Christmas movies

[Murfreesboro]

What are y'all's favorite Christmas movies? I have a number I watch, but honestly, I think it's harder to find good Christmas movies than good Halloween movies. What are your go-tos?

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

There are so many good Christmas movies, but my absolute favorites that we always watch are A Charlie Brown Christmas, Home Alone, and Gremlins.

We also watch the classic movies like Miracle on 34th Street, and It's a Wonderful Life, as well as animated classics like Rudolph and Frosty, and then there are the modern classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jingle All the Way, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Die Hard,The Santa Clause, Ernest Saves Christmas, Bad Santa, A Christmas Story, Elf, Christmas with the Kranks, and Deck the Halls.

I saw a post you made where you mentioned that you only recently saw the movie The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time, I was surprised by that because it's considered to be a modern classic. My mother took us to the theater on Christmas day in 1992 and we watched that and Home Alone 2, and we have watched both movies every year since then.

I love any holiday movie with the Muppets, and I would say that The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of my favorite versions of that story, of course, almost any version of A Christmas Carol is good, so you can watch most of them.

My wife loves the movie While You Were Sleeping, it's a really good romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock from 1995, and I definitely recommend you watch it, and any of the movies listed above if you haven't already.

[Murfreesboro]

Thanks for the in depth reply!

Not sure why I was so slow to watch Muppets Christmas Carol. I guess I thought it would be aimed chiefly at children, and I am really so partial to the Scott version. But I love Michael Caine, too, and it was better than I anticipated.

The romantic comedies I usually watch this time of year are While You Were Sleeping, Love Actually, and The Holiday. The Holiday is my husband's favorite of those.

I have childhood classics from my own childhood, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch. The only one I have from the 70s is The Littlest Angel, but I rarely watch it, I think because it is a little too poignant for me. My mother used to love the 1950s taping of Amahl and the Night Visitors. I recall it vaguely. Nowadays I could buy it on DVD, but so far I've just thought about it.

I have several movies that predate me--Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Holiday Inn. More modern movies I own include Christmas Vacation, Santa Clause 1 & 2, Elf (actually not a great favorite at our house, but we do own it), Jim Carrey's Grinch, Polar Express, A Christmas Story (in July '18 my sons and I made a jaunt up to Cleveland in a day outing from Columbus and saw the house where it was filmed), and The Man Who Invented Christmas.

We have a couple of religious DVDs, The Nativity and Bethlehem Star. Mike actually put me on to The Nativity, and it has become a favorite of mine.

One personal favorite I hardly know how to classify is Joyeux Noel, about the Christmas Truce of 1914. It is certainly not the typical holiday fare, but in some ways it may be the most genuinely Christmassy movie I own.

Some of my women friends are really into the Hallmark movies. I don't have that channel, but I did buy a few at Walmart to see if I liked them. They were about what I expected, kind of like Christmas wallpaper to have on in the background as I do chores.

I have bought a couple of Christmas concerts on DVD that I enjoy, one by Celtic Women and the other by Trace Adkins. Unfortunately, my Celtic Women DVD died on me, so I am looking for a replacement. The Trace Adkins DVD is actually superb, not exactly what you might expect from a country star, and, boy, is he a great bass.

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, we have Home Alone 1 & 2 also. I also have a DVD about the history of the carol Silent Night. For me NBC is a Halloween movie, but I noticed one person in our neighborhood has a Jack Skellington Santa in his yard for Christmas.

[Murfreesboro]

And I have Jingle All the Way, though I don't always watch it.

[Andybev01]

I'm with you both on the classics.

Charlie Brown, 34th st., White Christmas, Holiday Inn (which I can watch on all of the holidays), etc.

I also enjoy the offbeat, not-exactly-Christmas, christmas movies.

Bell, Book & Candle
Die Hard
Rare Exports
The Bourne Identity

Twenty years ago The Muppets did an amusing take on It's a Wonderful Life called 'It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie'.

The actor in the role of Potter is played by the always enjoyable Joan Cusack, and there are a lot of cameo performances.

I recently watched the Eddie Murphy offering, Candy Cane Lane...I found it tedious and repetitive.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

HA! I know exactly what you mean about the Hallmark movies, most of the women I know love them, including my mother and my wife, I have watched a few of them and some are fine, but most of them are just the same plot over and over again, so when they are on I just go do something else.

I haven't watched Joyeux Noel, but I know of the story because we learned about it in history class, so I might look up the movie.

I feel the same way about Elf, I was 22 when it came out and it just didn't do it for me, but the younger members of the family like it so we play it every year. Polar Express was a good story, and while the animation was considered good at the time, it really looks terrible when you compare it to what they can do today.

We were going to watch Candy Cane Lane, and we might still watch it if the kids want to.

I also like to watch the Doctor Who Christmas specials, speaking of The Doctor, has anyone here watched the 60th anniversary specials on Disney+ yet? If so, any thoughts? The next special is on Christmas, and apparently Davros can walk now! How's that for progressive?

[Murfreesboro]

I'm not sure if my daughter has seen it, but she seems to know everything about it. She thinks it was a blunder and wonders how they could have gone so wrong with Davies as writer and Tennant as the Dr. She even had an idea for how it *should* have been written, and her older brother thinks her idea is brilliant.

