12 Days of Christmas Not-Christmas Movie Marathon

12 Days of Christmas Not-Christmas Movie Marathon

Well, this one was a bit out there and in terms of Christmas, now a bit late. But maybe you want to do a movie marathon this weekend, this could be a list to get you through it...it was rejected for valid reasons of which I am not able to explain here. Perhaps it has something to do with Christmas and the #1 movie being Jewy...

Christmas is here, yet again. Time for some of us who don't like to be force fed Christmas cheer to hunker down in our Xmas-proof bunkers and avoid all things festive society spews forth. It's a time when we wonder why that 'Festivus' idea from Seinfeld never took off. Instead of complaining about it, why not just sit back and cruise Netflix or internet website lists for movie recommendations to get you through the season? 

So here's my Christmas gift to you, ogieoglethorpe reader. After all, who better to give you classic movie recommendations than me, a perfect stranger? And I'm nearly as perfectly strange as they come. I once met Quentin Tarantino and given this once in a lifetime opportunity, asked him if he ever had a Nutella and banana sandwich (he hadn't). It was a highlight of mine before he launched into a stream of thought ramble of the movies he watched that weekend.

So if Tarantino can gorge on a random selection of movies why can't someone like you? These aren't even necessarily classic movies; they're just a sneaky way to tie in a random movie list with a Christmas/December type theme. Plus it gives you something to discuss with your mates if you are holed up at the Winchester arguing over which Simon Pegg movie was better.

So here are movies you may have seen, or not. They all have a number from the 12 days of Christmas in them and because I am a dad and watching a complete movie that doesn't have talking animals in them is a thing of the past, I only watched the trailers. Good enough. If you have kids you understand. If you are going to have kids one day, enjoy this time of uninterrupted movie bliss. 

12 Monkeys

I saw this in the theater when it first came out and then engaged in a spirited 'movies and time travel' debate with my movie date after. This was Terry Gilliam's most commercially successful film (so far) and stars Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt going not-full retard. Bruce is some random guy from the future who goes back in time, meets Brad Pitt in an insane asylum and either stops or starts some kind of worldwide plague. You never actually see the 12 monkeys, which at the time I remember pissed me off a little bit. The movie poster looks like it's maybe about a Terminator-like robot but that's pretty misleading. I don't remember any robots in it. It's a good time travel movie if you want something a bit more substantial than Looper, which coincidentally also starred Willis .

The Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15s4Y9ffW_o

In case you haven't seen it. The movie starts off in true Terry Gilliam style with images of a futuristic minimalist laboratory. A low-budget astronaut appears in cellophane, which must be Bruce Willis. Then he's in a mental asylum in 1996, and someone mentions the word future, so you know it's about time travel. There's a lot of talk about what's real and what's not while jumping from Gilliam's futuristic world to images of a snow-covered city. There's a bear and an elephant and some cops burst into a room with guns drawn and Bruce Willis gets more and more confused, then he's holding a gun and says "I just want to do my part and get us back on top of the planet" in a not-tough but still Bruce Willis tough voice. This trailer made me think 'what the hell is going on?' just like when i find myself changing a stinky diaper at 4 in the morning.

Last Minute Substitution – 12 Angry Men. 12 Men in a room. One man leaves. A verbal Royal Rumble that is considered a veritable classic and one still on my 'to be seen list'.

Ocean's Eleven

Another guy's movie in theory but featuring so much man eye-candy it's okay to throw this at the mother of your children when she's wondering why you don't take her out anymore. It features a bunch of George Clooney's friends, including a non-retarded Brad Pitt dressing up in cool suits, prowling Las Vegas and teaming up to rob the guy you've seen in a lot of other things but you can't name one, like most of the other nine guys in the movie. There's a lot of standing around looking cool and Julia Roberts, which your girlfriend/wife will appreciate. The poster looks like a line up for every woman's speed-dating fantasy. Even Julia Roberts is there – behind the bad guy but ahead of eight other men so at least she has that going for her.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_bzUIbE5jo

George Clooney aka Danny Ocean is seen getting out of jail after sticking it to his parole board by asking them how much they make per year (burn, social justice system!). Clooney is quickly made out to be an overachiever but not a good one, because he was in jail after all. However, he's George Clooney and he has balls – he tells Brad that he wants to rob 3 casinos for $150 million.They need nine other guys (or else the title wouldn't work) and it looks like they already have a few million dollars with all their fancy toys and gadgets they use as per this trailer.

