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Under discussion:

The Bank Dick  (1940)

Brother's Keeper  (1992)

Chinatown  (1974)

The Godfather  (1972)

The Godfather Part II  (1974)

The Godfather Part III  (1990)

Grey Gardens  (1975)

Overboard  (1987)

Pather Panchali  (1955)

The Pharmacist  (1932)

Pink Flamingos  (1972)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  (1974)

You Can't Take It with You  (1938)

Spanking the Monkey  (1994)

Mother India  (1957)

Crumb  (1995)

The Funeral  (1996)

Buffalo '66  (1998)

The Virgin Suicides  (2000)

The Royal Tenenbaums  (2001)

Capturing the Friedmans  (2003)

Eastern Promises  (2007)

The Beales of Grey Gardens  (2006)

Rachel Getting Married  (2008)

Four Christmases  (2008)

The holidays are coming, and that either means spending time with your dysfunctional family or escaping them for the movies … where you’re likely to be met by other, fictional dysfunctional families. Already this season, Rachel Getting Married introduced us to the f’ed up faux masala of the Buchman clan, and later this month we get to follow Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as they’re pulled into their separate quadrants of kin in Four Christmases. Also, for those who think dysfunction is an American tradition, this weekend sees the release of the French film A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), which unites the two major premises of dysfunctional family movies by being set during the holidays and involving an ill family member.

With two more weeks left until Thanksgiving, after which we might not want to think about another family, real or cinematic, for the rest of our lives, it’s a perfect time to celebrate those dysfunctional tribes we love the best. Literally thousands of movies feature such families, though, so we’re sure to have left out some of your favorites. Definitely chime in below, and/or join the discussion currently going on over in our Top 5 group.

The Corleones in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III

Any film about a family business is sure to qualify, but none exhibit more dysfunction than those in which the business is the mafia. Some other good examples include the Tempios of The Funeral and the Russian clan in Eastern Promises. But there’s no doubt that the Corleones take the cake. Maybe it’s Fredo’s fault, because inspiring fratricide is certainly evidence of a failing family. No, the Corleones are dysfunctional from the time Fredo and his siblings are little children, when Vito enters his family into a life of crime, from which none of its members will be able to escape.

The “Johnsons” in Pink Flamingos

If you only define dysfunctional as non-functioning, you leave out a great number of truly dysfunctional families, the kind that apparently gets along quite fine on their own but which doesn’t function within society. Think the Hewitts in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and the motley crew made up of Sycamores, Vanderhofs, Carmichaels and others in You Can’t Take it With You. Technically the “Johnsons” are an internally functioning group, and they even have an official place in society as “the filtiest people alive,” but with a shit-eating matriarch, an egg-obsessed granny and a son who likes to have sex employing live chickens, it doesn’t really get much more abnormal, and therefore dysfunctional, than this family.

The Lisbons in The Virgin Suicides

Both abnormal and non-functioning, it also doesn’t get much more dysfunctional than a family in which the kids commit collective suicide (well, one of them started the trend early).

The Tenenbaums in The Royal Tenenbaums

They’re clearly born out of Salinger’s Glass family, and their situation is so common that A Christmas Tale almost seems like a French remake of the Wes Anderson’s movie. But the Tenenbaums have come to be one of the most beloved dysfunctional families in cinema, so it’d be a crime to leave them off this list. They’re so popular that many fans probably wouldn’t mind having such an asshole for a father as long as they got to be a member of the family, similar to the dreams of outsider Eli Cash (Owen Wilson). Also, there are probably some guys out there who dream of having Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) as a non-blood-related sister — as long as she’s really into making out with adopted-family siblings.

The Aibellis in Spanking the Monkey

Non-blood-related “incest” is one thing, but the Tenenbaums have nothing on the dysfunction of the Aibellis, with their motherloving son, Ray (Jeremy Davies), and the disturbingly consentual — though alcohol-induced — sex that occurs one awkward summer. The only incestuous family that might actually be more dysfunctional is the Cross clan of Chinatown.

The Proffitts in Overboard

The movie’s tone allows it to seem like such an innocently fun premise, but imagine a family in real life that would kidnap and exploit an amnesiac woman the way Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell) and his four sons do. And imagine the woman who escapes this situation only to return in a Stockholm syndrome-as-happy-ending decision. Not only is it immoral, illegal and unlikely, it’s highly dysfunctional.

The Crumbs in Crumb

Dysfunctional families are obviously not limited to fiction, so it’s necessary to cite at least one documentary. Again, it’s difficult to narrow down. There are the scandal-stricken Friedmans of Capturing the Friedmans, the daffy duo in Grey Gardens (and The Beales of Grey Gardens) and the fraternal foursome of Brother’s Keeper. But it’s comic artist R. Crumb’s family that comes off as the most interestingly screwed up. Equally expected and revealing for a man of Crumb’s odd nature, reclusive brother Charles, bowel-cleansing Maxon and uncomfortable mother Beatrice are almost too strange to believe real.

