hand, battles both with a Tennessee accent (fairly successful) and his godawful wife Beatrice (fairly unsuccessful), who is actually a writer and who never fails to bring up how unappealing her washed-up husband is. I’m certain she made this film twenty percent more unlikeable. Away from her, Cairo and Jonathan grow to know one another, pretentiously quoting literary greats with gusto and longing in their eyes, until they start to dangerously sway into the illegal.
Francois Ozon’s Dans La Maison (In The House) stages a similar relationship, in which a French teacher (Fabrice Luchini) becomes obsessed with a teenager’s creative writing, but where it is subtle and well-written, Miller’s Girl is vapid, empty of any reasoning behind its characters’ actions. In The House plays on the border between reality and fiction with grace, questioning when and if Luchini has gone too far. In Miller’s Girl, Freeman’s friend Boris, the physics teacher, who shockingly also has a ‘thing’ going on with Cairo’s best friend Winnie, just comes out and says it – “you don’t know where the line is, that’s the difference between you and me”. I hate to break it to you, but you are crossing the line from the minute you sext an underage girl, Boris. The main issue with Miller’s Girl, however, is that nothing is of any consequence because every character is a stickman on a piece of paper , and every action feels like a play’s stage directions – Cairo emerges from the woods amidst haze, puffing on a cigarette. Jonathan looks over in wonder, his lips slightly parted.
10. DarkGame – cops copping
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Despite its entertainment value as a horror flick, DarkGame suffers from a very severe case of being a combination of many films without differentiating itself in any way, shape, or form (aside from being a B-movie) – it is Untraceable, Nerve, The Hunger Games, Zodiac, The Silence of the Lambs, and Saw all at once, without the story or philosophy of any of the above. Ed Westwick is Portland cop Ben Jacobs, whose squad comes across a particularly gruelling series of murders being broadcast live as a game show, hauntingly presented by a man dressed as an eagle in a velvet suit (this is never explained). While the police scratch their heads over this apparently untraceable bird of prey, the Presenter’s goons kidnap yet another victim, Katia, a single mother who plays the role of ‘eyes on the inside’ and whose determination to see her son and mother again cements her as a final girl.
Naturally, Westwick’s character needs a dark backstory, revealed halfway through, which no doubt explains why he is so unnecessarily stern with the new cybersecurity specialist, who ends up doing half the job alone without so much as a pat on the back. It’s very watchable, but between the loose strings of the plot (i.e. no one ever calls for backup at the most crucial of times), the theatre kid acting, and an attempt at commentary on how foul the world is (because everyone from aristocracy through to estate kids watches with glee as someone drinks bleach on camera), DarkGame doesn’t live up to its predecessors’ subtlety.