More Great Christmas Films
Every Christmas film reviewed on this site, ranked. Capra and Curtiz, the Berlin musicals, three Shane Black pictures, and the action films that keep being argued about every December.
Tag: Christmas
Christmas stories carry more weight than their runtime suggests, because everyone brings their own to them. This tag collects Christmas films, holiday reading and the seasonal writing that gets revisited every year.
2020sHawkeye (2021) Review
Hawkeye (2021) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A small warm Christmas crime story about a middle-aged man who wants to go home, and the modesty is the point. Hailee Steinfeld is the best new character of…
2010sIron Man 3 (2013)
Tony Stark hunts a terrorist called the Mandarin while battling PTSD from the Avengers, with Christmas as the season-long backdrop. Iron Man 3 is Shane Black's 2013 American superhero film depicting Tony Stark hunting an apparent terrorist called the Mandarin…
ChristmasThe Christmas Ghost Story Tradition
Telling ghost stories at Christmas was normal Victorian practice and considerably older than that. Dickens did not invent it, he wrote inside it and made it commercial. The custom then died almost completely in America while surviving in Britain, and…
AdaptationA Christmas Carol Day: December 19
A Christmas Carol was published on 19 December 1843, sold out in five days, and made its author almost nothing because he had paid for it himself and specified expensive materials. He then sued a publisher who pirated it, won…
ChristmasThe Greatest Christmas Films
Twenty Christmas films ranked, including several that are genuinely bleak, one about an attempted suicide, one about a family destroying each other over the English crown, and one nobody thinks of as a Christmas film despite every scene being lit…
ChristmasThe Twelve Days of Christmas: What Every Gift Really Means
A memory game from 1780 that accidentally became a carol, containing at least two gifts nobody can reliably identify and one internet legend with no evidence behind it. Twelve gifts, twelve cards, one per day.
ChristmasRedneck Christmas: What Fans Call the Daytona 500
The Daytona 500 has an official name, a sanctioning body and a trophy. It also has names nobody printed on anything, and those are the ones worth listening to.
AdaptationCharles Dickens Day: I Hated the Book and Watch Every Adaptation
Dickens gave us A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and the word Dickensian. I was forced to read him in school and hated it, and yet I watch every adaptation. A look at the gap between assigned reading and real love.
1940sMiracle on 34th Street (1947)
A department store Santa claims to be the real Kris Kringle, and a lawyer must defend him in court. Miracle on 34th Street is George Seaton's 1947 American Christmas drama about a department store Santa who claims to be the…
1940sHoliday Inn (1942)
A singer retires to a Connecticut farm and converts it into an inn that only opens on holidays, leading to a rivalry with his former dance partner. Holiday Inn is Mark Sandrich's 1942 American musical depicting Jim Hardy, a singer…
1940sMeet Me in St. Louis (1944)
An American family in 1903 St. Louis faces upheaval when the father announces a move to New York, with Christmas as the season of crisis. Meet Me in St. Louis is Vincente Minnelli's 1944 American musical depicting the upper-middle-class Smith…