SLUG Magazine Presents: 31 Days of Secondhand Givings

Season’s greetings, my fellow readers! It’s the time for peace on Earth (if we’re not reduced to pieces first), goodwill towards men (yeah right, okay…) and a holiday-appropriate collection of hand-me-down media. As the winter rolls in with its blistering winds of cold, gather around the radiant glow of the box set and don your gay apparel, you little freaks, for a festive installment of Secondhand Screenings!

Batman: The Animated Series – Christmas with the Joker
Director: Kent Butterworth
Warner Brothers
Released: 11.13.1992

It’s Christmas Eve and Joker has escaped Arkham Asylum, singing the iconic “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Robin laid an Egg! The Batmobile lost a wheel, and the Joker got away!” After their nightly patrol of Gotham, Batman and Robin return home to watch It’s a Wonderful Life (Batman hasn’t seen it because he “could never get past the title”), only to find the Joker, dressed like Mr. Rogers, broadcasting on every channel a Christmas special revealing he’s kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, his wife and Detective Harvey Bullock. It’s cartoonish and often silly, as were most episodes from the early seasons, but Bruce Timm’s iconic art style and sense of humor are brilliant.

As far as television Christmas specials go, it’s hard to top the iconic A Charlie Brown Christmas or Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, but for me, the ultimate Christmas special is Christmas with the Joker. Being the second episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which contains some of the greatest interpretations and performances of Batman’s rogues, Christmas with the Joker introduces Mark Hamill (Star Wars, The Long Walk) as the Joker. The debate of the greatest Joker always defaults to Heath Ledger, which yeah, he’s good, but it’ll always be Hamill, whose chemistry with Kevin Conroy’s Batman (a voice so good I hear it when I read the comics) is dynamite and later brought both characters to insane heights. —B. Allan Johnson

This Christmas
Director: Preston A. Whitmore II
Screen Gems
Released: 11.21.2007

When I choose my titles for Secondhand Screenings, I usually do so in a grab-bag style with little thought. Usually this makes it so I am faced with a movie that I would have never watched before, and likely never will again. Sometimes, though, I find a real gem, and this is one of them. 

This Christmas follows the Whitfield family through their Christmas season as they face soap-esque tribulations like “secret pregnant wife,” “cheating husband” and “Uh-oh, unpaid gambling debts!” all whilst dealing with the usual pains of a big family Christmas. And I’ll tell you what, the film does it all really well. I won’t waste my wordcount on the very watchable writing, though, I would like to spend it on what really makes this movie; the cast. Idris Elba (The Wire), Delroy Lindo (Sinners), Regina King (The Boondocks) and the fabulous Loretta Devine (Grey’s Anatomy) turn this from a generic Christmas movie into a family classic that will endure for years to come. I suspect they had a lot of fun on set, and it shines through in the genuine way they interact throughout the film. The chemistry of the cast makes me wish it really was a soap, so I could watch a hundred episodes while sick in bed. It’s also worth mentioning that singer Chris Brown is prominently featured in this movie, but we’ll move past that. If you want a Christmas movie that has drama, laughs and a classic melt-your-heart happy ending, then This Christmas is for you. —Cam Elliott

8 Women
Director: François Ozon
Fidélité Productions, Mars Films, France 2 Cinéma
Released: 09.20.02

When it comes to selecting holiday movies, there is one thing that is of the utmost importance: a cozy atmosphere. It’s the most defining part of the holidays, and for whatever reason I have found that some of the coziest movies in my opinion happen to be mystery films. Knives Out and Gosford Park with their lavish settings, all the characters huddled in a room discussing their live and having terrible secrets be revealed to everyone — it all makes for some shocking and at times comedic reevaluations. In my search for another homey mystery movie to add to my rotation, I happened across a French murder-mystery film called 8 Women. Taking place in the interior of a french chateau, decorated with floral and pastel patterns, and opening with the snowy landscape, the movie immediately puts you in the mood to snuggle up with a blanket and take a sip of hot cocoa as you witness the twists and turns of a delightfully morbid mystery.

The film follows the eight titular women as they get ready to celebrate Christmas. Things go awry when they discover that the patriarch of the house has been stabbed in the back with a dagger. With no evidence of anyone else having entered the house, the only suspects are each other. Secrets are revealed and the facade of each one of these women begins to slip. 

Despite being a mystery film, the true twist for me was discovering that this film is actually a musical, and a jukebox musical for that matter. Maybe the pastels and endearingly over-the-top acting should’ve been a dead giveaway. Still, this was a really pleasant watch. If you’ve been trying to get into French cinema or musicals and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is too devastating for your taste, then give 8 Women a watch! —Angela Garcia

Happiest Season
Director: Clea DuVall
TriStar Pictures, Entertainment One, Temple Hill Entertainment
Released: 11.25.2020

Happiest Season was the first lesbian Christmas rom-com produced by a major Hollywood studio, co-written and directed by the breakout star of But I’m A Cheerleader, who wrote the script inspired by her own experience coming out to her family — that has to be the formula for a queer classic, right? Wrong! It’s not because the movie is brimming with every trope in the book, complete with a “What are you doing in the closet?” joke. Holiday rom-coms are meant to provide comfort and laughs, not reinvent the wheel, and the goofy clichés are actually some of the movie’s most charming moments. It’s because the love interest is so narcissistic and unlikeable that, as many Letterboxd users have pointed out, it comes across more like a lesbian Get Out than a heartwarming holiday tale.

