Ho-ho-ho: The best Christmas movies of all time (plus some turkeys) — 2023 edition

[Author's note: I first wrote this article for The Davis Enterprise in December 2005. When reviving it for this blog in late 2009, I was surprised by how little had changed. Indeed, the lists themselves remained constant; it was necessary only to mention a few more holiday duds which — although dreadful — weren't quite bad enough to make the turkey list. As I prepared this edition, another dozen years further along, several more recent flops elbowed their way onto the Worst list's near misses. What follows, then, is the original article with minor introductory modifications and the aforementioned updates.]

Next to Thanksgiving, Christmas remains the most popular time to gather friends and family members, surround yourself with food and enjoy a holiday-themed movie or two ... or three or six, depending on your level of commitment. 

Far too often, though, the roster of movies for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day suffers from an acute lack of imagination. Everybody can rattle off It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and Home Alone, but where do we go from there? 

While you'll find all three of those films cited below, I worked hard not to simply state the obvious. 

It becomes more surprising, with the passage of time, that most of the best Christmas-themed films are decades and decades old. Many are in black-and-white, but try to be patient; I promise, the absence of color won't kill you. After all, story rules everything else; you might be surprised, halfway through one or more of these selections, that you're so wrapped up in the characters that you've completely forgotten about trivialities such as film stock. 

In this article's first draft, I expressed the belief that one cannot truly judge a film's impact until it has been given a chance to stand the test of time. As a result, nothing on the "classics" list had been released more recently than 1993. This updated version includes a 2011 entry, which — now 12 years old — has similarly endured, and become more popular over time.

I also wondered, back in 2005, where our modern holiday classics-in-the-making were hiding, and worried that Hollywood had lost its ability to produce a poignant, well-made Christmas film. To my profound disappointment, that situation hasn't changed. The vast majority of our choices, for several Decembers now, have been limited to dumb comedies; insufferably sappy, Hallmark Channel-style romances; or gory trash such as this year's Silent Night. 

With respect to such bombs, it could be argued that numerous films are worse than some of the entries on my list of turkeys. But many of the other options have no-name casts, and/or quickly faded into obscurity, so why call attention to them? It's much more fun to cite flops with big-name stars.

On a happier note, I've been pleased by several recent near-misses: Klaus and Last Christmas (both 2019), Santa Camp and This Is Christmas (both 2022). And if I ever get enough entries to add a fifth category devoted to documentaries, 2020's Dear Santa will be first on that list.

The following films are divided into four categories:

• The Bestest — Undeniable classics all, these are the most satisfying "traditional" Christmas films ever made ... which is to say, the sort of movie one generally thinks of, when asked to name a Christmas film. While most will be immediately familiar, at least a few should be new to you. Near misses: The Cheaters (1945), A Christmas Carol (1984, the George C. Scott version), Christmas in July (1940), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), One Magic Christmas (1985), The Polar Express (2004), Prancer (1989) and The Santa Clause (1994). 

• Alternative Fare — Although usually not associated with the holidays, or perhaps blessed with a cruel or darkly comic tone, all of these films nonetheless quite strongly concern Christmas. In many ways, they're likely to be better choices than the films in the first list, because you're less likely to recognize them as seasonal movies. Near misses: Die Hard (1988), The Family Man (2002), Gremlins (1984), Trading Places (1983) and We're No Angels (1955). (Ignore the 1989 remake of the latter.)

• The Worst — Feeling masochistic? Looking to drive some unwanted relations out of the house? Stream one of these holidays turkeys ... or pop it into the VCR or DVD player, if you're old-school. (Just don't admit to having made the choice.) Near misses: A Bad Moms Christmas (2017), Bad Santa 2 (2016), The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause (2006), Tyler Perry's A Medea Christmas (2013) and far too many more to bother with.

• Quintessential TV — Those born since the 1960s have their own holiday memories, often informed by television specials or the occasional holiday-themed episode of an ongoing series. Near misses: Edith Ann's Christmas (1996), Olive the Other Reindeer (1999), Prep and Landing (2009) and Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (2021).

Although each of these four lists is 10 entries long, I've cheated here and there, always with good reason. And, unlike traditional best-of-the-year lists, these titles are not ranked from top to bottom; the arrangement is merely alphabetical. That'll save me having to argue with purists who want to know why I prefer A Christmas Story to It's a Wonderful Life. (For the record, I don't; I adore both for entirely different reasons.) 

Onward!

Dumbo: A bumpy flight

Dumbo (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.29.19

1941’s Dumbo, Walt Disney’s fourth animated film, is a simple little fable powered by the loving bond between mother and child. The story carries some powerful messages: the importance of believing in one’s self, along with a gentle nod toward inclusion.

The moment of truth: With a capacity crowd breathlessly awaiting "something they've
never seen before," little Dumbo is encouraged by his friends — from left, Joe (Finley
Hobbins), Milly (Nico Parker) and Holt (Colin Farrell) — to go out and do what he does best.

It also features one of the saddest scenes in Disney animated history, set to the poignant Ned Washington/Frank Churchill song “Baby Mine.”

Disney purists likely were uneasy at the news that a live-action remake was coming from Tim Burton, whose flamboyantly macabre sensibilities were far better suited to his 2010 handling of Alice in Wonderland. Burton, overseeing this sweetly gentle tale?

In fairness, Burton gets it right … for a bit.

The story is set in 1919, as the rag-tag Medici Bros. Circus kicks off another season on the road. Disneyphiles are guaranteed to smile when this travel montage is set to an orchestral Danny Elfman theme that includes snatches of Casey Junior’s song, as the plucky engine pulls the entire entourage in its clickety-clack wake.

