The position of the film isn't a countdown list, so for example, if I mention The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then I mention A Christmas Story, it doesn't mean I like Nightmare more that Christmas Story more. With that said, here is a list of my favorite Christmas films, and a couple I don't like at all.
A Christmas Story, I love this movie. It was released in 1983 when I was two years old, but I've seen this movie more times that any other Christmas movie. The cable and satellite channel TNT plays this classic from Midnight to Midnight on Christmas day. This film was one I wanted to mention first. I love it, and I have a really close friend that has never seen it before, so you can bet I'm gonna force him to watch it. A Christmas Story was a book by a comedy writer who wrote about his favorite Christmas Day in the 1950's. The film's director, Bob Clark and his son were killed in a car wreck about three years ago, and I was really sad and depressed about it. The film follows a young school boy named Ralphie, who wants a "Red Rider B.B. Gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time." However, Ralphie keeps getting told by grown ups that he will "Shoot an eye out". His little brother, Randy, is a whiny little kid, that is really funny, but only because we laugh at his misfortunes, and his father who is a master of swearing. You never hear much swearing from him, but you know what's he's saying at the same time. If you have never seen A Christmas Story, you HAVE to watch it this year. You will love it. It's the funniest Christmas movie hands down!
I'm sorry I wrote so much about that one. I won't do that for the rest of the list, I just wanted to make sure you check it out.
National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, My family watches this one every year, but this one is rated PG-13, and it earns it. There's a scene where Clark, played by Chevy Chase, freaks out about how crazy their Christmas family get together is, and drops a couple swear words. I think that this one should be watched by older teens and their parents, but man, this movie is super funny. The characters are all great, and I can't think of my favorite part of it because everything is funny. I quote this movie all of the time, not the swearing, but some other things. It's great.
Elf, This Will Ferrell vehicle is great for the whole family. It's about a baby from an orphanage that busts out of his crib when Santa is delivering presents, and crawls into Santa's Bag, and when Santa gets back to the North Pole, the baby climbs out, and they don't know what to do with him, so they raise him as an Elf and name him Buddy, but after he grows up, and he's three times taller than all of the other elves, and not good at making toys, his elf father, played by Bob Newheart, tells Buddy he is a human, not an Elf, and that his real father lives in New York City, so Buddy goes off to meet his real father, played by James Caan, and the rest of his family, and it's up to Buddy to get his father off of the naughty list, and save Christmas.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I am not talking about the awful Ron Howard film from 2000. I'm talking about the original animated, half hour long show directed by Looney Tunes master, Chuck Jones. I have to admit, when I was little, and even sometimes in my adulthood, the Grinch scared me. Not the whole time, but the first introduction of him scared me. I even remember when I was three or four years old, I watched it on TV, and I had a nightmare that night that I was hiding under a bed because the Grinch was in our house, and he found me. It scared me enough to wake up, and I still remember that nightmare vividly, and that night, I dragged my pillow and blanket into my parent's room in the middle of the night and slept on their floor. It's a classic, though. They actually made a prequel a few years later in the 1970s called Halloween is Grinch Night. It's on YouTube. This one disturbed me too. In the show, the whos call a Grinch hotline to see if the Grinch is headed down the mountain to their village, and when they call, it's busy. Now every time I hear a busy signal on the phone, it creeps me out. But the original animated show is the best. It's a short story, and the half hour program did the book justice, but the only thing that's okay in the Ron Howard film is Jim Carrey, but everything else is garbage. Then The Grinch animated movie from the makers of the Despicable Me films was okay. It was cute, but the Grinch was nowhere close to being menacing. It's fun, and I like it okay, but the half hour show was perfect. The other films added and took away a lot of things that didn't need to be there.
This next one is actually four different shows.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Christmas Episodes, You know that I am a sucker for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and there are four episodes set at Christmas Time. The First is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. In this one, some kids are abducted and taken to the planet Mars, and Santa Claus comes to rescue them. Sometimes you can actually find the original version before MST3K added their jokes. It's a cult classic. The next one is Santa Claus. In this one, after a fifteen minute long scene showing Santa Claus playing a pipe organ for a bunch of kids from different countries singing songs in their native language and musical styles, (It reminds me of the parade of nations during the opening ceremonies for the Olympics.) The story kicks in when the Devil, that's right, the Devil sends demons to make kids do naughty things so that they don't get Christmas presents, and the film then shows Santa trying to beat the demons and save Christmas. The Third on is Jack Frost. Jack Frost was a Ukrainian film, but has had English dubbed over it, and it's so funny and so bad. It's about a girl with a wicked step-mother, a cowardly father and two evil step-sisters, but she runs away, and Father Christmas helps this poor girl get revenge on her Step-Mother and Sisters. And fourth, this one is on Netfilx in the new seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 called The Christmas that Almost Wasn't. This one has Santa Claus struggling to pay his rent at the North Pole, and so Santa goes to the big city to work as a store Santa Claus to earn the money to pay his rent. It's ridiculous and funny at the same time. The other three are on YouTube, here are some links....
