The 30 best Christmas movies of all time
From Miracle On 34th Street to Elf to A Christmas Story (duh), these are the most wonderful films about the most wonderful time of the year
Film Features christmas
(Clockwise from bottom left) Elf (Courtesy New Line Cinema), It’s A Wonderful Life (RKO Radio Picture/Getty Images), A Christmas Story (Courtesy of MGM), Miracle On 34th Street (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images) Graphic: The A.V. Club
After a long day of braving frigid temps and long queues—online or at the mall—for gifts and stocking stuffers, there’s nothing better than taking a break in front of the warm glow of the silver screen (or in front of your own big screen at home). Well, that, and some popcorn. Lots of popcorn. There you’re likely to find the likes of Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, Hugh Grant, and Santa Claus himself, all on hand to make sure your yuletide is the best it can be. Here, then, is a different kind of Christmas list, with films that are sure to make your season bright.
283 Comments
No Die Hard?
This! Or also The Year Without A Santa Claus. I mean where’s Heat Miser!
Other than the iconic Heat Miser/Cold Miser double act, little of that special holds up.
In our hearts (and in the weather patterns).
Not a movie.
Several Rankin/Bass were included which is what this one I mentioned was a well.
Trolling, obviously.
No Die Hard, no Lethal Weapon.
Dude gets shot through a carton of egg nog, mid-gulp! Doesn’t get more Christmasy than that!
You win
a man comes down a chimney to save christmas from Alan Rickman, I mean, it’s all right there
…and yet ..Gremlins .(which I love btw)Actually , what about Trading Places? Set at Christmas , Dan Ackroyd dressed as Santa , MERRY NEW YEAR!!
Name one thing of any significance that would change if Die Hard were set in July instead of December, and you’ll have your answer.
If Die Hard were set during July instead of Christmas, the following elements would be deleted from the film:No opening or closing songs that are explicitly Christmas-themed. The soundtrack would potentially be more generic. This probably includes “Ode To Joy” since without the Christmas setting, that song choice would feel very over the top.Suspension of disbelief that a New York cop would fly out to an average office party would be increased. Most offices don’t do parties to the level shown in the film except at Christmas.The pressure that John McClane would have to successfully make up with his wife would be lessoned. This is because Christmas is considered a time for family, and his family is broken.Even outside of the family element, the terrorists choosing to strike at Christmas time adds to the feeling of vulnerability everyone feels in reacting to the situation. Everyone would rather be doing nice, quiet Christmas-y things, not dealing with an intense hostage situation. The fact that evil isn’t taking the holiday off like everyone else wants to palpably adds a sense of weariness that enhances the stakes. No other holiday equals “everyone deserves a time off. Everyone” sympathy like Christmas.William Atherton’s journalist character involving John’s kids in the proceedings feels 10x sleazier because it’s at Christmas. These kids should be “nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,” not being blearily woken up by some stranger publicly shit-stirring a hostage situation for personal glory. Again, the disruption to what should be happening at Christmas enhances the stakes.No more “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho” line.No more “It’s Christmas, Theo, it’s a time for miracles” line from Hans Gruber.There are tons of other winks, nods and jokes that play off of the fact that it’s Christmas, all of which would no longer add a subversiveThe thing is, rather than the Christmas season being a garnish in this movie-dish (as it arguably is Lethal Weapon, which probably would have worked the same pretty much any other time of the year… then again, the same could be said of It’s a Wonderful Life or even White Christmas, actually), this particular story marinates in Christmas, because “having a calm, peaceful Christmas with the family” is explicitly one of the things that’s at stake.Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it’s specifically Christmas that’s being disrupted (Just like how Independence Day making its eponymous holiday a crucial plot element qualifies it as a bonafide way to celebrate said holiday). Or, put another way, much like how a spoof of action movies would still most likely qualify as an action movie, itself, Die Hard specifically subverting what a Christmas movie should be… means it’s still a Christmas movie, because it literally is about the holiday to a palpable degree.Face it. Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Even scientific surveys of the data agrees:https://stephenfollows.com/using-data-to-determine-if-die-hard-is-a-christmas-movie/
Nothing in that list substantially changes the movie in any way. It would be for all intents and purposes the exact same movie if they put in different music, different lines, and a different motivation for McClane’s visit. It’s set at Christmas time, nothing more. Any attempt to connect the action to Christmas themes is such a stretch that I’d be amazed if you didn’t pull something.Die Hard is not a Christmas movie no matter how hard you try to make it so.
THANK YOU. Also, Christmas movies aren’t released in July (which Die Hard was). It’s a summer blockbuster that happens to take place in the holiday season, that’s it.
When you’re a cynical asshole like* me , Christmas themes =Initial excitement then disappointment .Being forced to visit family members just long enough for everyone to hate each other all over again.Blowing all your money on gifts and having a long bleak January ahead of you.Having to hear that fucking Mariah Carey song 4000 times.Actually I’ll take a ‘just set at Christmas ‘Die Hard , over a thousand Love Actually’s and Santa Clause ‘s actual “Christmas Movies”(* I would also answer to Miserable Fuck)
This. This right here is why Die Hard resonates with me in a way that the more harmonious “traditional” Christmas movies don’t. Rather than characterizing the holiday season as an idealistic time of joy and harmony, Die Hard turns a Christmas celebration into a pure survival situation.And for those of us who look at the Yuletime as a season to endure rather than look forward to? Man, does it feel cathartic and therapeutic to watch a film that “gets” where I’m usually at emotionally during the season.
Whatever, man. To me (and a whole lot of other people), it’s a movie that I always crave watching around Christmastime. If that’s enough for people to consider It’s a Wonderful Life to be a Christmas movie, then I see no reason why Die Hard shouldn’t be allowed the same grace.Also, we’ll just have to agree to disagree whether those things would substantially change the film in any way. I feel that it does, and that deleting them would fundamentally shift the movie’s intentions; you feel that it doesn’t.Rather than continue debating it, though, we can probably just look at it as a sign that we get different things out of the movie from each other, and that’s fine. Mostly people just watch it to get action movies thrills out of it, and don’t want it to mean anything more than that. As someone who mostly just feels burnout when it comes to the holiday, this movie puts me into the Christmas spirit in a way that more traditional Yuletide films don’t. Neither approach to enjoying the movie is inherently wrong.
If Die Hard were set during July instead of Christmas, it’d be Die Hard with a Vengeance.(ok , maybe it wasnt July ..but definitely summer months)
Wasn’t school still in session? Probably early to mid June since it takes place in New York.
