There aren’t many films that transcend their art and time and generations. A box-office disappointment when released, It’s A Wonderful Life was so forgotten its copyright lapsed causing it to be looped endlessly on small independent television stations everywhere desperate for free programming. Inevitably this forgotten classic was rediscovered by a new generation. A generation under siege by a film industry that now scoffs at such simplistic ideas as reminding us of the rich benefits that can be reaped by our own simple human decency. 

Fifteen-years ago it was all the rage to worship It’s A Wonderful Life, and then the inevitable backlash began by the contrary-is-cool crowd and those offended by spiritualism and sentiment. Whatever. All I know is that after dozens of viewings each new one is like the first and without fail the story stays with me for days. 

And who are we to argue with time? Like Beethoven and Sinatra, the story of a good man blinded by disappointment, driven to suicide, and saved by God’s grace will live for as long as there’s a civilization. Because the message is about the simplest and yet most important of things — it’s about why when things are at their worst that’s the most important time to step outside the hurly burly of life’s setbacks and inventory our blessings. 

It’s A Wonderful Life is about perspective.  (more…)

Besides pure heart-warming entertainment value and some of the biggest laughs of any Christmas film, what makes A Christmas Story exceptional is that never before or since has there been another film like it. The offbeat, nostalgic, just shy of plumb story of Ralphie (a brilliant Peter Billingsly), a young boy determined to prevail in his Christmas quest for a BB gun, is a stand alone original. Others have tried, including a ill-conceived sequel, but none comes close. A Christmas Story is lightening in a bottle. A nostalgic look back at childhood perfectly pitched ten-degrees off center that manages to be, at the same time, all things wistful, absurd, abstract, and unforgettable.

Jean Shepard, the film’s warm wonderful narrator, is also responsible for the collection of short stories upon which the movie’s based.  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash is a series of anecdotes told from the perspective of an adult Ralphie going back to his hometown and reminiscing with people he hasn’t seen in decades. The cobbling together of a script from these stories to create the solid narrative of the film is quite a feat in itself, but it’s Shepard’s unique voice that drives the book and it was director Bob Clark’s genius to capture that voice both literally and figuratively on film.

It’s all about tone, and A Christmas Story is perfectly tuned. (more…)

This British production was titled Scrooge. To add further confusion, my DVD case is titled A Christmas Carol but the disc itself is titled Scrooge. As with most things Hollywood, this is due to a cost-saving measure. The 1951 American release was advertised everywhere as A Christmas Carol, but the prints all came from the original negative retaining the Scrooge title card. So, if it’s any consolation, American moviegoers at that time were similarly confused. Regardless, the easiest way for all of us to be on the same page as to which version we’re talking about is to simply call this one The Best One, because that’s a universal understanding and no small feat considering the competition.

This is the seventh version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to place in my Top 25, making it the Die Hard of Christmas Stories. Just as there was Die Hard on a plane, boat, and train, we have any number of adaptations of this timeless tale that works again and again thanks to universal themes of redemption and forgiveness that perfectly captures the essence of what Christmas is truly about. 

We love this story so much that we’re always eager to see what a particular actor or director will do with it. Each variation that made my list brings something unique, some special area of focus to the source material, and The Best One brings two. First and foremost, from first frame to last, this is a ghost story. A creaky, creepy, cobwebby, shadow and light ghost story, and at times a truly frightening one. (more…)

In this household, the Christmas season can’t officially begin until we hear those two magic words… “Shitter’s full.”

Once again screenwriter/producer John Hughes delivers the Christmas goods, this time with  Christmas Vacation, a masterpiece of a family holiday comedy (and the third of four “Vacation” films) with so many iconic scenes and pieces of quotable dialogue that it would take less time for you to watch the movie than for me to try and list them here. It’s the simplest of stories: Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase), a Chicago family man whose enthusiasm forces him to overdo everything, wants to throw his kith and kin a fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. But from the moment his parents and in-laws arrive all kinds of hell breaks loose including house fires, electrocuted cats, SWAT raids, and sewer gas explosions. 

