Twelve Lesser-Known Great Christmas Movies for Families
Posted on December 15, 2016 at 8:00 am
I love the Christmas classic movies and watch as many as I can every year. But there are many great Christmas films that don’t get mentioned as often and I like to remind families that these are worth making time for as well.
1. The Nativity Story This sincere and respectful story is a good way to remember that Christmas is about more than presents and parties. “Whale Rider’s” Keisha Castle-Hughes has a shy but dignified and resolute air and she glows believably as the very young woman who is selected as the mother of Jesus. And pre-“Llewyn Davis” and “Force Awakens” Oliver Isaac effectively conveys tenderness, doubt, courage, and transcendence as Joseph.
2. A Christmas Memory Truman Capote’s bittersweet memory of his childhood Christmas making fruitcakes with his elderly cousin, the only relative who cared about him is beautifully filmed with the magnificent Geraldine Page and Capote himself reading the narration. There’s a remake with Patty Duke that is also very good. So is reading the story aloud.
3. Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas The California Raisins guys put together this Christmas special, with the highlight the funniest-ever performance of “Carol of the Bells.”
4. Come to the Stable Loretta Young and Celeste Holm are French nuns trying to raise money to build a hospital. Their faith and goodness transforms those they meet.
5. Little Women “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents” is the first line of this classic novel based on the loving if sometimes tumultuous family of author Louisa May Alcott. The movie opens with an important Christmas lesson about the joy of giving.
6. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Based on the classic book, this stars Loretta Swit as the mother of six rambunctious kids who insist on playing roles in the church pageant.
7. This Christmas I love this movie about a family with five adult children who return home to celebrate Christmas with their mother and youngest brother. The outstanding cast includes Regina King, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine, and Chris Brown. Be sure to watch through the credits to see a great dance number.
8. Desk Set Before Google, companies had human beings to track down information. Katherine Hepburn plays the head of the all-female research department for a television network and Spencer Tracy is the engineer who is installing the company’s first computer, which takes up a whole wall and uses punch cards and vacuum tubes. Sparks fly — and not just in the equipment.
9. Die Hard Bruce Willis plays a cop visiting his estranged wife at her office Christmas party when the building is taken over by bad guys led by Alan Rickman in this action-movie classic.
10. The Polar Express Tom Hanks stars in this animated story based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg about a magical train ride to the North Pole.
11. Home Alone This comedy smash hit stars Macauley Culkin as a little boy who is accidentally left home when his family goes away for the holidays and has to take care of himself and guard the house from a couple of inept thieves. The slapstick is a bit over the top but the message of Christmas is surprisingly touching.
12. Annie The story of the plucky orphan from the comic pages became one of the biggest Broadway musicals of all time and one of its highlights is Christmas with Daddy Warbucks. The made-for-TV version and remake with Quvenzhané Wallis are also fun.
One of Hollywood’s brightest stars celebrates his first century today. Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916) tells his story in The Ragman’s Son and Let’s Face It. He is #17 on the American Film Institute list of Hollywood’s greatest leading men, with a range of roles from “Spartacus” to Vincent Van Gogh. As shown in “Trumbo,” he also showed enormous personal integrity and courage in defying the blacklist. He was also a producer who originally bought the rights to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” intending to play the lead himself, and ultimately turned the project over to his son (Oscar-winner Michael Douglas), who produced it with Jack Nicholson in the role. Celebrate his centenary by taking a look at some of his classic films, but don’t overlook his gift for light comedy in movies like “For Love or Money.”
The aliens in “Arrival” are spectacular, and that’s no small feat. In most “first contact” movies, the otherworldly creatures almost always let us down. Either they’re predictable — you know, little green men speaking an echoey, indecipherable language or stereotypical “Greys” with the big eyes and the egghead — or they look fake.
Carlos Huante tested many iterations with director Denis Villeneuve before they settled on the final design for “Arrival”… He settled on characters that tap into conflicting emotions: They’re serene yet daunting and huge yet indistinct. They’re heptapods, meaning they have seven legs, and they look like a cross between a giant hand and a squid; their “fingers” resemble starfish that emit an inky, smoky substance, which is how they express their entirely visual language.
They are strange but graceful. Other movie aliens have ranged from the humanoid to the insect-like, from the endearing (“E.T.,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) to the creepy and strange (“Mars Attacks”) to the all-out terrifying (“Alien,” “War of the Worlds,” “Pacific Rim”). Merry’s article gives credit to the talented and imaginative designers who created aliens that were enticingly strange and yet believable.
After you vote, take a break from red and blue maps to enjoy some of the portrayals of real US Presidents on screen.
Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for Lincoln. I’ve already written about some of the many other movie versions of Lincoln’s life. “Wilson” stars Oscar nominee Alexander Knox in a dignified tribute to the 29th President. Gary Sinese gave a powerful performance in the HBO movie, Truman. Rough Riders has Tom Berenger as Theodore Roosevelt, leading Cuban rebels against Spain.
Perhaps the most fanciful portrayal of a real US President is “The Remarkable Andrew,” with William Holden as an honorable accountant who discovers a discrepancy in the town books and is visited by the ghost of his favorite President, Andrew Jackson (Brian Donlevy), who provides guidance and support.
President Kennedy’s WWII experience was the subject of PT 109, starring Cliff Robertson. He was also the subject of 13 Days, about the Cuban missile crisis. Oliver Stone has directed movies about Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins (who also played a memorably cagy John Quincy Adams in “Amistad”), and George W. Bush, played by Josh Brolin. President Nixon has been portrayed in a number of other films, from the acclaimed Frost/Nixon to the humorous but touching Elvis and Nixon and the wild satire Dick. And of course he is the subject of the Oscar-winning Best Picture All the President’s Men, though he is only glimpsed in archival footage.
The Butler is based on the true story of a man who worked in the White House for eight Presidents, and we see everyone from Eisenhower to Reagan portrayed in the film. Of course Reagan himself was an actor before he went into politics. His best films include “King’s Row” (his own favorite), “Hellcats of the Navy” (co-starring with Nancy Reagan), and, yes, “Bedtime for Bonzo.”
There are some great President movies made for television: Gary Sinese gave a superb performance in Truman and Bryan Cranston was outstanding in the role he originated on Broadway, Lyndon Johnson in All the Way.
Kim Novak is a sexy witch who will lose her powers if she falls in love in “Bell Book and Candle.” The outstanding cast includes Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, and Elsa Lanchester.
Angelica Huston is a very scary witch who can turn humans into mice in Roald Dahl’s “The Witches.”
Meryl Streep was a singing witch in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”
. 
has Tom Berenger as Theodore Roosevelt, leading Cuban rebels against Spain.
, 
, 
, 
! (TIME notes that the only US President never to show up as a character in a movie is Warren G. Harding.)