This post shares the title with my colleague Alonso Duralde's charming, comprehensive and user-friendly book devoted to Yuletide movies.
Everyone's favorite family evergreens are here -- The Bishop's Wife, Elf, It's a Wonderful Life, Little Women, Meet Me in St. Louis, Miracle on 34th Street, The Preacher's Wife and This Christmas.
But it's the surprising titles -- Chris and Paul Weitz's About a Boy, Allen Reisner's tearjerker All Mine to Give, John Huston's The Dead, William Dieterle's noirish I'll Be Seeing You, Keith Gordon's lovely wartime parable A Midnight Clear, Danny Boyle's hearthwarmer Millions, Gillian Armstrong's off-center Starstruck, that make Duralde's book such a gift.
Particularly loved his inclusion of The Apartment and Desk Set, films highlighting that quaint mid-century American institution, the three-Martini Christmas party.
This year, I have a hankering for George Cukor's Holiday (1938), with wonderful performances from Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Lew Ayres, Penny Serenade (1941), George Stevens' tearjerker with Grant and Irene Dunne, Bell Book and Candle (1958) in which Kim Novak bewitches James Stewart during the holidays, and The Holiday (2007), Nancy Meyers' gingerbread about a house swap between Londoner Kate Winslet and Los Angelena Cameron Diaz. Your favorite holiday films?
How about "A Christmas Story" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?" I would also put "Home Alone" in that group. I am 29 and have been watching these movies every Christmas for as long as I can remember, just classic Christmas movies.— Kimberlyjj- Desk Set sounds like a good addition this year. One of my favorites is Remember the Night, with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Definitely love the scene in Desk Set, with Joan Blondell and Katharine Hepburn pretending they are sailing off from the balcony of their network's library. And a special RIP to Neva Patterson, who played Emmy Emerac's caretaker in Desk Set (Corfu, not curfew!) and Cary Grant's fiancee in An Affair to Remember (another one I will watch this weekend).— allegheny
Two modern but obscure films come to mind. The WWII drama "A Midnight Clear" (1992) with Gary Sinise and Ethan Hawke, which I think is criminally underrated. Also though it's not a Christmas film (it takes place in the summertime), "Smoke" (1995) has a tremendous Christmas monologue at the end delivered by Harvey Keitel & written by Paul Auster. It's so good it vaults the whole film into favorite Christmas movie status.
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