Really solid analysis!
Thank you! I put a lot of time into that post, so it’s very kind of you to give me feedback on it. Very appreciated.
RIP Theo.
I dunno, did he actually die? He seemed like he very well could have easily just been knocked out.
I was shorthandedly referring to the actor, Clarence Gilyard, Jr., who recently passed.
Oh, shit. I hadn’t heard that!Yeah, may he rest in peace. It took skill to make a baddie that smarmy still be likable AF.
Well, when McClane writes “now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho” on the dead terrorist wearing a Santa hat, it probably wouldn’t have made much sense if set in July. Same goes for the season’s greetings gift wrapping tape for the hidden gun at the end of the movie. Die Hard is a family-fun Xmas movie.
No Iron Man 3? Or should it just be a combo entry – all Shane Black movies…?
Love Scrooged and Bad Santa. Also a fan of the unpopular Love the Coopers. And this has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Great cast and a helluva an ending.
Oh, and I can’t believe something we used to say as a joke when we were edgy teenagers 35 years ago (and for Lethal Weapon before that) is still being repeated today, but take it from the man himself…
Honest question: In what way is It’s a Wonderful Life more of a Christmas movie than Die Hard? (And I’m not asking the question in order to argue that the latter is a Christmas movie, but to argue that maybe the former really isn’t, despite decades of tradition.)
You see me argue somewhere up there that it was? Because I never liked it. If I remember correctly it wasn’t even intended to be one by Capra and only became one because someone fucked up and let the copywrite expire making it something cheap to broadcast around the holidays. I could be wrong on that though.
My bad for assuming you considered IaWF a Christmas movie, then; I’m just hoping to hear an argument from someone who does believe that while also believing DH isn’t.
Perhaps the themes of family, community and charity (as opposed to spousal reconciliation) and the central participation of an angel? I’d say those separate it somewhat from Die Hard. You could put several in this category though, including Love, Actually.
It’s easy to argue Die Hard is a movie about family, since he’s in LA to visit them for Christmas and reconcile with his wife.
it was released right before christmas though
I mean, technically July is before Christmas, but I don’t think I’d argue it’s right before though.
Release dateDecember 20, 1946i was referring to wonderful life. its hard to argue its not a christmas story when its both released and set around christmas time
ah gotcha. Still not a fan so I’m not really invested in it one way or the other.
It can be argued that It’s a Wonderful Life is a redemption story that echoes the redemption offered through Christ. But, yeah, other than that it just happens at Christmas.
I will admit up front that I’ve never actually seen Die Hard, but I’m gonna argue that It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas movie because it’s all about the spirit of community, family and generosity.
Call in sick and watch it. No human being should not have seen Die Hard. Ideally one should have seen it so many times that you can recite the entire movie at will.
Meh. I’ve managed to live 41 years just fine. I know the basic premise and I’m sure it’s entertaining but it hardly seems like a “call in sick from work” situation.
I finally got around to seeing Die Hard, and…it completely lived up to the years of billing. It’s best appreciated if you watch it keeping in mind that Willis was a non-brauny TV actor playing against type, at a time before “everyman” action heroes were a common thing. This was arguably the original of those (something I knew going into my viewing), and it also might be one of the best action films ever at offering a believable hero who might actually not pull off the save and who can’t just shrug off every physical encounter.
Unless you don’t care for action movies at all, I highly recommend it!
Wonderful Life has magical angels. Also going through all of the important events in a person’s life in the past is a fairly strong element of the holiday season ( reflecting on the past, see Christmas Carol or Christmas Story). So there’s quite a bit of “magic of the holiday season” kind of thing going on, even though most of the movie is a flashback that has nothing to do Christmas.Die Hard just happens to take place at Christmas. That doesn’t really make it a Christmas movie. For the same reason I wouldn’t put Gremlins on that list or Batman Returns or Reindeer Games. Honestly I wouldn’t even put Home Alone on the list of Christmas movies. ( I have not seen Love Actually, but I’m guessing that falls into the same kind of category).Having said that, Scrooged is an awful version of the story, and Muppet Christmas Carol is an excellent version….primarily because the book itself has a VERY strong narrator, and Muppet Christmas Carol is very close to being the only version that truly includes the narrator as an element of the story.Also, Klaus really needs to be ranked higher.
Everyone watches it at Christmas. So, it’s a Christmas movie.The Yule log channel is hardly about Christmas either, but ………
By that criterion, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a Christmas movie, at least in parts of Europe.
counterpoint: It’s a Wonderful Life is one big pseudo-Christian, saccharine, cloying, maudlin slog – and I hate it.
IAWL square on addresses something that has been true since the 19th century – that Christmastime is for many, a terrible, depressing time. Lack of sunlight is a factor. But there’s so much more. In Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993) a lonely character asks our anti-hero what he’s going to do for Christmas. In one line, the theme of Christmas suicide is touched upon. And It’s A Wonderful Life doesn’t just touch that third rail, it belly flops on it.
He has been suffering for the last few years with …am illness
a man comes down a chimney to save christmas, what more do you people need, christ
He’s wrong though. I mean, the entire premise of the movie is that he’s in LA to spend time with his family for Christmas and hopefully reconcile with his wife by doing so. The theme is Christmas, right down to the opening limo ride, the snowfall (debris) at the end, the Christmas party, Ho Ho Ho etc. It’s not a traditional Christmas movie, but that doesn’t make it any less of one.
Christmas is far more important to the plot of Die Hard than it is It’s a Wonderful Life.This is why I’ve been proposing what I call the Bailey-McClane Compromise.We acknowledge Die Hard as a Christmas movie and in exchange we don’t try and take that away from Its A Wonderful Life.Because the arguments against IAWL are stronger than DH.
I’d say he’s half right. Die Hard isn’t centrally a “Christmas” movie, true enough, but it goes beyond simply being set on Christmas given the themes and developments that occur with the central hero. By the time I got around to seeing it, I agreed with the notion that its Christmas setting isn’t just window dressing, and that the film ties said setting in with the overall movie nicely.
I still watch it every year.
Fuck me, I had no idea Willis was on the wrong side of this debate.
What the fuck would he know about it , he’s just the fuckin actor, and he’s been phoning them in since Live free and Die Hard “Hey Bruce ! A lot of people enjoy watching it at Christmas ,its set at Christmas,.. its end credits play over ‘Let it snow”. Its a fucking Christmas movie cowboy, so happy fuckin’ holidays .”