What makes Christmas Vacation a must-see perennial (I’ve already watched it twice this season and the season’s not over) is that Hughes’s script expertly wrings every possible situation out of his concept, and first-time feature director Jeremiah Chechik does a beautiful job wrapping the whole production, even the more slapsticky and cruder moments, into an old-fashioned package that never loses the winning sincerity so crucial to the film’s success.  Not only is the look of the film much warmer than most comedies, but most impressively, Chechik controls the overall tone like a seasoned pro.  (more…)

Both films are listed together because they belong together, one fitting snugly against the other, offering a seamless double-feature capable of brightening your whole world for a few hours, and maybe a little longer if you can avoid leaving the house after they’re over.

Going My Way  won seven well-deserved Oscars including best picture, actor (Bing Crosby), supporting actor (a sweet and crusty Barry Fitzgerald), director (Leo McCarey), screenplay, and song (Swingin’ On a Star). The story is a gentle and moving one about Father Chuck O’Malley (Crosby), a seemingly low-key, even lazy priest who’s really a fixer for the diocese with an uncanny ability to effortlessly maneuver everyone into under-estimating him.

At first this includes the elderly Father Fitzgibbon (Fitzgerald), who’s no longer able to efficiently run his parish and thisclose to losing a crumbling church to bankruptcy. The heart of  Going My Way is the complicated road both men walk until they finally reach a warm and rich friendship.  

Holiday Inn isn’t just one of the all-time great Christmas films, it’s also one of the all-time great movie musicals. With an astonishingly good score, even for Irving Berlin, and the perfect star combination of the affable Bing Crosby and perfectionist Fred Astaire, Holiday Inn conjures up the simplest of concepts to craft a compulsively watchable holiday delight.  

The plot sets up with head-whipping speed when Jim Hardy (Bing) breaks the bad news to his friend and partner Ted Hanover (Fred) that he’s breaking up their successful act so he can marry part three of their song and dance trio, Lila Dixon (a superbly caustic Virginia Dale). Jim’s plan is to whisk Lila away from the grind of the show-biz rat race and retire to Connecticut where life as a leisurely and lazy gentleman farmer awaits.

As he does with most everything in life, Jim takes the news rather well when Lila changes her mind. More in love with show business than any man, Lila announces that she’s fallen for Ted … and so with little more than a “Sorry, old man. No hard feelings,” Jim flicks his wrist, forgives them both, and heads off to the country where another harsh dose of reality awaits.

Using a very funny montage, veteran musical director Mark Sandrich (he directed five of the ten immortal Astaire-Rogers musicals) crushes every naive notion Jim had that farming’s anything other than damn hard work, which leaves the retired singer in quite the pickle: he owns a farm with an overdue mortgage, but he’s too lazy to work it.  (more…)

I was in grade school when The Gathering first aired in 1977 — right in the middle of that second Golden Era of television that within a few years produced Rich Man Poor Man, Roots, The Night Stalker, Holocaust, Jesus of Nazareth, and Salem’s Lot. And while I missed the Emmy winner for Best Drama back then, twenty years later my intense dislike for Ed Asner’s obnoxious politics almost caused me to miss it again during a rare broadcast late one evening right around the holidays when I couldn’t sleep. 

What a mistake that would’ve been (and after “Up” Asner can now do no wrong). The Gathering kept my full attention until almost dawn and made such an impact that I made sure to grab the first opportunity to catch it on VHS a couple years later. Which is a good thing because for some inexplicable reason one of the best television films ever, and most certainly the best Christmas television film ever, hasn’t been available on home video for years, was never has finally been released on DVD, and only rarely broadcasts on cable anymore.

That’s the long way of saying, keep your eye out because this one’s special and hard to find… (more…)

His remake might have proved they can’t make ‘em like Miracle on 34th Street anymore, but nearly twenty years later, Home Alone proves they can’t make ‘em like John Hughes anymore. The Hughes canon increases in stature with each passing year and will long outlive the likes of today’s Judd Apatows because the Midwestern-raised Hughes was a genius at crafting the simplest of plots, keeping them moving, and dropping into them sympathetic and memorable characters we relate to. Characters who themselves were frequently the products  — not of lofty Manhattan or some other trendy city –  but Midwestern small towns and suburbs populated with ice rinks and churches and beautiful homes filled with good and decent people (not the Wheelers and Lester Burnham).

