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Christmas films….

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OK the tree’s up so it’s officially upon us. What are your favourite Christmas films, as in, you watch them as part of the ritual. For me (I hesitate to say us as I am probably more locked into the ritual than the rest of the household….anyway, for me they are “It’s a wonderful life” (weeping by the Doc/wrong pills scene), “White Christmas” (good till the General’s inspection) and late comer “Arthur Christmas”(generally solid other then when the elf says “not on my watch” but that might be an “Apollo 13” hangover). Yours?

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  1. Did Arthur Christmas earlier today – lovely little movie.

    Here’s the official list round mine:

    Home Alone & Home Alone 2 – Not to be watched until within a week of the big day. The ultimate Xmas movies (although Trump has probably ruined 2). I still laugh out loud every time.

    IAWL – I generally sneak off to the PCC to watch this on the big screen and stifle a little sniffle at the end. Always surprised by how bleak it gets, and just how short and sweet that happy ending is.

    Die Hard – A great movie that has recently been reborn as a beloved Xmas classic. Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho.

    Miracle on 34th Street – Both the original and the 90s remake. Good one to wrap presents in front of.

    Scrooged – Because one of the best things about Xmas is you get to watch Scrooged.

    Love Actually – I hate it, but I end up watching it every year, and every year I’m shocked to find it’s just as awful as I remember, but it has to be done.

    Batman Returns – The best Batman movie, benefiting from an Xmas setting, prime Tim Burton being granted full creative control, and an obsession with the era of silent movies.

    Lethal Weapon – Die Hard’s little brother.

    An Aardman animation – Has to be done within 48 hours of the big day. The kids love them.

    Raymond Briggs Father Christmas – Because it’s brilliant.

    Elf – Though my increasing suspicion is that if you’ve seen the TV ad for it you’ve seen most of the decent gags.

  2. Watching Home Alone right now with my daughter. Excellent. While It’s a Wonderful Life is as good as it gets and bad become a Christmas movie it is great any time of the year. Will check out Arthur C

  3. Agree on Home Alone and Scrooged, add Bad Santa, A Nightmare Before Christmas and Fanny and Alexander to my list.
    Also, in Sweden we have the annual “Julkalender” on TV, which is a kids drama series advent calendar, with a new episode each day in December until Christmas Eve. It’s been going since the late 50s or something, so over the years you get favourites and these days most of them are out on DVD…the ones I come back to are “Pelle Svanslös” and “Julens Hjältar” and every year I watch one of them again (plus that year’s new series of course).
    But my biggest Christmas tradition is to read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol out loud (to myself), sitting in front of the tree the night before Christmas.

  6. I have never understood why “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” is not more appreciated round these parts. I would’ve thought it’d be a touchstone, like This Is Spinal Tap, Yellow Submarine, or something… After all, it stars David Bowie, and Ryuichi Sakamoto of Japan fame. It’s by the leftist Japanese director Oshima (so it’s a WWII film from a Japanese perspective) which is important to some.
    Plus it features a soundtrack with David Bowie Jr. (aka David Sylvian)
    For me, I think it’s brilliant. Powerful even. The last lines of the film have haunted me for years. I recently read an old review by Roger Ebert, where he described the climatic scene as ruined by over acting. Unbelievable… is the man tone deaf? I would have thought there’d be fans on here, but the only mention it ever got (to my knowledge) was someone calling it a “not very good movie” a year or two ago.
    Anyway, it’s brilliant. It’s about war, and human beings, and foreigness, and the impossibility of understanding, but the true reality of brotherly love.
    It’s Bridge Over The River Kwai with mascara and 80’s synth music.
    It’s the best film Bowie was ever in. True.

    • Hmmm, interesting points, there, Mr Room.

      Just one tiny thing. There’s no such film as “Bridge Over The River Kwai”. For some reason, the preposition in that title is a really tricky one. The actual title is “The Bridge ON the River Kwai”. Perhaps we’ve all be led astray by Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water?

      • Oshima’s film should have been called “Bridge Over The River Kwai” …would have made a lot more money. As (has been pointed out) it’s not a christmas film, the title “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence” is complete crap. Since I’m indulging in what-ifs… replacing Bowie with a still living Elvis Presley would go a long way towards addressing Bowie’s bad acting issues. It would also be the break out acting-showcase that Elvis had longed for, but been unable to pursue under his prison warden manager “Col” Scumbag Parker. With America’s greatest icon replacing Bowie’s role, Oshima’s theme of culture clash might have been even more profoundly realized.

