Christmas Marathon Double Feature: Arthur Christmas (2011) & Happy Christmas (2014)

Christmas is here in only a few days and I have a TON of stuff (tentative) that I want to put on, so I’m going to do a double feature.  Now, Arthur Christmas really deserves its own post BUT I’ve already reviewed it once HERE when I saw it on a flight back in 2012.  Except, I felt that it deserved a rewatch because when I’m on the flight, at a certain point things just feel really blah because I feel really blah and I think that affected my view of the movie. And then, there’s the issue of the second movie Happy Christmas but I’ll go more in detail below.

Lets get this started!

ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (2011)

Director: Sarah Smith & Barry Cook

Cast (Voice): James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Ashley Jensen

December 24th is a busy day for Santa and aside from popular belief, its not a one man show.  Santa (Jim Broadbent) has a whole group of support helping him be the most efficient possible to make sure every child isn’t missed. The biggest help comes from his older son Steve (Hugh Laurie) who is hopeful in being the next Santa.  Santa’s younger and much more clumsier son, Arthur (James McAvoy) is a full believer of Christmas and admires his father but is sent to take care of Letters.  When he realizes that a child was missed, he is determined, even though his father and brother believe it is impossible to deliver it on time to the child, to get the gift to there with the help of GrandSanta (Bill  Nighy).

Arthur Christmas is a brilliant animation and believe me, its a lot more engaging and entertaining to watch it on a bigger screen than the plane screen (obviously). The dynamic characters and the fun approach of a modernized Santa versus the traditional Santa works out to be a lot of fun.  Its full of hilarious moments intertwined in some awkward but still funny ones. It takes what we believe and adds a new little twist and its completely believable.

The voices are done so well. Arthur Christmas makes Arthur out to be so different, scared and abnormal in his family but also its him that makes this so heart-warming, fun and contributing to what makes this absolutely funny.  Arthur is a lovable character because he is unique as the clumsy worry wart who doesn’t believe that he can do anything other than worry and be scared. But he has the purest of hearts and that makes him awesome 🙂

I’ve already reviewed this once before but second viewing in a normal setting definitely accentuated the awesomeness in Arthur Christmas and in my last review, I said its not one I’d go to for Christmas every year, well, I take that back.  This one is definitely worthy for annual viewing 🙂

Have you seen Arthur Christmas? What did you think about it? 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (2014)

Director: Joe Swanberg

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Lena Dunham, Mark Webber, Joe Swanberg

After a breakup, Jenny (Anna Kendrick) moves in with his older brother (Joe Swanberg), his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and child.  Jenny is irresponsible and not very trustworthy as they learn about it quickly but while she is getting over her breakup and moving forward, Kelly is also dealing with having a hard time finding the inspiration for her next novel.  With the help of Jenny and her friend, Carson (Lena Dunham), she starts finding that she needs to create a balance between her career, her family and her husband in order to feel more motivated and happy with her own life.

First things first, other than being set during Christmas, do not let Happy Christmas fool you with its title.  It has nothing to do with Christmas.  In fact, its pretty much an indie drama to the core.  Its a lot of low-key issues piling up together and moving in a realistic way of just watching a family interact with each other.  I’m not particularly a fan of movies like this especially since they always end in this somewhat weird abrupt fashion.

The cast did well with what they had and I could get on board with what the story was trying to say but in the end, it felt like I watched 82 minutes of really not much going on.  Maybe I’m too emotionally stunted to watch these things. Or maybe, I just don’t like to watch such profound movies with some deeper meaning to it, which kind of makes me feel really bad (like I have no depth) when I say that.  Except its the truth.  It just feels so meh.  The only thing I liked was the characters but the story itself didn’t have much going on.

I don’t know how to review something like this.  Reason for the double feature. I wasn’t exactly impressed with the movie but Anna Kendrick is fantastic in this so that kind of works out 🙂

(I’m kind of cheating to put this in Christmas marathon but it was part of my rundown and the title has Christmas in it, so it kind of works, right?)

Have you seen Happy Christmas? What did you think about it? 

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Because I started the recommendations on the second week of August, I decided to do one more week to make it a solid month of recommendations 🙂 Next up, we have Natasha at Film and Things with her suggestion to see Shaun of the Dead.  I’ve been meaning to see this a long time as I’m a huge fan of zombie movies.

