Here comes the holiday season, where you and your family should sit back, and relax on a comfy bed or a cozy sofa set, grabbing a popcorn and enjoy home made delicacies. The true spirit of Christmas is to get together with your family members, exchanging gifts and rejuvenating the family spirit. Good movies, indeed, are delight to watch especially with your family, to spend a quality Christmas time for cherishing life long memories. So, here are 10 best picks for you and your family to bring back the mood of XMAS.
10. HOME ALONE (1990)
10. HOME ALONE (1990)
Home Alone is the highly successful and beloved family comedy about a
young boy named Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) who is accidentally left behind
when his family takes off for a vacation in France over the holiday
season. Once he realizes they've left him home alone, he learns to fend
for himself and, eventually has to protect his house against two
bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) who are planning to rob
every house in Kevin's suburban Chicago neighborhood. Though the film's
slapstick ending may be somewhat violent, Culkin's charming presence
helped the film become one of the most successful ever at the time of
its release.
9. THE HOLIDAY (2006)
Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy Holiday stars Cameron Diaz and Kate
Winslet as two women who exchange houses in order to get a new lease on
life. After each suffers her fair share of romantic disappointments,
Englishwoman Iris (Winslet) and L.A. woman Amanda (Diaz) meet on-line at
a website devoted to helping people exchange houses for vacations. Each
agrees to spend the Christmas holiday at the other's home. While each
suffers from a minor case of culture shock, both women also end up
becoming involved with a man. Iris makes the acquaintance of an upbeat
every man played by Jack Black, while Amanda spends time with a handsome
Brit played by Jude Law. Both women must decide what to do with these
new relationships as their prearranged house switch is scheduled to
last less than two weeks. This Christmas movie is all about forming a new relationships and moving ahead in life with new companions when one got dejected/rejected by the old ones. A must watch!
A movie full of Yuletide cheer, Elf is a
spirited, good-natured family comedy, and it benefits greatly from Will
Ferrell's funny and charming performance as one of Santa's biggest
helpers. SNL performer,
Ferrell stars as Buddy, a regular-sized man who was raised as an elf by
Santa Claus (Edward Asner). When the news is finally broken to Buddy
that he's not a real elf, he decides to head back to his place of birth,
New York City, in search of his biological family. Elf also stars James
Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Zooey Deschanel, and Bob Newhart.
7. THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on children's author Chris Van
Allsburg's modern holiday classic of the same name, The Polar Express
revolves around Billy (Hayden McFarland), who longs to believe in Santa
Claus but finds it quite difficult to do so, what with his family's
dogged insistence that all of it, from the North Pole, to the elves, to
the man himself, is all just a myth. This all changes, however, on
Christmas Eve, when a mysterious train visits Billy in the middle of the
night, promising to take him and a group of other lucky children to the
North Pole for a visit with Santa. The train's conductor (Tom Hanks)
along with the other passengers help turn Billy's crisis in faith into a
journey of self-discovery. A long-time fan of Van Allsburg's book,
Hanks also helped produce the film.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stunningly original and visually delightful work of stop-motion animation. Despite having recently presided over a very successful Halloween, Jack Skellington, aka the Pumpkin King, is bored with his job and feels that life in Halloweenland lacks meaning. Then he stumbles upon Christmastown and promptly decides to make the Yuletide his own.
5. REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1940)
With a deft blending of humor, sentimentality and romance, this Preston
Sturges-penned comedy centers on the romance between a caring attorney
and the shoplifter he must prosecute. The whole situation begins near
Christmas time when the girl (Barbara Stanwyck) is caught lifting a
diamond bracelet from a posh New York store. Because the holiday is so
close, the judge decides to postpone the case until after the New Year,
leaving her to spend the season alone in jail. The assistant D.A. (Fred
MacMurray) assigned to prosecute her, learns that the girl is from his
home state and so offers to take her to her mother's home.
Unfortunately, her mother rejects her, leaving the D.A. with little
choice but to take her home with him. There, she is welcomed by the
D.A.'s mother and family. She is deeply moved by the unaccustomed love
and happiness she feels there, but though that love extends to the D.A.,
she refuses to show it because she is afraid that her joy is only
fleeting. Her fear grows and she eventually decides whether to jump bail
and escape or stay and face the music.
4. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940)
The Shop Around the Corner is adapted from the Hungarian play by
Nikolaus (Miklos) Laszlo. Budapest gift-shop clerk Alfred Kralik (James
Stewart) and newly hired shopgirl Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) hate
each other almost at first sight. Kralik would prefer the company of the
woman with whom he is corresponding by mail but has never met. Novak
likewise carries a torch for her male pen pal, whom she also has never
laid eyes on. It doesn't take a PhD degree to figure out that Kralik and
Novak have been writing letters to each other. Deftly directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a smart, funny script by Samson Raphaelson, The Shop Around the Corner is a romantic comedy in the finest sense of the term.