Die Hard is a movie that happens to take place during Christmas. The same could be said about Gremlins.
I mean Jeb Stuart, the guy who actually wrote the movie, has been pretty explicit about it being a Christmas movie. I’m gonna go with the dude who wrote it knowing whether it is or not over the guy who starred. It was the writer’s intent for it to be a Christmas movie, so yeah, it’s a Christmas movie.
Been running through a WWII doc and movie phase recently, but never heard of A Midnight Clear until now. Netflix disc service doesn’t have it, so will have to look elsewhere. They have Love the Coopers though, so added that to the queue. You might like Christmas Again (2014), if you can find it.
A Midnight Clear is available free from a bunch of places if you’re willing to sit through ads or for rent for a couple bucks. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/a-midnight-clearLove the Coopers is family drama, but was an enjoyable one for me. The only downside was Timotheeeeeeeee Shamalamadingdong.Christmas Again is on Mubi so added it to the queue.
I guess lists like this are destined to call forth “what about” reactions, but there are so many mediocre to bad films here (anybody who still hasn’t read this absolute destruction of Love, Actually should go do so: https://jezebel.com/i-rewatched-love-actually-and-am-here-to-ruin-it-for-al-1485136388) – but what about the British cartoon The Snowman, which beats half this list or more just for its music alone.
This list could definitely have been pared by 5 or so titles if you still wanted a nice round (well, half-round) number. It’s obviously not meant to be fully inclusive or we’d be here all week.
Making a “Love Actually is bad” article is a Christmas tradition.
Personally, I think Christmas movies should all have a certain level of schlock to them. Love Actually fits this bill to a T.
As someone who is not a huge fan of Love, Actually, that article is so bad it makes me want to watch the movie just to spite it. I’m so glad that the time of the faux outrage and ALL CAPS YELLING style of “humorous” article has passed. It’s not a good movie but that article was worse
yup , add in some controversial entries ,leave out a notable one for “maximum engagement” :
Agreed on the snowman! A fantastic movie
And speaking of British Christmas classics, where’s Bernard and the Genie?
I will not hear any Love, Actually slander and I will not give that Jezebel link any air for it.
It’s not slander when the movie’s shit.
So you included Carol as a Christmas movie, but omitted Die hard?!
Well, if we’re going to include TV specials, I think we ought to mention this heartwarming classic, staring Jodi Benson, Paige O’Hara, and Mark Hamill:(As bad as that preview image on YouTube is, trust me, it gets worse.)
Hold up, Imma let you finish, but Clive Donner’s Christmas Carol and George C. Scott’s Scrooge are the best Carol and Scrooge of All. Time. The Muppets and Caine coming up a strong second.
Amid the endless adaptations of Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol, we at The A.V. Club remain adamant that the Muppets’ version is the gold standard.Reasonable minds may differ, but for the writers to say that, then rank two other adaptations higher than it, is just weak writing and worse editing.
“Few Christmas classics are more classic, or more Christmas-y, than 1954’s White Christmas. It represents the peaks of all four of its cinema icons, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen, and catchy tunes that have endured in our cultural consciousness for a reason. Centered on a group of entertainers whose simple quest—spread the holiday spirit amid the tensions of World War II—involves delightful diversions of the romantic comedy variety, White Christmas has just the right amount of zippy comedy to cut the sentimental treacle that makes it an annual favorite.”Umm…no. The opening scene is set during WWII, but otherwise the movie is set when it was filmed, in 1954. They aren’t trying to spread some wartime Christmas cheer, they’re trying to save the General’s inn. If anything, the film’s message is “isn’t it a shame how people don’t respect retired high ranking military officials enough during peacetime?” which is hilarious in hindsight, but maybe made more sense during the Eisenhower era. You can be forgiven for not paying much attention after the first fifteen minutes, but maybe read a synopsis first before including the film on the list.
Good clarification here, although, in the writer’s defense, it’s pretty tough to maintain focus throughout that film since it’s ploddingly paced and boring as shit.
In a list made of pure garbage you have still managed to produce the worst take here. Truly astounding.
Yes, White Christmas was the Sequel to Holiday Inn, which introduced the song White Christmas. The sequel was an effort to capitalize on the popularity of the song, and is rather labored and not as romantic as Holiday Inn, which IS one of the best Christmas movies of all time.
Boom. Yes.
I always found it weird how they keep singing about how much they love him. Aren’t these soldiers who’ve seen the horrors of war? Shouldn’t they be killing Nazis and drinking to forget? Was this before they did that, or is this the example that made them think they had to do that?2 stars.
But it’s set at Christmas so why isn’t it a Christmas film? They’re putting on a show with Christmas as the theme. Also, see below. Trees, Santa suits, children’s choir. Plus, um the title is WHITE CHRISTMAS, Scrooge.
At one point, Random Dude in the Grays Commenting a Year Too Late, did I ever claim that White Christmas wasn’t a Christmas movie? It’s just not a *World War II* Christmas movie.
apologies. Posting at 5 am on no sleep. I mis read and thought you said it wasn’t a Christmas movie.
How the hell did that terrible Kurt Russell Santa movie make it on this list?“We may earn a commission from links on this page.”Ah, say no more.
Ah yes “A Christmas Story”, truly the “Dinner for One” of the United States of America.
…I’m sorry, what?
“Dinner For One” is a comedy sketch that many Europeans view as traditional viewing on New Year’s Eve. For some reason, it’s all but unknown here in the States.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One
Thanks for the explanation! Even if the general direction of the sketch was obvious, it provided an excellent showcase for Freddie Frinton’s slapstick skills; I can see how it’s become a widespread annual tradition.
A theater here in the Twin Cities is doing “Dinner for One” this season, & we’re going tomorrow night. I’d never heard of it, either, but it sounds like it’ll be good fun. Looking forward to it!
Just swung by for my annual, “’Love, Actually’ Is A Terrible Dumpster Fire”. And low-key misogynistic. And about as far from “cute and funny” as one can get.That is all! Carry on! 😉
It truly is the fucking worst, I mean like REALLY fucking bad…but its probably the reason two of the cast of Phineas and Ferb getting hired , so theres that I guess.
This describes it succinctly:
Say it along with Phoebe Cates, folks: “The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas …”My brother is still pissed about this, having taken his young daughters to see Gremlins while they still believed.
You have to be surprisingly careful with Christmas movies for exactly that reason. Though I’d venture most PG (and certainly this specific PG) movies aren’t going to be guarding the secret.
