“There is a real absence of good gay Christmas movies,” says Los Angeles author/film scholar Alonso Duralde. The lights, the pageantry, the festive decorations—Christmas really deserves more love, from a gay perspective, than Halloween. For that reason, in conjunction with his Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas (Limelight, $16.99), Duralde will be screening and discussing the underrated 2005 comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, in which Val Kilmer plays a tough gay private detective trying to protect Robert Downey Jr. during the highly artificial Christmas season in L.A. “It’s a cult movie that is slowly gaining steam,” says Duralde. “Setting it during Christmas just reinforces the notion that L.A. is one big movie set. Downey Jr. narrates it in a very-self conscious style. And I think Kilmer’s an underrated comedian.” (True! And his character, actually called Gay Perry, surely deserves a sequel. Or, failing that, a sitcom.) Duralde’s book also reminds us how some unlikely movies—Three Days of the Condor, Gremlins, Night of the Hunter—are set during the holidays. Christmas, he notes, signifies redemption, which all screenwriters adore. Book signing and discussion follow the screening. (R) BRIAN MILLER

Thu., Dec. 2, 8 p.m., 2010