Hudson Valley Crucial Viewing- 2024 Holiday Edition!

Hello subscribers! It’s the last edition of 2024. The holiday season is a time of many traditions, and for lots of us, seeing movies (whether explicity Christmas-themed or not) is one of those traditions. Instead of our typical calendar, all seven of us wrote a little something about movies we associate with this time of year. We hope you enjoy it!

Before we begin, just one last reminder that our final screening of 2024, Heartworn Highways at Tubby’s, is this Sunday, December 22. Advance tickets are going fast, so if you want to guarantee yourself a seat, you can get yours right here.

Okay, now, in alphabetical order, here’s our holiday favorites!

Skyler Balbus

Growing up Jewish, my family’s most consistent Christmas tradition was to go to the movies. It made sense — the movie theater was one of the only things open on Christmas Day, tons of movies get released in December for just this very reason, and we didn't have anything else to do. We would often eschew the more family-focused movies for something more interesting, which meant that we'd usually leave the theater with something to gripe about. The last time we got together for a Christmas movie trip was in 2019, when we decided to see Uncut Gems (on my recommendation after having a blast watching Robert Pattinson in Good Time). Is Uncut Gems a Christmas movie? Absolutely not — it's arguably a Passover movie, and in any case it's way more Jewish than any Christmas movie has a right to be. Was this the best choice to bring my parents, my brother, and his future wife to? You can guess the answer to that one, but I will tell you that instead of discussing what we liked or didn't like about the film, we spent the ride back to our family's house in near-silence. But I think that's what made it a perfect part of our tradition: We shared a new experience, however it met or defied our expectations, and I still get needled about how I could have possibly thought that anyone in my family would have liked that movie. 

My recommendation for a Christmas movie: Start a new tradition and borrow mine. Go see something new, something a little challenging, with people you love, and try to find something about it to gripe about together afterwards.

Kyle Black

My holiday movie choice is The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. “It’s just a bunch of dudes taking a really long walk” - this quote can be attributed to my fiance, and she’s so very right. And that’s what I love about these films - a group of people coming together, bonding, and working together to just take another step forward. I think that resonates so heavily with the Christmas season being one where most everyone feels compelled to get together and take care of each other, but it can come with plenty of challenges that need to be navigated. 

I rewatch these films every year now, and while I wouldn’t call it a tradition, I would call it a habit. Something I didn’t intentionally do, but it’s turned into a way to give myself the space and time during the season to simply rest - it lets me escape the exhaustion of everything that has come at me through the year. I can’t imagine I’ll win anyone over to watching this series - you either have or you never will - but for those who’ve enjoyed them in the past, I highly recommend you make the excuse to sit down for 3 hours and 28 minutes [because you should be watching the extended edition] during the holidays, because you deserve it - and Middle-earth is such a cozy place. 

And if you really need a reason to be able to consider this a Christmas movie, it is canon that after the Fellowship officially comes together in Rivendell, they depart on December 25th - good enough for me.

Greg Mills

My pick is The Grand Budapest Hotel. Dare I say, the greatest film about the rise of fascism in Europe AND 5 star hospitality. Zero mentions of Christmas, or any holiday for that matter, but the winter setting and Mendl’s treats consumption make it a holiday favorite in my household. Ralph’s best. Wes’ best. Pair this with the behind-the-scenes documentary of how they remodeled an abandoned Gorlitzer Warenhaus department store in Germany into the titular hotel to feel truly inspired. ‘Tis the season!

Bel Simek

If you’re like me then you’re a sucker for 60s and 70s animated Christmas specials. We all saw the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop motion when we were kids right? But have you seen the other, decidedly weirder Rankin/Bass productions? I saw all of these specials on home-recorded VHS tapes that my mom would dig out of the attic every year. You can’t go wrong with A Year Without a Santa Claus or Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town but, again, these are obvious. How about the studio’s final stop-motion feature, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Let’s get a little pagan with it! The 70s were an amazing time to let the weirdest things into children’s entertainment. I’m serious, this one is so special. There’s a Tolkien-esque counsel of immortal spirits, orc-adjacent villains, and the charming, beautiful puppetry you know and love from Rankin/Bass. This was among the last productions that Japanese studio Pacific Animation Corporation produced before it was bought out by the big Mouse himself (curse you Disney!). I doubt this weirdo little flick would’ve made it through under their reign. There’s also the charmingly stereotypical The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold which repaganizes St. Patrick, and has some great one-off puppets (and some of the most hilariously lazy song-writing of the lot). I love these movies for the childhood nostalgia, but also because they represent such a fun moment in animation history. We used to get away with being so much weirder and more interesting, when this industry wasn’t ruled entirely by three big budget studios. They’re also a hugely important studio in the history of American animation. There’s so much to dig into here that’s fascinating and goes way beyond some fun, timeless NBC tv specials. Also Jules Bass lived upstate until his death (just 2 years ago!). An upstate niche celebrity legend (for me at least). If you’re sick of the holiday fare from them, they also have an insane, bizarre Smokey the Bear special that’s easy to find through the Internet Archive (along with most of the rest of their filmography!). If you haven’t seen these since you were a kid I seriously recommend giving them a rewatch, at the very least to see a kind of artistry that we’ve nearly lost touch with entirely.

