Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. You May Also Like. I guess because the elves had been acting as magical child-abducting creeps the entire film it never occurred to me that this conclusion could be seen as horrific. ( Log Out /  Is Pietari’s father’s harsh coldness the result of being widowed, or is his horrid personality the reason that she’s gone? I also think it would have been much more effective to watch the number of children slowly dwindle down throughout the movie; instead, it was as if everyone all the kiddies had Roanoke’d before the film even began. Krampus is a goat demon who punishes bad children during Christmastime, which is much more similar to Joulupukki from Rare Exports than any other film version of Santa Claus. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale watch online free. You’ve now got me hoping for a sequel where the mall Santas rebel and return to their roots, bagging up the children who sit on their laps across the globe in accordance to their own cultural tradition and in defiance of their oppressors. You’re totally right, though; the elves were in their own way just acting according to their nature & customs, and the fact that I never really felt for their plight at the end is making me feel a little like imperialist, capitalist scum in retrospect. I mentioned it above, but it bears similarities in its images, especially that of The Unspeakable Thing Beneath the Ice. There's no place like home -- for frights! Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (457) ... and worth checking out if you like REALLY odd movies. His second feature film, Big Game, contains some of the same themes set in a more straightforward action template: as part of a male rite of passage, a Finnish teenager named Oskari (also played by Onni Tommila) is sent out into the wilderness of rural Lapland to track and capture a large piece of game (in Oskari’s case, the “big game” is the President of the United States, stranded by a plane crash en route to Helsinki). I can also see deciding to go full-tilt with the fairy tale elements, with so many of those narratives featuring a dead (or otherwise hopelessly lost) mother, but just because mom died doesn’t mean women cease to exist altogether. The writhing sacks immediately look odd, but you don’t fully register what’s inside them at first glance. The Joulupukki and Krampus traditions make so much more logical sense than the Christmas lore Americans are raised with, what the movie calls “the hoax of the Coca-Cola Santa.” Traditional fairy tales are usually set up as negative reinforcement tactics to scare kids into not doing dangerous (or, often enough, simply annoying) things for their own good & safety. Premium WordPress Themes DownloadDownload…. Rare Exports (2010) Parents Guide Add to guide . ( Log Out /  Brandon, were you as shook by the old nude elf men as I was? The naked elves creeping into the children’s bedrooms to kidnap them for Joulupukki would have scarred me for life, and I wish the movie would have at least showed one of the kidnappings in action. All contents are provided by non-affiliated third parties. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Follow 123Movies 2019 site on social networks to get the latest updates about new movies. Edit . Horror • Movie (2014) Mom and Dad. 123Movies 2019 site does not store any files on its server. Browse All Movies Browse All Shows. As much as I enjoyed its morbid humor and its willingness to go there when tormenting children, my favorite aspects of Rare Exports were mostly rooted in the way it functions as a modern fairy tale. The world may never know. It sort of was like that, but the adults surprised me by capturing the “Santa” and trying to make money off of his captivity during the film’s second half. What are other parts of the film that you found to be skin crawling? This Christmas everyone will believe in Santa Claus. The only Christmas film that I’ve seen that can be compared to Rare Exports would be Krampus. Boomer: Like Brandon, all I could think about when those children were attached to the helicopter was just how miserably cold they must be, trapped in sacks and being whipped about in the freezing air. I’m not even saying that choice to solely focus on the lives of boys & men was a good or bad thing; it was just something I couldn’t help but notice. Are there any other influences that you’ve noticed in multiple rewatchings? Upcoming Movies of the Month Add an item . It’s not that I didn’t believe he was real; it’s just that the Santa I loved in Larry Roemer’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special held little resemblance to the one described my Finnish father. What do you make of how that choice relates to the film’s overall tones & themes? It makes more sense, then, that a naughty boy or girl being monitored by a powerful, world-traveling Christmas demon would be punished by becoming dinner for that beast, not simply receiving a shittier gift than they’d get if they were good. In fact, I don’t recall there being a single female character represented onscreen anywhere in Rare Exports; even the neighborhood girls kidnapped as offerings to Joulupukki never escape their burlap sacks to show their faces. That Santa wasn’t a jolly, elderly fellow in from the North Pole, but a half-goat man named Joulupukki (literally, “Christmas Goat”) holed up in a place called Ear Mountain (Korvantunturi) in Northern Finland. Stream thousands of shows and movies, with plans starting at $5.99/month. And why didn’t Santa look anything like a goat? That’s it. Start Your Free Trial. Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before and we discuss it afterwards. Another part of Rare Exports that I really didn’t see coming was the abundance of elderly full-frontal male nudity. At first, I thought the film was going about a kid on a mission in a world of adults who dismiss his warnings until it’s too late. All we really get to see in regards to Joulupukki is a huge hole in the ground from where it was taken, and then we get to see it in a frozen block of ice with its massive horns sticking out. They even both use actual whips to whip bad children’s butts! Change ). In general, I do think the film leaves more of an impression as a fairy tale & an act of mythmaking than it does an exploration of ethical or interpersonal conflicts in the modern era. In fact, it turns the film into a child’s first Thing, which is an idea that delights me. Rack up 500 points and you'll score a $5 reward for more movies. The time has come to dig it up. From a filmmaking perspective, I get the initial thought process of “This is a harsh and unforgiving place and thus we can reflect that by having only harsh and unforgiving men in this world,” but the moment that idea crosses one’s mind is the moment that one should both immediately rethink their understanding of gender roles and also write a woman in there, fast, before you forget! Unlike Krampus, which is one of the greatest “bad” horror movies of modern times, Rare Exports isn’t a “bad” movie at all. I definitely would have enjoyed Rare Exports much more if Pietari’s community had been developed a little further. Exploitation & enslavement aside, I suspect that from now on I’ll get a kick from thinking of mall Santas as child-hating demons who’ve been newly domesticated as living Christmas ornaments, their newfound good behavior tentative at best. A young rural boy named Pietari (Onni Tommila), who has been spying on the suspicious activity, begins researching the mountain; he’s horrified by what he finds, and begins preparing himself, his friends, and his tortured father, Rauno (Jorma Tommila), for Christmas Yet to Come. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Britnee, how does this movie compare to other Christmasy action/horror movies, especially American movies? Rent $4.99 24-hour streaming period Hanna: Ultimately, Rare Exports satisfied my need for a) a spooky Finnish Christmas movie, and b) hordes of old, diseased, elf men nudely galloping into a forest. RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is a re-imagining of the most classic of all childhood fantasies, and is a darkly comic gem soon to be required perennial holiday viewing. Like Pietari in Rare Exports, Oskari is boyish and meek, lacking confidence in himself and any voice of authority in his community, and ultimately finds his role through unconventional smarts. Brutus also tries to win the game with his own team and get…, Sean Bean is back as the swashbuckling hero in Sharpe’s Challenge, an action packed mini-series to be shot on location in Rajasthan, India. the annual arson attacks on the Gävle goat in Sweden, Rare Exports (2010) Fan Art: Season’s Greetings from Joulupukki | Swampflix. Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Free 123Movies, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Full Movie 123Movies, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Online 123Movies, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Watch Online 123Movies, Watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale 123Movies, Watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Free 123Movies, Watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Full Movie 123Movies, Watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Online 123Movies, Watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Online Free 123Movies. Where are all the ladies? This film is just as much a dark comedy as it is a modern fairy tale, and there are few images I can think of that are darker than those writhing sacks (way more so than the wrinkly sacks hanging from the naked elves). Watch Troll Hunter Movie Online Free in HD. December: Brandon presents Strange Days (1995) The elf scrotums mostly just registered to me as a matter-of-fact extension of the film’s general interest in masculine relationships & bodies, which was not at all what I expected from a dark fairy tale about Santa Claus. January: The Top Films of 2019, Pingback: Baby’s First The Thing | Swampflix, Pingback: Joulupukki’s Little Helpers | Swampflix, Pingback: Rare Exports (2010) Fan Art: Season’s Greetings from Joulupukki | Swampflix, Pingback: Slut in a Good Way (2019) | Swampflix. I found the lack of full captions a little annoying and sometimes there are portions with no captions at all, but it's still a fun and very different film that seems like very few people know about. Britnee: The landscapes in Rare Exports were gorgeous! What are they good for? Boomer, do you think Rare Exports will similarly affect the way you look at the ritual of Christmas in the future?