Julia Roberts comes in looking pissed off she's the only woman on the cast and Matt Damon also appears, dressed like Linus from Charlie Brown. There's a little man jumping around and I am guessing what is supposed to be some tongue-in-cheek humour, like when Brad Pitt dons a Clark Kent disguise and asks 'did someone call for a doctor?'. I don't understand why that's supposed to be funny. George ends it with 'you are either in or you are out'. Which is what she said and now I'm a Dad.

Last Minute Substitution – 11:14. Five stories all 'crash' into each other. Starring Henry Thomas (that kid from ET) and Colin Hanks (Tom's kid) it's interesting because on the imdb box it totally doesn't mention them, instead going with Patrick Swayze and Barbara Hershey, which are both names that mean nothing if you are more familiar with Colin than Tom.

10 Things I Hate About You

I saw this because someone said I should which is how I used to choose most of my movies before babies came along. I don't remember anything about it. From the poster it appears to have a lot of young people in rock star poses, so there probably is a lot of teenage-talking angst about what they want to be when they grow up, how tough school is and how hot the new guy/girl is.  A young Heath Ledger is in it, pre-Brokeback Mountain fame so he's like the James Dean character from Rebel Without A Cause, I'm guessing.

The title does sound like it's something an ungrateful teenager would say to their hard-working father when he forbids them to leave the house at 11 pm to go 'hang out' with friends. Or it's about someone's feelings about the new guy/girl which culminates in a passionate kiss and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWmjzCZr0Jw

As I thought, it's a high school flick. There's the kid from 3rd Rock (JGH or whatever he's called now), that angry looking girl who was going to be the next Julia Roberts, the teen princess who i assume is passed out in a trash bin somewhere and Heath Ledger, sounding Australian and a bit of  a dick. For some reason it looks like No Doubt is stranded on top of a building singing that Cheap Trick song.

I think it's safe to summarize this movie as following the formulaic 'Boy wants to date Cute Girl but Cute Girl can't date unless her Bad Girl sister dates so Boy gets other Bad Boy to win Bad Girl's affections and Everyone Lives Happily Ever After'. It's not trail-blazing, but hell, did you watch it for that reason? Yeah, thought not.

Last Minute Substitution – How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days. Starring Mathew McConaughey doing his patented Mathew McConaughey thing and Kate Hudson doing Drew Barrymore's thing with a script that probably shouts ROM-COM from the opening minute.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

I saw this because I went to film school and it helps to see what you can do when you have nothing but the willingness and desire to do what you need to do, whatever it takes. Of course, I saw it in the nineties when anything was possible. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton teamed together to immortalize the director in the movie, Ed Wood, who was often cited as 'the worst director in history', which is, if you know your cinema (or read Clare Simpson's lists) isn't likely.

I made a movie once and it was pretty crappy, but i don't see Tim Burton knocking on my door wanting to make a movie about me. Ed Wood, the legend, is probably more famous or being the first film geek/cross dresser of low budget sci-fi, and in doing so became insanely cooler. That said, I don't remember very much about it - it reminded me a bit of Amazon Women From the Moon perhaps. There's a vampire girl in it and a couple of cops standing around. And some aliens, but human aliens. No biggie. Once I saw The Dark Knight Returns I realized Plan 9 had less plot holes so it has that going for it.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBoT0LJ0mgM

Wow. This trailer rocks it from the opening line: 'It is safe to say that the grandchildren of some of the people in this theater will not be born on Earth'. How's that for completely and utterly overly optimistically thinking what the future had in store for us fifty-plus years ago? There's that zombie vampire girl in a spooky cemetery, an explosion, a dead body going past some cops; all in the first 10 seconds. This shit looks to be the bomb. Then a lot of words appear on screen with Bela Lugosi in big letters and what appears to be the bomb now is looking more like a real bomb. The spacemen can't work their space guns, the cop seems to want to shoot people in the groin and the zombies (all two of them) can't seem to walk any faster than my daughter when she was '9' months old.

