A Christmas Carol
This Christmas Eve, the Ellermann family sat down for the animated Disney version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman. The film uses the same uncanny valley – courting mocap animation technology as The Polar Express, though a few more years of sophistication have made this outing easier to swallow.
The film itself is a faithful adaptation of the novel, and it doesn't stint on the book's horrific elements. A Christmas Carol isn't a saccharine story, but the tale of a man who's shown the incredible damage he's wreaked upon those around him, as well as the consequences of that damage. By turns sad and scary, it earns its resolution. When Scrooge finally sees the light, we revel with him because the film has shown us just how dark his soul had become.
This version of A Christmas Carol is a winner.
The Ox-Bow Incident
Because I have poor judgment, I
fired up The Ox-Bow
Incident
to kick off my Christmas vacation. Och, what a depressing film.
Here's the setup: Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan are just in from the
range, drinking whiskey in a dusty saloon and looking for fun in a
Western village with precious little of it on offer. When an angry
cowhand rides up with a tale of murder and rustlin', the people of
the village whip themselves up into a lynching frenzy which they call
a posse. Afraid suspicion might shift to themselves, Fonda and
Morgan join up against their own misgivings. All well and good,
until the group finds some likely suspects. Then we're in a morality
play.
And some play it is. The film, screened in 1943, feels like an angry
postwar drama, full of cynicism and hard judgments of hard people.
Fonda and Morgan make for fascinating protagonists, men we wouldn't
consider entirely good, yet just good enough to sense how things are
going and to feel repulsed by it.
This is not light stuff, and The
Ox-Bow Incident treats
it seriously. I appreciated its mature approach to the subject
matter, its challenging position, and its resolution. I just
wouldn't choose it as a film to usher in Holiday cheer.