For a while, if I hadn’t seen seem movie/TV episode I would not let my daughter watch it for this reason. Alas, she deduced it from finding the elf on the shelf in a closet in July. Stupid things.
One of my former colleagues described the Elf on the Shelf as a “drinker’s nightmare” because he’d forget to do it before bed, then the kids would be up before him in the morning.
On the plus side, that meant you no longer had to move that idiotic elf night after night
Ugh that damn elf. We dodged it with my oldest son and we didn’t plan to implement it with my younger son either but during quarantine binge watching of anything Christmas to try to fight off the depression he watched the “Elf on the Shelf” special. After we explained that not every house needed an elf which he was fine for a minute before declaring that an elf ornament we had on the tree was must be our elf and expected to see it move every day.
I hope he didn’t take them to see Gremlins 2 while they still believed in Abraham Lincoln…
I have read that Steven Spielberg did it on purpose. Turd.
He’s a mensch!
Does mensch mean turd? (kidding)
Is he a Mensch on a Bench ™. The Jewish Elf on a Shelf. https://themenschonabench.com/
I always thought the main kid character in Gremlins should have been much younger. If he was five it would make a bunch more sense that he run into all that trouble. As it stands, he’s a stupid, idiotic teenager who disobeys a ton of gremlin rules.
(That said, I love Hoyt Axton in the movie. I guess he’s in it for like five minutes but he’s great.)
But that story can be interpreted in two ways. Sure, that there wasn’t a Santa Claus and that Cates’ character’s dad died while pretending to be Santa, or alternatively that Santa was real and her dad! But still dead, granted.
I saw Gremlins when I was 8 and I’m one of the many children who ran screaming from the theater when they began to hatch, forcing the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating. I went back in after about 10 minutes but I missed some of the funniest albeit goriest parts, so afterwards my mom drew sketches of a Gremlin in the microwave, a Gremlin’s head in the fireplace, and a Gremlin’s feet sticking out of a mixing bowl, so I could see what I missed.
Its weird that because of that scene I remember my son who’d seen Gremlins 2 and LOVED it wanted to see the first movie , and I had to put him off , post Santa until he could . I’ve often thought about downloading and editing that scene out (or the line), as its ok for kids that are about 8 -19 to watch these days , except for the santa line.
Scrooged is one of my favorite 80s movies ever, Carol Kane was magnificent in that film. Great Christmas movie.
Goldthwait stalking the office firing off shotgun blasts never fails to make me smile.
Our whole family watched that on Xmas Eve a few years ago, all for the first time, and hated it, even fans of Bill Murray like myself. My then teenage son still complains about that time we watched that awful movie.
Scrooged is still one the best “modern” telling of that story.
It’s only a few-second cameo, but also: Best sidewalk buskers in music history. (Jerry Sanborn, Larry Carlton, Paul Shaffer, and some guy named Miles Davis.)
Oh yes!!! I went to “Scrooged!” with my Dad when it first came out in theaters. I was incredibly surprised that he came away LOVING IT!!! I really didn’t think it was his type of film.
Elf is one of those movies that I was not expecting much from and was totally gobsmacked at how terrific it is. To put it bluntly, Elf has a LOT of heart. They’ll still be watching and enjoying it 50 years from now.So between Will Ferrell’s acting and Jon Favreau’s direction, they hit that movie out of the ballpark. TOTAL home run.
I skipped it for years because I was getting sick of Ferrell’s schtick. Man I couldn’t have been more wrong because you are correct it’s a stone classic.In a similar vein I’d add Fred Claus to this list, lord knows it’s better than at least 10 of these titles.
I know, right? And Favreau is a MUCH better director than he gets credit for. (Also directed the fantastic Iron Man 1.)
Me too – was not that taken by Ferrell’s schtick (his time on SNL came after *my* casts from about ‘88-’92) and avoided Elf. Happened to catch it a couple of years ago and it’s now in the annual rotation for Christmas.
I like Elf right up to where it gets stupid in the park at the end. Before that I think it’s funny and heartfelt. The ending is horrible though.
I concede the ending is weak. But given how this was a Hollywood production of a tall comedian playing an elf as if Santa exists and actually pulling it off, I cut them some slack. A true Christmas gem right up there with the biggies, that’s Elf.
The James Caan vs. Will Ferrell matchup is also awesome.
The highest praise I can give Elf: I don’t love it for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, and yet despite that I’m just fine having it on in the background when doing Christmas activities because of the “heart” that you cite!
Jingle All The Way?!
Totally awesome script and performances. Sinbad at his best!
Gremlins is on the list I approve.
This list is just “30 very good to great Christmas movies in random order”.
Many are not even good!
Many are not movies!
We’ve been over this. If they’re a single, self-contained story, they’re a “movie”, regardless of runtime.
Many are not feature films!
Fair distinction!
New list: top Christmas episodes of tv shows, rife with spoilersMoonlighting “It’s a Wonderful Job”
My So-Called Life – they had one with some singer guest star who turned out to be an angel.Six Million Dollar Man – did a Scrooge episode where Steve uses bionics to convince some old, mean government contractor not to be such a dick to his employees and the space program. I am not making this up.Community “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”Night Court – the one with Michael J. Fox as some punk and that old guy turns out to be maybe the actual SantaThe Office – take your pickM*A*S*H – you know the one, with the chocolates sold on the black marketMagnum, PI – the four of them have a helicopter breakdown on an island about to be used for target practice by the Navy.
I’m assuming they’ll do that soon, as they just did one for Thanksgiving.The “Friends” episode they recommend was, predictably, unwatchable.Seinfeld wasn’t much better (man, that show does NOT hold up!)
Scrooge (1970) w/ Albert Finney should be on this list.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is great, no doubt. It’s not a movie. Ditto Grinch and Rudolph (though that last hasn’t held up)
Rudolph has held up if you stick with the assumption that male reindeer are pricks and Santa’s an overworked production and distribution executive on hard deadline.
Rudolf should have told Santa to fuck off.
Rudolph points to the “Your lack of planning is not my emergency” sticky note on his laptop.
Eh, he’s a dick about Rudolph’s abnormality even outside the Christmas season. He comes to visit his employee’s newborn, calls it ugly, then sings a song about how great he himself is. Later, he literally shames the father in public for his kid’s nose. He’s practically a eugenicist.
And that “being a dentist” is elf slang for gay.
It’s a self-contained story (as opposed to an episode of a television show), so it’s basically a movie with a short runtime. As are the other Christmas specials on this list.
