Scrooged

 This is, for me, one of Bill Murray's best performances, even though it is unhinged.  He plays a network executive who is clearly unhappy with the choices he has made, and through the magic of Christmas he is visited by three ghosts like in a Christmas Carol.  It is a retelling of it, but one that is more modern, and still firm set in the greed is good era of the 1980s.  This film came out when I was eleven, and I think my parents picked up a VHS copy shortly after.  I wanted to watch a Christmas movie with my kids, and they didn't want to watch Gremlins for some reason, so I chose this one.  I remember every little detail, and the practical effects are amazing.  The rotting corpse whose arm gets torn off is still creepy today.  It's a  pretty dark Christmas film, which leads to me to wonder why were the films of my childhood a bit dark, and now films for children are so antiseptic? 

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