Ah, Christmas. The most wonderful—and heartburn-inducing—holiday of the year, there is a whole panoply of fine cinematic treasures about the Yuletide season. I’m not talking about heartwarming films like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or WHITE CHRISTMAS, either; no, we’re talking GREMLINS or NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION or, hee hee, BAD SANTA. But, the one that warms the most cockles in this reviewer’s heart is the 1994 gem THE REF, one of the best examples of a family sort of uniting in the face of incompetent adversity ever put to celluloid.
It’s Christmas in Connecticut, and most of the respectable citizenry is either on vacation somewhere warm or snuggled up inside, celebrating the season. This august company, however, doesn’t include long-married couple Lloyd (Kevin Spacey) and Caroline Chasseur (Judy Davis), who are working on a decade or more of bitter and resentful (but funny) sparring. After burning through yet another marriage counselor, they stop at a grocery store to get ready for Christmas dinner, where Caroline meets up with Gus (Denis Leary), who is having his own brand of hell this Christmas Eve. Gus is a thief, a not-too-shabby one, who nonetheless has run afoul of a bizarre security setup that has left him limping from a dog bite, smelling like cat piss and separated from his dumb-ass partner Murray (Richard Bright), who panicked at the first sight of … well, anyone. Gus has the loot, but no ride out of town, and with the police blocking all the roads, what’s a self-respecting thief to do? If you said take Lloyd and Caroline hostage, you’ve probably seen the film.
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried has a joke about meeting aliens and their big question for the human race was, “Ben Gazzara is good actor, shouldn’t he have a better career?” With that in mind, this is a list of my “Ben Gazzaras”, great actors and one actress who did great movies but should have had better careers.
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LOU GOSSETT JR.
I know he won an Oscar. We all know that. The issue is why didn’t he get the roles that are now going to Morgan Freeman and Charles S. Dutton off of that win. AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN is fine, if a bit dated, as a love story. That movie got Richard Gere leading roles for the next fifteen years. Lou was in two great, if underappreciated movies after that- THE PRINCIPAL and DIGGSTOWN. But after that? It’s all TV guest spots, voice over and IRON EAGLE sequels. Honey Roy Palmer deserved better.
Check out the rest of the list inside!