The Browns in Buffalo ‘66

Dysfunctional family movies often peak with their respective dinner scenes, in which uncomfortable announcements are made or food is thrown or climactic fights occur. None are funnier, however, than the reunion meal between Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) and his unloving parents (Angelica Huston and Ben Gazzara). Mom ignores her son in order to watch football while Dad mostly hits on Billy’s pretend wife (Christina Ricci).

The Dilwegs in The Pharmacist

W.C. Fields has given us a few of the funniest dysfunctional families in film, and many fans would quickly reference the Sousés from The Bank Dick as his greatest tribe. But its this family from Fields’ earlier short The Pharmacist that should come to mind first, if only thanks to the daughter who shakes a martini with a pogo stick and eats the family pet after being denied supper.

Radha’s family in Mother India

The entire genre of melodrama offers up worthy selections for this list, but Bollywood arguably makes the most dysfunctional family melodramas of all, perhaps because a lot of them are meant as allegories for the dysfunctions of the Indian subcontinent. Mother India is possibly the most significant example from Indian cinema, even more than monumental films like Pather Panchali that aren’t of the Bollywood tradition. The film has all the necessary components: the metaphorically castrated and eventually abandoning patriarch; the desperate yet enduring matriarch; the sons who follow paths on separate side of the law. There’s even a familial sacrifice that’s comparable to the one in The Godfather Part II.

Under discussion:

Adam Resurrected  (2008)

Juno  (2007)

Slumdog Millionaire  (2008)

This review originally appeared during the Telluride Film Festival. Slumdog Millionaire opens in select markets tomorrow.

Danny Boyle’s latest offering, Slumdog Millionaire, is generating a fair amount of buzz here at Telluride. Not unlike last year’s Juno, the film showed up in one of the mysterious TBA slots, delighting audiences made weary by a slate of good but somewhat depressing films, such as Hunger, Waltz with Bashir and Adam Resurrected. Slumdog Millionaire follows the story of Jamal Malik, an unlikely winner of India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Jamal, his brother Samir, and fellow orphan Latika, manage to survive an almost absurd number of scrapes, the memory of each one coincidentally providing Jamal with answers to the game show questions. The film is big, fast, fun, and colorful, but ultimately a mess.

The hyperactive structure of the film is born out of the life experience-equals-game-show-answer formula. The first scene shows Jamal being tortured by police who suspect him of cheating, unable to believe that a “slumdog” orphan could know the answers to all those trivia questions. Jamal insists he really did know the answers, and the suddenly sympathetic cops disconnect the electrodes from his toes and decide to let him explain further as they watch a tape of the show. The one-two punch of crazy slum story providing an unlikely memory that later serves as a trivia answer becomes apparent very quickly, and never deviates through the entire film. This structure might have worked, but here it feels contrived and repetitive. The pace of the film is frantic, some of the flashbacks have comic merit, but by the third or fourth musical montage, it all feels too hectic and sloppy, especially considering the rigid and somewhat boring structure upon which the film is built.

People have been praising the performances in the film, and with the exception of the child actors and Bollywood veteran Anil Kapoor, I’m bewildered by this. Dev Patel’s Jamal is passable at best. He’s sympathetic, but most of the film he looks plainly dumbfounded at his own impossible luck. He gives us no real reason to care for him other than the fact that he’s a basically good person, and he’s in love.

The love story, seen by many to be central to the film, is sorely lacking. Jamal and Latika meet because they are both orphans, she’s first allowed to run with Jamal and Samir out of pity. The brothers loose track of Latika, only to later rescue her from forced prostitution. The would-be lovers are again pulled apart when Samir, who has turned to a life of crime, forces her to become a part of his crime lord’s harem. Jamal’s impetus for being on the game show, and his motivation to continue his stellar run, turns out to not be about money at all, but rather to get on TV in hopes that Latika, where ever she is, will see him. Sure enough, she does, and with the help of an inexplicably reformed Samir, she escapes the harem to find Jamal, her one true love. It’s the kind of shallow love story that plagues many Hollywood films.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a “love conquers all” philosophy propping up a film, but the whole thing collapses if that love doesn’t feel genuine. Freida Pinto as Latika, like Patel’s performance, is so-so at best. The film is too crowded and busy to allow any chemistry to build between these two. Sure, they’ve helped each other out of crazy situations, but just because a fireman saved my life doesn’t mean I’d want to marry him. When Jamal emphatically claims that being with Latika is their “destiny,” we’re forced to take his word for it.

Some will say that many of my issues with the film are due to the fact that I’m not seeing it as Boyle’s homage to Bollywood. While it’s true that the film is deeply indebted to the colorful and melodramatic musicals that are a mainstay of Indian culture, I don’t think the film holds up even under this reading. The key problem goes back to the lead actors’ performances. Great Bollywood players are not naturalistic by any means, they are exaggerated, playful, and incredibly charismatic. It seems like Boyle couldn’t decide which way he wanted Patel and Pinto to play it. Should they be overly theatrical to match the color and up-tempo editing? Or should they play it more realistically, two normal people brought together by extraordinary circumstances? In the end they do neither.

Slumdog Millionaire is not without merit. It’s nothing if not an ambitious film, and certain scenes do work well. But ultimately it’s an annoying cacophony atop a predictable structure.

