Holiday Movie Must See List
What’s your holiday must see movie list? The ones that you watch over and over and over again, without fail, every year?
In no particular order, here are some of ours:
Scrooged (1988) Bill Murray, Karen Allen. 66% on the Rotten Tomatoes site: A darkly comic and surreal contemporization of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
The Bishops Wife (1947) Cary Grant, David Niven, Loretta Young. 80% on the Rotten Tomatoes site: When Episcopalian bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) prays for divine guidance in his efforts to raise the necessary funds for a new cathedral, his prayers are answered in the form of a handsome, personable guardian angel named Dudley (Cary Grant).
Miracle on 34th Street (1947) Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Hara, John Payne. 96% on the Rotten Tomatoes site:
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
A Christmas Carol (1951) Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison. 85% on the Rotten Tomatoes site: 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
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). 69% on the Rotten Tomatoes site.
Christmas Vacation (1989) Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Johnny Galecki, Randy Quaid. 63% on Rotten Tomatoes site: Chevy Chase, star of National Lampoon’s Vacation and its sequel, is back as the paterfamilias of the Griswold family (including Beverly D’Angelo as his missus) to skewer the Yuletide season.
WKRP In Cincinnatti Season 3 Episode 7 “Bah Humbug” Mr Carlson eats one of Johnny’s special brownies and falls asleep at the station. He has a Christmas Carol dream about being a Scrooge for not giving the radio staff a Christmas bonus.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) Boris Karloff
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) Burl Ives
Frosty the Snowman (1969) Jimmy Durante
Shrek the Halls (2007) Mike Meyers
Die Hard (1988) Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia 92% on the Rotten Tomatoes site John McClane, officer of the NYPD, tries to save wife Holly Gennaro and several others, taken hostage by German terrorist Hans Gruber during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
More to come!