These next two are on Netfilx,
The Christmas Chronicles and The Christmas Chronicles 2. These are really cute and fun Christmas movies for the whole family. The first one is about a brother and sister who fight a lot. The brother is upset with their father, who died in a fire accident. He was a fireman and died rescuing some other people. The brother and sister end up trying to catch Santa Claus, and end up going on an adventure with Santa, Santa is played perfectly by Kurt Russel, and his real wife, Goldie Hawn who plays Mrs. Claus. The kids have to help Santa get his magic bag and magic hat that fell out of the sleigh when the kids were trying to catch Santa, and it's up to the kids to help Santa save Christmas. The second one mostly takes place at the North Pole, and there was a little elf that was an amazing inventor who would help Santa and the other elves make better presents for the children. However, the elf starts getting into some trouble, and ends up turning into a human, and is living at the South Pole, where he is hatching a plan to destroy the North Pole so that Christmas would be destroyed forever. The sister, Katie, and her new future step-brother are transported to the North Pole without knowing the bad elf sent them there as a way to break back in the magic shield that protects the North Pole. It's cute, and again, Kurt Russel was amazing as Santa and Goldie Hawn was so sweet as Mrs. Claus. Kurt Russel said in an interview about the second one that he hopes that Santa is the last role he plays. They are both a lot of fun, and family friendly, like everything else on this list except National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
Fred Claus. I really like Fred Claus. It doesn't have the best critic reception, but I love how sweet this movie really is. It's cheesy, but funny. It starts out with the birth of Santa Claus, or Nick, and his older brother Fred loves him and promises to be the best big brother ever, but while Fred is a normal kid, Nick starts getting all of the praise from their parents, Kathy Bates plays his mother. Also, Fred loves climbing a specific tree with a bird feeder house he made, and a bluebird was living in it, and Fred loved climbing the tree and talking with the bird, but Nick cuts the tree down, destroying the birdhouse, and the bird flies away, and Nick tells Fred he is going to take the tree into their house and decorate it. After that, Fred's anger grows and grows, while Nick becomes a saint and becomes Santa Claus. The movie explains that when someone is made a saint, they have eternal life, but that it's also true of the saint's family members, so Fred has eternal life as well. In present day, Fred is grown up, played by Vince Vaughn, who is very funny here. He becomes a repo man, so instead of giving presents like his brother, he takes them away. He has a very pretty girlfriend, played by Rachel Weisz, and Fred is trying to buy a store and open up, but when his shady dealings send him to Jail, he calls Nick and asks him to bail him out of jail and asks for some money to buy the store, but Nick, played by Paul Giamatti, and Mrs. Claus, played by Miranda Richardson, tell him that if he wants the money, he has to come up to the North Pole, for the first time, and work through the holidays until Christmas. Fred takes him up on his offer, and goes, but Fred is having a hard time working, and to make things worse, a man in charge of the commercialization of Christmas, played by Kevin Spacey, is trying to shut down Nick's whole operation, and when Fred makes some mistakes, the man starts trying to end Christmas, and Fred is reluctantly paid the money he asked for to open a store, and Fred heads back home. However, he has a change of heart, and he takes the money for the store, and uses it to get back to the North Pole to help save Christmas, but when Nick throws his back out, he can't deliver the presents, and the Elves tell Fred that only a Claus can deliver the presents, so Fred and his trusty elf friend, Willy, set out in Santa's Sleigh to deliver all of the presents. It's a really cute story, and it's funny too. One of my favorite things in the film is the Elf, Willy, played by John Michael Higgins, that is friends with Fred, has a huge crush on a girl who is a human, but works at the North Pole, played by Elizabeth Banks, and there is a fun little romantic side plot that has Fred trying to help Willy catch the girl of his dreams.
The Nightmare Before Christmas. This Tim Burton story and produced film, directed by Henry Selick, not Tim Burton, is both a Halloween and Christmas film. Danny Elfman's songs and voice work are all wonderful. It's fun seeing the monsters from Halloween Land trying to understand Christmas, but still making it bad, where Jack Skelington has to go and rescue a kidnapped Santa Claus from Mr. Oogy Boogy so that Santa can save Christmas in both Halloween Town and Christmas Town. It's a lot of fun, and every time I watch it, I see some new details that are really fun. It also has some genuine funny moments that are laugh out loud funny. It's great.