Thank you. I was going to a make this comment if I didn’t find it. To paraphrase the Grinch narrator, anyone who labels 25 minute shows as “movies” doesn’t “have his head screwed on just right”.
Gremlins ranked ahead of Christmas Vacation? Really? I’m also surprised that Christmas Story is ranked as high as it is with no mention of the undeniably racist scene at the end of the movie. I still watch and enjoy the movie every year, but I definitely find that scene uncomfortable these days.
My wife is Chinese, and she loves that part of Christmas Story.Then again, whenever we go down to Chinatown for a family event, the whole family revels in the idea of “let’s see how uncomfortable we can make the white guy feel by throwing chicken feet and duck heads at him.” From their standpoint, that scene encapsulates “white people are stupid because they don’t want to recognize the meat they eat as being actual living animals in the past.”
Never met a Chinese person that had a problem with that movie. Just overly woke little shits cry about it on shitty pop culture sites.
I’m surprised to see how many folks see that Chinese restaurant scene as “undeniably racist”. I read an article by a woman who says her kids aren’t allowed to watch the movie because of that scene. Which also suggested the whole movie was for white people to laugh at Asians.I prefer this quote from someone on Quora:
“The
scene in question shows a different culture, where the “choir” was
Chinese. These choir members were singing a carol that was in a language
foreign to them. In other words, English was their second language.
They did quite well when singing. Their accents were funny, of course,
but all accents are humorous to most of us. Remember, though. These
singers probably spoke two languages. How many do most Americans speak?“And
people tend to forget that the Chinese owner of the restaurant spoke
perfect English, and pronounced all the words to the carol perfectly.
Try as he might, however, he was unable to erase the accents of his
workers. Could you have done better? Accents are hard to lose, but they
show us something remarkable: the speaker speaks more than one language.
That’s twice the bragging rights most Americans can produce.“Who
among us, when traveling to China, and trying to speak—or sing—in
Mandarin, would not clip certain consonants in such a way as to not
elicit a few chuckles from our Chinese hosts?“Finding accents humorous is not racist. It’s just human nature.”
I will defend Scrooge (1970) with Albert Finney and Sir Alec Guinness to the death.
I love that one. Such great songs. But it goes overboard with the schmaltz in the end.
Only if the hell scene, missing from TV broadcasts of the film for decades, is left intact.
Even if Polar Express wasn’t creepy and offputting, it’s still not a good movie and an even worse adaptation of the book. I’m sure it has aged even worse from when I saw it almost 20 years ago.
I love How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), A Christmas Story (1983), A Christmas Carol (1984), Scrooged (1988), Home Alone (1990), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), & Love Actually (2003).
Happiest Season is great if you want to see the lead end up with the wrong woman in the end.
So aggravating. Seen it twice now and slightly less infuriating on rewatch but still, why did the movie think this was the “good” ending?
If it makes you feel any better, Aubrey Plaza has talked about it too, basically saying she played that role “to win”.
Aubrey Plaza is so much more interesting in that movie than Mackenzie Davis. It should have been a tale about not settling and accepting this type of abuse.On rewatch it became a little more clear they were trying to make Davis appear totally under her family’s thumb and without much agency and thus her behavior can be blamed on them and KStew’s forgiveness of Davis’s behavior is an acknowledgement that Davis didn’t have other choices. I don’t think the film actually pulls this off but I think that is what it was trying to do.
I thought the same thing, and I think that it might have been more obvious had there just been a scene to help explain this. Instead we see it as Davis ghosting her fiance in her hometown with her overbearing family.
Happiest Season stinks and its inclusion here is baffling. Did they just want something recent? Or something with a diverse storyline? It’s just an off-the-shelf hallmark movie with lesbian characters.
It has a pretty likable cast. Stewart, in my opinion, should handle way more comedies of this caliber.
Fair enough, but if you swap in Lacey Chabert, you’d have no clue it wasn’t a hallmark movie.
Yes its a Christmas Movie as much of one as anything else on the list . Its about family . Love,devotion,the things we do to keep a family together .
12
Days of Christmas 12 Terrorists , Naughty and nice and they all get
what they deserve in the end Snowing {papers} at the end .
Its so much a Christmas Movie they just remade it with Santa Clause as Violent Night .
With a subplot of how marvelous it is that a cop learned to kill again. I say this in full adoration of the film, but that little nudge dropped at the end always stuck out to me.
Family He did it to save for his friend/ Family {Mc Clain}
Yeah. Still strikes as odd how much the audience cheered every time.
Point taken ,..but it was the #2 Badguy of the film ,I think the cheer is more for him getting his lump of coal
Gee, Bad Santa was really ahead of the curve with the black elf!
I would have liked to see Krampus on here before some of the other stuff. Very underrated film.
I watch the 1951 A Christmas Carol every year by myself drunk on Christmas night and cry my eyes out when Tiny Tim runs into Scrooge’s arms and he scoops him up and plants him on his shoulders and jaunts down the lane. What a film
Always my dad’s all-time favorite Christmas Carol, with Alastair Sim being the best Scrooge ever.
highly quotableShitter’s full
It’s too late now, but your comment definitely needs an exclamation point at the end. Otherwise, it just sounds like Eddy doesn’t really care about his full shitter…
To anyone who enjoys Christmas movies but hasn’t seen Klaus, please do. Everything about it is wonderful. From the writing, to the amazing animation, to the voice acting.
Seconded. An absolutely fantastic Christmas film.
I’ve never seen it—hell, I forgot it even existed—so I’m glad to see it here. Definitely will check it out!
I figured The Ref would get snubbed, so it’s my duty to tell everybody to watch The Ref. In terms of dark Christmas comedies, I love it more than Bad Santa.
The Ref is indeed awesome and sadly was forgotten long before the Spacey’s fall from grace.
Still great performances from Judy Davis and of course Christine Baranski.
Absolute agree. The Ref buries at least half of the films on this list and could easily slot into the top 10.
Funniest Christmas movie ever.
The Ref is indeed a great movie to watch around this time.
Somehow omitted The Apartment. Also the Baryshnikov version of Nutcracker. I see that others have covered Diehard.
I love THE APARTMENT but don’t think I could include it on a list of Christmas movies.
Literally every time I read about White Christmas they include the same “fun fact” about Sisters …we know!
disappointed in no jingle all the way
Arthur Christmas is a better Christmas movie than just about everything on his list.
