Romanian film review – Counting down to Christmas

After all the election-related turmoil of the past weeks, things are not much clearer but the mood is less agitated. Feels less frivolous now to seek some escapism and think of the holidays. I certainly couldn't focus much on films a week ago, much less writing about them, and now I can return to this column with less distractions and after more hours of sleep.

So here we go, a recommendation of movies you can catch in the days leading up to Christmas.

Bucharest is doing well, as usual. Cinema Elvire Popescu has a particularly good schedule for these weeks. Bogdan Mureșanu’s Anul Nou care n-a fost/ The New Year That Never Cameis still going strong after a very successful run in theatres, and with its focus on the Revolution of 1989 it is such a fitting show for December. I was happy to see Bogdan Theodor Olteanu’s Taximetriști screened again, a funny, irreverent ride through Bucharest at night, mostly set in (well) a taxi. Among the many Christmas releases, many of them for children, there is a classic with more bite, Charles Laughton’s fantastically dark, tense, much-quoted 1955 noir The Night of the Hunter. At the opposite scale of threat and doom, but no less clever, is another classic, and of my absolute all-time favourites, Ernst Lubitsch’s perfect Christmas rom-com The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Fun fact, it got remade in 1998 by Nora Ephron with You’ve Got Mail, a respectable pic in its own right, but the original is superior and superb, and Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan are the pairing of comedy dreams.

Cinema Europa is hosting weekends of holiday films. This one it’s a Harry Potter marathon while the next brings wholesome comfort classic and ultimate family pic Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947) and the mother of all Christmas action movies, John McTiernan’s 1988