Home Alone (1990)
By Alex Dean (Deputy Digital Editor)In his 1990 review of Home Alone, critic Roger Ebert wrote that the film “shows a genius for remembering what it was like to be young.” He’s right—and that’s why the story of little Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), who is left home by himself when his family goes on holiday without him, is the best Christmas film of them all.
Kevin is understandably terrified when he first works out what's happened to him. But this is where the film taps in so well to the eight year old mind. Once the initial panic dies down he makes the most of the situation. He stays up late, and there's that great scene where he watches Johnny Carson and eats ice cream. It has become an adventure. He's more excited than scared now.
The best bit is of course when the two “wet bandits” try to break in. What follows is a lesson in self-sufficiency: Kevin has learned to cope on his own. He takes them both out with those elaborate booby traps, and by the time his parents get back he's not the same helpless kid anymore.
No wonder it did so well at the Box Office, becoming the highest grossing comedy film of all time. I’m a big fan, and I’ll be forcing my family to watch it at least a couple of times this Christmas. It spawned a good sequel too—if you ignore the unfortunate cameo by Donald Trump, that is.
Bad Santa (2003)
by Sameer Rahim (Managing Editor, Arts and Books)Everybody hates Christmas. At least we all hate the sterile, joyless, suburban shopping centre Christmas, with the overbearing parents and spoiled kids. But never fear: all you modern Grinches need to watch Bad Santa, the evil twin of Miracle on 34th Street. It is a consistently bad taste comedy that takes us the darkest corners of the human soul—and then lifts us back up, just in time.
Billy Bob-Thornton’s Willie, a self-loathing foul-mouthed sex addict, is our Santa. Every Christmas he teams up with Marcus (a pugnacious Tony Cox), his dwarf assistant, to rob the malls where they work. Willie is an outrageous lord of misrule. Faced with anything good he wants to destroy it—most memorably the advent calendar of a bullied kid. What makes it so funny is that this isn’t gleeful destruction: it’s laconic; almost suicidal.
There are some wonderful scene-stealing cameos. The negotiation scene between the pair and the Head of Security (Bernie Mac) who has rumbled them shows Mac's masterful comic riffing on one word—“half”—in six or seven different formulations. Mac’s exchanges with the uptight John Ritter are also priceless. Both actors are no longer with us. Their scenes are ample tribute to their talents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt8DoNerIPY
Just when you think the film can’t push the boundaries any further, it does. A barmaid with a Santa fetish (a wicked Lauren Graham trashing her Gilmore Girls reputation)? Check. Willie encouraging the kid to box Marcus? Check. Bad Santa being very bad in the Big and Tall ladies’ changing room? Check and check.
I probably shouldn’t find it as funny as I do, given how old I am. And any film with the Weinstein paw-prints must give you pause these days. It is grotesque in all sorts of ways and caricature doesn’t even come close. But the zingers keep coming, irresistibly.
Hope arrives, but without the taste of saccharine. The turning point comes when Willie decides to end it all. What inspires him to live? Seeing the kid who sweetly, slavishly adores him—“Do you want me to fix you some sandwiches?”—given a black eye by the school bullies. This is his moment of redemption. “You know I think I’ve turned a corner,” he tells Marcus in marvellous deadpan. “I beat the shit out of some kids today. But it was for a purpose.” What could be badder than that?
Zulu (1964)
By Jay Elwes (Executive Editor)Yes, Zulu is not about Christmas, and yes, many—in fact all—of the themes on show go completely against the spirit of Christian charity. The merciless pursuit of imperial ends, the wholesale massacre of indigenous people: peace and good-will are pretty thin on the ground.
Thing is, Zulu is the film my family has fallen asleep in front of more than any other, me included—I have never seen it to the end. There’s a bit, about two-thirds of the way through, when Zulu warriors sing to the British: “They ’ave a very fine bass section,” says a Welsh soldier, before breaking into a rendition of “Men of Harlech.” I don’t think I’ve got past that point.
It’s a fantastic film. I think. And I know that I will see it again, almost certainly through a haze of wine, Scotch and turkey, warmed and comforted by the ageless familiarity of it all. It doesn’t bear too much scrutiny, true. But it’s a Christmas film—who wants scrutiny?
’Tis the season to repeat those old, meaningless customs: to fall asleep on the sofa and to wake up half way through The Spy Who Loved Me wondering whether Michael Caine survived.
The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992)
By Stephanie Boland (Head of Digital)The Muppets Christmas Carol isn’t just the best Christmas film. It is the best Dickens adaptation.
Filled with original lines from A Christmas Carol which are delivered without either portentous, Olde Englishe gravitas nor dumbing down for the young audience, it has presumably done more for the writer's than reputation than a hundred school lessons on Oliver Twist or, for the truly committed teacher, Bleak House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwaCN-OETdQ
You wouldn't expect the best Dickens adaptation to feature a cast of singing puppets. But even the musical numbers work well. True, Michael Caine’s Scrooge is not much of a singer, but that only adds to the feeling that he is—apart from his extraordinary cruelty—just another businessman, joining in only as he becomes increasingly game for the muppets’ cheerful antics.