Last Minute Substitution – The Nines. There's lots to choose from. The Whole 9 Yards, District 9, Nine, 9 1/2 Weeks, Another 9 1/2 Weeks, but why not try this mind-bender? Ryan Reynolds is in it, playing Gary, an actor who plays a cop on television, uses too much lighter fluid when he burns his ex-girlfriend's things, then he drinks and drives, uses crack, and crashes his car, all in that order. Then it gets weird. I know, I had you at Ryan Reynolds smokes crack...

Eight Men Out

I remember it's about baseball and a team from Chicago that conspired to throw the World Series back in the early 1920's because, well, winning wasn't everything back then and they sure weren't getting paid to win. Unlike today where most athletes make the equivalent of a small African nation. That's all i know. From the title and my knowledge of baseball, someone is obviously innocent but calling it 8 Men Out and 1 Snitch probably didn't market America's other other other national past time correctly (after the NFL, dabbling in foreign politics and over-eating). The poster doesn't really help me. Apparently it's a national scandal, but then again, what isn't in America?

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSHQw85pvek

Ok, I was pretty close. It's about the Chicago White Sox, set in 1919. John Cusack is in it, so you know he's going to be sappy and he's probably going to be the innocent one. It's also about baseball, so you know it's not action-packed although a guy gets slapped and there's gun in it. It is about America after all. As per most American sports movies, there's a dickish owner, cuz it's about America and sports. No Latinos, which is because it's 1919 and this was before baseball was introduced to the Dominican Republic.

Last Minute Substitution – Eight Below. In honor of Paul Walker, kick it old school with this one from before the Fast and The Furious Franchise made Paul Walker Paul Walker. This is a Disneyfied version of the much more powerful foreign film 'Antarctica', about a bunch of sled dogs that get abandoned on Antarctica after a massive snowstorm. Warning - you are probably going to cry at some point if you love either Paul Walker or dogs.

Se7en

I must have a bit of a man crush on Brad Pitt. This is his third movie on my list. Here he plays the yet to be grizzled young rookie cop teaming up with the grizzled old cop, Morgan Freeman playing Donald Glover. If you haven't seen it, it's a cinematic must. This was an intense movie, from the opening murder scene. Not being Catholic I didn't know the 7 deadly sins but don't let that stop you. This was also the first David Fincher movie I remember. He rode this rocket to A-director fame with his next outing, Fight Club. For some reason that isn't relevant to the overall story line I remember that Pitt and his wife Gwyneth Palthrow lived beside the railroad tracks. Plus they were dating back when Pitt had a thing for shacking up with his co-stars. Thank god that stopped, right? ...Right?

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZbLbPv6Fs

The trailer makes it seem like an over-hyped episode of Criminal Minds on steroids. There's a few guns, because again, America. Although (spoiler alert) only one person of importance gets shot. Pitt looks beat up through most of the trailer, as if it's a prequel to Fight Club. Gwyneth hates 'this town' (probably because of those railroad tracks) and Pitt does a lot of running around, getting shot at and falling off things. Freeman lists off the seven deadly sins too fast for anyone not religious to remember and there is that single ominous tone playing throughout the trailer and that famous announcer's voice that made everything sound either way too important or way too stupid back in the 80's and 90's.

Last Minute Substitution – The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. Because, you know, Silver Vampires aren't as valuable and pretty second-class. Plus eight was too many Golden Vampires, six too few. But seven, seven is just enough Golden Vampires to make this qualify for this list. And it's a legend.

Six Million Dollar Man

Given the limited choices of movies with a 6 in them, i would go with a nostalgic favorite from childhood. It's hard to explain to my kids nowadays but at one time six million dollars was considered an insanely amount of money. If you had that much money back then you could make a man into a part robot. And that Cyborg would have the ability to appear to be running really fast while actually running really slow because that was special effects back then.  Today, there are nearly 50 hockey players that make more than $6 million a year and the only one who may be part robot is a hulking Yeti named Zdeno Chara. Then there's that golfer named Tiger Woods who made $75 million in 2011.

