CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER’S POINT is a movie that I heard about last Christmas but it wasn’t on video yet. Some people were really flipping for it and that’s really all I knew about it, so I checked it out when I saw it was on blu-ray this week.
I think what they were responding to is that it’s very old school in many ways: beautiful cinematography, big ensemble cast of mostly unfamiliar faces who seem very natural, an emphasis on characters and moments over any sort of plot, a shockingly low amount of conflict. It’s about a huge family get-together and involves multiple age groups but the movie it most reminds me of is AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Probly not coincidentally the cast features a couple children of George Lucas’s friends (Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg).
Of course, that led to a horrifying realization that AMERICAN GRAFFITI was set 11 years before the time of its release, while this is set sometime in the aughts, so it’s more like 20 years ago, but doesn’t seem like it. The biggest differences are flip phones and one family still has a station wagon with faux-wood paneling. It kinda feels timeless though because the music is much older and the fashions aren’t very aggressive. It could almost be five years ago, or thirty, or forty. (read the rest of this shit…)
