Black-and-white classics appear alongside crowd-pleasing comedies, animated TV specials, beloved romances, high-stakes action movies, ho-ho-horror horror films and more in IndieWire’s golden guide to seasonal cinema.
(Clockwise from bottom left): “Elf”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and “Carol”
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Rockin’ around the Christmas tree at the Christmas movie stop! That’s right: you’ve reached the North Pole of movie recommendations, where our toymakers (read: movie reviews) have been hard at work sifting through titles throughout 2022.
It’s easy to think of holiday movies as the one area where moviegoers are allowed to virtually forget about the rest of the year. With a limited window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, most moviegoers can only make time for a handful of seasonally appropriate screenings before the New Year brings our attention back to awards season and the big Best Picture contenders. Plus, with new Christmas deals hitting theaters and streaming platforms throughout December, there’s little time to enjoy Christmas classics while staying up-to-date. new holiday rate.
Selection is made even more complex when you enter the Christmas genre’s inexplicable trend towards access control. It’s a frustrating reality of the cinematic machine that some titles, for no real discernable reason, find themselves embroiled in debates that have relatively little to do with their stories. This is the case of John McTiernan’s “Die Hard”: the action-packed 1988 film starring Bruce Willis that became Synonym of disputed classification so-called “Christmas movies” and separately defined “Christmas movies”.
In curating this list, we’ve ignored that delineation, allowing Stanley Kubrick’s psychosexual thriller “Eyes Wide Shut” and Bob Clark’s slasher “Black Christmas” their rightful places alongside traditional TV specials, from “A Charlie Brown Christmas to “Rudolph the Red”. – Reindeer in the nose. The 25 Best Christmas Movies, as defined here, is a collection of films that celebrate and/or challenge the holiday while using its motifs and themes to explore the light and dark sides of the human spirit. The selections were ranked taking into account both Christmas relevance and the overall quality of the film.
Honorable mentions include the following, listed in chronological order: ‘The Shop Around the Corner’ (1940); “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944); “Christmas in Connecticut” (1945); “Scrooged” (1988); “Batman Returns” (1992); “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993); “The Ref” (1994); “Enemy of the State” (1998); “Serendipity” (2001); “Four Christmases” (2008); and “Klaus” (2019).
Check out IndieWire’s guide to 15 of the best Thanksgiving movies.
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