Movieacados! One of my favourite parts about doing this thread this time of year is the next three posts are pretty standard and I get a prompt with minimal effort! It being a holiday season and year end/new year beginning it is easy for me to come up with a few standard prompts, maybe tweak them slightly from last year or maybe just roll with it as is and rinse/repeat. And there is some holiday synergy here as this is the formula that a lot of holiday movies are accused of doing (especially Hallmark). For the most part movies have the same basic themes, follow the same basic rules/tropes and deviate very little from the approved holiday formula because that is what the general movie going public wants. And I am no different.

I do however have a love/annoyance relationship when it comes to holiday movies (there are very few movies that manage to fall into the hate category), and I realized recently that the line between love and annoyance often comes down to one or two scenes. There are a lot of movies where one or two scenes are the difference between good and bad, in my case a lot of movies this year were elevated to my top of the year based on a few specific scenes and how they spoke to me (more on that next week, same Brick time, same Brick Channel). And just to do a quick case study: It’s a Wonderful Life. A movie that seems to be most commonly remembered for the “Every time a bell rings an angel get’s it’s wings” line (for a long time myself included), but has many other great scenes that come together to craft a well thought out and very interesting film. The scenes showing the difference one person can make is what makes that movie for me, not the sugary sweet stuff. Even something as simple as Clarence’s introduction (physically on screen) where he jumps off the bridge causes George to switch from wanting to jump himself immediately into rescue mode is one of the scenes I like most about that movie. It gets to the heart of the character and sets Clarence up as someone who can think outside the box as well. The rest of the film flows well because of that scene (and others, but I am not doing a full film analysis here).

So in lieu of asking favourite holiday movie as a prompt I will ask: What are your favourite scenes in holiday movies that really make the movie for you? Movies can be full on holiday movies of any type or can be something else entirely with holiday related themes/scenes like for example “Spidey Bells” in Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which does not need that quick joke to make it a great movie, but that joke is just one little cog in the machinations of what makes that movie so great (as a bonus they released the whole song as part of the soundtrack and it is top tier holiday listening).