Holiday Favorites

[filmyfan]

Time to resurrect this thread me thinks..

any new offerings this year?

[ianthemovie]

Elle

[Costa]

I love Christmas and Christmas-y movies!!!

My yearly staples are Home Alone 1 & 2.
Love the atmosphere, the music, everything about them..

Now, I'll mention some others that may not have been mentioned yet (just did a quick browse in the thread)

The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971) (pilot of The Waltons) (I watch this every year too. I love the simplicity of it, and I hope it could be released on Bluray. Haven't seen any episode of the series)
The Gathering (1977) (TV movie)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
In the Good old Summertime (1948) (musical remake of The Shop around the Corner)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas (1977)
All Mine To Give (1957)
Prancer (1989)
Batman Returns (1992)

Also another film that I watched for the first time last year, and was blown away and I'm probably be watching it every year now in December is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Not Christmas movie but it ends with a Christmas scene.
Also I adore All that heaven Allows (1955). (starts in the fall, ends in the winter and includes Christmas scenes)

i wish James Ivory had done a Christmas film, because I love the production values of his films, and I have a hunch it would be magnificent aesthetically..

Furthermore, my favourite film of the Christmas Carol story, is the 1984 TV version with George C. cott. Probably because it was the first one I saw? I don't know..
One more vote here too for the anime The Tokyo Godfathers! Great film!
Another thing: I watched last year Mon Oncle Antoine (1971) which is considered the best Canadian film, and I don't know.. I didn't like it.
But I was thinking about it afterwards.. Maybe I should watch it again to reevaluate.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for pre-1995 foreign Christmas films?
I've searched the net but I've found only 4-5.
(eg. Fanny and Alexander (I try to watch at least the first episode of this every year whcih i think is perfectaly viewable as a standalone movie), Sundays and Cybele, my night at Maud's (couldn't finish this) etc.)

[Michael Kerpan]

Mon Oncle Antoine is a wonderful film -- but the Christmastime setting does not necessarily a feel-good "Christmas film" make.

[pzadvance]

I've had a hankering to revisit Carol this year specifically for its yuletide setting. Good excuse as any to start annually watching an excellent film!

[TMDaines]

Been watching a lot of Christmas staples and classics over last few years. Not too many bonafide classics that I haven't seen now and I've seen a a lot of the lesser known stuff, but I've got these on the schedule for this year:

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Christmas Eve (1947)
Susan Slept Here (1954)
White Christmas (1954)
We're No Angels (1955)
Ma nuit chez Maud // My Night with Maud (1969)
Fanny och Alexander // Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Metropolitan (1990)
Tyli naktis // Christmas. Uncensored (2012) [NSFW]
Happy Christmas (2014)
Tangerine (2015)

This Wiki article is a good place for browsing Christmas films. There used to be another page with only tangentially related films, but that was purged unfortunately.

[beamish13]

The Canadian crime thriller The Silent Partner has become a holiday staple for me. Much like The Ice Harvest, Bad Santa and
Reindeer Games, the Christmas holiday serves as an impetus for its central characters' actions, which result in both tragic and hilarious
consequences. Excellent performances from Elliott Gould, Susannah York and especially Christopher Plummer.

I'm glad Batman Returns was mentioned. I can't think of any other Christmas season film that so eloquently conveys the loneliness
that many people feel during these times. A beautiful film about incredibly damaged individuals, and arguably the greatest superhero comic
book adaptation ever.

[Caligula]

I'm hoping to revisit Fanny & Alexander myself over the festive season. My personal recommendation would be Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt, in which the small-town hypocrisy around Christmas is a substantial theme.

[ZHansen]

A couple of my recent favorites are White Reindeer and Christmas, Again, which both go a long way towards proving that maybe the best holiday films are the loneliest.

My all-time favorite Christmas film is Hellcab, a.k.a. Chicago Cab, which I rented back in college. It was labeled Horror, had a spooky cover, and "starred" Julianne Moore and John Cusack, all of which appealed to me at the time. What I found instead was a fantastic portrait of a lonely cab driver's shift driving the streets of Chicago on Christmas Eve and the various passengers he interacts with. Though Moore and Cusack's screen time is a combined five minutes or so, it was my first exposure to a young Michael Shannon. When I saw Bug years later I was pleasantly surprised to see that the crackhead from Hellcab was on the verge of stardom!

Revisiting the film has now been a Christmas treat for me ever since. Seeing the play the film was based on had been a four-year tradition, as well, at Chicago's Profiles Theatre's, but this tradition likely ended this year forever: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/pr ... d=22415861.

[beamish13]

Bill Forsyth's hilarious and allegorical film about warring ice cream vendors, Comfort & Joy, is another holiday-themed film that I greatly enjoy.

[TMDaines]

Just stumbled across Plácido. Might have to make a beeline for that.

