Get Santa

Santa's travels have led him on many a wild-eyed adventurous path, perhaps none so ritualistically disastrous as that trod in the feisty Get Santa.

Within, after accidentally encountering a grounding immobilized malignant encumbrance, he finds himself struggling to locate his cherished reindeer who have erratically dispersed throughout byzantine London.

He seeks to enlist the aid of a troubled soul just released from prison, but his bewildering roundabout strategy sees him scandalously incarcerated instead.

Unaccustomed to prison life, he awkwardly attempts to be disconcerting, but his natural magnanimous innocence ethereally precludes any bellicose mischief.

Meanwhile, the ex-con on parole (Rafe Spall) must help the legend escape, and with the aid and encouragement of his loving son (Kit Connor as Tom), sets about trying to zero-in on the flatulent beasties.

It's a rather complicated procedure considering the number of laws they must violate, on his first day of parole no less, the authorities unsympathetic and unamused.

And just as they reach fabled Elf City and find a new sleigh to break Santa loose, he's suddenly placed back in his cell, and must prepare to be transferred to another prison.

How could such a sociocultural imbalance lead to so distressing an incongruity, as one globally revered for earnest generosity can't enchantingly negotiate spiritual quarter?

As if during that grouchy year the Christmas spirit plunged to unprecedented depths, leaving the habitually wondrous and animately endowed with little recourse for upbeat revelling.

Get Santa captures the inherent disillusionment with woebegone unimpressed adamant criticism, while mischievously celebrating improvised conjuring along with lithe constitutional forgiveness.

In terms of its comedic vocation, the grizzly gaseous go-daddy gallows, maddeningly matriculate maladroit mayhem, with a classic salute to prognostic defiance. 

Seriously, it makes it seem like Santa (Jim Broadbent) has no chance of escape whatsoever, and lays the impossibility on super thick, while still engaging in traditional shenanigans. 

I immediately spotted the Michael Corleone pastiche and thought perhaps it was somewhat ill-suited to the season (the actual scene hails intense violence and heralds the emergence of an intelligent yet ruthless survivalist), but how can I not be forgiving at times such as these, especially when Get Santa fits so well with the '90s.

Classic goodwill and exceptional endeavours oddly uphold this offbeat Christmas romp.

As convincingly touching as many Christmas classics.

High stakes hi-jinx, convivial distaste. 

License to Drive

The unyielding desire to get out and drive, to head out on the road, to deck out your ride.

It motivates Les Anderson (Corey Haim) in Greg Beeman's License to Drive, who has yet to obtain his driver's license, yet boldly seeks to apply himself vehicularly, and then drive his eager friends around town.

A car is available should he pass the crucial test, and Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) has agreed to date him, having just broken up with her conceited boyfriend (M.A Nickles as Paolo), whose chauvinism was rather enraging.

There's just one problem.

Perhaps several problems.

Les falls asleep during driver's ed class and fails to acquire vital tidbits of information, which leads to him failing the written portion of his exam, since he's unable to guess the right answers.

But as fate would have it, the computers suddenly break down, his results remaining unknown, and since his twin sister (Nina Siemaszko as Natalie Anderson) passed beforehand, he's given encouraging motivation.

He passes the in-car portion of the exam under unorthodox forbidding circumstances, and returns to the examination centre full of upbeat pluck and resolve.

But his written results have been retrieved, his newfound prosperity instantly nullified.

Yet he still has a date that evening.

And friends who rely upon him.

Trouble abounds after he steals his grandfather's (Parley Baer) Caddy and Mercedes drinks way too much.

But Corey Feldman and Charles (Michael Manasseri) show no hesitation: they're still up for a bombastic drive.

Ah well.

I was hoping for so much more from License to Drive. It didn't have much of a buzz when I was growing up, but there's so much from way back when that I'm sure I must have missed out on.

It's cool to see Corey Haim and Corey Feldman engaged in shenanigans again, and Heather Graham, Carol Kane (Mrs. Anderson), Richard Masur (Mr. Anderson), and James Avery (Les's DMV Examiner) make the most of it; there's no slouching in the face of spasticity.

It promotes driving and the urge to drive with driven adolescent wonder, and sets up a variety of traditional incidents which perhaps still widely resonate.

But protestors and activists are vilified, as are the minority boyfriends of its lasses, and drinking and driving is whitewashed, and I couldn't find a classic '80s moment.

Too high of an elevation of slacking, not enough respect for book smarts, it tries to take things to uninhibited extremes, without ever really kicking into gear.

Baby Driver

Split-second ingenious unassailable guiltless reflexes, instinctively classifying delicate improvisation, piquant extemporization, serpentine spontaneity, the driver, driving the getaway vehicle, atavistic awareness vigilantly circulating extractions, an unprecedented impresario envisioned in wild heartlands brake swerve accelerate, coordinate chaos with implicit clandestine credulity, pulsating pumping propulsive paved impertinence, irreducibly reacting, to unpredictable explosive larceny.

Mad skills.

Variably exercised.

Character driven.

Edgar Wright's Baby Driver's hilariously character driven, with Ansel Elgort (Baby), Lily James (Debora), Bats (Jamie Foxx), Buddy (Jon Hamm), Darling (Eiza González), Joseph (CJ Jones), Griff (Jon Bernthal), and Doc (Kevin Spacey) each chauffeuring full-throttle eccentricities that make said characters their own.

The well-thought-out creatively choreographed romantically comedic yet harrowingly hardboiled script (Wright) supplies them with ample maneuverability.

In fact I'd argue this is Wright's best film.

There are two notable oppositions within that reflect different intellectual styles.

Baby and Doc's youthful and aged conversations provide the film with an executive frame as they reticently interact, Doc's nephew Samm (Brogan Hall) brilliantly expanding one of their sequences, while Bats and Buddy concurrently represent clever tenacious earnest hard work, as they durably discuss various subjects between jobs.

Nice to see Jamie Foxx rockin' it again.

Doc heartbreakingly embraces romance in the end, risking everything to aid young Baby and Debora as they wildly set off to matriculate on the run.

I've been focusing on the criminal nature of the film but it's also a warmblooded romance.

Baby owes Doc a large sum of money that he's been slowly paying off for some time.

He meets Debora at the diner where his deceased mom used to work and they hit it off, young adult love at its most endearing, hesitantly tender and shyly enthusiastic.

Since he engages in illicit activities quite frequently, however, the nogoodniks eventually terrorize their sanctuary, especially after they craft plans to escape, which unconsciously precipitate embroiled maturations.

Excellent film that's patiently yet boisterously detailed, the dedicated caregiving, the musical artistry, the Mike Myers gag, the paradoxical sense of coerced altruism, the relaxed quiet dignity, the wanton perplexed angst.

Realistic reverberations.

Sweet sweet summertime.

Breezy.