Director:  Edgar Wright

Cast: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy

Shaun (Simon Pegg) lives with two friends, Pete and Ed (Nick Frost).  Ed doesn’t really do much, doesn’t have a lot of friends and doesn’t get along with Pete and relies heavily on Shaun.  However, Shaun’s girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) doesn’t want her life to continue in the same boring pattern and when he fails to comply, she decides to leave him.  Right at this time, Shaun decides to pick up his life and get back Liz when the world is attacked with a possible zombie apocalypse. He decides its his chance to show that he can make something of himself by saving the day and he proceeds to protect his mom and stepfather (Bill Nighy) and also protect Liz and her two friends,Dianne (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran).

I’m a huge fan of British horror (or British anything).  However, I did learn that as much as Hot Fuzz was a decent movie, I wasn’t so interested in it so I was a bit reluctant to watch this.  Shaun of the Dead is possibly 1000 times better than Hot Fuzz in my opinion.  Its funny and crazy entertaining.  There was some shots where you can tell they were trying to build a bit of intensity and man, those zombies looked pretty good.  If they didn’t mix in such a good amount of hilarious moments, I’d actually might have been a bit creeped out.

Shaun of the Dead is led by a great cast.  I love Simon Pegg.  His humor is totally out of the world.  In this, he leads some of the best laughs and his bromance sort of relationship with Nick Frost’s Ed is just hilarious.  Plus, he has awesome expressions and reactions.  The dialogue in this was witty and sarcastic at times which really worked for me. Moreover, Bill Nighy is amazing all the time in big or smaller roles and he was in this and I found it funny as always!

Seriously though, do you really need me to tell you how awesome Shaun of the Dead is? I’m pretty sure everyone already knows about it seeing as almost everyone went to see The World’s End this summer.  BUT if you really do, I really recommend it extremely highly.  You should definitely give this original, witty and fun movie a go and I’m pretty sure you will like to some degree.

A huge thanks to Natasha for telling me to watch this because it was totally awesome and she is awesome as she just completed her short film One Bitten, Twice Shy.  You really should check out her fantastic trailer that she put together :). You can check out more info on her short film HERE.

Have you seen this yet? Are you a fan? Did you go see The World’s End? How would you rank Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End?

Christmas Marathon: Love Actually (2003)

LOVE ACTUALLY

Director: Richard Curtis (Pirate Radio or The Boat That Rocked)

Cast: Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Rowan Atkinson, Laura Linney

I’d like to start this off with the quote that starts off the movie because I find it best describes the whole concept of this movie.

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.”

That is what this movie is about.  Love actually is all around us, especially in London.  It is promoted as the ultimate romantic comedy filled with separate stories from all the cast that we see in the beginning of the movie either in a wedding and the others in a funeral.  The wedding is for Peter and Juliet (Keira Knightley) and we see how it rolls into the story of unrequited love of Peter’s best friend, Mark (Andrew Lincoln) for Juliet.  This event brings together Jamie (Colin Firth) who we see ends up falling out of love with his cheating girlfriend and flying to France to spend his holidays where he meets a young Portuguese housekeeper, Aurelia.  At that same wedding, we also see Sarah (Laura Linney) who we get introduced to her not so secret crush to her co-worker, Karl and how sometimes you have to make choices for family that we love.  In her office, we see the relationship of her boss, Harry who is tempted to cheat with a younger employee while his wife, Karen (Emma Thompson) tries to rekindle their relationship and keep her own family together.  Her brother, the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) starts his position and meets his lovely “catering manager”, Nathalie.  The funeral however is where we get the shot of Karen who is there for Daniel (Liam Neeson) who has lost his wife and must take care of his stepson, Sam and help him get the love of his life who is a girl in school that will be going back to  America.  In the background, we have a old rock and roll singer, Billy Mack (Bill  Nighy) who tries to get top spot on the billboard.  Lots of love stories all twisted together is what makes up Love Actually.

Love Actually is one of those movies that I know is very awesome to watch, (however I forget during the year its awesomeness).  I love watching every minute of it because it makes me laugh and smile and then by the end, I get tears of joy because of all the sweet moments.  Here’s one of the especially sweet moments of Mark’s unrequited love for Juliet.  Of course, its only one of the many but I thought it was sweet and original.