A Charlie Brown Christmas. I love this one. I love the Peanuts comic strips and the animated shows they made to show during the different holidays. This one has the most heart to it, and it's one that teaches that Jesus Christ is the most important part and reason for Christmas, who we are taught by Linus as Charlie Brown is having a hard time understanding Christmas, and why people love it so much. It also has Charlie Brown complaining about commercialism, which I hate myself. I actually played Linus in a stage version of this beloved Christmas special about five or six years ago. It was one of my favorite Christmas shows I have ever been in. It's so amazing.
Sorry, I write too much sometimes. I just get so excited to share stuff.
Home Alone, but just the first one, the four sequels weren't good at all. I didn't even know there was a fourth and fifth Home Alone. All I have to say is it's a good thing Kevin wasn't a teenager or adult. A YouTube channel I love called Legal Eagle where a lawyer watches movies and TV shows and lists all of the illegal things are being committed, and if Kevin would have been older, in real life, he would be facing more charges than the guys trying to rob his house. Like I said, the first one is great. I think I saw it three or four times in the theater, and I still think that it's funny. My son, Elliot, and my nephew and nieces love Home Alone and watching all the time.
The Santa Clause. The first two Tim Allen films are fun, but the third had a lot of wasted good ideas. It was fun to see that Tim Allen's character, Scott Calvin, catching and accidentally scaring Santa, who loses is balance on the roof, and falls, and when Scott puts his coat on, he becomes the new Santa Claus.
It's A Wonderful Life, this one is a classic that everyone needs to see at least once. I probably should have talked a bit more about it, but I didn't. I was in a play of It's A Wonderful Life that we performed like a 1930s and 1940's radio program. It was so much fun. We had five microphones on stage and a costume rack in the back of the stage, and I ended up playing nine characters in that version. Everyone else had at least five different characters, except for my friend Ben, who played George Bailey, he only had the one character. We also had a cool sound effects table where the stage crew were adding the sounds like a real radio broadcast would have had. It was awesome.
Prancer. A young girl finds a reindeer she believes to be Prancer, and tries to get him back to Santa.
A Miracle on 34th Street. I was in a play version of this movie last year, and I loved spending my time with my new friends from the cast, as well as some others I have been in a few other shows with. It helped me stay in the Christmas spirit as we performed it. It was a lot of fun. It's about a mother who works for a department store, and she is trying to find and hire a store Santa, but she teaches her little girl that Santa isn't real, and the real Santa ends up accepting the job to be a store Santa, where he starts planting seeds of belief in the little girl's and her mother's heart, and ends up being taken to court, and is proved by a believing lawyer that Santa is real and exists, and is eventually able to win the court case when the postal service delivers thousands and thousands of letters from children and adults who believe in Santa. It's a classic. It was remade in the 1990s, but it's not as good as the original.
This one is one of my all-time favorite Christmas films, The Muppet's Christmas Carol. We watch it every year. I was looking up some fun facts about it, and there were a lot of cool things. Michael Caine who played Scrooge in this version of the Charles Dickens's classic story, and said he would only play Scrooge as a real actor in a real play, and not a comedic role, and he is fantastic as Scrooge. I think it's my favorite of all of the people who have played Scrooge. Not to mention, while the film was being made, they had to have room for the puppeteers performing their Muppet characters, and so just about all of the sets were built three feet higher than the ground, and the human actors actually only had a couple of feet to perform with the Muppets. There was a real possibility for the human actors to fall off the narrow passages and could have been seriously injured, especially the older humans. It was originally going to be a made for TV movie, but when Disney heard about it, they bought the rights from ABC and turned it into a bigger budget film to release during the holidays. However, it's box office numbers were a little lower due to Home Alone coming out the same year at the same time. However, it sold very well when it was released on VHS, and now it's a classic. It is available on Disney+ right now. You and your family need to watch this one as well. It's full of heart, with great songs and very funny sense of humor. It's fantastic.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, This is another classic show from the 1960s. It's clay animated characters and sets are fun, and it's one that tugged on my heartstrings when I was a little kid, and I still find it a little charming.
Frosty The Snowman, Yet another TV show classic from the 1960s. It's cute and silly, and has been made fun of a lot, but it's still fun for the kids.
Well, that's my list. I hope you read everything, but if not, it's okay. I wrote too much. I hope there were some films on this list you have never seen and need to check out. I am sure I will be ready with another blog post shortly, but until then, I hope you are all safe, wearing your masks, and being careful out on the roads. I hate driving in the snow and on the ice. Be nice, not naughty during this holiday season. I hope you are all well and feeling blessed at this time of year, in a year that has been so crazy and surreal. Have a good whatever!
No comments:
Post a Comment