The prologue to Steven Spielberg's irresistible Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade tells you all you need to know about the upcoming movie: It's going to be fast-paced and energetic, nostalgic and warm, fun for new fans ... but definitely a treat for the faithful. It's a fantastic early-career mini-adventure for Indiana Jones, here played quite wonderfully by the late River Phoenix, as he bounds through caverns, races across the desert, and turns a circus train into a chaotic mess. This opening sequence is a fantastic mini-movie all by itself. And then the real fun begins ...

After taking a lot of finger-wagging from the mommies of the world, series creators George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to lose the nasty edge that was so prevalent in the previous film (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and hearken back to the old-fashioned charms found (everywhere) in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. The treasure this time around is nothing less than The Holy Grail, but (as usual) the relic means a whole lot less than what it does to the people around it. Plus we've also got a sneaky, sexy German spy; a big fistful of meticulously crafted action scenes; and, of course, the stately presence of Mr. Sean Connery as Indiana Jones' papa. (Seriously, who else could be Indy's dad besides James Bond?)

Early on in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indy turns to his soon-to-be love interest and his newfound sidekick – a singer in Shanghai's Club Obi Wan (Kate Capshaw) and a scrappy pickpocket (Ke Huy Quan), respectively – and intones, "I think we got a big problem." He's not kidding: the warning comes toward the end of a miraculous 20-minute opening sequence during which Dr. Jones gets poisoned while trying to exchange the remains of a dead emperor for a legendary diamond, plays floor hockey for the diamond and the antidote, impales someone on a kebab, crashes through a window behind a rolling metal gong, and stows away in a plane full of poultry only to have the pilots ditch and take the only parachutes with them. He then proceeds to leap out of the plane on a rubber life raft, which crashes off a cliff and careens down some vicious Indian whitewater. "Big problem" doesn't quite describe it; the torrent of obstacles and challenges that Spielberg and Lucas hurl at their hero in the first reel of this first sequel seems downright cruel. But their unkindness aside, the barreling momentum, brilliant staging, and breezy nonchalance of Temple of Doom's opening evoke something rarely found in Raiders of the Lost Ark and more rarely still in the rest of Steven Spielberg's career: a sense that Spielberg -- the master, the magician -- is at play.

Imagine this: The Paramount Pictures logo fades away into a real mountain as a fedora-topped man and his men travel through the jungle. We see this man in the shadows, from behind, and from the chest down -- all shots obscuring his face. Finally, when they get to a stream and the fedora man pulls out a map, one of his men pulls out a gun. However, before he can shoot, the gun is whipped out of the man's hand with a simple flick, and a thick, mustachioed Tom Selleck walks out of the darkness.

This is what Raiders of the Lost Ark could have been -- a Magnum PI-led adventure film -- had that same show not spirited Selleck away and forced Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to find someone else. They tested Tim Matheson, Otter from Animal House. They tested Peter Coyote -- an actor who went on to play Keys in ET. But no one compared to Harrison Ford, who came in and made Indiana Jones an ageless icon of adventure and archeology.

Given how well the classic song "Where Is My Mind?" worked at the end of Fight Club (1999) and given his "loudQUIETloud" (see Karina's review of the 2006 documentary) method of crafting songs, Black Francis (a.k.a. "Frank Black," a.k.a. Charles Thompson) would seem the perfect candidate to compose a fantastic new score for a classic silent film. And so an eager, sold-out crowd of fans lined up at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival for a Friday night screening of Paul Wegener and Carl Boese's silent-era, German Expressionist horror film The Golem (1920), hoping for just that. Francis -- deliberately billed with his Pixies-era stage name -- set up underneath the screen at the Castro Theater with his seven-man band (strings, horns, keyboards, etc.) and started the proceedings with a blast of guitar (the "loud" portion of the evening).

Surprisingly, Francis' raspy, yowling vocals also emitted from the darkness; he has composed an album of songs to go with the film, rather than a traditional score. The trouble is that they don't always seem to go. The effect is rather like synching Pink Floyd to The Wizard of Oz. Sometimes some magical cohesion happens between image and music, but most times the two forms are battling for your attention. The most distracting thing of all was a snarky commentator/narrator whose job was to make fun of the film between songs. ("There has to be a 12-step program for this!") At least once he spoke over the film's intertitles, and so viewers were forced to choose between trying to read or listen.

The films of the Coen Brothers tend to split their admirers into different camps. Some love everything they do, many favor their loonier comedic endeavors (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), and still others pledge allegiance to their more straightforward and violent dramatic offerings (Miller's Crossing, Fargo, No Country for Old Men).

I fall into the latter camp, having first encountered the unique sensibilities of Joel and Ethan Coen on a tiny television in my tiny Brooklyn living quarters in the late 1980s. Even in a bowdlerized version for television, interrupted for commercials every 10 minutes, Blood Simple held me mesmerized from its opening shot -- an extreme low-angle view of a two-lane highway, shredded rubber tire in the foreground -- to its last.

