A Cinephilic Festivus

Or, Is This the Worst December for Movies in 40 Years?

Oh, hey there. It’s Ryan, but only momentarily. We have a special guest writer this week: our man behind the scenes; this newsletter’s de facto editor, Evan Beattie, aka Rusty Shackelford. Evan is a scholar, a renaissance man, and one of the smartest people I know. He’s also a fantastic writer, though his time is limited due to raising a little human. We appreciate the time he took to pen this piece and look forward to more from him in the future. Be sure to heckle him about writing his screenplay. Take it away, Ev.

Happy Holidays everyone! I was talking to Ryan the other day and he asked me to do a holiday guest piece. I didn’t know what to write about, so he told me to write what I know… And I know that movies aren’t as good as they used to be.

I’m not a filmmaker. I’m just a dude who likes movies. I’m no expert. To establish my bonafides, my personal top 5: Alien, Blue Velvet, Whatever your favorite Coen Brothers Film is (mine is actually Blood Simple, but that feels pretentious), and maybe La Dolce Vita? I know that’s only four, but I’ve realized the futility of this exercise. I can’t pick a favorite five movies.

Maybe I could pick five directors. Nope. I made a big inspiration list on my phone trying to narrow things down. The task was impossible. So just trust that I have middlebrow tastes at best. I like some film buff movies, but I also love Starship (and Super) Troopers completely unironically. Miss me with sports movies and musicals. The former can’t compete with the real thing, and the latter belongs live on stage.

Let us celebrate the holidays together then, with an airing of grievances about film, a cinephilic Festivus. I could bitch about second screen programming, or the thin gruel of comic book movies, with their insipid propagandizing, sexlessness, lifelessness, and boring lack of moral ambiguity. I could cry about the CGI-ification of practical effects (and I will, if ever given the chance).

I could go on about how we can’t get a standalone story. Everything is a sequel or a part of a cinematic universe. Nobody will write a movie that tells a story in 90 minutes that just… ENDS. It’s killing the comedy genre. It’s stifling creativity. I’m not opposed to a remake or re-imagining of a classic every 50 years or so, but come on, they remade Mean Girls before it was old enough to buy a beer. I’m getting off track.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Let’s pour a fat glass of eggnog, take a stroll down memory lane, and talk about December movies of yesteryear, in comparison with today. With any luck, we’ll all walk away from this article feeling like my grievances are overblown, and that I’m just a middle aged man yelling at clouds. Please God, let me be poisoned by my own nostalgia.

As of 12/16/25, these are the films I could get a ticket for between now and Xmas day weekend at my local national theater chain (Marty Supreme looks good, but it wasn’t on the list at my theater, and I won’t be discussing it below, but wanted to stick this disclaimer in): There is a Knives Out sequel.. maybe the fourth, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Wicked 2, Zootopia 2, Avatar but with Fire, the Anaconda remake (old enough to rent a car and drink, but obviously unworthy of a remake), and SpongeBob SquarePants, again I believe the 4th.

Finally, we have the truly original films, Song Sung Blue, a film about a book about a Neil Diamond cover band, “a well reviewed crowd pleaser,” (Google AI’s words, not mine) releasing Xmas day, and the Sydney Sweeney vehicle, The Housemaid. It is also fairly well reviewed, and coming out this weekend.

Gun to my head, I’m probably going to Zootopia 2 or The Housemaid. Gun not to my head, I might watch ‘em on my couch one day. None of the others interest me. What a shame James Cameron has pissed the last 20 years of his career away on (I guess visually exceptional) CGI and lowest common denominator moralizing (I didn’t like the Iraq war either Jim, and we shouldn’t destroy the environment, but that doesn’t make Avatar compelling).

Now, let’s slide into the warm comfort of yesteryear, when things were allegedly better. Ahh, the simpler times of 2015. Everything was perfect in the world of cinema. Star Wars Episode VII was making money hand over fist, The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 (I believe this was the 4th film in the series) was a distant second, and an Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Sisters, and The Big Short were also top 10 grossing films. I saw most of these. I remember two of them.

The Big Short is a great film, about a dark time in modern history. I recommend it. I also remember Star Wars. All my earlier complaints about comic book movies track perfectly on this. The good guys are good. The bad guys are bad. The message is boring. The stakes are great, but we know who will win (though they won’t win enough to prevent future movies).