    • It’s probably not appreciated because DB, for all his qualities, is a dreadful actor and death to anything he’s in. See “Absolute Beginners”.

      • Bollocks. He’s great in Labyrinth (including the laughing gnome in his tights), The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Prestige, Last Temptation of Christ, as Andy Warhol in Basquiat and he is genuinely excellent in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence

        And was hilarious when playing himself like in the Rutles 2 interviews. Jagger can’t even do that convincingly. I won’t post his sketch about the Python reunion as its just horrifically bad.

  8. We (by that I mean my wife) have a soft spot for Scrooge the musical with Albert Finney. The songs by Leslie Bricusse are catchy, it uses the same sets as Oliver! and Finney makes a brilliant Scrooge. Plus it’s directed by Ronald Neame who made the best ever New Year’s Day film.

    • Together or apart, me and my Dad have watched that film every Christmas eve at 3pm (usually “gulping ales from ignorant glasses”, since you ask) for the last 30+ years. It’s probably my favourite film ever.

      I accept that it’s not really a very good film and takes preposterous liberties with the book – the “hell” sequence, for one. But it has a special creaky atmosphere and some glorious scenery-masticating cameos – Kenneth More, Edith Evans, and a row-of-tents Marley from Alec Guinness.

      PS. Anybody who thinks of Anton Rodgers as merely that fuddy duddy bloke from Fresh Fields ought to watch the Thank You Very Much sequence, in which he sings and dances atop a coffin being carried through windy cobbled streets as if he’s safely cutting a rug in his own lounge…. brotha had balls of steel.

  9. Last Saturday before Christmas is designated Sausage Roll night at chez Sam. We work through a plate of the good stuff, drink mulled wine and watch the following:

    Die Hard
    Trading Places
    National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

    Films are shown in that order, No quibbling..

  11. This is no fun, who wants a good film at Christmas, fer chrissake, it is schlock and tosh we want…..
    Santa Claus, the Movie, with Dudley Moore, uplifting landfill celluloid like that!

  12. Elf, It’s a Wonderful Life, Comfort and Joy. That’ll do for me. Though in recent years the evening of Christmas Day has been given over to Tarantino marathons.

  14. I know I’ll be the only person who likes this but so what…..The Holiday (Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, Cameron Diaz). It’s probably because it was partly filmed around Godalming where I lived for many years. Another vote for A Muppet Christmas Carol too.

  16. Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Great LA-set double bill.

    Gremlins Weird film, this. Lots of young-kid friendly stuff, but a 15 cert – mainly because of that scene in the kitchen when the Mom goes postal on the nasty little critters.

    Trading Places. The Dukes were nasty pieces of work, weren’t they?

    It’s a wonderful life. A lovely, lovely film. The ‘wrong pills’ moment sets me off. As does the look on George’s face when he realises that his brother has no intention of taking over at the bank.

    Bad Santa. “Is Granny spry?”

    Elf’. James Caan sticking it to the man on Christmas Eve.

    Muppet Christmas Carol.

    Home Alone. Mainly for the scream when the spider is placed on Daniel Stern’s face.

    I do enjoy the lull between Christmas and New Year – when you stick on a nice fat movie at about 10 in the evening and settle in with a drink and mint matchmakers and any leftover sausage rolls. Thinking here of something like The Godfather, Annie Hall, Some like it Hot, North by Northwest.

    • Fun Home Alone fact – they had to dub in the scream in post production; Daniel Stern just mimed it. If he’d actually screamed that loud the spider would have freaked and potentially bitten him.

    • I absolutely agree about the lull. One year we nipped off for some winter sun the day after Boxing Day till after new year, and whilst it was fine I really missed that period when you really don’t have to do anything. It’s about the only time you’re not under pressure to do stuff (generally having just done it) so you can just chill. I’d never go away again in that hallowed period.

      • Since leaving school I have usually had to work at least a couple of those days. But what bliss it is to snag time off during that period from Christmas Eve till the New Year.

        I like it when you lose track of the days and date. Wake the day after Boxing Day – is it 26th or 27th? Is it Wednesday? They show ‘proper films’ at 2 in the afternoon and it is acceptable to have a cheeky mince pie mid-morning.

