St Nick's holiday blues

Billy Bob Thornton is a very Bad Santa.
Metro10 April 2012

Billy Bob Thornton is a smoking, swearing, drunkard loser in a red suit on Bad Santa, Tom Cruise is battling aliens in War of the Worlds and Silver City provides smart entertainment and a sophisticated take on American politics...

Bad Santa
****
For those who hate Christmas, Bad Santa is pure, unadulterated Yuletide pleasure. Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is a smoking, swearing, drunkard loser who gets rigged up in a red suit each festive season in order to rob department stores with the help of mouthy dwarf Marcus (Tony Cox), until the combined efforts of a pretty Santa fetishist and a dopey fat kid (Brett Kelly) begin to give his life a little meaning. Made by Terry (Ghost World) Zwigoff from an idea by the Coen brothers, Bad Santa never gives in to Hollywood cheesiness: if Willie is marginally happier at the end of the film, it's not really much progress. It's not the rude words or foul behaviour that make this film but the scalpel-sharp script - and Thornton's ability to somehow be loveable and a sleazeball dirtbag at the same time.
Extras: Featurette and rather unexciting outtakes.

Phantasm
****
If you're a big fan (or 'Phan') of Phantasm, odds are you first trembled at it from behind a sofa at a non-BBFC-appropriate age. Because - let's face it - in terms of pacing and performance, the films aren't much cop. Yet, seen as an adult, Don Coscarelli's surreal, supernatural saga still prickles the imagination with genius, near-Lynchian scares: The Tall Man undertaker, the dwarf slaves, the blood-soaked ice cream van - nightmare images that stick deeper than its flying, razor-pronged spheres. And if this five-disc set isn't enough, there's another edition sheathed in a facsimile of said sphere: heck, when something looks this shiny on the shelf, you don't actually have to watch the whole thing.
Extras: Brill bonus disc zinging with Phantasmagoria featurettes, tours and interviews.

War of the Worlds
****
Tom Cruise makes a much better family man on-screen than on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In Steven Spielberg's adaptation of HG Wells's sci-fi classic, War Of The Worlds, he's an irresponsible, divorced father who learns the joys and trials of fatherhood only when aliens take over New York and start pulverising Godfearing Americans. The special effects are brilliant but the terror of looming, destruction-bent spaceships is lessened by the transition to the small screen. Cruise suits this kind of frazzled hero with an attitude problem perfectly - even though mini scream queen Dakota Fanning, playing his daughter, acts him off the screen.
Extras: Loads, as this is a special edition: production diaries, photo gallery and docs about everything from Wells's legacy to the scoring of the film.

Silver City
****
John Sayles is a committed Democrat but even the trials of the past five years haven't tainted his sense of humour. The sheer idiocy and malevolence of America's current first family makes it into this writer-director's Silver City, the story of a powerful family intent on dominance - and the small guy trying to undermine them. Chris Cooper is Dickie Pilager, the bumbling son of a powerful family whose senatorial campaign is disrupted by the discovery of a body - and it would be hard to wish for a more cruel impression of George W Bush. Danny Huston is a washed-up journo whose crusading spirit is revived by the Pilagers' pillaging. This is smart entertainment and a sophisticated take on American politics.
Extras: Interviews and a making-of documentary.

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