Have Yourself A Very Specific Type of Christmas Movie...

Are you looking for Christmas movies to put you in a specific mood? Here are my top five choices:

1.Neo-Retro Leather and Blood on White Snow Christmas: Batman Returns

Not the Tim Burton movie most people will recommend for Christmas, but people tend to forget that Burton had a bit of an obsession with the holiday leading up to Nightmare Before Christmas, as both Batman Returns and Edward Scissorhands take place around Christmas time. I just love the tone that the holiday adds to the story for Batman Returns. An extra layer of beauty and tragedy via fresh white snow as a canvas for dead bodies and chaos to fall on. Plus, the great touch of that 1940s-era design that the two Burton-directed movies (as well as the Bruce Timm cartoon) had just adds to the classic Christmas vibe of it. The movie sometimes looks and feels like it could take place in the same universe as a Fred Astaire movie.

2. Stark Stylized Neon 80s Christmas: Less Than Zero

Just as Batman Returns mixes 1940s nostalgia with Christmas imagery, Less Than Zero slaps you in the face with the 80s and puts an obnoxious stark cold 1980s L.A. vibe all over Christmas and New Year's. Add in all the ridiculous opulence and the painful scenes of Robert Downey Jr's character being kicked out of his father's home just in time for Christmas... and you have a great movie to watch to appreciate what you have.

3. Small Town Falls to Crap Christmas: Gremlins

No music score says "Christmas" to me quite like that of Gremlins. It takes the idea of a Christmas movie set in a small town and turns it into a monster movie set in a small town. With a sing-along! And as someone who has worked a fair share of Christmas Eve's, I always appreciate Phoebe Cates's scene of serving drunk and crazy gremlins at the bar (while also always asking...why would you keep serving them?!). But I feel that Gremlins gets that "why am I supposed to be happy just because it's Christmas even though crappy things are happening?" mood perfectly.

4. Ruined Christmas in Chicago: While You Were Sleeping

Okay, here's a nice one that I like for the specific 1990s Chicago-flavored Christmas setting (yes, I'm picking this over any John Hughes Christmas movies). In the grand scheme of the Sandra Bullock oevre, I imagine that While You Were Sleeping falls more on the All About Steve side of things in the long run, because it's very odd when you rewatch it. It really goes the distance while trying to convince you and Bullock's Lucy that it's very important that she continue to pretend to be Peter's fiance. And while I can't say that the movie does a "good" job of making it seem like a good idea, it puts more effort into the issue than a rom-com from the 2000s ever would. It actually reminds me a lot of rom-com plots from the 30s and 40s- like Bachelor Mother, starring Ginger Rogers and David Nevin, which also takes place around Christmas. But While You Were Sleeping is a little less disturbing (I could write a dissertation on Bachelor Mother, but that is for another post...).

5. People Are Insane Yet Apathetic During The Holidays: Brazil

Two of my three favorite movies take place at Christmas, so it was tough to make a call on which one should be on this list. But I choose Brazil because it's a lot less well-known compared to The Apartment. And really nails the mania that seems to take over people as Christmas gets closer and closer and how life just gets kind of weird for a couple weeks. My favorite thing might be the pointless "executive" gifts that Sam keeps encountering. But then there's just how you can be told "Happy Christmas" and "You're going to die" in the same breath in the world of Brazil. With the same amount of apathy.

Four Out of Ten

This is not a Doctor Who-related post.

In the past week, I have injured four fingers. And one of those four has been injured twice.

And when I say "injured", I don't mean anything severe like breaking a finger. But I have bled a decent amount in the past week.

I burned a knuckle making a hot breakfast. It blistered and then scabbed, and due to it being on the knuckle, the scab keeps opening despite how I keep putting Neosporin and coconut oil on it.

A similar looking injury is on the upper knuckle of a finger on my other hand. I wasn't paying attention to wear my hand was and a co-worker ended up slamming a drawer closed on my finger. I played it off as nothing until it started bleeding on items I was wrapping. I'm just thankful that it didn't blacken the nail bed, as the whole upper portion of that finger was smashed but only the knuckle shows any signs of it. This scab also keeps opening- much more than the burn, in fact.

That same finger was scratched a few days later at the base. I can't remember what did it, at this point, but I remember it being something that I didn't think could scratch me.

The third was pinched in the flush knob of a toilet at my office. I have never run so quickly to disinfect an open wound in my life.

The last injury was on the same day, from a sharp corner of a metal cart. Again, something I didn't expect to cut me. Again, I raced to find a first aid kit to disinfect the cut, as I have no idea where that cart had been.

And, in all these injuries, I have come to the conclusion that adhesive bandage technology sucks. At first, I thought it was just my Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bandages being cheap (although, seriously, the artistic design of the TMNT bandages is AMAZING. The one pictured above is basically a design of Michelangelo photo-bombing the design on the one end- so that you can wrap a finger with the pad on the pad of your finger and have Mikey on the front of your finger. It's fantastic). But I have gone through so many bandages this week to keep from grossing people out and not a single one has lasted a full day. And it's barely a couple hours if I put Neosporin on under the bandage.

Why can't these things freakin' stick?