What's The Matter With Kansas: The Ice Harvest

This perverse Dickensian tale has the makings of a modern day Christmas classic: a morality play gone awry in almost too many ways to count, with a Scrooge who realizes that even if he's generous, the bank account's still full. There's Christmas past, present and future, all rolled into one icy rainstorm as a Benz whisks Cusack from tense to tense.

If it sounds like another maudlin Christmas movie to you and if you've had enough of The Christmas Story to last a lifetime, consider this: Cusack plays a mob lawyer involved in a "perfect crime," partnered with Billy Bob Thornton as the muscle guy with motivation. Set in Kansas, we're made aware of the contradictions at play; you can almost hear Sen. Brownback chiding his congregation, ahem, constituency against the evils portrayed herein. This is the other Kansas - one that was left behind as rock 'n' roll moved out of Kansas City for Detroit, New York and Los Angeles. The political ambiguity still allows for a critique of greed and hypocrisy, something Daniel Kasman notes in his review.

Ramis returns to a familiar theme: small town claustrophobia. But unlike Groundhog Day, the danger in Wichita Falls is as palpable as it is inevitable. As Cusack skirts the cops and his would-be killer, we learn how desperate everyone is to escape; think of a thousand toasters dropped into a thousand bathtubs in the name of existential freedom. But for Cusack and his company, there are no easy outs.

If The Pardoner's Tale were a Christmas comedy or Groundhog Day a noir soaked in rain and bourbon, then The Ice Harvest would be a brown paper bag waiting for you Christmas morning beneath the tree, decorated with blood red ribbon.