So we could have had 12 cyborgs or 1 Tiger Williams. Way to go America.  The seventies really undervalued cyborgs... The Six Million Dollar Man was named Steve Austin (not the wrestler). He was an astronaut who crash landed, but they rebuilt him. There was another guy named Oscar who was his boss. Together they fought crime or something. In it's most memorable episode for me and a host of others, he fought Big Foot.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlcuiDUVyVQ

Well, it's a TV series, but i found one that flashes back to what made it so awesome; the pulsing music, the strange 'bionic' sound whenever he used one of his robot parts; Big Foot. Plus if you just skip ahead to 0.55 I'm pretty sure that's an eternally young Sandra Bullock playing Sandra Bullock.

Last Minute Substitution – 6 Plots. Quick what to you do if you are an Australian filmmaker and only have enough funding to make one movie yet have 6 ideas you think are excellent? Boom! Problem Solved. Or was it?

Slaughterhouse Five

This is a movie of the classic novel that some film directors like to strategically place in shots to show via cinematic short cut that a character is smarter than they look. The book itself is a famous one by Kurt Vonnegut and it's a messed up story of a man split between at least two dimensions; one as a zoo specimen in an alien world and another as Kilgore Trout, who may or may not have been in World War 2. The poster doesn't really help, other than making it look like it's cold and probably set in World War 2. Apparently this movie is a classic, which you can say of anything made in the seventies. If you have kids, they are not going to like it.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlZtlBfCi0

It looks like someone squished together 3 or 4 different movie trailers for this one and it reminds me of a Stanley Kubrick film, or basically any other film done in the early 70's and it's by far the longest trailer I've seen, clocking in at over 4 minutes. There's Nazis being Nazis, explosions, talk of aliens, someone gets shot cuz you know, America. A naked boy gets thrown in a pool. There's a few brief seconds that remind me of Pink Floyd's the Wall. It appears to be a story about a boy named Billy. At the end of the clip young Billy is running through the snow. I don't know why. I have a headache now. Interesting fact; the director was George Hill, who would go on to direct the greatest sports movie of all time, Slapshot. I did not know that.

Last Minute Substitution – Fast Five. Let's go with another Walker tribute with his much more famous Paul Walker 'vehicle', The fifth installment of the Fast and The Furious Franchise, it has hot cars, hot women and Vin Diesel. Don't confuse it with Kung Fu Panda; Secrets of the Furious Five which has no car racing in it but does have talking animals.

I Am Number Four

I don't know anything at all about this one, but it became my default pick when i found out the other options were Fantastic Four, Four Christmases, and Four Rooms all of which I have seen and never want to see again, not even for this gimmicky list. However, if you took the best parts out of all three of those, it would probably make for a decent sitcom. I'd rather chance watching something that might be okay, despite the glowing blue power fists in the movie poster, which makes me think it's some sort of X-man rip-off.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP6zhpST3Ro

Well, after the trailer, it still looks like an X-Man rip off. The first 30 seconds is all the exposition you need about the other three because this guy is #4 (in case we didn't get that yet) . There's still an awful lot of film time to sit through. From the trailer he's a loner, doing what all loners do, hanging at the beach and getting hit on by hot chicks. Then a merman or something attacks him so he has to leave and so he heads to Heartland America, where he apparently finds one of those high schools where everyone looks in their mid-twenties.

The bad guys still find him, he goes around using his superpowers to defeat them and find others with superpowers where i would be quite shocked to find that they don't defeat the bad guys (who are obviously bad because they have tattooed heads and trenchcoats). Now I'm wanting to watch Highlander.

Last Minute Substitution –Four Lions. Yay, finally, British Cinema Represent! A comedic look at the justified paranoia of internal terrorism, this will be sure to spice up the old xenophobic rants of your neighbors as they call in to report you on suspicion of terrorist activities if you dare to play this with the volume too high.

Three Amigos

At one time, these were three of the biggest names in comedy. Chevy Chase aka Fletch aka Clark Griswold aka Pierce whose ego was still small enough to share screen time with other comedians plays Dusty Bottoms. Steve Martin aka The Jerk aka The Man with Two Brains plays a fellow washed up silent movie star named Lucky Day and Martin Short aka that cute little annoying guy from SCTV as Ned Nederlander.