In fact, it is his acting that makes the film. With the puppets and children’s jokes, it would have been easy for Caine to play the part with a knowing wink to the grown-ups at home.
Instead, he plays it straight: his Scrooge is genuinely cruel in the opening scenes, with a bitterness that could almost make him too much of a villain. Yet when he visits old schoolyard and suddenly opens up with remembered joy, we realise that his bitterness only thinly covers a deep, paralysing sadness.
By the time the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present have been, he is already filled with a furtive hope; the horror of the Ghost of Christmas Future is only, as it were, the icing on the (Christmas) cake.
It is refreshing to watch a children’s film which expects its young audience to be able to cope with both literariness and true emotional depth. (Watching it again, I realised with some disappointment how much children’s programing today has become relentlessly positive, at the expense of proper emotional range and, I suspect, real emotional development.)
Not so much a kid’s film with something for the adults as a film that, genuinely, works for all.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
by Mike Turner (Creative Director)“Hey Griswold. Where do you think you're gonna put a tree that big?”
“Bend over and I'll show you.”
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched the National Lampoon Vacation films over the years—with Chevy Chase as the relentlessly optimistic, clumsy, family obsessed dad, they never fail to crack me up.
Written by John Hughes, the mastermind behind so many 80s film classics, Christmas Vacation tops the list for me. Forget the sickly-sweet, emotion overload movies like your Love Actuallys or Wonderful Lives: slapstick humour, colourful language, annoying relations, obnoxious neighbours, distracting shop assistants, and electrocuted pets is where its at. (Of course, with sprinkle of heart-warming moments in the mix—it is Christmas, after all.)
The film has a fantastic cast; soundtrack; writing... there are so many quotable lines that still to this day resurface over drinks with mates: “THE BLESSING…”
The Holiday (2006)
by Pauline Joy (Finance Manager)Asked by our digital editor to name my favourite Christmas film my first thought was The Holiday (2006) which I am prepared to assert is, by any standards, a timeless holiday classic.
In case you haven’t seen it—or incredibly, somehow, disagree—let me provide a brief summary. Kate Winslet (Iris; a columnist for a London paper) and Cameron Diaz (Amanda; successful LA movie trailer producer) meet on a house-swap website and, quite reasonably, decide to swap houses for the Christmas holidays to escape their love life-related problems.
Following this extremely plausible base scenario, there are of course romantic shenanigans for them both as they fall in love with the first man they clap eyes on across the ocean.
There is also an invigorating dose of character development involved. Iris, who has for years been in unrequited love with her newly-engaged boss (a compelling and manipulative Rufus Sewell), develops “gumption” and realises that he is, in fact, completely worthless. Amanda, meanwhile, learns how to cry again after an apparently work-obsessed, almost totally emotionless adult life. It is—though it pains me to say it—a hugely silly plot.
However, in addition to the romance, there is a genuinely touching story line in which Iris befriends Arthur, an elderly Hollywood screenwriter: he recommends old films for her to watch and she encourages him to attend a lifetime award ceremony in his honour.
As she encourages and cajoles him, they talk about their lives and the most believable relationship of the film develops. If the sight of Arthur making it up those stairs that doesn’t bring a Christmas tear to your eye, you must be living the same kind of emotionless life as Amanda before her breakthrough.
As ever with rom-coms, especially, it seems, seasonal ones, there are a number of unlikely details to be glossed over. The women meet online one day and travel the next—what about the time needed to clean the bathroom and make the handover lists necessary before giving an unknown woman the run of your house?
Iris doesn’t seem to feel the need to mention that she has a dog that will require Amanda to play face-pulling games. Seems like more than a detail.
Despite a chauffeur-driven car, Amanda has a penchant for walking or running the final stretch of the route to the cottage in stiletto heels in the snow. Inexplicably, although Kate Winslet commutes daily into central London from Surrey, not once does she complain about British public transport. I could go on, but this is nit-picking.
https://youtu.be/BDi5zH18vxU
There are legitimate criticisms to be made about gender roles and the generalisations made about Brits and Americans. Nevertheless, it is really nice to see a holiday film that is centred on two women and celebrates their personal progress. The men, unusually, are the love interest here.
Jude Law is at his most winning as the roguish but sensitive widowed father of two small (and arguably just the right side of irritating) daughters, while the unexpected casting of Jack Black as a cheeky film composer is disconcerting but somehow just about works (though I’m not entirely convinced). They do all end up in relationships, but the focus is primarily on Iris and Amanda as they become, in Hollywood parlance, the leading ladies of their own lives.
Ultimately, what makes this film an uplifting Christmas watch is that a cast of characters, all handicapped in their own way by low self-esteem and fear, are liberated by meeting a decent person who treats them with love and respect. In Iris’s words after a difficult time: “you’ll go somewhere new and you’ll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again and little pieces of your soul will finally come back…”
It’s a rom-com, it’s not really profound. It’s fun and pretty, but it does bring the feel-good factor. Surrounded by the right people, rather than a miserable downer, life can be a conga round the beautiful living room of a stunning mill house in Surrey–even if you can’t dance. As I said, a timeless holiday classic.
