12 Days of Cinematicalmas: Best Christmas Movies

by Bob Sassone Dec 5th 2005 // 1:55PM

Its A Wonderful Life

So...it's Christmas! Are you wondering what to watch tonight, or maybe you'd like to get some holiday DVDs for friends or family? Here's a handy guide, my choices for the best Xmas movies of all time, along with links to Amazon where you can buy the DVDs (the cool thing about Christmas DVDs? A lot of them are pretty cheap!).

And if you're wondering: both National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and White Christmas juuuuuust missed the list. 

It's A Wonderful Life - Really, do I even have to explain why this is number 1?
Miracle On 34th Street - This is a close second, because the film is just so marvelously entertaining and Edmund Gwenn is the perfect Santa. And it's a very American film, set in NYC during the holidays and featuring department stores Macy's and Gimbels as not just locations but characters in the film. Natalie Wood is quite excellent too (she was filming another film at the same time she filmed this, and it's amazing such a young kid could be so compelling while juggling two jobs.) 


Bad Santa - You ever notice that you often won't laugh at a comedy, even if it's incredibly funny, if you're watching it alone? This is one of the rare movies where you will. One of the funniest flicks I've ever seen: nasty, dirty, hilarious, with a perfectly cast Billy Bob Thornton. Oh, this is good (and get the Badder Santa version). 
Three Days Of The Condor - I hesitated putting this movie on the list. Not because it's not a great film (it's one of the great thrillers of all-time), but because I wasn't sure if I wanted to include any "non-holiday" holiday movies on the list. Movies that are set at Christmas but aren't necessarily "Christmas films." But this movie is too damn good, too well written, too well cast and directed (Sydney Pollack) that I just can't leave it off. And if you're looking for holiday elements in the film, you can see some decorations, hear Christmas music in a store as Faye Dunaway buys skis, watch Robert Redford buy a pretzel in the New York City cold, and the film ends with the ominous echo of a classic Christmas carol. So, hey, it's a Christmas film. Even if several murders take place and Redford has to run for his life.
A Christmas Story - One of the ways I went about choosing these films is, I thought of the movies I absolutely have to watch every December. The movies that, if I don't watch them, I feel that I didn't have the best Christmas that I could have. This is one of those movies. It's so funny and real. It's clever and has a great cast and is well written (by Jean Shepard, based on his story), and shows another directorial side to Bob "Porky's" Clark. 
A Christmas Carol (1984)/ A Christmas Carol (1951) - The 1984 version is actually a TV movie, starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, and it's possibly the best screen adaptation of the Dickens story among the approximately 300 that have been filmed. The 1951 version is almost as good. Both films deserve mention here. (The 1951 version is also sometimes called Scrooge, not to be confused with Bill Murray's Scrooged.)
Elf - Jon Favreau does another fantastic job of directing (after the excellent Made). He manages to make a big screen Christmas movie that's actually funny, sort of a mix of live-action and those Rankin/Bass TV specials. Will Ferrell is funny, Zoey Deschanel is charming, the plot is fun, and Peter Dinklage steals the movie. I even buy the really sappy ending. A fun family flick that even the cynical adults will love.

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