I guess Davos was the guy in the wheelchair? Yeah, Davies said he wasn't comfortable making the bad guy someone with a disability. My daughter passionately disagrees, says it actually denies agency to people with disabilities to think they can't ever be shown as evil, and also messes with classic Who. In addition, much of the plot seems to revolve around (I've forgotten the name of the companion, maybe Donna--the one who had her memories wiped) anyway, that companion's trans daughter. My own daughter is sick of being preached at through fiction, and I guess that's what happens in this episode.

I'll have to ask her more about it later today and get back to you. She is a writer herself and can actually be spot on in her critiques of scripts, etc.

[Murfreesboro]

I do enjoy Christmas episodes of certain TV shows. The reboot of All Creatures Great and Small has had some charming, wholesome Christmas episodes. Some of the Frasier Christmas episodes were classic. Grimm had a wonderful Christmas episode about Krampus that always makes my husband laugh. And the X Files, surprisingly, had at least two really good ones.

Oh, if you find Joyeux Noel, just know it is not a movie to watch with the little ones. It is about warfare and is very serious.

There is one Hallmark movie I'd like to see, if it should come out on DVD. They made one this year at the Biltmore, and since I've been there, I'd like to see how they used that setting. I think they actually did film there. Sometimes they cheat. I own one supposedly set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but they filmed it somewhere out West, I know. I used to live in Staunton, VA, and I know what those trees look like. People may think if you've seen one mountain, you've seen them all, but it ain't so.

[Murfreesboro]

I thought of one more Christmas movie in my collection, The Family Guy. I don't watch it every year, bit I did a couple of weeks ago. It is sort of a reverse Wonderful Life, where the driven businessman is given a glimpse of the life he might have had if he'd married his college sweetheart. In the end he reconnects with her, and it is implied they might still get together. But my daughter finds it depressing, because, as she says, the children they have in his fantasy world would not be the same children they would have now. I think she's maybe being too literal about it, though of course in real life she'd be right.

[Andybev01]

Christmas at the Plaza is one of a few Hallmark movies that I like.

Most of it was filmed at the Plaza hotel in Manhattan, and the hotel manager is played by Julia Duffy, of Newhart fame.

[Murfreesboro]

I'll look for that one.

I also neglected to mention here (though I think I did elsewhere) that I have a couple of somewhat historical DVDs about Christmas. One of them is Rick Steves' European Christmas, and the other is Lucy Worsley's 12 Days of Tudor Christmas. In the latter she talks about mumming, which looks creeptastic and was perhaps a progenitor of ToTing.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

Well, Disney now has the streaming rights to the show in the States so you can't even watch it on regular tv here anymore, which is fine for people that stream, but if you don't stream then you can't watch it, though to be honest, with the way the show is going, you're not missing much.

They told fans that Disney wouldn't have any influence on the show, but it's clear from the 3 specials that have aired that Disney has their woke agenda in play, I guess we will have to wait for the Christmas special to find out if the show gets better, but as I mentioned, the changes to Davros, a character that has been important to the franchise since the 70s, are another reason why this show is slowly dying. Though, if we are being honest, the terrible writing over the past few years, undoing 50 years of stories has already killed the show.

While we are still on Disney, they just wrapped up the second season of The Santa Clauses, it's based on the movies with Tim Allen, we watched the previous season last year and it was fine, so we might check out the new season this week. I also recently watched a Christmas movie called The Naughty Nine, another movie from Disney, it was a fun movie if you ignore the woke agenda, I'm glad that my kids are too young to understand the messages being sent to them.

I just think that woke people should go back to sleep.

There are some really great classic Christmas episodes of cartoons and shows from when I was a kid that I still watch to this day, like Garfield, The Smurfs, Full House, The Golden Girls, and ALF, just to name a few. Actually, the ALF Christmas episode is really dark, but it ends on a positive note. I also like The Brady Bunch Christmas episode, and the tv movie A Very Brady Christmas.

I do like the Grimm and X-Files Christmas episodes as well, and I think that most of us here agree that the Frasier Christmas episodes are classics.

Home Alone 2 was also filmed at the Plaza Hotel, and Trump also made a appearance in the movie, that was back when people liked him.

Murf - I haven't watched the movie The Family Guy, but I think that your daughter brings up a interesting point. I think that most of us at some point in our lives sits there and looks back at the previous relationships we had and thinks... what if? I know that I have thought about it, and you know what? I wouldn't change a thing, because every failed relationship that I had put me on the path to meet the woman that became my wife, and with her, we have 2 amazing and awesome kids that wouldn't be who they are if things had been different, so I wouldn't change a thing because I'm happy with the way life is.

[Murfreesboro]

This post is superfluous, because the one below it is what I wrote

[Murfreesboro]

What you just said reminds me of that (very good, IMO) country song, God Blessed the Broken Road (that Led Me Straight to You). Rascal Flatts used to sing it, but I think it's been covered by others as well.

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern Stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I believe I misnamed that Nicholas Cage movie. It's The Family Man. Family Guy was an adult-oriented cartoon my older son used to watch in high school. Sorry about that.