With an eye for physical comic comedy a Keaton or Chaplin could appreciate, Christopher Columbus does a fine job directing but this perennial holiday favorite and surprise box-office smash ($486 million domestic in today’s dollars) is through and through a John Hughes film. Not just in the sense that he produced and wrote the screenplay (which happens to be one of the best structured of the last two decades), but that his unique sensibility is all over it; from the perfect amount of sentiment to a genius understanding that no matter how big or small the role, a movie is always better for the presence of John Candy. (more…)

There are two television movies in my top ten, here’s the first of them. Best known as George C. Scott’s A Christmas Carol, this is, thus far, the most emotionally satisfying adaptation of the Dickens’ classic yet, thanks to an exceptionally well-written script and, of course, The Mighty George C. Scott, who offers up my favorite portrayal of Scrooge.

Scott’s characterization of Ole’ Ebeneezer is more grounded and less theatrical than the others, especially after the three ghostly visits where the Oscar-winning actor chooses not to transform his character into a completely different person, at least not on the outside. Instead, Scott’s post-visitation Scrooge retains the gruff booming voice and regal presence, with the only visible proof that something’s changed and softened and different found in the old man’s eyes;  a bittersweet mix of joy and love, and most touchingly, regret. (more…)

And so we finally reach the top ten. Admittedly, from here on in there will be few surprises. These are the greats, the perennials, the timeless classics that we all grew up on, pass on to our children, and give us one more reason to love and anticipate the holiday season. 

Nominated for Best Best Picture of 1947, everything about Miracle On 34th Street works, but what makes it uniquely special is the on-location shooting, most especially for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade which opens the film. It was rare for a production from this era to lug cast, crew, and equipment across the country when it was so much cheaper and convenient to reproduce wherever and whatever was needed on a Southern California backlot where everything from litter to weather could be controlled. Thankfully, some studio exec was thinking outside the box and so there it is, forever encapsulated on celluloid – a big, beautiful New York City all decked out for Christmas in glorious black and white. And if that doesn’t spark your holiday spirit, well, you’re hopeless. (more…)

As Dudley the Angel, Cary Grant is remarkable in “The Bishop’s Wife.” In lesser hands, what could’ve been a fairly bland do-gooder role, is turned into a complex character with a real emotional life thanks to Grant’s extraordinary ability to plumb the depths of his well-known persona (watch Grant react, it’s the best part of his performance here). Think about it: He’s an angel sent from God to help Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) find his way, and what does Dudley go and do? He falls in love with the  bishop’s wife, Julia (Loretta Young).

That’s pretty complicated stuff, especially in 1947 before blasphemy and defiling God became a Hollywood resume enhancer. But nothing about this lovely Christmas film with a great big spiritual heart seems complicated at all thanks to a deft script that gives each of its characters a simple dignity, and Grant, who effectively adds a subtle layer of darkness to Dudley that works almost on a subconscious level. 

And what a wonderful film to spend a couple of hours with. Photographed by the legendary Gregg Toland, the holiday spirit leaps from the screen in every snow-covered scene.  Christmas shopping, ice skating, choirs, churches, decorations, and the time-honored tradition of buying a tree. You don’t watch “The Bishops Wife,” you visit for a couple hours as you’re transported — not to the way life is or was — but somewhere better: the way life ought to be. (more…)

Pretty much ignored when released in 1985, One Magic Christmas has hung in there and found an audience thanks to a solid script and Mary Steenburgen’s compelling lead performance as Ginny Hanks Grainger, a morose wife and mother whose Christmas spirit has been buried beneath mountains of unpaid bills, a soul-crushing job, and a coming eviction. 

Help arrives in the form of Gideon (Harry Dean Stanton), the unlikeliest of angels, who’s been tasked with the impossible: reminding this despairing mother of two of her blessings so that the Christmas spirit ripped from her by the hard realities of life can return. How far Gideon’s willing to go in order to accomplish this makes for some of the darkest moments you’ll ever come across in a holiday film, especially one from Disney.

This quiet, understated and sometimes grim spin on It’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol is not for the wee ones. But at 88-minutes there’s a ton of story and you have to be grateful that when the end credits roll no one On High has paid the bills or found Ginny and her family new housing. The film understands that God is not our own personal deus ex machina and that the angels can only help the willing to refocus their perspective on to that which really matters. Miracles are short-term solutions, it’s wisdom that helps you go the distance.  (more…)

Four years before they would make noir history teaming up to commit a sordid murder-for-profit in Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” in the first of their four cinematic pairings, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck would find true love courtesy of  genius screenwriter Preston Sturges in “Remember the Night,” a Christmas-themed romance by way of road comedy with just a dash of social statement.

