I've been regularly consulting the 72 films still sitting in that list, far less than a third of which I will watch prior to finalizing my 2021 rankings next month. I suppose it's been a small symbol of stability in a storm of a week where the emotion and stress levels have run high.
The one thing I do not have much of on that list, though, is Christmas movies. In fact I have only one, and I can't even watch it.
I've been angling for some Christmas-themed viewings this week with the family, whether that's actual holiday movies or movies that have a "Christmas feel," which sometimes just means family friendly blockbusters. There are plenty of those playing in the theater right now, but because we've been focused on moving and preparing to host Christmas, they have been out of my grasp. I imagine we as a family will get to a number of them from December 26th onward.
I've suggested viewings of the first two Tom Holland Spider-Man movies in preparation for the third, which is playing theaters and getting rave reviews. Sticking with the Marvel theme, I've also suggested starting to watch Hawkeye, knowing it's set during the holidays.
Both of these were shot down and I know both of them are not quite right. For one, I don't know that anyone wants to fill up a busy Christmas week with obligatory Spider-Man viewings. Neither would they do much to advance my personal goal of watching 72 movies from 2021 before the second week of January. Plus I didn't even particularly enjoy the second one. Then with Hawkeye, I imagine you have to devote several episodes before you get to the most solid Christmas material. We should have been watching it from the start, not cramming it in now.
Plan B -- or maybe Plan C -- was to watch 8-Bit Christmas, an apparently nostalgia-filled new Christmas movie starring Neil Patrick Harris. As the week ground on and my viewings didn't feel the least bit Christmassy -- I tried with Being the Ricardos but it wasn't quite right -- I knew that 8-Bit Christmas would save us. (I say "us" even though I didn't, of course, subject anyone else in my family to Being the Ricardos.)
I had thought it was playing on Netflix. Actually, it's playing on HBOMax. Which, after I recently signed up for Paramount Plus, is about the only streaming service we don't yet have.
There's probably more than one reason we don't have HBOMax -- I don't want to be the guy who subscribes to every streaming service -- but the one that nullifies the others is that it's not available in Australia. So I can't even sign up for it as a desperation move for 8-Bit Christmas.
Now it's Christmas Eve and we have to watch something tonight ... don't we?
Even though I knew this would not be a "typical Christmas" -- we moved less than a week ago -- now that it's actually arriving and not being typical, I'm struggling with it. I'm accustomed to the week leading up to Christmas being paved with holiday-appropriate family viewings, not just whatever episode of Futurama happens to be next in the list as part of our family watch of the series. We still have the week after Christmas of full-on holiday mode, but it's not the same feeling, you know?
Besides, one of the reasons we pushed for a 45-day closing on this house was to spend Christmas in our new house. The inspiration behind that wasn't just to physically occupy this house on Christmas. It was to have some version of a classic Christmas. And while the house looks pretty Christmassy, and the "classic" part is covered by the house dating back to 1970, for me, it's not a full classic Christmas without some Christmas viewing.
The poster above points us to a possible solution, though it would not be a new one. 8-Bit Christmas is advertised as from the studio that brought us Elf, and in truth, Elf may be the thing that saves us. It'll be the third time the kids have seen it, but the first since 2018, which was the first since 2015. Maybe we're building a family tradition of watching Elf every three years. I'd be fine with that.
And when Buddy's father, Walter, finally finds it in his heart to start singing, and provides the necessary final boost to lift Santa's sleigh into the sky, maybe that's when my classic Christmas will finally kick in.
I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.
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