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All rights reserved About Us. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. Posted Thu, Dec 19, at am ET. Here's a little insight into what might be the perfect Christmas movie for the friends and family in your life. The most-popular Christmas movie in the nation? Find out what's happening in Across America with free, real-time updates from Patch.
Let's go! Sandra Bullock's performances in 's Speed and in 's While You Were Sleeping are the perfect examples of movie star range. In one, she's a put-upon everywoman thrust into an absurd, convoluted action movie scenario. In the other, she's a put-upon everywoman thrust into an absurd, convoluted romantic comedy scenario. She adapts to both.
Also, one is about a bus, and the other is about a train. But only one of these films—specifically, the one where Bullock's character pretends to be engaged to a man in a coma Peter Gallagher and then falls in love with his charming brother Bill Pullman —is also a stealth Christmas movie.
What can't she do? Praise Sandra Bullock, bringer of holiday amnesia comedy cheer. Like his Christmas Carol , director Robert Zemeckis rendered Chris Van Allsburg's illustrated children's classic, a dazzling mix of surrealism and 20th-century Romantic art, for a three-dimensional canvas.
Through the magic of motion-capture, Tom Hanks stars as The Boy, the Train Conductor, and Santa Claus, who all suffer from the Uncanny Valley mistiness, but beam with excitement and cheer. The Polar Express is basically a tech display for Zemeckis's new toys, but since when is Christmas not about the decorations? Elizabeth Barbara Stanwyck is a revered food columnist who spins yarns of her white-picket-fence existence in Connecticut with a loving husband and newborn.
But when her boss tasks her with hosting a Christmas dinner for a returning soldier Dennis Morgan , her actual status as a single New Yorker puts her in a precarious and sitcom-ready position. Christmas in Connecticut gift wraps criss-crossed relationships, gender dynamics, and burning desire into a romantic, holiday romp. Stanwyck and Morgan require no mistletoe to conjure their endlessly watchable chemistry.
If this were a list of the best psycho-sexual odysessy films, Eyes Wide Shut would definitely be sitting in the top spot. But this is a Christmas movie list, and while we're willing to acknowledge that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's Eyes Wide Shut is, in fact, a Christmas movie—look out for the Christmas trees the film's notoriously meticulous director Stanley Kubrick placed in the background of multiple scenes—there's something a little obnoxious about declaring this deeply Freudian meditation on desire the "best" holiday film.
At the same time, the last scene of marital reconciliation does play out during a light-strewn shopping trip. It's the most mind-bending, brooding, orgy-filled Christmas movie ever made. Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov star in this gleefully absurd, yuletide tale about three criminals who break out of jail a few days before Christmas only to become live-in, fix-it guys for an impoverished family and their picturesque corner store.
Michael Curtiz, who directed Bogart in Casablanca and helmed White Christmas just the year before, keeps this paradise escapade light on its feet. Dwell on the fact that the three "wise men" lie, cheat, and steal their way to holiday harmony, and We're No Angels loses all its charm.
Indulge in Bogart's old-fashioned charm and Curtiz's Technicolor redemption, and you may have new required viewing. Turns out the only thing more threatening to Ernest P. Worrell's life than sticking two fingers into an electrical socket is the Kentucky fried nincompoop placing his entire hand into Santa's magic bag. This mandatory Christmas adventure finds Ernest and Mr.
Claus on a mission to retrieve the powerful gift-giving knapsack. Carol is as exquisite as a shiny new ornament removed from the box. Writer Phyllis Nagy adapted Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt for director Todd Haynes, who bathes each image of seduction and enchantment in an otherworldly glow. The visual approach puts you in the mind of Therese Belivet, a young department store employee played by Rooney Mara, as she falls under the spell of the titular Carol Cate Blanchett.
Like most great cinematic love stories, it's a tale of obsession—and its combination of meticulous period details, stupendous costumes, and possibly doomed romance make it ideal viewing next to a roaring fire. Just don't get too close to the flame. The two main characters in Tangerine —Sin-Dee Rella Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Alexandra Mya Taylor —have the type of kinetic, exhilarating, and occasionally lurid day centered around a Hollywood donut shop that would make Quentin Tarantino's head spin off.
