Remembering the incredible — and incredibly ridiculous — controversy surrounding the 1984 release of Silent Night, Deadly Night, I’m wondering if the nary-a-peep outcry over 2022’s Violent Night is a sign that society has progressed or become desensitized. (I don’t have the answer.)

After all, whereas Silent Night’s slasher was merely a psycho killer disguised in a Santa suit, Violent Night casts David Harbour (TV’s Stranger Things) as the jolly, real-deal Claus. Instead of an ax, he wields a mighty sledgehammer. And ice skate blades. And a stocking stuffed with billiard balls. And candy canes sucked down to sharp, lethal points. You’ll poke your eye out!

No matter the weapon, it’s all for a good reason: With equal parts Die Hard and Home Alone, Santa’s defending a mansion of über-wealthy people against bad guys seeking the contents of the safe on Dec. 24. The have-nots are led by John Leguizamo (John Wick 2), while the haves’ balls-of-steel matriarch is Beverly D’Angelo, no doubt cast to upend expectations of her most visible role as the perfect wife of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

The setup is almost incidental, and Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) directs accordingly. To the film’s credit, it does not take the first word of its title lightly; the punishment Santa doles out is gruesome and graphic. It’d be nihilistic if not for Violent Night also being a self-parody. Having a puking-drunk, public-urinating, F-bomb-dropping, skull-crushing Santa as a hero is no surefire audience-rouser, but with Harbour bringing the slovenly, beer-bellied elements of his Emmy-nommed Chief Hopper character to the table, his sardonic take works like a charm. —Rod Lott

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Dear Santa,

What I really want for Christmas is a new drone. One with a camera and that goes real real fast.

If you get me this drone, I will be very very happy. I will make a movie with it. It will be about an ambulance that gets taken by bank robbers and is chased all over Los Angeles by the police cars and helicopters. I might even call the movie Ambulance. Maybe I will get a big star like Jake Jillinhall Gillinhall Gillenhal G. to star in it. He’s good!

I could use the drone to do lots and lots of cool camera tricks. It could swoop down streets real real fast or hover over their heads. I might even want to use it like in normal shots where the people who make real movies wouldn’t use it. Maybe if I make those shots super duper quick like a split second, no one will know.

But mostly I just want to use the drone a lot! I really really want people to watch my movie and then say “Hey he got a new drone!”

So please please bring me that drone. I gave you half an Oreo.

Your friend,
Mikey Bay

—Rod Lott

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Moonraker is the James Bond movie I hated as a kid because it wasn’t Star Wars enough. Today, I like it for the same reason.

Coming right smack in the middle of Roger Moore’s roguish run of seven 007s, this adventure tasks Bond with locating an American space shuttle reportedly hijacked while in flight. In his way are giant-sized foe Jaws (Richard Kiel, back from The Spy Who Loved Me) and bearded kazillionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale, The Day of the Jackal), who looks like a Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces toy guise come to life; in his bed is the delectable Lois Chiles (Creepshow 2) as CIA scientist Dr. Holly Phenomenalblowjob Goodhead.

The third and final Bond for director Lewis Gilbert, Moonraker has much to recommend, starting with the cold open’s airborne tussle while plummeting from a plane. From there, one can rely on the nauseating centrifuge sequence, the fight atop cable cars, a musical wink to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a boat chase, Bond’s struggle with a massive python and Q’s exploding balls. On the flipside, the film also boasts a ridiculous gondola pursuit that goes too far over the top by venturing out of water, a pointless Magnificent Seven parody and, ironically, nearly all the scenes in outer space.

Famously, For Your Eyes Only was announced as the next 007 outing in The Spy Who Loved Me’s closing credits, until Star Wars’ stellar success convinced producer Albert R. Broccoli to postpone for a cash-grabbing trip to space. While that worked for the box office, it doesn’t gel well in a movie that does just fine on terra firma; a sense of cohesion suffers. Turns out, in Her Majesty’s secret universe, lasers belong in one spot and one spot only: nearing Sean Connery’s crotch. —Rod Lott

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Having worked on both sides of the camera for H.B. Halicki’s pioneering hicksploitation indie, 1974’s Gone in 60 Seconds, perhaps Jack Vacek thought he could do that, too. And he did, editing, producing, writing, directing, stunting and starring as Smokey in Double Nickels (as in 55, which some can’t drive, but you got that).

