email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com
Stand on a busy city street one week before Christmas – and spit! – and you’re likely going to hit a cinematic Christmas watchlist, complete with a number of recognizable films from seasons past, yet hopefully possessing one or two gems that you’d never seen before.
Or – spit! – and you’ll hit a child begging their parent for an expensive gift. Never mind that it’s a week’s countdown until Christmas Day. Never mind that the household Christmas tree will soon be knee-deep in wrapped goodies. Never mind that the whole idea of being good all year isn’t exactly a requirement anymore in order to earn a mountain of gifts on Christmas morning. Times certainly change, don’t they?
But what hasn’t changed is the notion of selfless giving during the holiday season, for some. And here at the Pickwick Drive-In, we don’t wait for an invitation.
The Pickwick simply comes with the gifts.
Here at the Drive-In, we don’t ask for a wishlist from our viewers, and we don’t spy on our viewers in order to figure out their favorite candies, their favorite scented candles, their top secret garment size. Instead, the Pickwick intends this season to deliver up a Christmas watchlist of seven decidedly seasonal films that remain contrary to the traditional cinematic lore of the holiday season.
You won’t find George Bailey wishing that he had never been born here. You won’t find Clark Griswold wishing for a backyard underground pool here.
What you will find here are seven motion pictures that give side eye to everything sacred about the winter season, perhaps what you specifically didn’t ask Santa for this year …
… Even if you secretly needed it.
To that end, the Pickwick is thrilled to showcase these alternative goodies to the general fare you find awaiting you in a stocking on Christmas morning.
While far from sugary sweet, these motion picture morsels may prove the perfect gift for you & yours this holiday season.
So – ho-ho-ho – it’s time to stay home with the Pickwick with seven motion pictures that will deliver the perfect non-traditional cinematic gifts for the holiday season.
Go
C O M E D Y
You will love this movie if you asked for boiled shrimp served at a Las Vegas buffet, frozen orange juice purchased at a local grocery store, lap dances, opportunities to work in wholesale pyramid schemes, and police stings related to the sale of illicit drugs for Christmas.
***
1999 | Rated R | 102 minutes | d. Doug Liman | s. John August | c. Doug Liman
***
The best people in the world have worked one of the three worst jobs in the world: food service, retail, or waiting tables. Work all three in a single lifetime — and you’ve done the Lord’s work.
But, precisely, a grocery store is Ground Zero for director-cinematographer Doug Liman’s Go — the most atypical holiday film you’ll likely see this season, composed of a handful of vignettes unspooling over the course of the Christmas holiday. Tonight, four friends (Taye Diggs, Desmond Askew, and others) spend an evening in Las Vegas and get more than they paid for when they purchase a lap dance … two soap stars (Jay Mohr & Scott Wolf) are entrapped into both a drug sting and a wholesale pyramid scheme … and a grocery store clerk (Sarah Polley) hard-pressed for monthly rent risks the lives of her friends & herself in order to serve as a one-night drug dealer in a film that asks many humorously existential questions about relationships.
For example, Claire (Katie Holmes) asks the beleaguered drug dealer Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant) after an insufferably long night of broken promises and betrayals, “You know what I like about Christmas?”
“The surprises,” she answers herself. “It’s, like, you get this box, and you’re sure you know what’s inside of it. You know — you shake it, you weigh it — you’re totally convinced you have it pegged. No doubt in your mind. But then you open it up, and it’s completely different.”
According to that child-like anticipation of Christmas morning, Go is precisely what you will have imagined it to be — and yet like nothing you expected — and you’ll be grateful for it.
As a holiday film, Go captures an evening akin to the familiar, popular 1990s storytelling of films like Pulp Fiction (1993), Smoke (1995), Four Rooms (1995), and more — motion pictures that weave together individual vignettes over the course of a single day or many weeks. And each of the narratives of Go — like Christmas morning — have a little something for everyone: comedy, crime, danger, romance, sex, tension, and terror … all set against a backdrop of crackling dialogue & a quintessentially 1990s soundtrack.
One couldn’t ask for much more on Christmas morning.
***
TRAILER
A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
Office Christmas Party
C O M E D Y
You will love this movie if you asked for inappropriate or uncomfortable office relationships, a prostitute whom you hope plays the role of your legitimate lover at a holiday office mixer, a simulated blowjob that ends in a wash of egg nog, unsolicited cocaine sales, or a year-end holiday bonus for Christmas.
***
2016 | Rated R | 111 minutes | d. Will Speck & Josh Gordon | s. Justin Malen & Laura Solon, et al. | c. Jeff Cutter
***
The extra cheddar beefy Tex-Mex spicy macaroni or whatever it was at that office potluck that made me wish I’d called in sick that day — I’ve never been a fan of office holiday parties since, but when it comes to tangential non-denominational holiday mixer movies, I leave room in my belly for this film, no matter how I’m feeling.
In this film that stars a Who’s Who of comedic actors, a newly-divorced chief tech officer (Jason Bateman), his assistant (Olivia Munn), and their irresponsible branch manager (TJ Miller) throw a last-minute office holiday party in order to impress a potential client and convince the company’s interim CEO (Jennifer Aniston) that the branch shouldn’t be shut down — on Christmas Eve, no less.