[ando]

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, everyone. 'Fraid my three favorites haven't changed for years. Ermanno Olmi's Carmina Carmina (Keep Walking, 1983), a dramatization of the three magi who foretold and followed the star heralding the birth of Jesus Christ cast among Italian peasantry; BD Hurst's Scrooge(1951), the indelible 20th century version (though I admire the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol as well) and, of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas - the quintessential American holiday kid crew.

[TMDaines]

Mrs Parkington (1944) is a film I had not heard of until yesterday, but the shots of a Christmas tree in HD made me give it a watch. The film opens with the framing story on Christmas Eve, where Mrs Parkington is hosting her family for the festive period. They are depicted as boorish and entitled. Through extended flashbacks, the film charts her rise socially and economically, and her good times and bad with the single love of her life, all the while contrasting that with the family's current arrogant attitude to its immense wealth and her great granddaughter's indecision at being torn between her fiancee and family. Recommended!

[ando]

Mrs Parkington (1944) is a film I had not heard of until yesterday, but the shots of a Christmas tree in HD made me give it a watch. The film opens with the framing story on Christmas Eve, where Mrs Parkington is hosting her family for the festive period. They are depicted as boorish and entitled. Through extended flashbacks, the film charts her rise socially and economically, and her good times and bad with the single love of her life, all the while contrasting that with the family's current arrogant attitude to its immense wealth and her great granddaughter's indecision at being torn between her fiancee and family. Recommended!

Thanks. Found a nice streamer, which will do until I can get a DVD edition. Revisiting my old faves (mentioned above) again this week.

[TMDaines]

There's a ridiculous amount of Warner-owned classic Hollywood films now available in HD. I'm not sure where all the rips of streams are coming from? Amazon US? Such a shame they are not releasing these in volume on Blu-ray.

[Lost Highway]

My favourite Christmas scene:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=10OXtPn9r1U&feature=share" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[filmyfan]

Hate the end of the holiday season.

Signals the end of my own curated holiday film season.

Succeeded in watching 50 (Festive Fifty) films and shorts..(TV not included) in the month of December.

This year (well last month now!)..I watched a Naruse season (4 films)..and plenty of Chaplin/L&H shorts (always a holiday staple).and rounded off last night with In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

Squeezed in The Apartment on the 23rd-but sadly didnt watch Remember the Night or Shop Around the Corner (2 faves)-and a distinct lack of noirs (always like a good noir at xmas)-also a lack of new films..Things to Come was watched early in December and a poor Great Gatsby was watched on the BBC-that was it for anything new-ish

Will still be watching in January of course but its back to work tomorrow...and time constraints play havoc...but still have a pile of stuff (and a list) of stuff to watch...its never ending.

Cant wait for December now...when I will do it all over again...wonder what I will watch??!!

[TMDaines]

Watched In Name Only tonight, not appreciating about a third of it is set at Christmas. I would have saved it for a few months’ times otherwise! Curious how it never seems to appear on any of the mega lists of Christmas films.

[domino harvey]

I imagine it being a rather depressing Christmas for Grant's character is part of the reason why it doesn't get trotted out as much!

[TMDaines]

This year I’m lining up:

Stella Dallas (1937)
Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
Bachelor Mother (1939)
Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
Christmas Eve (1947)
Blast of Silence (1961)
Placido (1961)
The Silent Partner (1978)
Le père Noël est une ordure (1982)
Ma saison preférée (1993)
Pelišky (1999)
The Family Man (2000)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

[Lowry_Sam]

Thanks to Criterion I am now able to watch the best Christmas scene of all time on a blu-ray

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I caught a bit of Eyes Wide Shut last night, and was reminded how much I love it. It's certainly one of my favorite Christmas comedies. It's one of the films I have on rotation around this time of year (usually EWS for Christmas Eve, It's a Wonderful Life for Christmas, and The Apartment for New Year's Eve. Other standards are The Shop Around the Corner, Fanny and Alexander, and Holiday Affair, which I think is quietly extraordinary in its non-melodramatic engagement with war, commercialism, romantic triangles, and single-parent families. I also think it's beautiful in its simple but articulate staging, and understated performances by all. And Robert Mitchum in a light-hearted rom com is the star on top of the tree.

[Feego]

This year I’m lining up:

Bachelor Mother (1939)

Bachelor Mother contains my favorite New Year's scene and has become something of a tradition for me on that evening.

Spoiler

The scene in which Ginger Rogers and David Niven get lost among the revelers and make their way back to each other through the crowd and finally kiss is one of the most genuinely romantic moments of any film I've seen.

[Big Ben]

I caught a bit of Eyes Wide Shut last night, and was reminded how much I love it. It's certainly one of my favorite Christmas comedies.

What movie did you watch? I saw this my junior year in High School on a Censored VHS tape and all I really recall was being unnerved the whole time.

[reaky]

This year I discovered the *other* Deanna Durbin Christmas movie, Lady on a Train (1945). It’s a bit of mess, but as much fun as you’d expect from a screwball comedy whodunnit musical.