Yeah, Arthur Christmas is brilliant and deserves so much more love than it seems to get. One of my favorites, I watch it every year.
100%–it’s not even close.
The Santa Clause is my go to Christmas movie, that and Home Alone and The Thing. I’ll get bored with the rest of these year after year but never those 3.
Gotta add “Santa Claus: The Movie,” featuring an Elvish Dudley Moore who goes around selling “magic dust” that’ll “make you fly!” (like so many people did in the ‘80s!) and a delightfully malevolent John Lithgow who really spotlights Capitalism, profit, and exploitation at the cost of holiday magic. The end scene where he shoves a bunch of magic candy canes into his mouth and floats off into the sky is the true meaning of Christmas, IMO.
Disappointed not to see Last Christmas with Emilia Clarke, which has one of the funniest “Plot” sections on Wikipedia of any film ever.
Come on. I think we all can agree that the Santa Clause and Polar Express are objectively terrible movies (and Home Alone ain’t far behind.)
Never seen the Santa Clause, you are absolutely right about the Polar Express, but Home Alone is the most underrated horror film of the early 90s.
I’m with you 100% on Polar Express. Those CGI’ed cold dead eyes, stuck in the “uncanny valley”, make the movie completely unwatchable for me. After 15 minutes of viewing, I was done. Never attempted another look.
Indeed. That opinion seems fairly universal. Baffled to see this movie on the list. The only time people really discuss it is in the context of horrible CGI/mo-cap.
The awful horror of it is best experienced in small doses, to wit:
NEVER LET IT COOL!
The best part of that whole sequence is how the kids refuse to be impressed with Tom Hanks’ bullshit. All of them seem mildly confused that he won’t just give them the damn chocolate without a fuss, especially once they have to move their drinks to keep the waiters from stomping on them. This is the only musical number I’ve seen where the bystanders treat the song as an inconvenience.
And I was just thinking I might give The Polar Express a try this year. Thanks for curing me of that.
And it was weird that the flopped Final Fantasy movie had better human CGI characters several years before Polar Express. And the FF movie wasn’t really that bad as a movie either — I enjoyed it, even if it had fuck all to do with the games as far as I could tell.
The Santa Clause is great if you related to Charlie like I did growing up. Divorced parents, weird stepdad, real dad trying to do his best to make Christmas magical for you.Polar Express is dead to me.
I’m of the unique position of agreeing that the Polar Express is objectively terrible, but for different that usual reasons. Don’t get me wrong, the uncanny valley problem is part of the list, but to me it’s secondary to the reality that the adaptation added so much to the precious book telling…all of which completely distracts from the beautiful message that is supposed to be front and center.The Santa Clause to me is a…funky movie. It’s a great time capsule for its era, and there is enough Christmas spirit in it that I think it works very well as a kid’s movie. Which is what it is: a pure Christmas movie. I don’t think any adult can enjoy it, excepting adults who grew up on it and so enjoy it for the memory of the feelings those childhood viewings brought.I do think it’s rather insane to criticize Home Alone. It was a barely-got-made, no expectation film that blasted off for legit reasons. While the physical comedy and the light humor of much of the run time are the things people tend to first key on, the fact is that the film reaches another level by refusing to stop there and so effectively tying the spirit of Christmas to the proceedings. You have classic family quarrels that often emerge during holiday gatherings, you have the overlooked and misunderstood (the neighbor) and what is out there for us to connect to if we go looking for it, there is the understanding that if we can only tap into the love at the heart of our relationships we can brush all the other stuff aside…and then you have it all come together at the end in three different beats (Mom coming home, the rest of the family bursting in, and then seeing the neighbor reconnected to his family), all set to John Williams tunes doing their thing. As with any film, it might not be your cup of tea (#respect), but “objectively” terrible? That’s a tough one to pitch.
Our kids like “The Polar Express”. I don’t. I wonder if some of these movies are supposed to be for kids.
Watching Home Alone as an adult is a trip. The best stuff is just the comfy hangout vibes of Kevin learning to live alone in a big house (also Catherine O’Hara and John Candy over-delivering in a very under-promising subplot). Once we actually get to the fireworks factory and Kevin is wasting those two dudes, it gets shockingly boring. And that’s because as an adult, you know those two guys would have been hospitalized in seconds flat. So the whole thing is a cartoon all of a sudden and it just deflates.
Both like nails on a fucking chalk board. And this list also excludes Arthur Christmas and… includes a bunch of tv specials, which opens up a world of potential selections that are infinitely better than the Santa Clause and Polar Express (just off the top of my head: a bunch of doctor who Christmas episodes, the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special, even the recent guardians of the Galaxy special. All far superior to those).This website has become such trash.
If you can get past the blackface (and I understand if that’s a deal breaker), Holiday Inn is infinitely better than White Christmas.
Holiday Inn is terrible compared to White Christmas. Fight me! It’s a story to guys stealing a woman back and forth from each other. It’s pretty awful. At least White Christmas everyone is trying to do a good old fashion Christmas deed.
I don’t want to fight. It’s Christmas! That said, I found White Christmas unbearably dull.
I prefer White Christmas to Holiday Inn. But I’d still rather watch both of these than most of the films listed.
Rare Exports or GTFO.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.You’re welcome!
I refuse to believe that The Polar Express belongs on this list, especially at the expense of Arthur Christmas.
“Arthur Christmas” is a masterpiece, & is ten times better than anything else on this list. And I say that as someone who *likes* a lot of the movies on this list.
While I suppose that, strictly speaking, it’s not entirely a Christmas movie my favorite will always be Meet Me in St. Louis. The grandpa’s surprise at the Christmas dance and Judy Garland’s heartbreaking rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” always get me.
/ Die Hard“No Matches”
Just Friends is a funny Christmas movie. It’s not great but I love Reynolds interaction with his brother in it. And Anna Faris is awesome in it.I saw Home alone in the theater when it came out and loved it. But I rather rewatch Scooged each X-Mas than Home Alone.
I saw it Thanksgiving weekend at Downtown Disney and the crowd was absolutely rolling.One of the biggest laugh geeters I’ve ever seen in a theater.
not enough Jingle Jangle
That one is a new gem. Such an original aesthetic.
I was about to complain about a few of the inclusions on this list…but then I got down to #9 and realised you included “Shop Around the Corner”. All is forgiven. That’s one of my favourite movies of all time, and truly a classic holiday movie.
“The Santa Clause is the Christmas movie of the ’90s.”Home Alone came out in 1990 you fucking numbnuts
It’s a Wonderful Life could only possibly have been better through the addition wide open beaver shots.