Steven Swarbrick

I enjoy feel-bad Christmas films. If you’re reading this and have not seen Ernst Lubitsch’s Shop Around the Corner (the other Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie) or Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (the orgy Christmas movie), stop and watch those ASAP. If you have seen those films and are looking for a nontraditional Christmas movie, try Three Days of the Condor (1975), a paranoid thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. The film follows CIA analyst Joe Turner as he tries to solve the mysterious murder of his colleagues. Soon, he finds himself in danger, unable to trust anyone, including the CIA. The film takes many twists and turns, delivering a dark tale of uncertainty and fear. What makes it a Christmas film? Although Christmas is in the background of the main action, it comes into focus through music, which punctuates the action, suggesting a momentary holiday from the corruption that Turner slowly uncovers. In this way, the film underscores the contradiction at work in every true Christmas film (see, e.g., It’s a Wonderful Life): Christmas is, on the one hand, a reprieve from capitalist violence (just ask Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas) and, on the other hand, the apotheosis of greed and violence (e.g., Black Friday). When we hear the Christmas songs burst into the narrative, we think it might turn out okay. Turner is not so sure. 

If Three Days of the Condor leaves you wanting more, check out my other favorite feel-bad Christmas films: Eastern Promises, 2046, and The Apartment. Enjoy!

[Editorial note: If you want to read more of Steven’s thoughts on film, his new book Negative Life makes a great stocking stuffer…]

Brian Whitney

It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that my favorite Christmas movie comes from the world of auteur-driven arthouse cinema. Specifically, Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander.  I watch it at least once every year during the holiday season; the uncut TV miniseries version, but not the whole thing, just the initial Christmas party. Roughly the first hour and a half. There's one part in particular that always sticks with me. Helena, the grandmother and matriarch of the Ekdahl family, is preparing herself and her home for a big Christmas dinner, with various maids scuttling about under her direction, finishing the feast and last minute decorating decisions. Her three children and their families are running late, and she's in the full throes of anticipatory anxiety. At last the moment is here; she looks out the window and sees her guests hiking through the snow towards home, children and adults making merry in equal measure. She pauses for a beat, smiles warmly, and with relief and love in her voice, says, "Here comes my family." It's a small, beautiful moment, one that doesn't sound like much, but in the hands of Bergman and his masterful ensemble, it is the magic of the holiday season, a warm embrace at the beginning of a party, the gauzy haze of a candlelit room on a dark winter night. The Ekdahl family Christmas is probably several orders of magnitude nicer than any of my actual family Christmases, but when you're a kid you don't understand money or hidden family discord or any of the other stresses that permeate these types of gatherings as an adult. The magic of this opening episode is that, while it hints at the problems that will arise in the subsequent four hours of Fanny and Alexander, it lets you see this one happy family Christmas through a child's eyes, with hope, innocence and joy. I love this scene so much that I used a still from it in my daughter's birth announcement, because I couldn't think of anything that captured my feelings more perfectly. Here comes my family.

Lauren Whitney

When Harry Met Sally is one of those movies that was always on TV in my household growing up, and its one of the 7 movies that I actually own on DVD. It's absolutely my favorite romantic comedy. But what I think I love about it so much is that it's the most Jewish Christmas movie of all time. A cursory googling reveals that there is a non-insignifcant amount of scholarship dedicated to the ways in which Harry Burns, played by Billy Crystal, "reads" as Jewish, despite a lack of explicit evidence. Sally is seen Christmas shopping throughout the film; Harry is not. Burns isn't the most common Jewish last name, but it's not undeniably goyische either. But like, come on. Harry Burns is one of the most Jewish film characters to ever exist. It's funny that his Jewishness is even debatable, and it's also why Crystal's performance feels so comforting and familiar to me. As the product of a short, highly verbal, slightly obnoxious but ultimately quite lovable Jewish father and a beautiful blonde shiksa mother, this movie always felt like their story, and thus MY story. The details are different but the general outline is similar. Listening to Harry and Sally go back and forth was like listening to my own parents bicker. Watching this movie was like watching a highly romanticized version of the circumstances that led to my creation. Much like one's parents set a standard (high or low) for how a relationship should operate, my film parents Harry and Sally also set a standard, albeit an unachievable one. Like many other women who saw and loved this movie, I deeply wanted to end up in a situation of mutual disdain leading to friendship leading to harmonious partnership. I don't agree with the premise that Harry lays forth in the beginning of the film, that men and women can never be friends, but to me, there was nothing more aspirational than mutually falling in love with someone I had known and trusted for a long time. But alas, I ended up with a tall, lapsed Catholic who I met online and married within a year and a half, who is probably rolling his eyes as he edits this very newsletter.