It might not officially be The 12 Days of Christmas, but FILM IN WORDS will still fill your festive viewing schedule with cheer. From beloved movies that have become an irreplaceable holiday tradition to cult and lesser known Xmas cuts that promise to subvert and haunt your holidays, there’s something for everyone all the way up to Christmas Eve.
Words: Brody Rossiter
Twitter: @BrodyRossiter
LIFE BEGINS AT 3AM
Christmas is a time for family, a time for giving, a holy time filled with self-reflection, and for many, a time for getting completely and utterly fucked up. Electing to tell its tale of youthful hedonism and debauchery from three different perspectives, 1999’s Go follows a group of twentysomethings through the wildest Christmas Eve of their lives.
When broke checkout girl Ronna (Sarah Polley) agrees to cover the shift of her impulsive drug dealing colleague, she ends up taking more than his hours and finds herself buying ecstasy in bulk from dubious old acquaintance, Todd (Timothy Olyphant). Simon journeys to Vegas with his dude bro buddies for a night of gambling, tantric sex and all you can eat shrimp, but soon finds himself in a stolen Ferrari being chased by strip club mobsters. Finally, soap opera actors Adam and Zack engage in a murderous game of entrapment with LA cop Burke (William Fichtner) after finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.
With its frantic editing, Dutch angles and sharp dialogue, Go powers through the substance filled night with a potent sense of urgency, balancing violent, visceral shocks, late-nineties beats, and chaotic set-pieces with a sense of style familiar to Swingers director Doug Liman.
As the night begins to unravel and Go’s cast of characters become more desperate, unhinged or furiously vengeful, the picture’s interweaving narratives form one big, morally ugly collage of sex, crime and narrow escapes. Darkly comedic, boasting a brilliantly nostalgic soundtrack of nineties hits and bearing a strong and diverse cast including Katie Holmes, Taye Diggs and Jay Mohr, Go is a Christmas adventure that’s strictly for adults, even if they do behave like drug-addled teenagers.