It was the last Star Wars vehicle I watched. Not even the Mandalorian has drawn me back in, and I’m a sucker for a Western, like The Hateful Eight, a true bright spot in this lineup. The chemistry (friction) between Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins still looms large in my imagination. My verdict on 2015: suffering from the same issues as we have today, but at least there was one great film out. Crank the time machine back up, let’s check out December 2005.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe led the way, along with King Kong, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Fun with Dick and Jane, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Family Stone. The Narnia movie fell far short of the book, and the animated film of the same name from 1979, but it was fine, I guess. It certainly made money. I can’t really criticize one of English literature’s greatest children’s stories for not being morally ambiguous enough. In fact, I can’t wait to read those books to my daughter.

As for the rest of this slate, we’ve got a remake, a very popular movie about a very popular book, a remake (yes, Dick and Jane was first made in 1977), a controversial Academy Award Winner (for Cinematography/Costume and Production Design, not Best Picture), and a movie I remember nothing about other than I told my date it was a great choice. I really hope our next jump back harvests some better films. I’m beginning to fear that I am indeed being a boomer.

December 1995 saw Toy Story, Jumanji, Father of the Bride Part II, Heat, and GoldenEye. Ok. Now we’re talking. Toy Story is a heartwarming classic. It made Pixar an animation juggernaut and an inevitable Disney property. Pixar, for the most part, makes exceptional films for families, kids, and arrested development cases like myself. Toy Story is probably my least favorite of the good ones, but that’s a me problem, not a Toy Story problem. This is our first certified banger.

Jumanji, were I to watch it now, would probably fall prey to many of the criticisms I’ve leveled at many other films in this article. However, I recall it fondly. Robin Williams was wonderful, and my aunt gave me the Caldecott winning book well before the film was released (I loved it). Never saw the second Father of the Bride… but Steve Martin’s presence makes me think it was probably pretty good for a sequel. Heat is another certified banger. GoldenEye, which I caught in theaters a couple of years ago, holds up, but wasn’t I just complaining that we never got new IP in film? I gotta say though, December of 1995… certified fresh.

Our last stop is going to be December of 1990, because honestly, I wanted to talk about these movies more than I did the ones from 1985. We had Home Alone, Dances with Wolves, Misery, Kindergarten Cop, and Edward Scissorhands. I have probably watched Home Alone more than any other movie. I had the VHS, I played the GameBoy game, I had the board game, I played make believe Home Alone all the time. It is in the running for my favorite Christmas movie.

Dances with Wolves is an unassailable classic and Academy Award Winner (Best Picture among others). Kindergarten Cop was my childhood best friend’s favorite movie that he had on VHS, and may be my second most watched film of all time. Misery is a classic. Kathy Bates more than deserved the Academy Award bestowed on her for that. Her performance was profoundly upsetting.

And what can I say about Edward Scissorhands? A completely original idea, it set us up for thirty years of campy, lovable freakshows from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. I loved that movie, and I’ve loved their vibe ever since. The peanut butter and chocolate of weird kid cinema was born with that film. That said, I’m talking about two movies for children that I watched as a child, two movies adapted from novels, and one certified original idea. They were all great movies, though.

Are Misery and Dances with Wolves better movies than anything out this December? Almost certainly. I’ll say the same of Home Alone, GoldenEye, Toy Story, and Heat. Were the 90s a golden age in cinema? Not really. I am relieved to find that I am an old man yelling at clouds. The clouds suck, but so did a lot of movies in every December. December 1995 and 1990 had exceptional slates of movies, but I actually looked at every year between 2025 and 1985, and most years had mostly sucky movies, with gems scattered throughout.

That doesn’t make my critique of CGI slop any less legitimate. It doesn’t make my disdain for and boredom with the Marvel Cinematic Universe any less correct. It certainly doesn’t mean that American cinema is headed in a good direction. With studio consolidation, streaming, and the massive cost of making films stifling creativity and uniqueness, it isn’t. But I could have written all of that ten years ago and been right. Also, you shouldn’t care about my opinion on film. If Marvel Man 17 makes you happy, who am I to take that away from you?

I would encourage you to go see independent films, if you live in a city where they get screened. I would strongly encourage you to check out the Criterion Collection. Watch weird movies. Go watch Bottle Rocket, check out David Lynch’s work, watch Blood Simple with your parents this Christmas, like I did a couple of years ago. But also, go watch Starship Troopers and Alien, and anything by Hitchcock, or Kubrick. Go watch Ryan’s movie, Videovore, when it comes out, too. I read the script, and it’s really good. If he shot half the movie he wrote, it’s going to be fun as hell.

But whatever you do, decide your own tastes, make your own decisions. Don’t let your nostalgia and your own complaints stand in the way of enjoying something new, and damn sure don’t let mine. I certainly won’t. Sometimes it’s just fun to air your grievances. Happy Festivus to all!