Kitch's Top 5 Christmas Movie Countdown: Honourable Mentions

‘Tis the season for festiveness and there are few greater set-pieces for filmmakers than Christmas. Trust me, I’ve got a sizeable collection of Christmas movies, and a conversation with a college got me thinking about my favourites. I’ve narrowed down a pretty good Top 5 list, but first, some honourable mentions:

Die Hard (1988)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Allan Rickman
Director:  John McTiernan

Not the Christmas movie you might have envisioned me picking to kick off this list, but Die Hard is indeed set around the holiday season. In fact, off-duty NYPD cop John McClane (Willis) is in Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife, Holly, and their kids for Christmas, and ends up in the Nakatomi Plaza when a group of sadistic terrorists led by Hans Grubber (Rickman) storm the place and take hostages. 

Leave it to McClane to shoot and scramble and trade witty remarks with Rickman’s Gruber – does anyone do a bad guy better than Allan Rickman? – in a movie that’s been the benchmark for so many years. Often imitated, never bettered. "Yippie-ki-yay, motherf&*ker!"

 

The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

Starring: Tim Allen, Eric Lloyd
Director: Michael Lembeck

Not as good as the 1994 original, but still a good entry into The Santa Clause franchise, with the man formerly known as Scott Calvin (Allen) returning as Santa, and discovering that he needs to get married before next Christmas Eve, or risk Christmas dying due to a broken clause in the Handbook of Christmas.

There are other problems to deal with, like Scott’s son, Charlie, turning up on the Naughty List, and that brings Scott back to his hometown to sort things out. To cover for Santa’s absence, Curtis, the chief elf, creates a clone Santa, who goes haywire at the North Pole while Calvin is romancing the principal at Charlie’s school, Carol Newman.

Definitely lightweight, but good fun. 

Do yourself a favour, though: avoid The Santa Clause 3 like the plague. So disappointing!

Four Christmases (2008)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn
Director: Seth Gordon

Discovered this one a few years ago in America: a hilarious story of an unmarried couple, Brad and Kate (Vaughn and Witherspoon) from San Francisco who come from dysfunctional families with divorced parents, and so, every Christmas, prefer to leave California and go somewhere exotic, to avoid spending the day with their families.

Except that they are trapped in San Francisco by a thick fog, which cancels all outbound flights and, to make matters worse, the couple – who don’t want marriage or kids – are interviewed on television, so there’s no way to avoid visiting their respective families on Christmas Day. They are forced to visit four separate houses, giving the film it’s title, and there are some incredibly funny scenes as they learn new things about each other. I think the funniest scenes are the ones where they visit Brad's father, who is played to perfection by Robert Duvall.

Good, harmless fun, and a great soundtrack, too!