Watching the film again last night, I was struck by how accomplished the film looks. You could play it on a double bill with No Country for Old Men and be reminded that the Coens already knew the power of silence way back in 1984. They also knew a great image when they saw one, appreciated the value of underplaying a performance, recognized the allure of shadows and silhouettes, and treasured subtle nuances. They've grown and matured, expanding their thematic range, but their debut demonstrates that they've always been uncommonly assured filmmakers.

At the age of 30, Jason Reitman has directed a half dozen short films, two narrative features, and an episode of The Office. He has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing. He is beyond the usual Hollywood definition of "hot": he is, thanks to the runaway success of Juno, superheated, like the molten core of the sun.

At the age of 30, his father, Ivan Reitman, had directed one short film and two narrative features (the immortal Foxy Lady and Cannibal Girls). At that point of his career, it is safe to say he was as far from "hot" as possible: he was as cold as the far side of the moon, at least as far as Hollywood was concerned. Three years later, the success of Meatballs, especially in relation to its budget and its recognition as the one that made Bill Murray a film star, warmed things up for the senior Reitman, in much the same way that Thank You For Smoking would later warm up his son's career, raising expectations.

Thus it's interesting to compare Ivan Reitman's follow-up, Stripes, with his son's follow-up, Juno. Strictly in financial terms, Stripes was comparable to Juno, earning $85 million in 1981, a year in which only nine films broke the $50 million mark. (To be fair, Juno's budget, at $2.5 million, was only 1/4 of Stripes' reported budget.) Stripes wasn't nominated for any Academy Awards and Ivan has never been nominated, so that gives a leg up for Jason, but that's more a reflection of the Academy's malleable taste than any intrinsic merit. Though Stripes is remembered as a broad, mainstream comedy, I'd argue that it's just as edgy and independent as Juno, and displays some of the same borderline reactionary leanings as the newer film.

It is easy to dismiss It's a Wonderful Life, and indeed, people have been doing so since the film's release in 1946. Too sentimental, too hokey, too loaded with Frank Capra's hopeful humanism -- all these complaints, and more, have been fired at It's a Wonderful Life over the years. People still watch It's a Wonderful Life, sure, but you have to ask how much of this is based in the two most corrosive reasons to watch a film -- camp and tradition. Watching a film only so you can dissect it with the sharp blades of irony can blind you to its real virtues; you look for stereotypes, not performances; listen for often-quoted lines of dialogue without ever hearing them; see scenes in the context of their pop-culture parodies instead of as what they are.

So, the virtues of It's a Wonderful Life are often ignored by detractors. I'd also put forward that the virtues of It's a Wonderful Life are, in some way, occasionally ignored by the people who love it. It's a Wonderful Life is part of the American film canon, sure, but the canon is a cage -- placing movies on pedestals can put how good they actually are out of our minds. And hurling a film on every year because you're used to doing so can turn it into something seen but unwatched, the cinema equivalent of a nativity crèche or an artificial tree: It gets pulled out every December, put away soon after, forgotten until next year.

"Ho, ho, but no matter. Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved."

I tried that once. Only I didn't have the guts to stick my tongue to a flagpole, so instead I tried repeatedly to stick my tongue to the metal plate inside my parents' freezer. I was a kid who had just watched A Christmas Story more than five times over the Christmas holiday, and I wanted to see if my tongue would stick. No one else was around to egg me on -- and though I grew up with kids like Flick and Schwartz, I was determined to go at this one alone. So my tongue ... yeah, it didn't stick. Well maybe for a second or two, but that was it. If it was any other time of year, I probably wouldn't have tried it. But, for a kid, Christmas is heaven. Knowing the holiday is approaching brings a jolt of life to the kid spirit; they're invincible, nothing can stop them. Trying to decide what you want for Christmas, as a kid, is also the most important decision you'll make all year. No job, no mortgage or rent to pay, no wife or girlfriend or family to buy presents for. Nope. Your only responsibility is to anticipate great things to come. And no other movie captures that mindset, that energy, that love for life better than Bob Clark's A Christmas Story.

Starting in just a couple hours from now, TBS will air this movie for 24 hours straight; a yearly tradition for the television station. In my house, these are the rules: We must leave the TV on when we fall asleep, and the set must be tuned into A Christmas Story. I attempt to watch the first half before I fall asleep, and then I time it to wake up and watch the second half before the wife, dog and I hop out of bed and open presents. I do this (and the wife just goes along because I'm nuts and she doesn't have the time nor patience to argue my insanity) because after all the shopping, the hustling, the re-arranging and the spending of money I'd rather save, this film helps raise my spirits, helps me prepare for the onslaught of Christmas dinners to follow and it brings me back to that time as a kid when the cold, the lights and the tree meant we were in store for something special. To a kid, that something special is a gift; a reward for being young and full of glee. To an adult, that something special is togetherness; a bonding moment with the ones you love.

