A Christmas Story: Simply the best. There’s really no competition. “In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.” Every line of narration in this thing is pure gold.
Love Actually: Waited fifteen years to finally watch this, and should have waited fifteen more. I feel like you needed to be sixteen or younger in 2003 to think this is anything but a nonsense contraption of a movie. (It’s like the Infinity War of rom-coms, only with less-believable characters and situations.)
The Year Without a Santa Claus: Heresy I know, but I prefer this to the Rankin/Bass Rudolph. The stop-motion work is pretty sophisticated for 1974 —the lighting and camera movements are impressive— and it’s unintentionally perverted and weird in places, so I love it.
Home for the Holidays: HftH is technically a Thanksgiving movie, but when a film has both Holly Hunter *and* Robert Downey Jr.? Gimme. It’s Peak Rehab RDJ, so he’s manic as fuck, but director Jodie Foster lets him roll with it to great effect. Bonus points for casting a My So-Called Life era Claire Danes as Holly’s daughter, a perfect pairing that didn’t get enough screen time.
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: More RDJ, this time at the beginning of his career reboot. Like everything Shane Black has ever written, it’s most impressive on the first viewing, and doesn’t hold up as well over time. In retrospect, it’s most notable for being the only movie ever made where noted scene-stealer RDJ has every scene stolen from him… Val Kilmer runs away with the movie any time he’s on screen. (I miss funny Val Kilmer. Real Genius was my jam in high school.)
Jesus Christ Superstar: Hey, it’s closer to being Christmasy than Die Hard! And Murray Head cracks me up. (I loved One Night In Bangkok as a kid.)
Olive the Other Reindeer: Dan Castellaneta as a deeply disturbed postman, Joe Pantoliano as a cranky penguin trying to make a buck, and Drew Barrymore as a well-intentioned, very dumb dog named Olive who allows a flea with a hearing problem to convince her that she’s the “the other reindeer” that Santa needs to make his delivery run.
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Man, that Lucy is one huge bitch.
