If you’d like something a bit sweeter and nicer, may I recommend A Christmas Without Snow? A friend of mine put me on to it years ago.
Here’s the plot: a woman has moved to San Francisco after a divorce. She’s trying to put her life together and face her first Christmas in a new city and, as part of that, she joins a choir which is going to sing Handel’s Messiah. John Houseman plays a curmudgeon cut from the same mold as his character on The Paper Chase and has some of the best lines in the movie. It’s a good movie to watch while curled up with friends and a good cup of hot chocolate.
I concur. And I’ll second someone else’s recommendation of The Lion in Winter.
Moonstruck takes place in a New York* dressed for Christmas–although the holiday is never mentioned. But I don’t need much of an excuse to watch that movie.
And it’s time to drag out *If I Should Fall from Grace - The Shane MacGowan Story *. Yes, it’s mostly very sad. But there’s a performance of Fairy Tale of New York.
Not exactly obscure, but not terrifically commonly shown: Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol – the very first Christmas Cartoon Special, predating Rudolph by years (and assuming you don’t count those self-promoting Disney “From All of Us” episodes, as I don’t). Short, well-done, with music and lyrics by a proven Broadway team. And UPA’s Gerald McBoing-Boing as Tiny Tim is a cute touch, although it was years before I realized it.
A Christmas Carol – The 1971 animated version used Alistair Sim’s voice (he played Scrooge in arguably the best filmed version ever, from 1951), a scenario by Chuck Jones (!), and animated the original drawings from the book. It won an Oscar (even though made for TV). I’ve never seen it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068373/
** The Blue Carbuncle** – One of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes ones, done for Granada/WGBH. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer – The animated one, but not THAT animated one. This one predates it by a fair bit, having come out in 1948 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068373/
Another vote for The Ref. Great performances all around, and it manages to be snarky through and through, and still wind up kind of heartwarming. A couple years ago when it came out on DVD, my husband got it for me for Xmas, knowing it’s my favorite.
One more suggestion: La Bûche. Set in Paris in the days leading up to Christmas, with a moderately dysfunctional family disovering things about themselves. (“Bûche” is the French for a Christmas cake in the shape of a log).