For anyone who has attended as much as an office Christmas party or as little as a holiday grazing buffet, this irreverent comedy has something to offer everyone. There’s some crude humor here. But there’s also some real heart here. If you’re not the kind of filmgoer who will sample both the sweet & the sour at the office holiday smorgasbord, this particular motion picture might not be for you. But if you’ve attended an office holiday party and tolerated that someone decided to bring individually-wrapped candy canes while someone else brought a relish tray, you’ll be in good company here.
For a film that looks like the widescreen work-related hijinks of the 1980s, Office Christmas Party lands with a particular amount of heart that you didn’t know you needed, like a thoughtful (if incredibly irreverent) gift given to you by family or a friend.
The film also stars Kate McKinnon, Randall Park, Vanessa Baver, Courtney B. Vance, and more, an office Christmas party that you won’t soon forget, even if hilariously uncomfortable moments resonate with you as ones that you wish you could have wiped from your memory, like sensitive information from a corporate computer database.
***
TRAILER
The Night Before (2015)
Krampus
H O R R O R
You will love this movie if you asked for awkward family dinners, creepy Christmas snow globes, neighborhood power outages, unanswered letters to Santa Claus, and wintry snowstorms for Christmas.
***
2015 | Rated PG-13 | 98 minutes | d. Michael Dougherty | s. Todd Casey & Michael Dougherty, et al. | c. Jules O’Loughlin
***
I’ve always loved scary movies. And what’s more, I’ve always loved horror movies that take place generally close to the Halloween holiday: Halloween (1978) — of course. Trick ‘R Treat (2007) — much more, of course. House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) — “Son, look around,” the menacing backwoods serial killer clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) asks. “Do I look surprised?” The list goes on.
But horror films that decidedly fall on or around other holidays remain just as entertaining: Jaws (1975) for the 4th of July. New Year’s Evil (1980). My Bloody Valentine (1981). The list goes on and on.
And when it comes to Christmas, the list could conclude with writer-director Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, which tells the story of a family besieged by the anti-Claus when a young boy (Emjay Anthony) — discouraged that his family (Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, and others) has lost the Christmas spirit — wishes that his family would be plunged into anti-holiday darkness. As a result, the household isn’t visited by Santa & eight reindeer but instead by the demonic Krampus & his mischievous minions. The film, then, insists upon the viewer that family — no matter how annoying — is more important than gifts — no matter how extravagant.
And once people stop believing in the inexplicable magic of Christmas, it will be the demonic Krampus — not the jolly St. Nick — who will darken the home on Christmas Eve, once & for all.
There is real heart at the core of this horror film — despite the film’s conclusion, that somehow demands writer-director Michael Dougherty to dip his ladel into this particularly sinister sauce pan of homemade hot chocolate — more than enough to fuel a more traditional holiday motion picture.
In fact, Krampus gifts you with much of the same messaging as any iteration of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol …
… The movie simply does it with fire & brimstone rather than fir trees & sleigh bells.
***
TRAILER
Violent Night (2022)
Black Christmas
H O R R O R
You will love this movie if you asked for aggressive attacks on your right to choose what you can do with your female body, cellophane wrap, college-town search parties scouring the community for a missing girl, sorority houses, and unnecessarily obscene & unsolicited prank phone calls for Christmas.
***
1974 | Rated R | 98 minutes | d. Bob Clark | s. Roy Moore | c. Reginald H. Morris
***
After the three-day (Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night) weekends — every weekend — and the marginally lethal substance abuse by way of beer, wine, spirits, and chemically-created & homegrown drugs, the best thing about college is winter break. You come home to spend a few nights spread out over many weeks with family, but spend the rest of those weeks catching up with friends, also home for the holidays.
Merry Christmas — everyone.
But some college kids aren’t so lucky, as evidenced in the 1974 seasonal slasher Black Christmas, directed by Bob Clark (who would go on to direct a much more family-friendly holiday motion picture with A Christmas Story (1983)). Of all the films that appear on this watchlist, it’s surprising even to me that this particular film is the latest entry in my cinematic vocabulary, having only seen it for the first time in the past few years. Missing out on this movie for so long is a bit like enduring Santa Claus fly-bys each Christmas Eve, only to be gifted one of the best holiday films — ever — after years of yuletide drought.
In the film, it’s the holiday season, and Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) & her sorority sisters are prepped to enjoy the annual winter break. But when a prank phone call takes a turn for the worst, the girls discover that they are the target of a bloodthirsty lunatic. Over the course of the night, the tension and the body count will rise.
Today, the film’s premise looks like nothing new, emulated in other horror movies over the course of many decades & legitimately remade in 2006 & 2019, with varying critical responses. But when it comes to holiday fare, Black Christmas challenges others as one of the first slasher films. Director Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) often looks more like a study of first-person film theory than a hard & fast example of the genre, while Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is frequently cited as a thriller for a number of reasons more than would characterize as it as a slasher film. Meanwhile, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) — as violent as it is & yet as bloodless as it is — fails to measure up as a bonefied genre film of that name, even if it was released more than two months before Clark’s film.
Recording devices, roadside motels, and chainsaws aside, Black Christmas maintains the distinction of being one of the first genre films of its kind.
Never mind that the motion picture also inspires some thoughtful discussions about women’s reproductive rights, posited as it is one year after the passage of Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that protected women’s rights to an abortion prior to the point of fetal viability. It’s not a foregone conversation when lives — even those of college co-eds or otherwise — are on the line.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Barb (Margot Kidder) asks the beleaguered father (James Edmond) of the missing co-ed Clare. “But, I mean, how could I make something like that up?”
How, indeed.
***
Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.
Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In 
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