Might I suggest a long overlooked early 99s gem? 58th Street. It’s a Christmas story loosely based on New York’s first lottery winner. Anthony LaPaglia plays the lead, and Danny Aiello gives a beautiful performance as his father. It’s a big hearted. tac Italian family comedy that I think got lost in the glut of post-Goodfellas mob films.
Thank you for not including Die Hard. It’s the perennial it’s-not-a-Christmas-movie that I will go to my grave arguing against.
How could I forget about that film.
I watch Harold and Kumar’s Christmas every year. I’m not saying it’s the best Christmas movie, just that have have no problem missing any of films in the list this Christmas.
Where’s The Ref?
I am already prepared to stump for Violent Night to be on this list.
Well this is a curious list. There’s some great stuff (“The Shop
Around the Corner,” “Christmas in Connecticut” and a few OK also-rans like
“Remember the Night” and “It Happened on Fifth Avenue” (it’s cute enough but if
you’re going for obscure, I’d have gone with “Beyond Tomorrow”). You picked the
best version of “A Christmas Carol” by far (the first movie I ever saw and it
still makes me cry after 50+ viewings) but you ignored Richard Williams’
BREATHTAKING animated version (with Sim reprising the role as Scrooge) that won
an Oscar. Most egregious of all, you passed over “The Bishop’s Wife” which, for
all its unenveness, is a really, really beautiful movie graced not only by one of Cary
Grant’s most effortless, beguiling performances but also a truly
lovely performance by the great, GREAT Gladys Cooper.As for “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the movie-beyond being framed by
Christmas Eve and dealing with very Christmasy themes-was based on a story
written as a Christmas story/gift by Philip Van Doren Stern so, yes,
it’s a Christmas movie.
Good analysis. I agree that IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a Christmas movie – just not a good one. 🙄
I’m sorry, but where the fuck is Anna and the Apocalypse?
Thank you for not putting Die Hard on this list.
Phil Pirello, what has Mitchell Leisen done to you? Are we keeping the very homophobic canon of Leisen being just an annoying dresser that destroyed the scripts of Sturges and Wilder or what?Sturges, Leisen, DeCava, all those classics guys of the screwballs have plenty of nice Christmas movies but I am going to highlight the absolutely awesome Bachelor Mother among them all because it has one of my favourite “I love you” scenes in cinema.
Maybe I’m picky, but most of these don’t make my list. Where is “The Bishop’s Wife”? Where is the musical “Scrooge”?
Arthur Christmas remains the most disrespected Christmas movie in existence.
You chose the absolute correct version of A Christmas Carol. The Alastair Sim version > all others. The colorized version is ok, but the black and white is better still. Well done.(That being said, I love me some Gremlins, but it’s too high on the list.)
Even putting aside the uncanny valley effect of The Polar Express that makes it seem like a chilling horror movie, or maybe an spiritual predecessor to Anomalisa, I was just really disappointed that it lacked the unique charm, the quiet mystique of the original book. The movie comes off as tacky in comparison.
I think of In Bruges as a Christmas movie. I’m pretty sure it isn’t, but I’m also pretty sure it’s like a fairytale.
How’s a fairytale town not somebody’s fucking thing?How can all those canals and bridges and cobbled streets and those churches, all that beautiful fucking fairytale stuff, how can that not be somebody’s fucking thing, eh?
Glad to see a couple of the old Rankin/Bass specials get acknowledged here.Loved them so much growing up.
Trading Places is my favorite Christmas movie. In some ways, it’s a lot like It’s a Wonderful Life.
This list is complete bullshit without “Emmet Otter.”
There are several movies on here, not all of them though, that are nowhere near as good as “Ernest Saves Christmas.” Which I suppose, tells you what I think about the Santa Clause.
Having ELF on the list is a travesty, Ferrel in this film is as cringe worthy as always, the only way he could be considered funny if you are totally wasted. If you are of double digit IQ he is over the top unwatchable.
I can’t take this list seriously if it doesn’t include Family Stone.
I know it’s a sequel, but Home Alone 2 is just as re-watchable as the original. It deserves to be on this list.
Donovan’s Reef with John Wayne, is my favorite Christmas Movie. Should be on the list!
I have great respect for Zemeckis’s work, especially his pioneering efforts in the underrated Beowulf and excellent A Christmas Carol (my personal favorite adaptation of the work, and one of my two always-must-watch picks every year) – but I can’t get over how poorly adapted the story of The Polar Express was to me and the rest of my family.
See, Express is our family Christmas tale, published the same year my twin brother and I were born and our annual reading from age 2 onward. We still get chills remember our (usually emotionally closed up) father recounting how the final pages left him weeping. It holds a precious place in our hearts.
But Express revolves strongly around the lesson at its heart, all set to magic by the unique illustrations of Chris Van Allsburg. And the film lost that magic and heart somewhere in translation. I don’t so much blame the art style, which I think came reasonably close to translating Van Allsburg’s look, but even beyond uncanny valley problems the movie was just became too cluttered when it attempted to fill out to feature length – an effort that, in my humble opinion, stumbled badly.
I think about the famous, original The Grinch and many other beloved Christmas specials, and the lesson I take is that filmmakers shouldn’t force feature length on tails that don’t merit it. If Zemeckis could have just brought the exact tale to life without embellishment (and especially without all the unnecessary physical activity), I think he could have nailed it down. He should have made it into a standalone holiday television special, or adapted multiple works at the same time that would be featured together (it could have been a handful of Christmas stories, or he could have done a “holidays” series that covers a number of different ones on the calendar).
I appreciate anyone who loves this movie, whether because it works for them or because they grew up on it and knowingly flawed or not it holds a place in their childhood memories. But I have to be honest and say that it was a big clang for me…
Clearly this list is just one person’s OPINION. But – how about “The Family Man”, “The Family Stone”, “The Holiday” (sure does wanna make me take a Christmas Holiday with Jack Black!!!), “The Year Without Christmas” (who doesn’t love a snarky Heat Miser for Christmas!?!?), and uh….Hello!?!?…”Die Hard”!!!!
Um……or GTFO.
I am shocked and sorely disappointed that you do not consider “The Man Who Came to Dinner” to be among these top 30. Have you ever seen it? If not go watch it now. If you have, then what is your excuse for including “The Happiest Season” and leaving out this hysterical classic starring Betty Davis, Anne Sheridan and Billie Burke and co-starring Jimmy Durante. (yes, dear readers, Betty Davis was once an ingenue with killer comic timing.)
