We’ve been busy churning out Christmas fare and mood-lifting tunes in recent days, looking for appropriate presents and wondering where tinsel came from (we’re thinking the guy who developed radar-blurring “chaff” during the war came home and peddled the surplus to Montgomery Ward, probably made a killing). Don’t ask us how we come up with this stuff, it’s how our mind works…
Anyway, we’ve been looking for some Christmassy movies to pass under our eyes during the wee hours between panic and sleep and we came up with a couple, though we had to venture outside the U.S. to locate them.
Our first candidate “Comfort and Joy” comes wrapped in a thick Scottish brogue and tickles almost all of our major movie needs: fact-based storyline, killer Mark Knopfler soundtrack, and Easter Eggs throughout. Written and directed by Glasgow director/writer Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, 1983), the movie centers on Glasgow radio disc jockey Allan “Dicky” Bird, who finds his easy-going life turned upside down after his girlfriend leaves him just before Christmas, leading to a series of progressively bizarre mishaps as Dicky finds himself embroiled in a perplexing mob war over the local ice cream trade.
That last bit actually happened.
Scottish film, theater, and television star Bill Paterson rocks as Dicky, who – until he witnesses a crew of cricket-bat-wielding ice cream thugs bash a truck owned by a girl he is smitten with specializes in the 6:10 a.m. traffic report at the local radio station (“There’s not one single car on the road.”)
After that we’re off to the races, with Dicky brokering peace negotiations between bickering ice cream companies and introducing us to a steady line-up of Scottish characters, all more engaging as the last. Even Forsyth’s trademark running gag about people who think they look like somebody else (here the losers of a Bob Hope and Fred Astaire look-alike contest) seems to work.
Comfort and Joy premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and topped the UK box office upon its release, also earning a BAFTA nomination for Best Original Screenplay for its director/writer.
WHERE: Currently on Amazon Prime
“All Is Bright”
Not quite as understated and requiring big dollops of suspended disbelief is Phil Morrison’s “All is Bright” about one half the absurdist comedy of a Bill Forsyth effort but still fun in parts.
Our hero, Dennis (Paul Giamatti), is a Quebeqois robber who learns only after being released from prison that his former accomplice and friend is dating the mother of his child. Wife (Amy Landecker) instructs Dennis not to reveal his existence to their tween daughter, whom she’s told that her daddy died of cancer, and after a brief hysteria Dennis comes to grips with the fact that he’s been written out of his former family’s life.
Homeless and desperate for work, Dennis tags along with former accomplice Rene (Paul Rudd) on a trip to New York to sell Christmas trees. That’s not too far off base as we remember huddling around a space heater with an ex-car thief selling trees on a suburban lot for extra money – our guy and guys like him learning to submerge their emotions lest they be sent back to the cages they came from.
There are some moments you have to work past to accept (can you really bribe a border patrol officer with a Christmas tree? We think not…) but Dennis and Rene eventually set up shop – or lot – in Brooklyn, encountering more local color and setbacks along the way.
Although she’s as Yankee as they come we were intrigued by Sally Hawkins’ “Olga,” a Russian house-sitter occupying the home of a pair of well-heeled local dentists, capturing our hearts when she explains her benefactors promised to give her teeth “…like Vunna White on ‘Fortune Wheel…’” in exchange for her services.
There follows an incident in which both former criminals fall victim to another criminal and a plot is hatched to regain what is lost and make good on a promise Dennis has made. More of that disbelief suspension is required but “All Is Bright” plows on to an improbable but expected conclusion.
We were entertained if not enthralled because we like movies about men going through hard times. We’re told women like to look at Rudd and if we can be led to believe Giamatti was a Screaming Eagle we guess we can believe what he’s saying and doing here. We’ve always liked his work, he just needs a better script.
Still, if you like Christmas fare, you can’t miss with these two presents. Enjoy.
WHERE: Most streaming services.
