In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.
Pretty conventional list for this edition – a pair of 1980s classics along with a more recent Christmas flick. (Remember we were still in December of 2020 at this point.)
- 1983 – The Big Chill, directed and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, staring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams, along with a host of 60s and 70s R&B, soul and pop songs. To be honest, in retrospect The Big Chill is more memorable for the excellent soundtrack and Glodblum’s snarky performance as a People magazine writer than for the story or the rest of the actors. If you want vintage Kasdan, check out his directorial debut – 1981’s neo-noir Body Heat, but make sure you have the kids tucked in bed first! Instead of the trailer, here’s the opening credits that sums up what is best with the movie:
- 1982 – Deathtrap, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, and Dyan Cannon. This stagey black comedy/mystery is based on the 1978 play by novelist/playright Ira Levin. It’s a fun cat-and-mouse story where the viewer is never quite sure what is real and what is deception. If you’re going to watch it, don’t do any research first. Just dive in. Several aspects of it are rather dated, but it’s still good, dark fun. Director Lumet is responsible for one of my all-time favorite movies – Network. (The trailer is short and basically spoiler free.)
- 2017 – The Man Who Invented Christmas, directed by Bharat Nalluri and starring Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, and Jonathan Pryce. A fanciful telling of how Charles Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol when he desperately needed a hit after his three previous books had been flops. It’s a quirky look at the creative process in which Dickens’ characters come to life around him and harangue him mercilessly. While the central elements of the story are reasonably accurate, remember that this is fundamentally a fantasy and not a biopic. Worth a view at Christmastime, especially if you have a houseful of writers, as we did. (I’m a textbook author, and my wife and late mum-in-law wrote women’s fiction together.)
Up Next: A Murder of Hitchcock Films