Smokey and partner Ed (Edward Abrahms, also of 60 Seconds) work as California highway patrolmen. For a while, Double Nickels plays aimlessly, like a slice-of-life account of their day as they pluck ukeleles, play pinball and pursue a speeding motorcycle, dune buggy and truck — the latter straight through a watermelon stand. Then one traffic stop yields a unique opportunity that changes the movie’s course: a side hustle of repossessing cars. Smokey and Ed sign up, leading to more scenes of someone saying, “That’s my car!” than the silver screen has ever witnessed.

What they realize too late is the job isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, legally speaking; they’ve been working for a criminal enterprise! Cue the big chase finale, as Smokey tears through a swap meet, a fireworks stand, a public park and, presumably post-credits, his best girl’s tube top. (Patrice Schubert, aka Mrs. Vacek, plays said best girl.)

From today’s perspective, Vacek exudes big Dax Shepard energy and likability — and looks similar, too, which is extra-ironic, given that the comedian would be behind the wheel of his own star vehicles (literally) some 35 to 40 years later with Hit & Run and CHiPs. As such, Double Nickels coasts on a laid-back, we’re-all-family vibe, even in pulse-quickening, stunt-heavy action sequences that appear to put extras closer to real danger than union shoots would allow. When you have that in surplus, being light on plot matters not.

On the funometer, Double Nickels easily clears 85. Make some “vroom” in your viewing schedule. —Rod Lott

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On my iMac, the F9 key operates as a fast-forward button. For F9, this function is apt. Among the increasingly less fun globetrotting adventures of the clutch-burning covert-ops heroes, this is the franchise’s least-engaging entry since the fourth, 2009’s Fast & Furious. In these films’ ever-widening world, there’s nothing a popped can of nitrous can’t fix … except boredom.

Marking the return of Justin Lin (parts 3-6) to the director’s chair, F9 finds Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and several others getting the gang back together after receiving a distress signal from the downed plane of their government agent pal (Kurt Russell). In the crash, imprisoned terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron in an unflattering bowl cut) escaped. She’s working with a new bad guy who happens to be Dom’s long-lost brother, Jakob (John Cena), to find both halves of a device that, once assembled, is some kind of super weapon; apart, the pieces look like Rubik’s Turtle Shell, if such a 3D puzzle existed.

From a chase through a mine-strewn jungle to a chase with a magnetic truck (which would be more entertaining if Michael Bay’s 6 Underground hadn’t already used a similar gimmick), the set pieces show Team Toretto continues to have the most extraordinary luck around. Its members not only defy the laws of gravity, but rewrite all scientific rules, causing stakes to dissipate. I know it’s “just a movie,” but having a meta scene comment on their apparent indestructibility does not excuse lazy screenwriting. Equally apathetic is the brushed-off “explanation” of the resurrection of fan favorite Han (Sung Kang), who “died” in film 3, The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Since Han is not the first “JK, I’m alive” character, the exercise steers F9 closer to soap opera.

Like a soap, F9 is overstuffed with wholly extraneous scenes dragging the pace (sorry, Helen Mirren and Cardi B), none begging for excision more than Dom’s origin story, which no one needs. Nearly two and a half hours are filled with so many characters and callbacks, it feels like Lin assumes viewers have seen all the previous movies and watch little else than the repeats on CMT.

As was the case for the previous film, The Fate of the Furious, in trying to top each successive sequel, F9 becomes the victim of its own excess. What’s wrong with aiming to make a movie as good as the one before it rather than attempt to go bigger? Once you’ve traveled to space, as Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson do here in the third (or fifth?) act, you’re too far gone to realize you jumped the shark miles ago. —Rod Lott

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