This was the comedy apex, hot on the heals of GhostBusters where it was proven that although two comedians are good, three are better. It's like Seven Plus, it was written and produced by Steve Martin. A classic story slightly based on the Magnificent Seven but with a lot more bling. I don't even need a trailer for this one so instead here's My Little Buttercup, which is also my go-to Dad song for the baby.

Bonus Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5T8FJ7TldU

Last Minute Substitution – 3:10 to Yuma.  Now that we are getting into the dreaded sequel to the sequel of a great movie territory which gives you a lot of sucky movies to choose from. So instead, let's go full cowboy; 3:10 To Yuma  is a pretty decent Western starring two non-Americans as the lead cowboys, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale who both have yet to make an appearance this Christmas season.

Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers

If I could only have one LOTR movie it would have to be the 2nd installment, in my opinion the best sequel since Empire Strikes Back and also luckily happens to perfectly fit this article's theme. I remember the giant trees, the battle of Helm's Deep, Gollum having a conversation with himself, which at the time i thought was a groundbreaking way to portray split personalities and has since been copied many times. It was a great movie that really led nowhere, because it's the middle but had it's own story within it, amazing special effects and the best battle scenes that wouldn't be bettered until the release of The Return of The King.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wek5UClasY8

Hells yeah! Makes me want to sit through the entire 12 hour trilogy again. Time and pop culture have now made it look like a condensed version of Game of Thrones, only with actual fighting, great CGI and that intense melodramatic soundtrack. It's got it all, if by all I mean elves, orcs, wizards, giant eagles, dwarves, spooky old men, Kings, Queens, catapults, trolls, arhery, talking trees, fireballs, plenty of sweeping pans of the New Zealand countryside and Aragon opening giant doors to maximum dramatic effect. A great way to spend an evening forgetting Christmas is just around the corner.

Last Minute Substitution; Miss Congeniality 2, Armed and Fabulous. In the world of sequels to good movies there are a lot of great ones, most famous being Terminator 2 but let's assume for the moment that you are getting pretty tired of all the testosterone I've thrown at you. Instead, so close to Christmas why not just relax with a real no-brainer starring the previously mentioned Sandra Bullock, looking as young then as she did way back then. Complete brain candy with some eye candy for both sexes with Bullock and a younger version of Ron Swanson.

And finally, what to watch on Christmas Eve? How about...

Year One

Let's celebrate all things Jewish with this Micheal Cera/Jack Black bit of comedic stupidity directed by the legendary Harold Ramis. Cera was all over the place after Arrested Development ended it's glorious initial run. He looked to be a shoe-in for every role that involved a 'mopy, expressionless young boy-man character' but instead he lost out in that closer than expected Oscar race to Social Network's Jesse Eisenberg. Yet despite the Jesse doppelganger tag, Cera has starred in some great comedies to under-appreciated or not yet fully appreciated critical acclaim.

He burst out as George Michael on Arrested Development, this Caveman epic and then nearly extinguished his movie career in the cult-classic (yes, it will be) Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Year One is a great caveman out of water story. Good for a few Old Testament laughs, especially if you have questions about circumcision, what happened after Cain killed Abel and the difference between Sodom and Gomorrah. Lots of cameos by other semi-famous funny people as well, with McLovin from Superbad putting in a special appearance as the kid who unfortunately is the first one to ever get circumcised, because his Dad thought it was a good idea.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qHWVW52XDI

There was plenty of lot of great one-liners in this that I didn't remember and was fun to sit through again. Cera plays Caveman George Michael at his finest, while Jack Black manages to still come across as your creepy single uncle you don't want to hang out with but kind of do. It has the feel of the Life Of Brian, but earlier because it's more mocking The Old Testament as opposed to the New. So technically, this is year one of the Jewish calendar, not the Gregorian-Christian one as most of us base our lives around now.

Last Minute Substitution; The One. Just pretend this is the true story of Christmas, Jet Li is the real Jesus Christ and let your mind explode with all that could have been if they made this into a Christmas martial arts movie because really...there isn't one.

That's it; 12 classic and not-so-classic movies to help get you through the Christmas season. Hope it helps. I have to go stand in line for Santa Claus now.