'A Christmas Story'

I'm watching it as I type.

I'm not going to pretend I'm something that I'm not: I enjoy a good film, but I am a low-down sucker for Christmas movies.

Ridicule all you want. But I'll start plugging in DVDs and watching TV specials right after Thanksgiving and re-watch until the day after Christmas.

"A Christmas Story" is one of my top 15 or so movies of all time, personally. The writing is impeccable. Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon give underrated performances. The way they shot it with the 1940s "soft" filter just tops it off.

I first watched it when I was nine or so. My Aunt Linda -- who died about a year or so ago -- was in town for Christmas, staying with us, and realizing I had never seen it thought I should and rented it. I enjoyed it, but it probably took another eight or so years before I would watch it again, when TBS plays it 24 hours straight around Christmas Day.

Since, I've probably watched it no less than 100 times. Probably closer to 150 times. That's a good estimate.

Each time, however, I see something new. Some detail like a facial expression, costume, the way a character delivers a line. I also try to nail down the exact year the film is set in. It's clearly the 1940s, but it has to be post-1945 because there would have to be allusions to the war.

Basically, we're chronicling a low- to middle-class family in a smallish city in the Midwest after the nation trudged through the Depression and through a war that basically changed the world.

It's interesting to me to think about these things: Placing a fictional story within some real historical context.