Who is Charlize Theron to know which of her movies are good or not? During a recent interview in Esquire magazine, the actress had the following to say about Reindeer Games, one of her early films: "That was a bad, bad, bad movie. But even though the movie might suck, I got to work with John Frankenheimer. I wasn't lying to myself -- that's why I did it. I mean, he directed The Manchurian Candidate, which is like the movie of all movies." Okay, let me stop you right there, Charlize. Have you actually seen The Manchurian Candidate? It's a movie where Janet Leigh plays a Chinese workman. Frankenheimer was an artist of the absurd, and sure, Reindeer Games doesn't work on traditional dramatic levels -- you don't care a lick about what happens to any of the characters -- but you can't watch that movie and not know that the director is completely, deliberately trying to screw with your head. Frankenheimer knew exactly what genre conventions he was working with in this film, and he decided to explode them.

In his negative review, Roger Ebert noted that "just a nudge and the movie would fall over into self-parody and maybe work better. But I fear it is essentially serious." Fear not, Roger. This is not a serious movie, but yes, it does require the characters to act serious, because they think they're in a Christmas-themed gangster plot -- how else should they act? For those who haven't had the pleasure, Reindeer Games opens in prison as Rudy (Ben Affleck) is about to be released from prison. His cell mate, Nick, has an ultra-hot girlfriend on the outside -- yeah, right -- and after Nick is stabbed to death, Rudy upon his release decides to tell the girl he is Nick. She won't know the difference. Turns out the girl, played by Charlize, has a crazy criminal brother played by Gary Sinise who has designs on Nick-Rudy. And that's only the beginning. The movie ultimately pulls rug after rug out from under us, becoming more ludicrous in the last thirty minutes than any serious-minded movie in crime picture history.

One of the perennial favorites for TV broadcast at this time of year is the 1945 film Christmas in Connecticut, starring Barbara Stanwyck. I sat down for the first time in years to watch the entire movie, and gave it my full attention in a way that I never did while I was wrapping presents or chatting with relatives or trimming the tree. As I suspect from my half-assed viewing of the film over the years, Christmas in Connecticut is a very slight movie; if it weren't related to Christmas, or didn't star Stanwyck, most of us might never have heard of it.

The plot is pretty lame: Liz Lane (Stanwyck) has gained career success by writing a series of columns about the joys of being a housewife and mom on her farm in Connecticut -- a Forties version of Martha Stewart. Trouble is, she's really a single NYC career girl who can barely boil water, and who gets her recipes from her Uncle Felix (S.Z. Sakall), who runs a restaurant. This was never an issue until her publisher Alexander Yeardley (Sydney Greenstreet) decides to accompany war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) to Liz's Connecticut farm for Christmas to experience home cooking and happy holiday domesticity. Liz talks her longtime cold fish of a suitor into lending his farm, they bring Felix along to cook, and even manage to borrow a baby ... but can they pull this off without Liz and her editor losing their jobs?

The Muppet Christmas Carol may be to the Muppets what Room Service is to the Marx Brothers. Neither is particularly good, especially in relation to the rest of the Muppet or Marx Brothers movies, but they can still be enjoyed immensely if you are a big enough fan of the Muppets or the Marxes. The films share two significant factors that aided in their surprisingly low quality. Each comedy "troupe" (if you can accept Kermit & Co. as a troupe) had recently suffered from a terrible disruption in their respective commands. Muppet Christmas Carol was the first Muppet movie produced after the death of Jim Henson, while Room Service was the first Marx Bros. movie to be filmed (fully) after the death of producer Irving Thalberg (though, of course, Thalberg was not the Bros.' creator like Henson was the Muppets'). And, most importantly, each is notable for having not been written for their "troupe"; instead the "troupe" was rather ill fittingly dropped into pre-existing stories.

In the case of The Muppet Christmas Carol, that pre-existing story is of course Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (umm, commonly known as simply A Christmas Carol). Unlike previous Muppet vehicles, such as The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, this one focuses on a main character not played by a Muppet. Instead, Michael Caine portrays the lead, Ebenezer Scrooge, while the old favorites play minor supporting characters from Bob Crachit (Kermit) and his wife (Miss Piggy) to the narrators, Charles Dickens (Gonzo) and Rizzo the Rat (himself). Strangely the Christmas spirits aren't played by any of the star Muppets. In fact, only one of them is even technically a puppet: the Ghost of Christmas Present, which is a burly, redheaded body puppet (has an actor inside) with a Scottish accent.