3. A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951)
The 1951 adaptation of Charles Dickens' timeless classic is perhaps the
most faithful film version -- and Alastair Sim's performance as Scrooge
is not to be missed.
Widely considered to be the definitive of the many film versions of
Charles Dickens' classic novel is this 1951 British adaptation, starring
Alastair Sim (entitled "Scrooge" in its U.K. release). Sim plays
Ebenezer Scrooge, a London miser who, despite his wealth, refuses to
make charitable contributions and treats his sole employee, Bob
Cratchit, as an indentured servant. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited
by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, who was as
selfish as Scrooge in life and has been condemned to an eternity of
wandering the Earth in shackles. Marley informs Scrooge that he's to
receive a trio of spirits that night who will take him on a journey
through Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come. As Scrooge
encounters each apparition, he is taken on a tour of his life and
realizes what a wretch he is, transformed by greed from an idealistic
youth into an embittered ogre. Infused with a new, cheery outlook,
Scrooge sets about earning his redemption.
Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living
image of Santa Claus. Serving as a last-minute replacement for the
drunken Santa who was to have led Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is
offered a job as a Macy's toy-department Santa. Supervisor Maureen
O'Hara soon begins having second thoughts about hiring Kris: it's bad
enough that he is laboring under the delusion that he's the genuine
Saint Nick; but when he begins advising customers to shop elsewhere for
toys that they can't find at Macy's, he's gone too far! Amazingly, Mr.
Macy (Harry Antrim) considers Kris' shopping tips to be an excellent
customer-service "gimmick," and insists that the old fellow keep his
job. A resident of a Long Island retirement home, Kris agrees to take a
room with lawyer John Payne during the Christmas season. It happens that
Payne is sweet on O'Hara, and Kris subliminally hopes he can bring the
two together. Kris is also desirous of winning over the divorced
O'Hara's little daughter Natalie Wood, who in her few years on earth has
lost a lot of the Christmas spirit. Complications ensue when Porter
Hall, Macy's nasty in-house psychologist, arranges to have Kris locked
up in Bellevue as a lunatic. Payne represents Kris at his sanity
hearing, rocking the New York judicial system to its foundations by
endeavoring to prove in court that Kris is, indeed, the real Santa
Claus! We won't tell you how he does it: suffice to say that there's a
joyous ending for Payne and O'Hara, as well as a wonderful
faith-affirming denouement for little Natalie Wood. 72-year-old Edmund
Gwenn won an Oscar for his portrayal of the "jolly old elf" Kringle; the
rest of the cast is populated by such never-fail pros as Gene Lockhart
(as the beleaguered sanity-hearing judge), William Frawley (as a crafty
political boss), and an unbilled Thelma Ritter and Jack Albertson.
Irrefutable proof that gentle sentimentalism can be the chief ingredient in a wonderful film, Miracle on 34th Street delivers a warm holiday message without resorting to treacle.
1. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
Your Christmas is not complete without the classic, "It's a Wonderful Life". This movie is director Frank Capra's bittersweet comedy/drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), the eternally-in-debt guiding force of a bank in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls. As the film opens, it's Christmas Eve, 1946, and George, who has long considered himself a failure, faces financial ruin and arrest and is seriously contemplating suicide. High above Bedford Falls, two celestial voices discuss Bailey's dilemma and decide to send down eternally bumbling angel Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers), who after 200 years has yet to earn his wings, to help George out. But first, Clarence is given a crash course on George's life, and the multitude of selfless acts he has performed: rescuing his younger brother from drowning, losing the hearing in his left ear in the process; enduring a beating rather than allow a grieving druggist (H.B. Warner) to deliver poison by mistake to an ailing child; foregoing college and a long-planned trip to Europe to keep the Bailey Building and Loan from letting its Depression-era customers down; and, most important, preventing town despot Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from taking over Bedford Mills and reducing its inhabitants to penury. Along the way, George has married his childhood sweetheart Mary (Donna Reed), who has stuck by him through thick and thin. But even the love of Mary and his children are insufficient when George, faced with an $8000 shortage in his books, becomes a likely candidate for prison thanks to the vengeful Potter. Bitterly, George declares that he wishes that he had never been born, and Clarence, hoping to teach George a lesson, shows him how different life would have been had he in fact never been born. After a nightmarish odyssey through a George Bailey-less Bedford Falls (now a glorified slum called Potterville), wherein none of his friends or family recognize him, George is made to realize how many lives he has touched, and helped, through his existence; and, just as Clarence had planned, George awakens to the fact that, despite all its deprivations, he has truly had a wonderful life. Capra's first production through his newly-formed Liberty Films, It's a Wonderful Life lost money in its original run, when it was percieved as a fairly downbeat view of small-town life. Only after it lapsed into the public domain in 1973 and became a Christmastime TV perennial did it don the mantle of a holiday classic. The holiday classic to define all holiday classics, It's a Wonderful Life is one of a handful of films worth an annual viewing.
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