That it takes place on Christmas Eve—well, that's just icing on the donut. For many, Christmas is about friendships that serve the same purpose as family, and director Sean Baker's stylistic whirlwind of a movie is a bracing study of how those relationships sustain people in times of emotional crisis, violence, and reconciliation. Its final scene of two trans women quietly enjoying each others company in a laundromat is a genuine Christmas miracle. White Christmas is the fruitcake of Christmas movies: a holiday standard that you either love or hate.
The musical sequences—including the stirring rendition of the Irving Berlin-penned title track and the charming "Sisters"—are spectacular. What's not to like? Well, the plot, dialogue, and characters are paper-thin, but the film's minute running time is the perfect sedative for anyone too excited to sleep on Christmas Eve. Denzel Washington isn't known for his comedies—the Oscar winner's long career is packed with bullet-ridden action movies and tough-minded dramas—but he's more than capable of delivering light-hearted laughs when called upon by the Lord.
Washington is a delight as a dapper angel named Dudley summoned to New York to rekindle a sparkless marriage between Whitney Houston's choir singer and Courtney B. Vance's pastor. The story, updated from 's The Bishop's Wife starring Cary Grant, might feel a little hokey, but the performances and the showstopping gospel numbers give this fairytale a holy glow. Setting aside its meme-able cue-card scene, Love Actually isn't as sticky-sweet as its heartstring-pulling reputation might suggest.
Writer-director Richard Curtis Notting Hill specializes in tart-tongued retorts, silly verbal gags, and witty banter, which help leaven some of the movie's cheesy sentimentality. So do Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, and the late Alan Rickman , all on hand to add touches of class and melancholy as you struggle to resist this divisive rom-com's sugary charms.
Be warned: This is the only movie on this list that boasts a claymation character exposing its genitals. In the third installment of this underrated comedy series, stoner buddies Harold John Cho and Kumar Kal Penn go on another Homeric quest, this time looking for a new Christmas tree to please Harold's pissed-off father-in-law Danny Trejo , which means more sly social commentary slipped in among hefty helpings of gross-out gags, weed jokes, and vulgar Neil Patrick Harris cameos.
It just might be the sticky-icky strain you're fiending for this holiday season. Also, shout-out to WaffleBot , the funniest holiday robot of all time. What if Santa was real and buried in a mass grave somewhere in Finland? That's the bizarre and hilarious question posed by director Jalmari Helander in this whimsical horror romp about a young boy Onni Tommila and his reindeer-herding father Jorma Tommila , who investigate a mysterious mountain-excavation company and wind up in over their heads.
Packed with winking John Carpenter references, bursts of gun-churning violence, and a surprising amount of older male nudity, the movie occasionally struggles to nail its anarchic, storybook tone down the home stretch, but it's more than worth a post-milk-and-cookies viewing.
In a brutal one-star review of Scrooged , critic Roger Ebert called this Dickens update "one of the most disquieting, unsettling films to come along in quite some time. Is Bill Murray why some families return to this proudly rude holiday movie every year?
But the Ghostbusters star invests his Scrooge-like '80s TV executive with enough irony and blowhard arrogance to earn this comedy—the Bad Santa of its day, basically—a loyal cult following of smart-ass uncles over the years. He doesn't like kids; he lives a life of decadent luxury; he seduces and discards vulnerable women; and he rejects Christmas cheer, a scorn he's carried ever since his father penned the joyfully tacky novelty hit " Santa's Super Sleigh.
Watching Grant's heart grow a couple sizes has never been this fun, and a moving supporting turn from Toni Collette—along with a sneakily great Badly Drawn Boy soundtrack—make this essential droll holiday viewing. Put your love for the confectionary remake behind you: Laurel and Hardy's black-and-white original is where it's at. With enough holiday DNA—the duo play fairytale dolts who build toys for Santa, and the overt connections end there—and toys to fill a forest of Christmas trees, the musical sings, dances, and slapticks through a magnificent fantasy world, made all the more surreal by the blend of live action and animation.
Why does a Mickey Mouse seizure on the dance floor while a cat gawks and plays the fiddle in this movie? Just go with it. In , director Bob Clark made holiday-movie history with A Christmas Story , a hilarious, sweet, and nostalgic slice of Americana with just enough rough edges to keep audiences watching every year on cable. But real Christmas-movie fans know that Clark also helmed this brilliant bit of '70s slasher heaven about a murderer running rampant at a sorority holiday party.
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