Favorite Holiday Films

Topic shamelessly stolen from Ally Carter, though she wants me to pick just one, and I can’t. How about a top ten:

10. Santa Claus: The Movie. I don’t know what it is about this film. Certainly it’s not Dudley Moore’s rather creepy portrayal of an elf. I just love the idea of the Santa Claus origin myth, love how all of the things about him are explained, how the beautiful relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Claus is portrayed, and the great costumes and colors. I pretty much lose interest after we get past the origin part of the story and into the plotline involving John Lithgow trying to steal Christmas. But I love the whole first half so much. (The scene where he reads “The Night Before Christmas” and gets all freaked out about whether or not his belly shakes and goes on a diet never fails to slay me. “Jelly? Jelly!?!?!” “Well… the cookies…” says Mrs. Claus.)

9. Bad Santa. This movie is dirty, mean-spirited, gross, and utterly hilarious. I adore it. Billy Bob Thornton plays a pathetic, alcoholic safecracker posing as Santa Claus in order to plan a mall heist. Laura Graham is his Santa-fetish girlfriend, and John Ritter’s last role is as his uptight boss. You’ll hate how hard you laugh, and how much you love it.

8. The Small One. I feel vaguely guilty for including this after the previous entry, because it’s one of the sweetest, most tender, most beautiful holiday movies of all time (and also probably the closest to religious that I’ll be getting on this list), and also for picking it over other Disney holiday cartoon fare such as the Scrooge McDuck Christmas Carol (though I have a lot of those on this list) and The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is also brilliant. But I can’t even think about this movie without wanting to cry. It’s a short film about a young boy from Nazareth who loved his old donkey, Small One, and what happens when his father forces him to sell his donkey at the market. Yep, here come the tears.

7. It’s a Wonderful Life. Sorry folks. It’s a classic for a reason. I admit I was on the bandwagon of “overrated” for a really long time with this film, but over the past few years, I’ve started to love it more and more with every viewing, and now it’s one of my favorites. It’s a gorgeous screenplay, and lovingly acted and directed. You can tell everyone involved in this production believed in it. That scene, where Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart kiss on the phone? *swoon*. And “I don’t want any plastics and I don’t want any ground floors, and I don’t want to get married to anyone, ever! Do you hear me?” *swoon, swoon!*

6. While You Were Sleeping. Not often thought of as a Christmas movie, but it is, and it’s a very Christmasy Christmas movie at that. I love it, not only for the central romantic story, which is really sweet and really funny and really romantic, but for all the awesome secondary characters, including Peter Boyle (R.I.P.) as the patriarch of a loving, close-knit family. I also love it as a writer, because it’s a wonderfully structured screenplay. I can’t figure out why I find this movie so utterly charming. It’s a bit predictable and cliched, but in a totally forgiveable “this is a romantic comedy, and it’s going exactly where you think it is, but isn’t it fun?” kind of way.

5. A Christmas Carol (sometimes called Scrooge) starring Alastair Sim. This is my father’s favorite version of the story, and over the years, it has become my favorite as well. It’s certainly the darkest take on Scrooge. Alastair pulls out all the stops. His conversion at the end comes across almost like madness, and throughout the film, the focus is always, always, always on him, his expressive face, his almost palpable despair… It’s amazing.

4. Scrooged. I really love any and all versions of the Dickens novella, even the one starring Vanessa Williams as “Ebony Scrooge,” but this one might be my favorite adaptation. Bill Murray is a perfect Scrooge (er, Frank Cross), and the supporting cast of Karen Allen, Alfre Woodard, Carol Keene, and Bobcat Goldthwait are phenomenal. It’s funny and dark and oh so eighties.

3. The Ref. Another rather dark Christmas film about a cat burglar who takes a dysfunctional family hostage on Christmas Eve. This is the first time I think I ever saw Kevin Spacey in a starring role, and it remains my favorite of his movies. He’s SOOOOOO good in this film. “Excuse me! The corpse still has the floor!” Denis Leary is brilliant, as is Judy Davis, and the rest of the cast. The script is phenomenal and it ends up being really quite touching. And yet, more than touching, it’s laugh out loud funny. A perennial favorite in my family (where we really go for the sick humor.)

2. Holiday Inn. I like this movie more than the very similar White Christmas. Danny Kaye’s dancing is phenomenal, no doubt about it, and Rosemary Clooney kicks ass in her part, but Holiday Inn has more spectacular dancing, better songs, and a more comprehensible (if less emotional) plotline. Here, Bing plays a performer-turned-farmer whose engagement to his female (brunette, the vixen!) co-star was broken when the other partner in the act, Astaire, stole her away. Now, Bing is trying to start an inn open holidays only, and hires an up-and-coming blonde to be his new co-star. Astaire, fresh from having his heart trampled on by the brunette (karma is a killer), now bursts back on the scene and tries to steal the blonde in a series of increasingly showstopping dance sequences (one where he performs a dance off with fireworks). It’s also the debut of the song “White Christmas,” and a much better use of it. I watched it last week, and the romances really don’t make any emotional sense (they fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat), but the musical numbers are still so amazing that I don’t care. I’ve always wondered why it’s not as popular as WC (along with this number, the two films share a set), and think, perhaps, it’s because WC takes place entirely during the holidays, while HI covers a whole year. Also, HI has a rather offensive blackface number that is often edited out in television broadcasts. But it’s still a great flick. I’d watch it just for the firework number, but Astaire’s “drunk dance” and Bing’s Freedom song and rendition of White Christmas are terrific as well.

1. A Christmas Story. This is one of those stories that I wish I’d written. A man recounts his childhood Christmas in the 40s and his all-consuming desire for a bb gun despite the common warning that he’ll “shoot his eye out.” I love it; every line, every scene, every shot. No wonder they now they show it to packed houses at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theater nearby. No wonder they show it for 24 hours straight on television on Christmas Day. Perfect characters played to perfection and directed perfectly to a perfect script in a perfect production. I triple dog dare you to say you don’t love this film.

I realize that I have a somewhat odd taste. I never was a huge fan of Miracle on 34th St., though I don’t actively dislike it. Ditto with the animated Grinch Who Stole Christmas. I do think I actively dislike the Rankin-Bass claymations, however. Sailor Boy wants to know why I didn’t mention his favorites: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Home Alone, and Gremlins 2. My mother, who, conveniently enough, shares a similar taste in Christmas films as me, has a few other favorites in The Bishop’s Wife, The Santa Clause, and (oddly and inconceivably) Jingle All the Way. And Marley adores Love Actually.

What about you?