30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

Neal is uneasy around ordinary people and in unstructured situations. His mind is organized like a Day-Timer. He’s lived in a cocoon of affluence and lacks a common touch. Consider the scene on the bus where Del suggests a sing-along, and Neal, awkwardly trying to be a good sport, begins “Three Coins in a Fountain” (and doesn’t know the words). His fellow passengers look at him like he’s crazy. Del saves the moment with a boisterous rendition of a song everybody except Neal knows: “Meet the Flintstones!”

The last scenes of the movie carry the emotional payoff we have been half-awaiting all along. For Neal, they reflect a kind of moral rebirth such as Scrooge experiences in another great holiday tale: He has learned his lesson, and will no longer judge people by their appearances, or by his own selfish standards. There is true poignancy in the scene where Neal finds Del waiting alone on the L platform.

One night a few years after Planes, Trains and Automobiles was released, I came upon John Candy (1950–1994) sitting all by himself in a hotel bar in New York, smoking and drinking, and we talked for a while. We were going to be on the same TV show the next day. He was depressed. People loved him, but he didn’t seem to know that, or it wasn’t enough. He was a sweet guy and nobody had a word to say against him, but he was down on himself. All he wanted to do was make people laugh, but sometimes he tried too hard, and he hated himself for doing that in some of his movies. I thought of Del. There is so much truth in the role that it transforms the whole movie. Hughes knew it, and captured it again in Only the Lonely (1991). And Steve Martin knew it, and played straight to it.

The movies that last, the ones we return to, don’t always have lofty themes or Byzantine complexities. Sometimes they last because they are arrows straight to the heart. When Neal unleashes that tirade in the motel room and Del’s face saddens, he says, “Oh. I see.” It is a moment that not only defines Del’s life, but is a turning point in Neal’s, because he also is a lonely soul, and too well organized to know it. Strange, how much poignancy creeps into this comedy, and only becomes stronger while we’re laughing.

The Polar Express

G, 100 m., 2004

Body movement performers: Tom Hanks (Hero Boy / Father / Conductor / Hobo / Scrooge/Santa), Michael Jeter (Smokey / Steamer), Nona Gaye (Hero Girl), Peter Scolari (Lonely Boy), Eddie Deezen (Know-It-All), Charles Fleischer (Elf General), Steven Tyler (Elf Lieutenant / Elf Singer), Leslie Zemeckis (Sister Sarah / Mother). Voice performers if different than above: Daryl Sabara (Hero Boy), Andre Sogliuzzo (Smokey / Steamer), Jimmy Bennett (Lonely Boy), Isabella Peregrina (Sister Sarah). Directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Zemeckis, Gary Goetzman, Steve Starkey, and William Teitler. Screenplay by Zemeckis and William Broyles, Jr., based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg.

The Polar Express has the quality of a lot of lasting children’s entertainment: It’s a little creepy. Not creepy in an unpleasant way, but in that sneaky, teasing way that lets you know eerie things could happen. There’s a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie. This one creates a world of its own, like The Wizard of Oz or Willy Wonka, in which the wise child does not feel too complacent.

Those who know the Chris Van Allsburg book will feel right at home from the opening moments, which quote from the story: On Christmas Eve, many years ago, I lay quietly in my bed. . . . The young hero, who is never given a name, is listening for the sound of sleigh bells ringing. He is at just the age when the existence of Santa Claus is up for discussion.

The look of the film is extraordinary, a cross between live action and Van Allsburg’s artwork. Robert Zemeckis, the same director whose Who Framed Roger Rabbit juxtaposed live action with animation, this time merges them, using a process called “performance capture,” in which human actors perform the movements that are translated into lifelike animation. The characters in The Polar Express don’t look real, but they don’t look unreal, either; they have a kind of simplified and underlined reality that makes them visually magnetic. Many of the body and voice performances are by Tom Hanks, who is the executive producer and worked with Zemeckis on Forrest Gump (1994) —another film that combined levels of reality and special effects.