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For Christmas, nothing beats Jason and the Argonauts - nothing exactly festive about it, but I first saw it on a Christmas day and always try to watch it around that time. Trust me, it just works!

Last year, on New Year's Eve, my family and I watched The Dead, timing it so it finished just before midnight. Warm but sobering, it's the perfect film after all the exaggerated cheer and festivity of Christmas. Unless of course you actually enjoy raucous New Year's parties, in which case sticking this on probably won't win you any friends. Personally, I find that sharing in Gabriel's bleak epiphany is a great way to settle into the realisation that I have yet another whole bloody year to get through...

Just watched Better Off Dead for the umpteenth time and it has Christmas in it, totally forgot about that! Found my go to x-mas movie for from now on.

Michael Kerpan wrote:My relatives would disown me if I gave them copies of Kon's film. ;~}

Hehe, I'm choosing the recipitents wisely. Actually, it's a Kon heavy year as someone will be receiving Millenium Actress in their stocking too.

Two Holiday films worth screening at this time of year:

Remember the Night. Directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges. An unsung classic and just about the perfect Christmas film, a searing romance that's not like anything else Sturges wrote, though it has his characteristic moral relativism and view of virtue and vice as interchangeable love-carried viruses. Prosecutor Fred MacMurray feels sorry for petty thief Barbara Stanwyck and takes her into the American heartland to celebrate with his folks (and less so with hers). Like all the best Christmas movies, there's just as much pain as celebration on hand. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The best Bond film ever made is also the only one specifically set during Christmas. The timing is put to especially sardonic use, since Blofeld and Bond have no use for "goodwill toward all men". Director Peter Hunt makes excellent use of the Swiss and Portuguese locations, playing them off against each other by alternating golden summer idylls with wintry alps and chasms and staging ski and bobsled chases that are still innovative 40 years later. The holiday celebrations lend depth to the most fully developed and tragic love story in the series.

Certainly On Her Majesty's Secret Service deserves a (second) look in the 'grim and gritty, back to basics' Craig-era.

What about Goodfellas, with its sprinkling of ostentatious festive decorations, 'Frosty the Snowman' on the soundtrack -- and definite lack of goodwill towards men, even at Christmas?

Caged Horse wrote:What about Goodfellas, with its sprinkling of ostentatious festive decorations, 'Frosty the Snowman' on the soundtrack -- and definite lack of goodwill towards men, even at Christmas?

It would be a tough call to decide between a festive Goodfella's and a merry Vera Drake as two which will give me the lowest Pot-Noodle eating Christmas yet. They both have their charm.

The Christmas party scene following the big heist, with De Niro's rage mounting as the mobsters arrive having treated themselves to increasingly OTT presents, is as memorably excruciating as anything in The King of Comedy.

Brazil is usually my odd holiday choice.

Remember the Night. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.

Good news, Revelator.

Though I've never thought of it as such, TCM programmed THE LION IN WINTER over the weekend & yeah, it is a Xmas movie. Lots of gift-giving, backstabbing family politics ...

reaky wrote:Remember the Night. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.

Good news, Revelator.

Very good indeed! I ordered my copy today.

reaky wrote:Remember the Night. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.

It's on DVD in the Italian Cofanetto Mitchell Leisen and also available as a DVD (-R?) from Universal's TCM Vault Collection.

WFMU digs up an impossibly large assortment of TV Christmas specials viewable online

Featuring the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special at the bottom of their list!

I saw White Christmas for the first time yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner, and while I didn't think highly of the film, I felt compelled to report that the Blu-ray is stunning. The colors of Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen's costumes are astonishing. Granted it could have been the settings of my aunt's television, but if what I saw was accurate, I'd say it would make an excellent demo disc.

A Charlie Brown Christmas remains my favorite Christmas-related anything.

I found out this year that it still makes this cranky bearded atheist cry.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:A Charlie Brown Christmas remains my favorite Christmas-related anything

Truth.

I'm more of a Rankin-Bass guy myself.

Bill Forsyth's COMFORT & JOY (1984) is the kind of holiday-centered film curmudgeons like myself can enjoy repeatedly.

I usually revisit any of the following around Xmas:

Brazil
Fanny & Alexander
The City Of Lost Children
Female Trouble
The Twilight Zone "Night Of The Meek" episode
The Junky's Christmas
Dame Edna Experience Christmas Specials
How The Grinch Stole Christmas

You can't forget the Alan Partridge holiday special!

We watch The Homemade Xmas Video by Smith & Jones every Christmas, and I never tire of it. The same goes for a beautiful animated short from Sweden called Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton, directed by Per Åhlin from a story by Tage Danielsson.

My dad pulled the ol' switcheroo and put the TV on Cheech and Chong, not A Christmas Story, during family breakfast this morning, so I guess we all have room for new traditions