Moving Pictures

Belcourt Theatre’s Holiday Classics program is a stocking stuffed with surprising seasonal cinema

By Joe Nolan

In December, the Belcourt Theatre is opening its Holiday Classics series with a sprawling slate of 17 films that vary from the best Christmas movie of all time to a frosty flick that features more Satan than Santa. Here are the highlights:

Dial Code Santa Claus finds Thomas at home with his grandfather while Thomas’ mom is working late at the office on Christmas Eve. Thomas is French, but he’s a lot like American kids in the 1980s: He loves computers and role-playing games and his trusty pooch, but all of the kid stuff gets interrupted when a mania cal Santa bounds down the chimney. Thomas is forced to vanquish the Creepy Kringle with nothing but an arsenal of toys and all the wits an inventive little nerd can muster. This description might remind you of Home Alone, but Dial Code Santa Claus (aka 36.15 code Père Noël) was released a year before Kevin took on the Wet Bandits, and it opens the Belcourt’s Holiday Classics series with more fake blood and Rambo references than we ever got from White Christmas Dial Code Santa Claus is the Midnight Movie at the Belcourt Theatre this Friday night, Dec. 9.

Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia’s second film features a priest, a record store clerk and a TV psychic doing battle with the antichrist. And even though this sounds like the set-up for a dumb joke, Screen Anarchy called Day of the Beast “a classic of modern Spanish cinema.” What does all of this have to do with Christ mas? Well, the Antichrist is going to be born on Christmas Eve, of course. Iglesia decks all this seasonal blasphemy with his signature dark comedic style, and won six Goya Awards for being Satan’s — I mean Santa’s — very best boy. Day of the Beast is the Midnight Movie at the Belcourt Theatre this Saturday night, Dec. 10.

The Fly is David Cronenberg’s best film. That said, Eastern Promises is my pick for runner-up. Eastern Promises is one of the great gangster flicks, and somewhere between the tattoos, gloomy London vibes, Russian accents and naked bath house knife fighting, this is also a movie about that bittersweet yearning for home and family that’s unique to winter the holidays.

Let Eastern Promises shine down upon you like a solstice sun when it screens at the Belcourt Theatre on Wednesday, Dec. 21.

It’s a Wonderful Life is the best film of all time. It’s also the best Christmas film of all time. Weep at the wonder of moving images synced to sound this holiday season. See It’s a Wonderful Life at the Belcourt Theatre Tuesday, Dec. 20 – Sunday, Dec. 25.

This holiday series extends beyond Christ mas into the run-up to New Year’s Eve when it all comes to a chaotic end with Klaus Kinski and a terrified monkey stalking a sinking raft in a mad reverie of tyrannical reigns and incestuous dynasties. I don’t remember Nat King Cole singing this verse. Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God boasts some of the best opening and ending sequences in all of movies, and this bonkers story features an incendiary title character turn from Kinski who once wrote and performed a one-man show in which he cast himself as a modern Jesus Christ (“Jesus Christ Savior”). Stare maniacally at Aguirre: The Wrath of God when it plays at the Belcourt Theatre on Wednesday, Dec. 28.

Read about the rest of the titles in this inventive holiday series, and find times and tickets at www.belcourt.org

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/ songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.