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Guilty Pleasures

• Amélie - if you step back and look at it, it's a pretty gooey, sentimental theme: sad, lonely (beautiful) woman works to make others happy and in so doing finds happiness.  But as done by Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Jeunet and Charo, the twisted minds responsible for Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, it's just so beautiful to look at, and with enough quirky and even sinister moments (what is going on in that ghost-train ride?) that it makes up for it in spades.  It even gets away with using the Vacationing Gnome theme about ten years past its sell-by date.  I defy anyone to dislike this film - even my mother liked it!
• Bad Santa - another feel-good movie, redeemed by being relentlessly cynical and unremittingly foul-mouthed.  Billy-Bob Thornton has never been better, Bernie Mac is excellent as always, and Jon Ritter steals every scene he's in in his last movie.  See it on Christmas Eve, preferably in Arizona.
  
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch - how can you like films made by Madonna's less-talented husband?  Well, guiltily.  I actually saw Snatch first, and enjoyed it enough to try out LS2SB.  Yes, these are Lads' movies.  I think there's about one female character in each (in both cases, appearing briefly to wield serious firepower) and the dialogue clearly owes a debt to Tarantino.  And they use that goingveryveryfast and then s u d d e n l y v e r y s l o w l y thing that you see in every commercial to excess.  But hell, they're never boring, and often funny, and that's good enough for me.  And I remember Vinnie Jones when he helped bring Leeds United back from the then Second Division, so I'll always have a soft spot for him.  And Snatch includes the ONLY role in which Brad Pitt is not only bearable, but actually likeable.  Seriously.
  

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