Set in New York during the busy shopping season, Lee Leander (Stanwyck) might be the best dressed shoplifter you’ll ever meet when she’s busted by the cops and tossed in jail. A three-time loser, Lee is facing some real prison time and it’s the job of prosecutor John Sargent (MacMurray) to see to it she serves it. But in a crazy contrivance only a writer as brilliant as Sturges could sell, Sargent is convinced to let Lee out of jail and then offers to drop her off at her family home in Indiana for the Christmas holidays. (more…)

At first glance that steamy noirish poster might come off as a pretty deceptive piece of advertising for what looks like just another boy meets girl, post-war, studio Christmas film. But bubbling beneath the surface of  “A Holiday Affair” are some pretty heavy themes that give this under-rated classic an unexpected emotional maturity and complexity.

Though only 22 years-old at the time, the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Janet Leigh is superb and mature beyond her years as Connie Ennis, a war widow and single mother who understands that her young son Timmy needs a father even though she’s unwilling to betray the memory of her dead husband by falling in love with someone else.  This is what makes Carl (the always excellent Wendell Corey) a perfect suitor. Buttoned down, bland and safe, Carl’s a good man who will always love and take care of her and Timmy, but Connie doesn’t and will never fall in love with him. 

Enter Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum) to really complicate things. 

Steve’s a devil-may-care drifter working this job and that and in no hurry to save money for a sailboat when — in a pretty effective meet-cute — Connie gets him fired from his job as a toy department sales clerk just a few days from the holidays. A number of believable plot contrivances keep Steve and Connie in regular contact until a potential romance blooms that makes things stickier for Connie than she would like. (more…)

Bob Hope plays The Lemon Drop Kid, so named because of an affinity for a certain kind of candy. The Kid grifts his way through life bottom feeding in the rackets as a racetrack tout steering suckers to this bet or that in order to keep the odds profitable for the house. After he mistakenly convinces a gangster’s gal to change her bet from a winner to a loser, he’s thisclose to being on the wrong end of a gangland killing when he manages to fast talk Da’ Boss into a little time to come up with the $10,000.

It’s Christmastime in New York City and the Kid hatches a scheme to cash in on holiday sentiment through the cynical deployment of an unwitting cast of colorful characters dressed as Santa Claus and filled with goodwill hoping to collect money for an “old dame” retirement home that will never open after the Kid embezzles every penny to save his own skin and a little extra for himself.  Along the way he lights up his old flame Marilyn Maxwell and coins a standard with the definitive version of “Silver Bells.”

Based on a Damon Runyon story, The Lemon Drop Kid naturally offers up a host of those ever-fascinating Runyonesque characters personified here by greats such as William Frawley, Jane Darwell, Lloyd Nolan, Tor Johnson and many others.  (more…)

Purists tend to hate this adaptation, and while it’s hard to blame them on those grounds, MGM’s warmly produced version of the Dickens’ classic offers a number of charms the more respected darker and deeper versions do not. Namely, it is bursting with an ebullient Christmas spirit and has no agenda other than to immerse you in the flavor of the season courtesy of the studio’s beautifully designed back-lot and a wonderful cast of character actors.

Of the many fine film and television portrayals of Bob Cratchit, the indomitable spirit of Gene Lockhart’s interpretation sets the bar for all the others. He’s the heart and soul of the film, and the pathos always simmering just beneath a bubbly exterior – the lost and confused eyes of a good but helpless man in an impossible situation – never fails to get to me. I doubt Lockhart was a method actor, but it couldn’t have hurt his performance that his real life wife (Kathleen) and their daughter (June of “Lost In Space” fame) play his wife and daughter onscreen. (more…)

There’s a “Twilight Zone” episode early in the first season where Ida Lupino plays a Norma Desmond-type screen star: aging, resentful, a little nuts and holed up in a dark Hollywood mansion lost in the glory days that run endlessly on an old film projector. The final Serling-esque twist is that she ends up transporting herself into one of her own 25 year old films where she can live forever in a sophisticated romantic celluloid dream, always young always beautiful, where the world is as she believes it should be. 