Harper (Mackenzie Davis, The Martian) takes her girlfriend Abby (Kristen Stewart, Twilight) home for Christmas, and conveniently forgets to mention that she’s not out to any of her family. Forced to play the role of Harper’s orphan friend, Abby slowly goes insane, while Harper’s immature and manipulative behavior grows more and more infuriating. A beacon of light appears in the form Aubrey Plaza as Riley, Harper’s hometown ex who connects with Abby — but despite every bone in my body screaming “leave your girlfriend and run off with her instead,” it doesn’t happen. Even Alison Brie as Harper’s competitive older sister and Dan Levy as Abby’s gay best friend as isn’t enough to save the story from snowballing into yuletide tragedy. —Asha Pruitt

The Christmas Letter
Director: Tori Hunter
Scatena & Rosner Films, Bridge and Acorn Entertainment, LAMA Entertainment
Released: 11.12.2024

Every movie is a miracle. The fact that any of them get off the ground each year, especially independent and low-budget projects, is truly miraculous when you consider everything that goes into making a feature film. Additionally, every opportunity for those in local film industries (like the local film industry in Central New York, for example) to get paid to do what they love is a beautiful thing that should be cherished and protected. However in Jordan Peele‘s Nope, OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) poses the question: “What’s a bad miracle? They got a word for that?” If you ask me, the answer is The Christmas Letter. Writer and co-producer Michael Cunningham spent 13 years writing a script that wasn’t very funny, then got it made with cameos by a few big names. How? A bad miracle!

The story follows Joe Michaels (Angus Benfield), a petty imbecilic father who spends his family’s entire savings on a series of farcical attempts to compete with his childhood pen pal’s annual extravagant end-of-year Christmas recaps. The performances are as flat as the lighting, the exact same rudimentary set-up/punchline structure manufactures every comedy set piece without variation, and it’s only claim to fame — what the back of the DVD called a “reunion” of “Christmas movie icons” Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid — is a FaceTime call between two bored former stars strapped for cash. Worst of all, though, it’s just not funny. The only entertaining aspect of this holiday-themed snoozefest was the anticipation I felt waiting for Benfield’s Australian accent to break through in his line deliveries. (Fortunately for me, it happened often.) It may have been a Christmas miracle for Cunningham, but with an end result like this, it’s a bad miracle all the same. If you see it on the the Salt Lake City Public Library’s shelves, look elsewhere. —Max Bennion

Christmas at Pee-wee’s Playhouse
Director: Wayne Orr, Paul Reubens
Pee Wee Pictures
Released: 12.21.1988

Shamelessly enough, I always fall victim to a good Christmas special. The unsystematic appearances of “remember them” cameos, the mise-en-scène of festive jolliness, a few merry old-time songs throughout the runtime — whatever it is, I eat that snickerdoodle shit up! One Christmas special in particular that eases the soul into Yuletide delight is Christmas at Pee-wee’s Playhouse. 

The zany manchild himself (and I mean that in the best way possible) Pee-wee Herman begins setting up for his holiday party after sending a mile-long wishlist to Santa Claus. Through a chaotic mix of ‘80s celebrity appearances and the bizarre antics the playhouse attracts, Herman must make a selfless act that will change the course of the holiday itself. Of course, you’ll have the regular playhouse loiterers like Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix) and Reba the Mail Lady (the only grounded-in-reality voice of reason), but where else would you find Magic Johnson, Grace Jones, Joan Rivers and even a prime-time Cher share the the same magic screen??

Those who grew up watching this fever dream of a children’s show, or rented each season from Hollywood Video like yours truly, remember the bright colors and eccentric cast of characters. The hallucinogenic program was like traveling through an antique store while overdosing on gas station boner pills. It had all the workings of holiday pudding pie to hypnotize the audience: stop motion animation, drawstring puppetry, a few adult innuendos to catch your parents off guard and just enough Christmas charm to hold the mantle as a holiday classic. —Alton Barnhart

Santa Claus: The Movie
Director: Jeannot Szwarc
Santa Claus Productions Ltd
Released: 11.27.1985

40 years after its release, Santa Claus: The Movie remains one of the most ambitious yet bewildering holiday films ever mounted — a lavish, earnest and entirely too overarching and brazenly commercial attempt to craft the definitive Santa Claus origin story while also functioning as a mammoth ’80s blockbuster in the Superman vein. Time has been both kind and cruel to it, and that paradox is exactly what makes the movie fascinating to revisit in 2025.