Why isn’t Die Hard included ?
Technically aTV show, but Geraldine Page at her peak, and Capote nailing the narration.
Scrooged, The Ref, and Mixed Nuts are my Top 3, and given how Christmas movies are trending towards more Hallmark schlock, I doubt that will ever change. Happiest Season was the best new one I’ve seen in a long time, although now I really want to see a Dan Levy/Aubrey Plaza buddy flick. Also, Jane was the unsung hero of that movie. Christmas Vacation is too good to be ranked. Every year I notice something new, like Ellen cupping Clark’s balls, “welcome to our home,” or Eddie’s off the cuff remark, “don’t forget the rubber sheets and the gerbils.” Now, Love Actually? I’m the last person to hop on a PC bandwagon, or even call out an insensitive transgression. But what was up with that movie’s obsession with weight? For starters, Brits aren’t necessarily known for being…svelte people. But Natalie was hardly overweight, or even, what did they call her? “Hippy”? What’s worse, it’s abundance of fat jokes weren’t even really comical to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be offended by fat jokes. They were just lazy jabs at overweight people who weren’t even overweight. On the flip-side, you have a child singing a sexy Mariah Carey Christmas song in a midriff. I’m no prude, but that was just creepy. But all that aside, it’s just a bad screenplay. With over 2 hours to wrap up its ensemble, we don’t know what ever happened with half the cast. It just ended, like someone walking away from a fart in an elevator. That said, I still watch it once a year for Mr. Bean in the department store. The one I won’t watch is The Family Stone. What a bunch of insufferable yuppies, and why are they always eating cereal? I swear, in every other scene, Rachel McAdams is sitting on the kitchen countertop in sweatpants eating cereal. The only likable one in the bunch is the one we’re supposed to hate, Sarah Jessica Parker, who I’ve hated in almost everything since Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As a gay man roughly the same age as the movie’s token gay couple (who, in the grand tradition of Hollywood’s supporting gay characters managed to have every minority status possible shoehorned into two people), I can assure you we’ve seen and heard enough to be able to discern enough nuance from Meredith’s dinner table comments to know her heart was in the right place. I saw it for the last time last year and I thought, “these are the kind of rich liberals who put a Black Lives Matter poster in their window, then call the cops when they see the black neighbor they never bothered to meet walking his dog.” I’m a sucker for a tearjerker, but that movie was so insufferable I couldn’t muster up more than an eye-roll in the end. Claire Danes was cute in it, but the sibling lovers swap was creepy.
Glad to see some old movies get some love (e.g., CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUTT is great!), but you all need to go watch HOLIDAY AFFAIR.I’ll wait…
Not only does the list not include Batman Returns, but not one comment either?!
“Comfort and Joy” (1984) directed by Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, Gregory’s Girl). I give this movie my highest possible recommendation if you are a grown up and like funny as heck, very bizarre, under-seen Scottish films. I promise you have not seen anything like this movie.In terms of Christmas horror/comedy movies (a surprisingly large category), I recommend the Finnish film “Rare Exports” (2010).
I loved Comfort and Joy, a truly underrated film, though its off-the-wall humor might fly right past a lot of people. The ice cream truck jingle punctuated with “Hello, folks!” never fails to tickle me.Another Christmas favorite of mine is Holiday (1938) with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Hepburn and Grant have great onscreen chemistry (as they did in the other films they did together). Holiday really speaks to that longing to escape from conformity and live life on your own terms. The supporting cast is solid, particularly Edward Everett Horton (who played the same role in the original 1930 Holiday) and Lew Ayres, who gives a poignant performance as Hepburn’s alcoholic lost soul brother.
I like watching The Thin Man and Bachelor Mother.
What about Prancer, a sweet film about a father and his daughter coming together about beliefs and values?
the grinch isn’t a movie
Recently watched “Noelle” with Anna Kendrick, Bill Hader, and Shirley MacLaine — sure, you can call it “twee” or whatnot, but dammit, it’s a cute Christmas movie (and far better than several of those on this list). Anna Kendrick is, as always, adorable, Bill Hader is a bit under-used but very good, and Shirley MacLaine is hilarious.
The Mothman Prophecies is a Christmas classic and I’m only half-kidding when saying so
Bill Murray said in an interview that the worst ass kicking he ever received was from Carol Kane on Scrooged.
I want to give Arthur Christmas a shout-out. It is one of our favorites in my family and we watch it every Christmas Eve!And I was glad to see Klaus on this list.
That’s literally the only reason I scrolled through all the comments. Sad to see only four people even bringing up “Arthur Christmas”.
A great list overall. Kudos for Tokyo Godfathers, Black Christmas and Gremlins. Despite the explicit racism, I have a thing for Holiday Inn, which starts and ends on New Year’s Eve and is a Christmas film to a degree. But I have always loved how the best Christmas films are the darkest. Christmas Carol and Wonderful Life are so damn bleak. It’s a Wonderful Life just wouldn’t be made today. Count the triggering storylines. And it’s this nation’s best contribution to Christmas movies. Speaking of which, can’t France’s A Christmas Tale get a little love? Take out Home Alone and put in that bleak, arthouse classic.
Good job including Love Actually, but how could you fail to include the other amazing Christmas film starring Alan Rickman?
YOU KNOW WHICH ONE I MEAN.
Not gonna lie folks. Donna Reed does it for me.
This list is laughably bad. How do you not have Die Hard?
This is the problem: if you are going to leave off classics like “Die Hard” and “Lethal Weapon” (presumably in an attempt to be “edgy” or something) then you are left with the unavoidable conclusion that there are maybe seven decent Christmas movies, and the rest of your list is barely even filler.
Just here to say that omitting “The Night Before” from this list is a mistake.
Love Actually is the Donald Trump of Christmas movies. You can make a long list of all it’s off-putting, obnoxious and unsavory qualities, yet it remains mystifyingly popular
The Polar Express and Christmas Chronicles are not better than The Santa Clause.
Hey, be more adventurous! I recommend dropping Santa Clause, Love Actually, Scrooged, and The Polar Express,
adding Joyeux Noël (2005, dir. by Christian Carion)
My Night at Maud’s (1969 dir. by Éric Rohmer)
8 Women (2002 dir. by François Ozon)
….also Ingmar Bergman’s final film, Fanny and Alexander (1982)
….and the annual argument, shouldn’t Die Hard be here?