Based on stories by anecdotalist Jean Shepherd, the film follows young Ralphie ( Peter Billingsley, whod grow up to be a director and inflict Couples Retreat on us) growing up in the 1940s and dreaming of a BB gun, while his parents ( Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon ) feud over the fire, the next door dogs, and a lamp in the shape of a womans leg.One more time. Twas a month and two days before Christmas.Nailed it. Anyway, its Thanksgiving week, but you wouldnt know it from whats playing theaters: a few weeks ago brought Christmas With The Coopers, this past weekend saw the opening of both the enjoyable Seth Rogen holiday-themed comedy The Night Before, and Todd Haynes sublime Carol, which is set over the Christmas period, while next week we get the Evil Santa horror-comedy Krampus.
In an entirely unrelated move, weve been thinking about Christmas films. And so below, youll find twenty of the best ever. Take a look at our picks and let us know your own present-wrapping favorites in the comments. Perhaps more than anything else, this makes The Apartment a Christmas movie: though it spans a few months and climaxes memorably on New Years Eve, the film makes as great a use of the holidays as anything else here. Billy Wilder s film, maybe the greatest romantic comedy ever made, stars Jack Lemmon as an ambitious, lonely office drone who lets his higher-ups use his apartment for their extra-marital affairs. Hes in love with elevator operator Ms. Kubelik ( Shirley MacLaine ), who is in fact the mistress of his boss Sheldrake ( Fred MacMurray ). Though often incredibly funny, Wilders film stands apart from other holiday films by its rich vein of melancholy, and none more so than during arguably the movies most memorable stretch, involving a Christmas party where everyone finds out everything thats going on, and Lemmon finds MacLaine having attempted suicide in his apartment, and then spends several days with her while she recuperates. The Christmas backdrop elevates the fairy tale feel of the story, even if its a bittersweet one for much of its running time, and the perfect climax to a perfect film warms your heart like chestnuts roasting on an open fire. If it does not quite encompass Laurel Hardy s finest hour, the film is certainly one of their most imaginative and family-friendly efforts. The two play Stannie and Ollie, two toymakers assistants who live in a shoe in Toyland who try to raise money to stop the evil Silas ( Henry Kleinbach ) from forcing Bow Peep ( Florence Roberts ) to marry him against his will. Surprisingly convoluted plot wise and even surprisingly scary by the time bogeymen invade at the end, the film perhaps suffers in comparison to Laurel Hardys best by letting the comedy take a back seat to the plot and adventure elements. Which is to say theres bouts of sloppy jacuzzi sex, conspicuous binge-drinking and more creatively colorful profanity than a hundred South Park episodes. Billy Bob Thornton, a born outlaw if ever there was one, plays Willie Stokes, a piece-of-shit crook moonlighting as a mall Santa Claus, with his pint-sized, foul-mouthed partner Marcus as an attending elf. Some rays of sunshine trickle into Willies dark, boozy world in the form of a horny bartender with a Saint Nick fetish ( Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls ) and an overweight, underloved kid who frequently finds himself a target of bullies. Zwigoff is an ace profiler of the downtrodden and disenfranchised (see his bitter, lovely Ghost World if you havent already) and Bad Santa never asks to be loved, to its credit. Theres no Christmas spirit forcing Willie to change his reckless, philandering ways: he remains a true-blue American scumbag, all the way to the movies literal middle finger of a final shot. Featuring crackerjack supporting turns from two since passed comedy greats John Ritter as the malls perpetually flustered overseer and Bernie Mac as a hard-charging private consultant tasked with cleaning up Willies messes Bad Santa is a naughty present for the holiday hell-raiser in us all, and almost certainly the most gleefully foul Christmas movie on this list. The sequel to 1999s The Best Man, directed like this film by Malcolm D. Lee, switches up genres, from comedy-drama to a sort of Big Chill -style reunion movie, as Lance and Mia ( Morris Chestnut and Monica Calhoun ) ask their old friends to join them for Christmas, which is the first time theyve all been together in fourteen years. Its refreshing not just because, like the original, it focuses on resolutely middle class African-American characters, but for showing a Christmas revolving less around family and more around friends. Its a little odd that the film exists at all, given the fourteen year gap, but it proves more effective than a dozen similarly-plotted Sundance movies at examining the fractures and bonds of friendship and at juggling an ensemble cast Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Terrence Howard et al with a lot of actors who are often underused given good material to play with here. It becomes weighed down a bit near the end, as terminal illness melodrama threatens to overwhelm proceedings, but on the whole, this is good enough to make us glad that a third movie in the trilogy is on the way next year. It happened to Its A Wonderful Life back in the day, it happened to Elf and Love Actually since, and its happened to A Christmas Story, which airs in a continuous Christmas Eve marathon on TBS every year.
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