For some reason Serling presents that twist as though it’s a bad thing. I don’t know, sounds like a plan to me, and  if there’s one movie-world on this list that I would want to transport myself into it would be “Christmas in Connecticut.”

This 1945 Warner Brothers’ charmer is as light as the souffle Barbara Stanwyck’s magazine writer, Elizabeth Lane, pretends she can cook for thousands of magazine readers and now will have to in reality if she’s to keep her job. Using recipes from her Uncle Feliz (the terrific S.Z. Sakall), Lane has crafted an identity for her readers and employers that doesn’t exist. Everyone believes she’s a Connecticut housewife with a newborn baby living on a storybook farm when in reality she’s single, childless, can’t boil an egg, and living in a cramped New York City apartment. As expected, topsy soon goes turvy and for the Christmas holidays her boss (an absolutely delightful Sydney Greenstreet) decides to offer a returning soldier (Dennis Morgan) a Christmas weekend with Lane on her storybook farm. Oh, yes, and the boss would like to join them. (more…)

A Muppet Christmas Carol is of course elevated, as all things are, by the presence of The Mighty Michael Caine, who wisely plays the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge perfectly straight amongst all the Muppetry and shenanigans that goes on around him. But it works on more levels than just an inspired bit of casting. Within seconds you completely buy into the world and tone created by Brian Henson, who doesn’t miss a step picking up where his father Jim left off.  Naturally, the Muppet characters are wonderful, but the film mainly benefits from a lean, very funny, and moving script that perfectly incorporates the famous Muppet personalities we’ve come to love into a classic story we love just as much.

The movie completely won me over during an early scene when Scrooge threatens his Muppet office workers if they dare to be cold. Instantly they put on a Hawaiian luau setting the irreverent and witty tone that will carry the remaining 85 minutes. 

This is also a perfect holiday film for small kids. Above-average songs, a faithfulness to the source material, a lot of heart, and an important lesson about the difference between Democrats and Republicans. (more…)

A lovely, low-key, tender family film with a rich spiritual theme about a young, imaginative girl who finds and protects one of Santa’s reindeer.

Thanks to a wonderful performance by the young lead, Rebecca Harrell, and Sam Elliott and Cloris Leachman ably bringing to life a couple of well-crafted and surprisingly complicated characters, what might’ve been cloying and fantastical remains grounded and focused on the realistic drama of a family going through very tough times. Most appreciated is that Prancer’s arrival doesn’t work as some sort of deus ex machina. When we leave our characters their problems remain. Sam Elliott’s still widowed and the bills are still due. What they are left with, however, is a stronger appreciation for one another and that antidote for despair known as hope.

“Prancer” didn’t make much of an impact at the box office, but enough of a following has developed over the years that a direct-to-video sequel was produced in 2001. Part of what makes the appeal of the original so enduring is presenting a rarity in the Christmas genre: characters who live in a part of the world known as Flyover Country — everyday rural, small town folks who are struggling to make ends meet. Most holiday films (and this isn’t a complaint) take place somewhere picture perfect. “Prancer” tells its story in the rural mud and cluttered homes most of us recognize and the people living in this very real place are dealing with the very real problems most of us have faced. (more…)

Don’t let the unwatchable sequels diminish how imaginative and heartfelt the original was. And though I’m not a big fan of Tim Allen’s film choices of late, in the right role like this (and Galaxy Quest), he’s very good. Also going for The Santa Clause is a perfectly cast Judge Reinhold, the hottest of all hot moms, Wendy Crewson, some terrific special effects, a warm Christmas spirit and, uhm, well, Wendy Crewson.

Most of the credit, however, belongs to the screenwriters who seized upon the beloved and well known story of Santa Claus and turned it into an original story that still very much respects what came before. The Santa Clause doesn’t rewrite or deconstruct, it builds upon the legend basing itself on all those lingering unanswered questions, such as: How does Santa fit down the chimney? How does Santa visit every home in one night?  It’s a genius premise and don’t forget that the divorced-dad-who-learns-how-to-be-a-better-father comedy wasn’t as tired and played out in 1994 as it is today. (more…)