Under discussion:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day  (1991)

The Matrix  (1999)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines  (2003)

The Matrix Revolutions  (2003)

Terminator Salvation  (2009)

City of Ember  (2008)

Terminator Salvation, due in May of next year, stars Christian Bale as John Conner. The film will be a quasi-reboot of the series, picking up after the machines have destroyed civilization and Conner is leading a small band of survivors in a war against the machines. The following is an open letter to McG, the director of the film.

Dear McG,

Lots of people have been talking about your new movie this week. Several sites have posted some leaked material featuring the work of production designer Martin Laing. Many sites had a behind the scenes featurette with Laing and a gallery of concept art, most of which were taken down at the request of the studio. One of the only ones to survive at time of this writing is on io9. Ain’t it Cool News reported that while James Cameron did not have a hear-to-heart with you, as you claimed in July, he still has high hopes for the film.

When I saw you at Comic-Con in July, I was very pleased with the early footage and what you and the cast had to say about the film. One thing you said was that you were interested in what we thought about the early images and the direction the film was heading. I hope it’s not too late, because I have a few suggestions.

First of all, bravo on hiring Martin Laing. This guy doesn’t have a huge list of credits, but his work on City of Ember was great, and the concepts for new the Terminators look really good. In the leaked featurette he seems very tuned in to the fact that this film takes place at a very particular time in the story line of the Terminator universe: after the nuclear holocaust, but before any machines are sent back in time to meddle with the Conners. So while the machines are really badass, they’re actually less advanced than Arnold’s T-800. Also, they have no need to be disguised as humans, so we’re treated to Terminators that take the form of motorcycles, snakes, and a huge Transformer-like behemoth called a Harvester.

While the images of these new (or is it old?) Terminators have me salivating, they also raise some concerns. I’d like to know that you’re going to avoid what I call The Matrix Revolutions Problem. The first Matrix was a great movie, the second one was alright, but The Matrix Revolutions was a steaming pile of crap. There are many reasons for this, but there are three I’d like to focus on here: One, the plot felt like it was on autopilot, the conflicts previously set up were being worked out without any convincing new conflicts being introduced. Two, the battle between the humans and the machines became epic to the point of feeling bloated and silly. Three, the Matrix sequels were completely inside the rabbit hole. Rather than being about the incursion of an fantastic reality upon the real world, they were fully immersed in that fantastic reality.

The first of these concerns, that the plot will feel locked in place, could be a real problem for the Terminator series because of the use of time travel. (Spoilers of the existing three Terminator films ahead.) We know that Kyle Reese has to survive up to the point where he’s sent back to save Sarah Conner and father John Conner. We also know that John Conner survives long enough to send him, that the machines will send three Terminators to kill the Conners, and that the resistance will send two Terminators to protect them. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines did show that the timeline can be altered, as Judgment Day was delayed from when it was originally predicted to happen. Also, Christian Bale’s line in the teaser trailer, “This isn’t the future my mother warned me about, I’m not sure if we can win this war,” indicates that you and the writers have realized this is a concern. My advice is this: If you have to amend the timeline, fine. The important thing is that a sense of urgency and dread permeates the film. The original films, especially the first two, succeeded because they created a tension between inevitability and resistance.

The second concern, that the need to one-up previous villains will make the new film outlandish, parallels the trouble the Matrix films encountered. The set-up of the first Matrix was so cool: you’re plugged into a machine, but you can free your mind and fight, and the machines send agents after you. Simple enough. But in the second and third films, we were introduced to computer viruses and architects and all kinds of complicating crap. All of which probably looked really good on paper, but when inserted into the movies they really just distracted from what was great about the first film, namely that technology is a means of control that we have the power to resist. As much as I’m looking forward to seeing Christian Bale and Sam Worthington destroy a 50 foot tall Harvester, don’t forget what made the action sequences in the first two films work so well, a sustained feeling of desperate survival. The heroes didn’t really fight, rather they tenaciously avoided extermination like cockroaches.

The third concern could be a blessing or a curse. What the first Matrix shares with all three existing Terminator films is that a fantastic reality comes into conflict with the normal worldt. The prospects that the world is an elaborate computer program or that a man who saved your life is a warrior from the future are much easier to swallow when we share in the initial disbelief of Neo or Sarah Conner, respectively. The Matrix sequels suffered because the outlandish state of the world was a given. The Terminator films, up to this point, have always been careful to include characters that are in the same frame of mind as Sarah was in the first film, unable to believe that a war with the machines is possible. This tension over the acceptance of the future is the driving force of conflict in the first three Terminator films. Sarah Conner exemplifies this in T2, she’s a prophet betrayed by those she’s trying to save. The harder she tries to convince people that the nuclear holocaust is coming, the more they think she’s crazy.

Terminator Salvation can still be a great movie, McG — don’t listen to the haters. You just need to focus on the elements of the previous films that can thrive in this new premise, and let go of the ones that cannot. There’s nothing in the previous films that indicates how John’s war against the machines ultimately turns out. Godspeed, McG, and remember: “the future is not set, there is not fate but what we make for ourselves.”