What's the definition of a "Christmas movie?" Is it a simple matter of setting in time, a more complex question of tone, an ineffable connection to the Christmas spirit? I can't answer that, but I can tell you one thing.

Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

It's bloody, brutal and base; it's punchy, puckish and profane ... and it's unequivocally a Christmas movie, or it wouldn't be in the rotation at my house -- and, I suspect, some of yours -- every December as reliably as it is, nor would that annual process of returning to my mind seem as welcome as it is. Normally, in a piece about a film, here's where I'd recap the plot, but seriously, do you need one here? Have you been in cryogenic suspension? Are you leaving the Amish faith after 20 years and figured you'd turn to the internets to catch up? It's Die Hard. You know the plot. And if you need a refresher, go watch it. Right now. We'll be here when you get back.

Many, many actors have played Ebenezer Scrooge. Not even counting all the various stage productions featuring the likes of Patrick Stewart, the movies and TV alone have brought us dozens, including George C. Scott, Bill Murray, Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Kelsey Grammer, Jack Palance, Jim Backus and Scrooge McDuck. It says a lot, then, that Alastair Sim is widely considered the best Scrooge of them all. And the film that he starred in, Brian Desmond Hurst's Scrooge -- released in 1951 in the U.S. as A Christmas Carol -- is likewise the definitive film adaptation.

Sim is known for this role above all; his only other two roles of note came in Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950) and Peter Medak's The Ruling Class (1972). For one thing, Sim looks like Scrooge as Dickens might have imagined him; he has a kind of sour, pointy mouth and sunken, dagger-like eyes. His body is stovepipe lanky, and his wiry, white hair flies off in frightening angles. For another, he seems to understand Scrooge at some core level. Rather than a being of pure evil, this Scrooge comes from a place of sadness, loss, anger and regret. In one great scene, Scrooge has left the office on Christmas Eve and stops at a tavern for his meal. He orders more bread, but when he finds out that it will cost extra, he decides against it. His expression after the waiter leaves is nearly broken, crushed, as if that bread might have brought him his final bid at happiness.

I first discovered 1980's Christmas Evil (a.k.a. You Better Watch Out and Terror In Toyland) when I found it in one of those 10 packs of public domain horror movies that Brentwood/BCI Eclipse was putting out a few years ago. Based on the title I had assumed this to be a Christmas slasher flick along the lines of Silent Night, Deadly Night, but there's a bit more going on here. Try to imagine Taxi Driver as a Christmas movie and Travis Bickle as a man obsessed with the idea of making Santa Claus real. Christmas Evil isn't in the same class as Scorsese's flick, but both are stories about loners with dark obsessions, and Christmas Evil makes for some fun if seriously twisted holiday viewing.

Harry Stadling had his belief in St. Nick brought to a tragic end at a young age. To paraphrase the classic song, he saw mommy getting busy with Santa Claus (actually, it was his Dad in costume), and he hasn't been quite right since. Harry grows up to become a man with more issues than National Geographic, and he is driven by the idea of making Santa Claus real in his own way. He spies on the neighborhood children with binoculars, keeping track of which ones are naughty and which ones are nice, (the kid with the Deborah Harry issue of Penthouse is a particular troublemaker) and he works at the Jolly Dream toy factory. His recent promotion to management doesn't allow him to work on the assembly line, and he misses working directly with the toys. His relationships with his co-workers are strained because to them it's just a job and they don't take the business of toy making seriously.

I can tell you a thousand things that Scrooged, director Richard Donner's 1988 updating of A Christmas Carol, gets wrong. It features Bobcat Goldthwait, for one example; it's silly and sketchy and has the attention span of a fruit fly, for another. Carol Kane's Ghost of Christmas Present is amusing for a millisecond and annoying for every moment thereafter. The script veers between brilliance and bathos, there's at least four too many sub-plots and the film is littered with those little Donner touches -- left-leaning posters as set dressing, acting in his own film -- that mark Donner as one of the more competent and terrifying hacks of our time.

But there's one thing that Scrooged gets right -- and indeed, it gets that one thing so right, that moment of perfection turns it from a diverting cable standby to compulsory holiday viewing. Mitch Glazer and Michael O'Donoghue's script gives a modern makeover to Dickens's classic story, and also mocks the Scrooge tale even as it re-enacts it. Frank Cross (Bill Murray), the youngest network president in the history of television, is harried and hateful as the holiday approaches; his network's spending $40 million on a live production of A Christmas Carol (which, for some reason, the film calls "Scrooge") that'll run Christmas Eve. The live shoot is going to be a mess: Buddy Hackett's playing Scrooge, and isn't great with his lines, at one point asking in dress rehearsal "Why am I surrounded by these sea urchins?" John Houseman's doing the narration; Mary Lou Retton is playing Tiny Tim. It's going to be horrible. And, most importantly to Frank, profitable.