I’ve already listed one of my favorites in this thread, so this thread is for letting everyone know what your favorite Christmas movies are and why.
[ul][li]“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946, James Stewart)[/li]
I have an irrational affection for this movie. George Baily’s struggle to achieve great things leaves him frustrated and unaware what great things he’s already accomplished. It takes a financial crisis, a suicide attempt, and divine intervention before he realizes just how wonderful his life really is.
[li]“Santa Caus Conquers the Martians” (1964, Lots of people whose names I don’t recognize plus a 10-year-old Pia Zadora)[/li]
Martians decide to kidnap Santa Claus so he can deliver toys to their kids. If you love movies with bad dialogue, wooden acting, stock footage, flimsy sets, and hokey props, this one’s for you!
[li]“A Christmas Story” (1983, Darren McGavin, Peter Billingsly, and Melinda Dillon)[/li]
Have you ever seen a movie that paints an unrealistically sentimental picture of childhood? One where the adults are wise and patient and the children are quiet and well-behaved? Well this isn’t one of them. Little Ralphie is trying to convince his parents to buy him a Red Ryder BB gun, as well as staying out of the way of the local bully. This movie recreates childhood as seen through the eyes of a kid (or at least as seen through the eyes of an adult who didn’t forget what it was like). I highly recommend this one.[/ul]I’d go on to list more, but it wouldn’t be a forum if you couldn’t get a word in edgewise, now would it?
My favourite Christmas movie ever. Especially liked the true confession of the heroine when they are trapped in the bank “…I’ve always hated Christmas…”
Though A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Nightmare Before Christmas are all priceless, my absolute favorite Yuletide film (one that makes me cry hands down every time) is one I can virtually guarantee nobody on this board has seen:
London Under Fire
A 10-minute documentary made during the Blitz, it shows how traditional holiday conventions are turned on their heads that winter of 1940. Just a few examples:
[li]Church bells which usually toll remain silent, since tolling bells are the island-wide signals of invasion.[/li][li]Nobody hopes for a starry night, because clear skies mean the Luftwaffe will visit. And of course, no Christmas lights.[/li][li]The new best-selling toys are RAF model planes, while miniatures of the French campaign are on the remainder shelf after Dunkirk.[/li][li]Holiday shoppers wander through the rubble of broken glass from blown out storefront windows.[/li]
And all sorts of other attempts to make do amidst the rationing and anxiety of a city under siege.
But the kicker is the ending. A choir begins singing Adeste Fideles, and with the second verse, we descend down the escalator of the Underground to one of the deepest of all the routes–the Piccadilly line. There we see hundreds of people camped out, performing their nightly ritual of sleeping on the platform a couple dozen meters below the surface. Families & Christmas trees amidst the pitch black, but these celebrations act as oases of hope rather than orgies of materialism.
Manipulative? Sure, but also incredibly powerful and immensely moving.
Eyes Wide Shut.
I can’t believe it was originally released in JULY. Every shot has lush Christmas scenery. If the critics weren’t so busy trying to figure out how to admit they liked it without telling anyone there would have been a Christmas re-release.
SANTA CLAUS, THE MOVIE, with Dudley Moore and John Lithgow. By Alexander Salkin, same guy that produced Superman - The Movie. You’ll believe that a reindeer can fly!
The 1951 Alistair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol” is still far and away the best, although the 1984 George C. Scott TV version was very good. I still have a soft spot for the Mr. Magoo musical version from the early 1960s. (And I’d like to see the Chuck Jones-produced animated version from circa 1970. It animated the original illustrations AND had the voice of Alistair Sim.)
Plus, of course, the Chuck Jones animated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.
I have to admit that I’m not that fond of most Christmas movies. I’m not particularly fond of Christmas Vacation. Some kids first learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real because of the movie “Gremlins” (which I’m not particularly fond of), and I’m not that fond of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which I managed to avoid seeing somehow until just a few years ago. I have this fantasy of an alternate version in which the John Barrymore banker is the one who tries to kill himself by jumping off the bridge, but he’s rescued by a devil who shows him how much more cloyingly sweet life would have been if he hadn’t been born, so the banker decides not to commit suicide to keep things from getting disgustingly nice. “And remember, every time you hear fingernails scraping on a blackboard, a Devil gets his Horns!”
Miracle on 34th Street. Has everything, great story, humor, and is not flawed by being overly sentimental.
A Christmas Story
A Christmas Carol (Alistar Sim version)
The Thin Man (Yes, it does take place at Christmas)
If we’re going to add TV specials, then you can include Chuck Jones’s “Grinch,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” but I think that’s another category.
I can’t stand It’s a Wonderful Life. I have yet to see A Christmas Story all the way through, I either come in in the middle, have to leave in the middle or some of both.
Even though it’s another Steve Martin Los Angeles movie, Mixed Nuts is one of my favorites, in a really weird, “this is too freakish not to enjoy it” kind of way.
My favorite Christmas Movie? Not really a movie, more of a short subject – it was originally on Saturday Night Live a couple years ago (or maybe only last year, it’s hard to remember).
The plot was pretty thin: Christ visits various media preachers and “holier-than-thou” types searching for some sign that he is remembered. Actual dialog from those preachers is heard, usually denouncing some group or begging for more money, while Christ just gets more and more upset. In each case, he zaps the speaker into a toad, a rat, or something of that nature.
Finally, discouraged and depressed, he is walking along a city street and stops at a store. In the window are many tvs, all tuned into “A Charlie Brown Christmas” as Linus begins reciting the passage from the Book of Luke. Christ is surprised, and overjoyed. A tear swells, he smiles, and begins the “Charlie Brown Dance”. At the end, a message went out: “Happy Birthday, Charles Schultz”.
My husband, when he saw this, not only laughed, he nearly cried as well. Never was the meaning of Christmas better portrayed. I only wish I knew where to find a copy of this!
I love this movie. I end up watching it at least two or three times during December. Although it’s not broadcast as often as it used to be – when I was a senior in high school I was looking for something to watch on Christmas Eve, and It’s a Wonderful Life was on every channel. Every channel! (Well, about 90 percent of them, anyway.)[/ul]
::giggle:: Have you ever seen the MiSTed version? That’s one of my favorite episodes of MST3k, if only because it has a skit where Joel and the 'bots sing “Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas.”
I love the version with Alistair Sim. It’s another one of those Christmas movies that I have to watch every time it comes on TV.
When I was about seven my mom found a little tree just like that one and couldn’t resist bringing it home. She even bought special miniature ornaments for it so we could decorate it. She called it our “Charlie Brown” tree.
Wha … it’s on tonight? ::checks TV Guide online:: It is! Thank you, Zoggie! I would have missed it. I need to look up when all of these specials are on.