30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

Material like this is only as good as the acting and writing. The Ref is skillful in both areas. Dennis Leary, who has a tendency, like many standup comics, to start shouting and try to make points with overkill, here creates an entertaining character. And Davis and Spacey, both naturally verbal, develop a manic counterpoint in their arguments that elevates them to a sort of art form.

There are a lot of supporting characters in the story: The relatives, each with their own problem; the local police chief; Gus’s rummy-dummy partner; the drunken neighbor dressed as Santa Claus; and of course Siskel, the teacher from the military school, whom the kid is blackmailing because he photographed him consorting with topless dancers. The director, Ted Demme, juggles all these people skillfully. Even though we know where the movie is going (the Ref isn’t really such a bad guy after all), it’s fun to get there.

Scrooge

G, 113 m., 1970

Albert Finney (Ebenezer Scrooge), Laurence Naismith (Mr. Fezziwig), Alec Guinness (Jacob Marley’s Ghost), Edith Evans (Ghost of Christmas Past), Kenneth More (Ghost of Christmas Present), Paddy Stone (Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come), David Collings (Bob Cratchit), Richard Beaumont (Tiny Tim). Directed by Ronald Neame. Produced by Robert Solo. Screenplay by Leslie Bricusse. Based on the novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

The notion of Albert Finney playing Ebenezer Scrooge is admittedly mind-boggling, and so is the idea of A Christmas Carol being turned into a musical. But Scrooge works very nicely on its intended level and the kids sitting near me seemed to be having a good time.

Still, I’m not sure the movie should have been in color (Scrooge having, of course, the definitive black-and-white personality). And I’m not convinced it should have been a musical. With so few musicals being made today, it’s our loss that so many of them are written by Leslie Bricusse. Here he is, after Doctor Dolittle, back again with still more forgettable tunes and inane lyrics with titles like “I Like Life” and “Thank You Very Much.”

Bricusse’s songs fall so far below the level of good musical comedy that you wish Albert Finney would stop singing them, until you realize he isn’t really singing. He’s just noodling along, helped by lush orchestration. To get the lead in a big-studio musical during the long dying days of the genre, you apparently had to be unable to sing or dance. How else to account for Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon? Or Finney in this one? Finney adopts Marvin’s singing style, which is a sort of low-register growl. Meanwhile, countless dancers and a children’s choir keep up the pretense that music is happening.

So if all of these things are wrong, why does Scrooge work? Because it’s a universal story, I guess, and we like to see it told again. Ronald Neame’s direction tells it well this time, and the film has lots of special effects that were lacking in the 1935 and 1951 versions. I was less than convinced by Scrooge’s visit to a papier-mâché hell, but the appearance of Christmas Present (Kenneth More) surmounting a mountain of cakes and candies was appropriately marvelous.

The whole problem of the Ghosts of Christmas have been handled well, in fact. Reviewing the 1951 British version of A Christmas Carol for the Chicago Sun-Times, Eleanor Keen noted appropriately that the three ghosts are “a trio that resembles fugitives from an eighth-grade play in costumes whipped up by loving hands at home.” My memory of that version is that she was right and the ghosts looked ridiculous.

In this version, the ghosts are handled more believably (if that’s possible). The Ghost of Christmas Past is a particularly good inspiration: They’ve made the role female and given it to Dame Edith Evans. She plays it regally and sympathetically by turns, and seems genuinely sorry that Scrooge’s childhood was so unhappy. Christmas Present, played by More, is a Falstaffian sort of guy with a big belly and a hearty laugh, who doesn’t look like a ghost at all. And Christmas Future is simply a dark, faceless shroud, not unlike Lorado Taft’s figure of Time in his Fountain of Life sculpture on the Midway at the University of Chicago. All three figures are miles better than conventional eighth-grade ghosts.

Alec Guinness contributes a Marley wrapped in chains; the Christmas turkey weighs at least forty pounds; Tiny Tim is appropriately tiny, and Scrooge reforms himself with style. What more could you want? No songs, I’d say.

The Thin Man

NO MPAA RATING, 93 m., 1934

William Powell (Nick Charles), Myrna Loy (Nora Charles), Maureen O’Sullivan (Dorothy Wynant), Cesar Romero (Chris Jorgenson). Directed by W. S. Van Dyke. Produced by Hunt Stromberg. Screenplay by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett.