A truly great Christmas movie should channel the mood of the holiday season. Since we all have different traditions, that means Christmas films can take many chestnut-roasting, Jack Frost-nipping forms: unrelentingly cheery musicals, vaguely religious dramas, defiantly grim horror films, or gleefully vulgar comedies. We don’t want to make any assumptions about what your family or friends are like — maybe they’re all claymation characters. But you probably don’t ring in yuletide cheer by fighting off terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza.
Like Santa Claus himself, we’re making a list, but we’re checking it more than twice because — seriously — this is important. Who only checks a list twice? We’re also telling you where to watch them right now, with an emphasis on streaming services that include them with a subscription, though you can usually rent most of these movies from the likes of Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube. (Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, dig up the old VHS copies stashed away somewhere.) What would Christmas be without instant gratification?
Check out our list of the best Christmas movies of all time!
15. The Santa Clause (1994)
With apologies to the Wild Hogs fans out there, Tim Allen has never really found his rhythm as an on-camera movie star. But with The Santa Clause, he stumbled on the perfect sleigh-like vehicle for his gruff comedic stylings. As a divorced ad executive who must take on the role of Santa after the big guy falls from his roof, the Home Improvement star brings enough playful grunts, wry incredulity, and genuine cheer to the role to elevate this above kiddie movie schmaltz. If you don’t laugh when supporting star Judge Reinhold finally receives his weenie whistle, ask Santa for a new funny bone next year.
Where to watch it: Stream on Disney+; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
14. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
The basis for You’ve Got Mail is this mannered romantic comedy from the legend Ernst Lubitsch. With snickers and sorrow, the story of Alfred (James Stewart), a leather salesman, and Klara (Margaret Sullavan), the co-worker he can’t stand and the secret metaphor he’s fallen head over heels for, unwraps with a certain wintery stillness that’s missing from most Yuletide offerings. A movie that’ll make you pick up a pen and paper and send your loved ones snail mail.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
13. Trading Places (1983)
This John Landis-directed comedy isn’t the most “Christmasy” movie on this list, but a madcap tone — and a Santa costume for the ages — makes it ideal Yuletide viewing. Updating Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper for the Reagan era, this fable flips the fortunes of haughty businessman Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) and charming con-man Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), and all hell breaks loose. Though Jamie Lee Curtis, Ralph Bellamy, and Jim Belushi all appear, this is the Aykroyd and Murphy show, a schtick-filled, anarchic spectacle with two brilliant comics working at the peak of their powers.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
12. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Vincente Minnelli’s Technicolor musical would earn a spot on this list even if it were just a two-hour loop of Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” But there’s so much more here: swooning romance, fake-looking snowmen, ball gown-filled dances, and a hallucinatory Halloween segment that should be taught in every film school in the country. In following a Missouri family gearing up for the 1904 World’s Fair, the story casts a nostalgic hue on the dawn of the 20th century in the same way films today gaze back at the ’50s and ’60s. It’s a snow-globe kind of movie, perfect to marvel at when the fire’s roaring in the background.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
11. Bad Santa (2003)
Is there a more quotable Christmas movie? This film’s script, written by Crazy Stupid Love‘s Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (with uncredited punch-ups from the Coen brothers) is a master class in baroque profanity, brutal put-downs, and wanton cruelty. But what makes it come to life is the sense of mischief and melancholy Billy Bob Thornton brings to his down-on-his-luck Santa character. No other actor could make, “You ain’t gonna shit right for a week” into such wonderful holiday poetry.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
10. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
What the first Vacation did for family road trips, this threequel does for the most wonderful time of the year and all the anxiety, masochism, bewilderment, and warm-fuzzies any extended clan gathering ignites like a match thrown in a shit-filled sewer. Chevy Chase’s Clark struggles mightily here — to make his house the best-lighted one on the planet, to nab his year-end bonus, to fix the newel post, to keep cousin Eddie at bay, and on and on — but his travails remind viewers that investing too deeply in Christmastime commerce can result in nerve damage. Wrapping smarmy jokes inside sitcommy wrapping paper, the third Vacation movie owns its position on the naughty list.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
9. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
If you spend your time debating whether Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s macabre, stop-motion cartoon is a “Halloween movie” or a “Christmas movie,” you’ll overlook the celebratory message that proves why it’s both. Crossing over from his world, a ghoulish nightmare stuck in perpetual trick-or-treat mode, into the snow-caked Christmas Town, convinces Jack Skellington that there’s a “right” way to live. With a little help from his Frankensteined girlfriend Sally, his spectral dog Zero, and Santa Claus himself, Halloween Town’s Pumpkin King finds a way to transplant the beating heart of Christmas into the chest cavity of his ghoulish existence. If Danny Elfman’s devilish original songs don’t sound like holiday-appropriate carols to you, maybe it’s time to rewatch The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Where to watch it: Stream on Disney+; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
8. A Christmas Carol (1951)
This chilly Christmas Carol adaptation was released as Scrooge in the UK, and it’s deserving of the title. As the black-hearted Alastair Sim is peak Ebenezer, naturally matching Charles Dickens’ original description: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.” The beats are familiar, but few cower next to the Ghost of Christmas Present, or melt from calcified wretch into childlike giddiness when the sun rises on Christmas morning, quite like Sim, a Shakespearean thespian who takes the hopeful story as seriously as any of the Bard’s tragedies.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
7. The Apartment (1960)
Most Christmas movies are about family, but there’s an element of the holiday season that often gets short shrift: the boozy office party. Luckily, we have The Apartment, director Billy Wilder’s acerbic comedy about an insurance company drone (Jack Lemmon) falling for a charming elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) who works in the same Manhattan high-rise. Infidelity, loneliness, and Mad Men levels of heavy drinking ensue. Is it a conventional Christmas movie? No, not exactly. But its portrayal of whip-smart, self-destructive city-folk searching for love is the perfect Santa-less tale for those of us who spend too much time dwelling around the punch bowl.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
6. Elf (2003)
It’s hard to remember a time when Will Ferrell wasn’t one of comedy’s biggest stars. While Anchorman made him a dorm room favorite, Elf was the film that turned him into a candy-gobbling, box office-conquering phenomenon. Ferrell’s Buddy, an adult man who grew up thinking he’s an elf, travels to New York to find his biological father, played with greasy smarm by James Caan. By tapping the child-like sense of mischief present in his best SNL characters, director Jon Favreau weaponizes Ferrell’s manic energy for a Christmas movie that’s sweeter than a candy cane but doesn’t give you a post-sugar-rush headache. It’s the perfect stocking stuffer: thoughtful, funny, small, and not a pair of socks.
Where to watch it: Stream on STARZ; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
5. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
With a century’s worth of Ebenezer Scrooges grumping around the movie history books, it’s Michael Caine’s performance, towering over and barking at Jim Henson’s innocent, felt ensemble, that feels the most immortal, the most Christmas. Threaded together by The Muppet Movie songwriter Paul Williams’ original tunes, and given meta-cleverness by Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) narration, The Muppet Christmas Carol renews the Victorian classic with an ornamental sense of wonder. The bubbly Ghost of Christmas Present deserves a place on the Christmas tree. Kermit, in period threads, comes closest to enlivening E. H. Shepard’s Wind in the Willows illustrations. Warm, witty, and wonderful, The Muppet Christmas Carol is a testament to Jim Henson’s achievements — literally, as his son Brian directed the film shortly after Henson’s passing, and dedicated it to his late father.
Where to watch it: Stream on Disney+; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
4. Home Alone (1990)
KEVIN! Only John Hughes, a master of suburban wish fulfillment, could have conjured such an eccentric, slapsticky, Dennis the Menace-esque greeting card of a movie. Hughes stuffs Home Alone with lots of eccentric details — Buzz’s tarantula, that greasy pizza dinner, Harry’s gold tooth, the rip-roaring fake gangster movie Angels with Filthy Souls, the shovel guy, every trap in the grand finale’s tricked-out madhouse — and rips through them like a giddy kid on Christmas morning. As Kevin McCallister, Macaulay Culkin summons all the charm and glee of Tom Hanks in Big (minus 3 feet), and as his mother races home in parallel, his smile wanes at just the right pace. Who knows how Hughes came up with this movie, but my God, Home Alone is immaculate conception.
Where to watch it: Stream on Disney+; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
3. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
The War on Christmas is alive, and averted, in this 1947 classic. Subliminal pro-Macy’s marketing be damned, George Seaton’s fanciful story of Kris Kringle, and the trial to prove he’s the real deal, is an ode to the transformative power of believing in something positive. For all the star power in this movie (including a young Natalie Wood as Susan, the girl who needs to believe), it’s Edmund Gwenn as Kris who remains so pure and positive, you really might believe he is Santa by the end. Miracle on 34th Street hovers under To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men as one of the great courtroom dramas (even if the legal proceedings don’t make a lick of sense), but you’ll be too lost in the twinkle of this movie to ever think of it as such.
Where to watch it: Stream on Disney+; rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
2. A Christmas Story (1983)
Despite a reputation as a cheerful, running-24-hours-a-day yuk-fest, A Christmas Story also works as a horror movie; few kid-centric comedies understand the very real terror of being a kid. Director Bob Clark, who helmed the only slightly more sadistic holiday slasher film Black Christmas, mines writer Jean Shepherd’s nostalgic tales of growing up in Indiana for goofy laughs, heartfelt moments, and bleak scares. The leg lamp, the pole-licking, the trip to see Santa at the mall, and the eye-shooting-out finale all have a slightly grotesque, Norman Rockwell-meets-David Cronenberg edge to them. Ralphie isn’t just fighting for a Red Ryder BB gun; he’s fighting for survival.
Where to watch it: Rent on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
With all the family, forced cheer, and spiked eggnog, the holidays are often a time for maudlin self-reflection. So it only makes sense that the most popular and universally beloved Christmas movie is about a suicidal guy named George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who gets his ass metaphorically beaten by the forces of capitalism personified by a rich, bald banker who likes naming things after himself. Only a second-class angel, sent down from the heavens after viewing a celestial recap of George’s life, can save him. Despite its cheery title, It’s a Wonderful Life is an oft-depressing parable that asks unpleasant questions and provides few definitive answers. Ho ho ho, right?
And yet, this is the movie we turn to every holiday season: Why? Well, for one thing, there’s the small-town sweetness of Bedford Falls, the even-handed assurance of Frank Capra’s direction, and the moon-lassoing charms of Donna Reed as Mary Bailey. But mostly, it comes down to Jimmy Stewart’s shadow-strewn face. In a performance that glides from teenage swagger to adult despair with discomforting ease, Stewart personifies everything hopeful and dreary about the holiday season. He’s the joy of Christmas morning and the gloominess that inevitably arrives at the end of the day. With snow in his hair, bells ringing in his ears, and a glint in his eye, he’s Christmas incarnate.
Where to watch it: Stream on Amazon Prime; rent on iTunes, VUDU, and YouTube
This content was found at https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-christmas-movies-of-all-time
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