The cast is just beautiful and charming and you start getting attached to all the love that is around during Christmas in this.  It consists of such a perfect group of actors and actresses that I adore like Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson.  On top of that, we also had a few cameos of Rowan Atkinson.  I love him in general and in this one, he’s just the spectacular even for that little moment he’s on screen.  Maybe some stories could’ve been more elaborate if there were less put together but I think the point is to show the simplicity of each situation, how love is just very simple and we can find it when and where we least expect it.  We’ll do things that we don’t expect ourselves to do for it.  So great concept and great little stories, I loved them all.  However, I found that the key to the success was the soundtrack that they put together to support everything that was happening.  Just listen and look at the beginning song that pops up at the wedding.

Its some fun stuff when you find that perfect song that gets the viewers moving.  Especially when another song had Hugh Grant dancing through his Prime Minister headquarters.  We had the hilarious Bill Nighy doing his best routine of laid back old rock and roll star and swearing here and there with “Christmas is All Around”. Then we have “All I Want for Christmas” also one of my favorite songs.  There’s just so much more.  This definitely enhances the movie.

I may forget about Love Actually and its awesomeness throughout the year but whenever I see it, it just makes me feel so good.  Acknowledging that love actually is everywhere and all around is something we all want to remember when Christmas and the holidays comes around.

Arthur Christmas (2011)

Arthur Christmas is a pretty alright animation.  I had not intended on watching this in advance but it seemed like my brain after 8 hours straight in a plane really couldn’t watch anything else.  I had started then left 15 minutes into the movie Seeking a Friend For The End of the World.  It just wasn’t doing much for me.  So I figured maybe a Christmas movie would do the job. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

The plot is quite straightforward. Arthur(James McAvoy) is the son of the current Santa(Jim Broadbent) and he is clumsy and dysfunctional most of the time so he is just responsible of  replying to Santa’s  mail.  He also has the Christmas spirit that most of the family seems to have lost.  He just simply praises what his father does.  On the other hand, Steve (Hugh Laurie)is Santa’s other son and he is very competent as he has now upgraded the Santa mission into a modernized way with the help of technology and space ship and the elves are all there to help make the mission flow smoothly.  It’s pretty impressive how they set it up.  What causes problems is when one of the elves realize that one of the gifts was not delivered but Steve and Santa both don’t feel the need to do it and if anything, would do it later. However, Arthur disagrees and with through help of grandsanta(Bill Nighy), Arthur’s grandfather, they run through the night filled with obstacles to try to get the gift to the leftout child.

This one is a fun adventure. The first half was a bit slow and generic but the second half was fun.  On top of that, the voices for the characters are amazing. I have never heard any of them do voice over in animation but have huge respect for Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.  These are decent actors to get to do this, so the movie has a good foundation.  James McAvoy in my book is pretty cool as well. I”ve seen him in Atonement and more dramatic movies, but as a teenage comedic boy, I’d say it was a good change.

I’m not sure it’ll be my top 10 of Christmas movies but I really liked it in the second half.  Generally, I like most Christmas movies, so already this one won some points before it started.  The main turnoff is the fact that Justin Beiber sang the theme song and I really don’t have much love for it, so I just skipped the credits. Problem solved!

All in all this is a modernized Christmas movie which reminds us that Christmas spirit doesn’t change and shouldn’t change with time. It’s like in the part where they all want to be Santa. Grandsanta wants to prove that being Santa the old way was the way it’s supposed to be, current Santa is just tired and enjoying the glory and praise, Steve wants to be the next in line and take over his father and not just be behind the scenes taking care of operations. They all want their own and goal but no one really kept the spirit that Christmas and beliefs need to be kept that no child is left out on Santa’s list. I’m paraphrasing Arthur here but he says, it doesn’t matter how it gets there, what matters is that it gets there in time.

It’s a nice animation and tis full of talented voices and a really good plot. Of  course it cant compete with all through Christmas classics out there, but it certainly does alright overall. I would definitely stop on the channel to rematch if it was on TV.

I haven’t heard much about this movie before seeing it on the plane. Has anyone seen it? Did you like it?