The film’s opening act is still its strongest: a mythic, almost storybook rendering of how a humble toymaker (a warm and gentle David Huddleston, The Big Lebowski) becomes the legendary figure. Director Jeannot Szwarc (Jaws 2, Somewhere In Time) leans into a glowing, handcrafted look — giant candy-colored sets, practical-effects sleigh flights and Dudley Moore’s genuinely sweet performance as Patch the elf.  But the film’s second half is where the movie unravels, where it shifts to 1980s New York and pits Santa against John Lithgow’s gleefully villainous toy tycoon B.Z. It’s big, noisy and so overloaded with product placement that it starts to collapse in on itself. Lithgow, who took the role only after Harrison Ford turned it down, is none too fond of it, and even when I jokingly mentioned it to him at Sundance this year — at barely 5’4, I felt like and elf standing next to the 6’4 acting giant — he changed the subject as quickly as possible. The performance is still fun, however, and when viewed through the lens of today, the tonal whiplash plays less like a failure and more like an artifact of a decade that threw everything at the screen without hesitation.

Santa Claus: The Movie may not be a great film, but at 40 years old, it has settled into something more enduring: a nostalgic, slightly oddball holiday comfort watch whose sincerity outweighs its flaws, and for it’s an annual tradition that’s as sweet as a little puce candy and as comforting as a Coke and a Happy Meal. —Patrick Gibbs

Tangerine
Director: Sean Baker
Freestyle Picture Company, Cre Film, Duplass Brothers Production
Released: 04.10.2015

Now I don’t know about you, but nothing says “the most wonderful time of the year” and hollies my jollies like a good old-fashioned Christmas Eve hunt for a drug-dealing pimp who’s cheated on his fiance. That’s right, readers — I’m here to open a Die Hard-esque debate on whether or not Sean Baker’s 2015 sleeper hit, Tangerine, is technically a Christmas film. In my humble Senior Staff Writer opinion (which I will prove to you in this review), it is. 

Tangerine follows transgender sex worker Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), newly released from jail, as she meets up with her BFF and fellow trans sex worker Alexandra (Mya Taylor, Stage Mother). In this sugary sweet (they meet up at a Donut Time) reunion, Alexandra informs Sin-Dee that her boo  thang has been out gallivanting with a white “fish” (slang for a cisgender woman) during her incarceration. She thus leads Sin-Dee on a goose chase throughout the streets of LA, where we meet a charming little group of misfit side characters. This includes a chaser Romanian taxi driver named Razmik, who is fond of Ms. Sin-Dee, and is particularly fond of keeping his attraction to sex workers like Sin-Dee a secret from his wife and her overbearing mother. 

I am the bigger person and I will admit I didn’t understand the hype, nor necessarily trust Baker’s authenticity, when I first saw his films Anora and The Florida Project. Though after watching Tangerine and becoming engrossed in the shot-on-shot-on-iPhone-5s world, I can say with certainty that that I understand now. I imagine it’s how audiences felt watching Harmony Korine’s Kids for the first time. Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch (The Florida Project, Starlet) created a wonderfully heartfelt story that captures the true meaning of the Christmas spirit through a queer lens. I could go on, but I’ll let the film do the talking for itself! Give yourself the gift of experiencing Tangerine this holiday season! —Yonni Uribe

Krisha
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Hoody Boy Productions, A24
Released: 03.16.2015

Norman Rockwell had a vision of an American family on Thanksgiving, enshrined in his painting “Freedom from Want” and subsequently burned into our social retinas after appearing on the walls of grandmothers’ kitchens and cookie tins at the same time every year for almost a century. Krisha serves as an alternate interpretation to this lofty image. In what was Trey Edward Shults’ directorial debut, Shults paints his own family portrait, telling an autobiographical story about a real kind of Thanksgiving (warts and all) using real family members as actors in several roles.

Shults wrote, edited and acted as himself for the film, while his estranged mother Krisha is played by Shults’ real-life aunt, Krisha Fairchild. Shults’ fluid camerawork follows the nervous, aged and frizzy-haired hippie as she re-emerges into a family that’s hesitant to accept her back. She proceeds trying to make amends with the son she left with her sister, Robyn (played by her real sister and Shults’ other real-life aunt, Robyn Fairchild), a decade earlier, but the façade of holiday-imposed niceties is palpably thin. It nearly shatters entirely when Krisha’s own mother, played by the actress’ real mother, doesn’t recognize her. An anxiety-inducing score takes up residence seemingly in Krisha’s brain, heightening the tension as the camera stays on her, warped-angle shots indicating her declining mental state. One dropped turkey later, the family’s attempt at reunion begins to deteriorate badly, leaving you with a growing feeling of futility.

Krisha isn’t a horror, but it hits home in a way that’s probably unsettling for some people. Shults was certainly affected enough to make the film at all, and in doing so he masterfully captured the fragility of the modern family at the simultaneously most celebratory and most potentially isolating time of year there is. —Kyle Forbush

Stay patient, my friends! More Secondhand Screening reviews will be coming soon…

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