Wintery movies

What I rewatch this day, my birthday, and this season

It’s my birthday today. It’s also the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Things start to look up from here, I’m told (and they better). I woke up to texts from friends in later time zones and the tree outside my window covered in fresh snow. I don’t really have birthday parties anymore because the attention and pressure make me nervous, especially when everyone is expressing how overwhelmed the end-of-year is making them (Shopping! Deadlines! Resolutions!). Last year, I went to the opera and to dinner a few times. A couple years back, I went to American Dream. Yesterday evening, I went to the new Bar Oliver with two friends and we shared tapas, then a nightcap at the River, where my favorite bartender tells us their fries are being beta-tested and that “they’re the exact consistency of McDonald’s’.” He’s right. I’ll go out again tonight.

I wrote about some of my favorite Christmassy (but not Christmas) movies for a forthcoming list on someone else’s Substack, and that got me thinking about movies I tend to rewatch in winter. Other than those I’ve previously mentioned (The House of Yes [1997], Margaret [2011], and Let’s Get Lost [1988]) there’s The Squid and the Whale (2005), To Die For (1995), Friends With Money (2006), and Clueless (1995), which, if you’ll recall, has a Christmas party scene.

Although I’ve seen it once so far, I am pretty sure Two Lovers (2008) is a perfect film—and it is set during Christmastime in New York (a Brighton Beach movie before Anora). I recently suggested Serial Mom (1994) for a rained-in afternoon at a vacation house and it was a real crowd-pleaser. At Thanksgiving this year, I was reminded that the plot of Go (1999) centers around a Christmas-themed rave, so it could replace Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on your TV day-of if the latter feels played out.

Lost in Translation (2003), Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Phantom Thread (2017) are at Metrograph now, while Film Forum is showing a lot of Marlon Brando, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) on Monday at 3:30pm. Each of these, I believe, is the right level of seasonal feel-good sentiment and melancholy, as is Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon (1989)—not holidays, but so holiday, if you know what I mean. I’ll probably see something new today and on Christmas Day, because there are a few new movies I want to see.

And old ones. I watched the 1990 Bernardo Bertolucci adaptation of Paul Bowles’s 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky a few days ago at home. It stars John Malkovich (doing full frontal for no apparent reason) and Debra Winger and is narrated by an 80-year-old Bowles himself, who makes a few appearances as a nosy guy at the French Algerian hotel where the protagonists stay. It got terrible reviews, I guess because it doesn’t do the book justice. It won some awards, though, including a Golden Globe for Best Score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Apparently, for a 1998 reprint of the novel, Bowles wrote, in the preface, “the less said about the film now, the better.” Whatever; I liked it.