December 23, 2009

Christmas Film Choices

Unsure what to watch this Christmas? I’ve picked a few of my favourite Christmas films.

Batman Returns - Tim Burton’s vision of a Gothic Batman film, set during Gotham’s Christmas celebrations.

Gremlins - Probably my favourite Christmas film. One highlight is Kate’s (Phoebe Cates) personal Christmas story.

Tokyo Godfathers - A beautiful Christmas tale from Anime master Satoshi Kon.

Scrooged - Bill Groundhog-Day, Ghostbustin’-ass Murray! in a retelling of a very traditional Christmas story.

Silent Night, Deadly Night - Santa, slasher classic. Brutal and hilariously awful in equal measures.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Although perhaps slightly ruined by over exposure in popular culture The Nightmare Before Christmas is still a great film with wonderful songs from Danny Elfman and incredible animation from Henry Selick.

Die Hard - “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.”

Bad Santa - Terry Zwigoff directs Billy Bob Thornton in the offensive but surprisingly touching Bad Santa.

Black Christmas - A slasher that laid a lot of the ground rules for slashers to come and a film that also makes for a damn good alternative to the usual feelgood Christmas fare.

Lady in the Lake - Perhaps an odd choice but Lady in the Lake is set on Christmas Eve and also happens to be an excellent Marlowe Film Noir shot entirely in POV.

Jack Frost - I can’t say I can particularly recommend this direct-to-video horror but if you’ve made it through all the above and you’re pretty drunk on Christmas cheer you’ll most likely get quite a good laugh out of this.

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