Holiday-themed movies have become as intrinsic a part of the season as getting drunk on eggnog and passing out under the mistletoe while relatives sneak awkwardly out the door.

But does a film necessarily have to include persecuted Santas and suicide-preventing angels to be a true "Christmas classic?" Before you slip in your well-worn copy of The Bells of St. Mary's or Scrooged, consider some titles from The Pink Smoke's alternative list of movies that touch on the most wonderful time of the year (to varying degrees.) Pinnland Empire's Executive in Charge of Shameless Defenses of Terrence Malick, Marcus Pinn, joins us to discuss a filmmaker with Christmas unexpectedly coursing through his films.

"I don’t really trust the government right now."

Richard Linklater has never been one to hide his political views. That quote from Steve Carrell's “Doc” in Last Flag Flying sums up a large portion of his cinematic universe. Since day one he's laid it all on the table for everyone to see. A large majority of the folks in Slacker are super left-leaning anti-Bush Sr. gen-exers one might expect to cross paths with in late 80’/early 90’s Austin, Texas. No one exactly says the words; “Fuck George Bush Sr.” or “I hate Republicans” but let’s be honest - do you really see any of the characters in Slacker voting for or supporting a conservative political figure? I’m not saying there aren’t any conservatives in Austin but they certainly were represented in Slacker:

The thing is, the media's trying to hold up this whole one-party/two-faction system by telling you that George Bush got this mandate with 54% of the vote.
And that just doesn't take into account the whole population of the country.
They say that 50.3% - in the media - they say 50.3% of the eligible population participated in the '88 election.
But I think the figure's a hell of a lot lower than that. You gotta consider prisoners. We got more people incarcerated in this country than any other country in Western history.
Non-citizens, the underage, the overage, people too old to get to the polls. People out in rural areas. People who don't have addresses. I mean, to be conservative, the figure's more like 35%.
So Bush got 54% of 35%. What's that, 18%?
Maybe 18% of the people in this country support him. That's nothing. That's nothing. That's not a mandate.
Nazi Germany, in 1932, the Nazis had maybe 34-38%.
And somebody like Pinochet who's already out of there back in Chile. That guy's got maybe 34-43% of the vote.
So 18% is nothing. It just seems like one day it's gonna dawn on everybody that this large non-voting majority has been winning every election for the past three decades.

Similar to the folks in Slacker, do you see Randall Floyd or Ron Slater (Dazed & Confused) showing support for a guy like Richard Nixon? I’m sure the parents & coaches of the kids in Dazed & Confused are red-blooded Republicans but they’re secondary characters.

And it also speaks volumes when the only clear political views expressed in Dazed & Confused are that of the cool/hip history teacher who tries to encourage her students to get politically active by talking about her time at the Democratic National Convention:

You know, the '68 Democratic convention was probably the most bitchin' time I ever had in my life.

She then follows that up by reminding her students:

Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.

Then there’s the scene in Boyhood where Ethan Hawke’s father character tells his kids to rip down all the George Bush Jr. signs on the lawns of his neighbors (a gutsy thing to do in Texas).

Richard Linklater is such a bleeding heart liberal that he invited the subject of his 2011 film; Bernie to live with him following his prison sentence.

I’m no Republican or Bush family supporter but I do kind of draw the line at lending a sympathetic/helping had to a guy who shot an old lady in the back. Put aside Jack Black’s Bernie for a moment and just look at the facts. Look at the real Bernie Tiede. I don’t doubt that Marje Nugent was a nasty old woman but that doesn’t excuse killing her (especially the way he did.)

There’s a scene towards the end of Bernie where he tries to leave Marje’s property but she locks the gate at the driveway as to imply he’s a “prisoner” who can’t leave.

Really?

Instead of just backing the car up some and plowing through the gate, he goes back to the house and shoots her in the back (we’re not even going to get in to the fact that this woman had a lot of money to her name. That’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.) I understand that the story of Bernie Tiede is intriguing and I get why folks like it (and the version of Bernie that Linklater gave us). But as far as I’m concerned, the dude was a spineless coward that Richard Linklater somehow turned in to a victim.

Now... I say all this because I want people to understand the kind of person that made Last Flag Flying. It’s a little rare to find a anti-military film that still shows respect to the soldiers (especially from a guy like Linklater). Military stories are often left to seemingly blindly patriotic filmmakers like Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson.

But I guess it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Last Flag Flying is a politically left-leaning movie. Forget about Richard Linklater for a moment. This is a “spiritual sequel” to The Last Detail - a counter-culture Hal Ashby film (Hal Ashby is no novice to this kind of subject matter having also directed Coming Home.)

In Last Flag Flying we follow the lives of new iterations of the characters originally played by Jack Nicholson (Bryan Cranston), Otis Young (Laurence Fishburne) & Randy Quaid (Steve Carrell) in The Last Detail. In this unofficial sequel, the older veterans go on a road trip from Virginia to New Hampshire during the holiday season in order to give Carrell’s slain son a proper burial after being killed in Iraq (we eventually come to find out the details of his son’s death aren’t exactly what we were led to believe at first).

Through the coarse of the road trip the old friends catch up, express regret, get in to trouble and all the other tropes that come along with a good road movie. Linklater does stay from a few road trip standards like hooking up with random women in a motel or picking up weird hitchhikers along the way (our protagonists are much too old for sex, drugs and rock & roll at this point in their lives) but it’s still a pretty typical road movie.

But this is all secondary. Last Flag Flying is more than the basic plot description that you’d read on the back of the blu-ray case. This movie is a statement that you can be a liberal/lefty/whatever and still have respect for the soldiers in the military. The veterans in Last Flag Flying may have no love for the military anymore but at the same time they still wear their semper phi tattoos with pride and still incorporate the discipline they were taught in basic training to their everyday lives.

This is the kind of pro-military film a guy like me can get behind. Politically, Richard Linklater and I are on the same team. We may sit on opposite ends of the bench (I don’t have sympathy for men who shoot old women), but I’m willing to bet we’d vote for the same presidential candidate. Military support has become such a black & white thing. There’s a hard line in the sand. If you support the troops then you must support war. If you don’t support war (which I do not), you’re a flag burning hippie who doesn’t support the troops. There’s never a middle ground. Last Flag Flying is that middle ground. And instead of a pedestrian's point of view we get the soldier's/veteran's point of view which, in my opinion, is the most important point of view.

I’m pretty indifferent towards the American Flag and what people do to or on it, but I do have sympathy for some of the young poor kids who go off to fight a war for a country that doesn’t give two shits about them. You can be anti-war and still “support the troops” which is ultimately what Richard Linklater conveyed in his latest film. No matter how much hatred or indifference the veterans in Last Flag Flying show towards this country and it’s military in their older years, the movie does end in a beautiful backyard ceremony with Carrell’s son being sent off in a true respectable military fashion. After all - the ultimate mission is to give a soldier a proper burial which is what we get in the end.

Last Flag Flying is obviously not the first anti-war/pro-soldier movie. Not by a long shot. But in an era of American Sniper, Hacksaw Ridge and Flags Of Our Fathers, I think it’s needed now more than ever to balance things out.