30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

What is just right about Home for the Holidays is that none of the characters act as if they are experiencing any of this for the first time. Even when Aunt Glady drinks too much and announces that her sister’s husband kissed her the first time they met, all she draws is a resigned silence; we get the notion she may make this revelation several times a year.

Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment. And she realizes that although the Holly Hunter character supplies the movie’s point of view, it is up to Durning and Bancroft to supply the center—just as parents do at real family celebrations. Bancroft and Durning have each been guilty, from time to time, of overacting, but here they both beautifully find just the right notes of acceptance, resignation, wounded but stubborn pride—and romance. There are moments when they dance together that help to explain why families do get together for the holidays, and Durning describes a memory of one perfect moment in the family’s history, and we understand that although life may not give us too much, it often gives enough.

The story of Tommy, the gay brother, provides a counterpoint to the mainline madness. Foster and her writer, W. D. Richter, do not commit the mistake of making his character be about homosexuality. He is gay, but what defines him for the family is more his quasi-obnoxious personality, his way of picking on his boring brother-in-law, his practical jokes, his wounding insights, and finally his own concealed romanticism. Downey brings out all the complexities of a character who has used a quick wit to keep the world’s hurts at arm’s length. And in bringing along his friend, the mysterious Leo Fish, he has prepared a surprise that no one, certainly not Claudia, could have anticipated.

Holly Hunter is a wonderful actress. Here she has a more human and three-dimensional role than in her other current movie, Copycat, but her performance in Copycat is even better, maybe because it stands alone, and in Home for the Holidays, she reacts and witnesses as much as she initiates. It’s not hard to guess that with her stature and presence she represents, to some degree, Jodie Foster. Indeed there are probably autobiographical elements scattered here and there throughout the cast, but that’s not the point: What Foster and Richter have created here is a film that understands the reality expressed by Robert Frost when he wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

The Ice Harvest

R, 88 m., 2005

John Cusack (Charlie), Billy Bob Thornton (Vic), Connie Nielsen (Renata), Randy Quaid (Bill Guerrard), Oliver Platt (Pete Van Heuten). Directed by Harold Ramis. Produced by Richard Benton, Albert Berger, and Thomas Busch. Written by Richard Russo and Benton. Based on the novel by Scott Phillips.

It’s a busy Christmas Eve for Charlie Arglist, who visits his former in-laws, steers his drunken buddy out of trouble, buys toys for his kids, waives the stage rental for a stripper at his topless club, and cheats, lies, steals, and kills. Perhaps of all actors only John Cusack could play Charlie and still look relatively innocent by Christmas Day. He does look tired, however.

Charlie is a mob lawyer in Wichita, Kansas. He is in fact the best mob lawyer in all of Kansas. We know this because his friend Pete (Oliver Platt) announces it loudly almost everywhere they go. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Charlie says, but Pete is beyond discretion. Pete is married to Charlie’s former wife and has inherited Charlie’s former in-laws, a circumstance that inspires in Charlie not jealousy but sympathy. They are fascinated that the woman they have both married is the only adult they know who still sleeps in flannel jammies with sewn-on booties.

Charlie’s holiday has begun promisingly. He and his associate Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) have stolen $2.2 million belonging to Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid), the local mob boss. They think they can get away with this. They certainly hope so, anyway, for as Charlie tells Vic, “I sue people for a living. You sell pornography. Bill Guerrard kills people.” Charlie also manages a topless bar and is attracted to its manager, Renata (Connie Nielsen), who has suggested that Charlie’s Christmas stocking will be filled with more than apples and acorns if certain conditions are met.

It is all very complicated. There is the matter of the photograph showing a local councilman in a compromising position with Renata. The problem of Roy Gelles (Mike Starr), a hit man for Bill Guerrard, who has been asking around town for Charlie, probably not to deliver his Christmas bonus. The question of whether good old Vic can be trusted. And the continuing problem of what to do with Pete, who is very drunk and threatens a dinner party with a turkey leg, which in his condition is a more dangerous weapon than a handgun.