Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Growing up in America, my sense of Santa Claus had been that of a nice old fat guy who brought kids presents as Christmas time. That is, that was my sense of Santa Claus until I spent one Christmas in Germany with my extended family. Their Santa Claus was more serious figure. Sure, you could count on nuts, tangerines, and chocolates if you'd been good. If you'd been bad, however, expect a thrashing.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is very much about that second sort of Santa. When excavators find Saint Nick encased in ice under a Lapland burial mound one December, they scoff at rules like "no cussing, no smoking, and wash behind your ears." But they learn. Oh, how they learn. As far as this Santa's concerned, everybody's naughty.

So begins an original horror adventure that stays true its premise without losing the twinkle in its eye. There's a scary Santa. There's a protective father. There's a naughty boy who just might be more good than he thinks. Best of all, there's a real sense of place. Rare Exports feels like a movie about actual people in an exotic setting, dealing with something terrifying and quite outside their experience. Its story develops naturally, with no left-field moments and characters that stay true to themselves. Best of all, it's exciting and horrific and a great time at the movies.

So if you're looking for something a little different this Christmas, see Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Its Santa is the baddest of them all.

Wreck-It Ralph

My kids loved Wreck-It Ralph. My wife loved Wreck-It Ralph. I liked Wreck-It Ralph. Two out of three ain't bad.

Here's the setup: Wreck-It Ralph is the bad guy in a video game that's a cross between Donkey Kong and Rampage. He's tired of being the villain, however, so he sets out on a quest to find the legendary Dumont, the oldest program in cyberspace. He's blocked by the Evil Master Control Program. With the help of his allies Tron and Yori, he defeats the Master Control Program and takes his place as a hero.

Sorry, I got lost in my imagination there. While Ralph does set out to be a hero, he does so in a universe that's just one step to the left of Tron. Where Tron's vision of the world inside computers and video games (which are ... but you already knew that) is both awesome and a little scary, Wreck-It Ralph's is a lot more fun. While the film states that a game character can die if it leaves its own machine, we sense that the odds of that actually happening are really quite slim. This played well with my three and six year-olds, who thrilled to the film's dangers rather than hide behind my arms, as they sometimes do. Further, much of the film takes place inside a game Ralph visits called "Sugar Rush," a cart racer set in Candyland. Scary monsters become decidedly less so when they can get stuck in gum.

This reasonably non-threatening milieu makes for a nice place for kids to lose themselves for a couple of hours. Plug in a redemption quest, a cute sidekick, and sweet romantic B story, and you've got yourself a movie. Of course, none of it could work without good voice acting, and John C. Reilly voices the title character with a winning combination of soulfulness and lovability. While the other major voice actors basically do their schtick, Alan Tudyk (CDNW) outshines them all. His King Candy, with a voice reminiscent of Ed Wynn on a Fanta and Twizzlers bender, is the most energetic, exciting, and delightful villain you're going to find at the movies this season. (By the way, you really should see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. It's available on both Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant right now.)

So why did I just like, instead of love, Wreck-It Ralph? Well, I'd been up for 20 hours, so perhaps I wasn't at my most receptive. Thing is, I felt like I knew every beat of this movie before it happened. Don't get me wrong: the script is tight and the whole thing flows, but it felt, maybe, a little too perfect for me. It offered no real challenges, no insights beyond "Hey, be yourself." And that's fine, really. It just takes a little more to make me flip for something.

So, what am I telling you? I'm telling you that your kids will probably love Wreck-It Ralph. You very well may, too At worst, I bet you'll like it. Wreck-It Ralph is a good time at the movies.

Religulous

Religulous is great fun for fans of bullying.

In this documentary cum op-ed piece, comedian and public thinker Bill Maher seeks to explore modern religion.  In his quest, he mostly sticks to the three Yahvistic religions with which most of his presumed viewership will be familiar: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  (There's material on Mormonism, Scientology, and a few other belief systems, but the viewer in search of a comparison of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism will come away disappointed.)  Maher, a funny guy, uses his comic instinct to challenge and ridicule his interlocutors.  His point?  That it's time we evolved past religion before our beliefs lead us to destroy the world.

So far, so good.  The movie is well made, Maher is a genial host, and the proceedings succeed in being both thought-provoking and entertaining.

But there's a problem:  Maher avoids engagement with his intellectual peers, meaning people who are smart and theologically sophisticated and comfortable in front of a camera.  He discourses with well-meaning but intellectually unarmed truck stop evangelists.  He shows up frauds and hucksters and villains, but he often does it with subtitles or voiceovers, which speaks to a lack of either preparation or courage.  When he does talk with someone who, in my opinion, "gets it," he doesn't seriously engage him.  Rather, he appears to realize that he's swimming in deep waters and disengages fairly quickly.  In editing, the film, focuses on the man's disability, one which saddles him with distracting vocal ticks.

It was this interview, with a Vatican theologian, that turned me off to Religulous.  I mean, this guy was interesting.  He actually listened to Maher's ideas and built on them, rather than merely trying to joust with a professional comedian (always a bad idea).  He put Maher on his back foot without really trying, merely by being a smart and interesting guy to talk with.  And this made me realize what a missed opportunity Religulous really is.  Rather than follow Maher around for two hours as he picked on lightweights, I'd have gotten so much more out of two hours of conversation with this guy and his intellectual peers from other religions.  Could Maher have made this entertaining?  I think so.  Would it have helped him prove his point?  Probably not.  But it would have been world-class entertainment.

As it is, Religulous is content to tee off on the scrawniest kids in the playground.  It's funny as long as you aren't one of the scrawny kids.  But it's lazy and it's cowardly.  Ultimately, it makes us turn on the bully.  Religulous has a great idea and a capable host.  It deserves to be better than this.