        • I spent the first decade and a half of my working life in retail. Particularly in the later years that meant staying behind late on Christmas Eve then being back at work on Boxing Day to start the sale and deal with all the returns. Add in that I, and many other staff, would often get ill then because we had been working too hard before Christmas and succumbed once we stopped, even if it was only for a day.
          Since I bailed out for an office job I’m always happy to work the couple of days between Christmas and New Year that the place is open. This year I’ll get 5 days off then 3 more at New Year – luxury compared to what I was used to, and preferable to using a couple of days leave to string them together.

      • My own contribution to Christmas holiday traditions is Lord of the Rings Day. This entails, as you might imagine, watching the 3 LotR films back to back. Extended versions, natch. It is a lovely, calm meditative experience, fuelled by wine, leftovers, mince pies etc. It’s timed to be when everyone else is off at the sales so can be either Boxing Day or the day after. Yes, it’s that flexible – I’m not weird about it or anything.

  17. Bill Forsyth’s “Comfort & Joy” for me, the last of his classic opening 4-film salvo. Captures that melancholy of much of the great Christmas music.

  19. I love the 1951 Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim which always scares the bejeezus out of the kids. It really is genuinely dark (metaphorically, and with the gloomy black and white of the day, literally) and frightening in parts, as Dickens intended I would guess.

    Also another two thumbs up for Arthur Christmas which really deserves more attention than it gets at this time of year. It really is very funny in parts and full of quotable lines – “every child that year got a sausage nailed to a piece of bark”

    • That Scrooge – Sim specifically – is the most authentically Dickensian adaptation I’ve ever seen of any of his books. Ali is like a Leech engraving come to life.

      For several years Channel 5 showed the utterly bizarre colourised version. Cue a lot of confused people coming in from the pub on Christmas Eve and saying, “Am I tripping or is Bob Cratchit wearing a lime-green overcoat?”

  20. Oh gosh.

    I’m not at all ashamed to say it. The GLW and I adore ‘Love Actually’. There.

    I’m not sure how/when we started doing this, but we take a Friday or Saturday night just before Christmas every year to watch it. We put a big old plate together of crusty bread, pate, smoked salmon and various deli meats and cheeses, a few grapes and pickles, nice bottle of Bordeaux and watch Love Actually. It’s lovely. And it’s scheduled for this coming Saturday. I can’t wait.

    Apart from that, what everyone else said, with one addition. Anyone else seen ‘Mixed Nuts’?

    • It should have been a whole film about the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant, one of my favourite actors, no joke) falling in love with the tea girl from EastEnders. I would have enjoyed that, but Richard Curtis had already been to the well once with Notting Hill and was scared people might think he was being cheeky just rehashing an inversion of it for his next trick, so he added on a load of tonally awkward bells and whistles for Love Actually.

      I bet he was furious when he saw The Force Awakens. Furious.

  21. On the face of it, In The Bleak Midwinter has very little going for it. For a start it’s written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, that well-known perpetrator of Peter’s Friends and other luvvie horrors. It’s got both John Sessions and Julia Sawhala in it, two of the worst scenery-chewing actors ever to be allowed to stand the pointy side of a camera. But then it’s a film about bad actors, or at least quietly desperate ones, putting on Hamlet in a deserted church in the week before Christmas. Richard Briers is gruffly hilarious, and Michael Moloney as the ‘sweat prince’ skirts the fringes of mental breakdown to, trust me, touchingly brilliant effect.

    Somehow the awful cheesy saccharine moments (Cheesy Saccharine Moments, from Nestle) are forgivable because it’s a Christmas movie. If you can swallow them, and there’s a ton of them, there’s a lovely little film underneath, about loneliness and despair and redemption and unlikely friendships, and happy endings. It’s also wickedly funny and in another universe we’d all be quoting lines from it from Advent to Twelfth Night. As it is it’s an annual ritual in our house, with whatever friends we can round up to laugh, cry and drink along with Ken’s friends. Give it a try, honestly.

  22. I’m appalled that they’ve made a Bad Santa 2. The first one was a brilliant film, and it definitely didn’t need a – by all accounts completely awful – sequel.

  23. It’s just occurred to me that we’ve all overlooked In Bruges. I’ve watched it several times, but not at Christmas as far as I can recall. I’ll have to put that right this year.

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