Six Films Incidentally Set During Christmas
Morvern Callar
Curse of the Cat People (1944):
Christmas movies are a dime a dozen, but what about the films in which the holiday is simply in the background? In the loose, non-horror sequel to Val Lewton's Cat People, a 6-year-old girl spends the holidays fraternizing not with the Baby Jesus but with the ghost of the original's star, Simone Simon.
Blast of Silence (1961):
The noir antihero is a lonely sort, but Allen Baron's low-budget thriller goes so far as to set things during Christmas, thus augmenting the solitude. In New York City for a job, a hitman (Baron) wanders miserably through mirthful streets, all while the narration track upchucks growling, hard-boiled lingo in the very rarely employed second-person (i.e., "You're feeling better now that you've got that Christmas out of your system.") In other words: Best. Narration. Ever.
Brazil (1985):
So dense is Terry Gilliam's phantasmagoric melding of Kafka and Orwell that it's easy to forget it's set during Christmas. Late in, Jonathan Pryce's scatterbrained, lovelorn office monkey is delivered awful news from a superior dressed as St. Nick.
Less Than Zero (1987):
Christmas break is the excuse this trashy Brett Easton Ellis adaptation comes up with to get boring collegiate Andrew McCarthy back to L.A. with boring ex Jami Gertz and the decidedly un-boring druggie Robert Downey Jr. Of course, as Woody Allen noted in Annie Hall, L.A. never looks Christmas-y. Heathens.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999):
As Tom Cruise prowls New York, trying feebly to cheat on wife Nicole Kidman, the libidinous feelings and harcore T&A clash with all the Christmas lights and mad consumerism around him, which reinforce family unity and purity.
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