The circus is run by irascible ringmaster Maximillian Medici (Danny DeVito) — there is no “Brother,” of course — who’s forever bedeviled by the resident Shakespeare-spouting capuchin monkey, Barrymore. Aside from the other animal stars, the troupe features the usual assortment of faux “wonders”: snake charmer Pramesh Singh (Roshan Seth), heavily muscled Rongo the Strongo (DeObia Oparei) and mermaid Miss Atlantis (Sharon Rooney), among others.

They all keep an eye on children Milly and Joe (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins), who anxiously greet every train at all their stops along the way, hoping that their father Holt (Colin Farrell) will be among the soldiers returning from the war. (As is cruel Disney custom, their mother is dead, having succumbed to influenza.) When Holt finally does show up, their relief is undercut by the realization that his left arm was a war casualty.

The loss has left him bitter, and he’s uneasy around his children: the typical man who always left such matters to his wife. As a further twist of the knife, Holt — once a star attraction, as a skilled horseback rider — has no job, Max having sold the horses to keep the tottering circus financially afloat.

Such gloomy tidings are shunted aside by the arrival of the circus’ newest attraction: the baby just born to elephant Mrs. Jumbo. Alas, this youngster has freakishly oversize ears, much to Max’s dismay, and the sneering taunts of cruel handler Rufus Sorghum (Phil Zimmerman). The circus performers, accustomed to being regarded as outsiders themselves, find nothing to laugh at.

Whereupon we hit this film’s first potential problem.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Enchanting fantasy

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and quite scary fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang

It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect marriage of imaginative picto-fiction and eccentric filmmaking sensibilities.

All dressed up and ready for ... we know not what: from left, Olive (Lauren McCrostie),
Claire (Raffiella Chapman), the invisible Millard (Cameron King), the Twins (Thomas and
Joseph Odwell) and Emma (Ella Purnell).

Author Ransom Riggs’ neo-gothic Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was released to acclaim in the summer of 2011, spending well over a year on The New York Times’ Children’s Best Sellers list. It occupies a niche that blossomed with the 2007 arrival of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, brought to the big screen with panache by director Martin Scorsese.

Tim Burton has just done the same with Miss Peregrine, and if the results aren’t quite as impressive, it’s a beguiling near-miss. This new film also plays to one of Burton’s career themes: the importance of responding with kindness and grace to the misfits in our world, as opposed to shunning or fearing them.

Scripter Jane Goldman — boasting oodles of fan cred for her handling of Kingsman, Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and two of the X-Men films — has faithfully retained both the core plot of Riggs’ unusual narrative, as well as its mythical, off-kilter and slightly morbid atmosphere.

That’s no small feat: As with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, much of Miss Peregrine’s appeal lies in the manner in which the story unfolds, and how Riggs chooses to tell it.

Both books also cleverly exploit actual world history, transporting readers to pivotal eras that are both simpler and more dangerous.

And, perhaps best of all, both books evoke the imaginative blend of words and images that was much more common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by fantasists such as Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It would be nice if modern readers — of all ages — grew more tolerant of books with pictures.

Rather drolly, both film adaptations share the same young star.

Miss Peregrine begins in present-day Tampa, Florida, as teenage Jake (Asa Butterfield) discovers that his beloved grandfather, Abraham (Terence Stamp), has died — or been killed — under sinister circumstances. Jake finds the body in the woods near Abraham’s house, and is horrified to discover that his grandfather’s eyes are missing. Worse yet, Jake briefly glimpses a huge something lurking nearby, in the mist.

Frankenweenie: Delightfully ghoulish dog's tale

Frankenweenie (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity and whimsical horror
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes, revenge truly is a dish best served coffin-cold.

In the early 1980s, several years before Tim Burton became the deliciously macabre fantasist we all know and love, he was just another young animator at the Walt Disney Studios. Early assignments included conceptual art and animation on The Fox and the Hound, TRON and The Black Cauldron, although he received no credit for these efforts.

The family, during happier times: Young Victor shares his most recent amateur movie
with his mother and father, while the short film's primary star — Victor's beloved dog,
Sparky — takes his usual place, front and center. Sadly, things are about to get
rather grim for poor Sparky.

Young Burton was much more interested in making his own shorts, which was encouraged by Disney at the time (as always has been the case with Pixar). The first, 1982’s Vincent, was a six-minute, black-and-white, stop-motion tone-poem about a little boy who imagined that he was Vincent Price; the actor himself supplied the narration.

Next up was 1984’s Frankenweenie, a 29-minute live-action short — again in black-and-white — about a little boy who took rather desperate measures after his beloved dog was hit and killed by a car. The cast featured Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern and young Barret Oliver, who had a popular run during the ’80s in films such as The NeverEnding Story, D.A.R.Y.L. and Cocoon.

Frankenweenie was to be Burton’s last act at Disney. The studio fired him, insisting — and you gotta love this — that he had wasted the company’s money while making a film that was too dark and morbid to be viewed by children.

Happily, Paul Reubens was among the few who saw Frankenweenie, and he immediately hired Burton to helm Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The rest, as they say, is history.

Flash-forward to the present day, as Burton unveils his expanded, full-length version of Frankenweenie ... but now animated, in the stop-motion style of Vincent, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. Needless to say, it’ll be adored by his legion of fans.

And the irony is scrumptious: The film is released by Disney.

The stop-motion medium notwithstanding, this updated Frankenweenie is impressively faithful to its source, with whole sections and dialogue exchanges lifted intact. (This can be verified easily; both Vincent and the original Frankenweenie are packaged with the DVD of Nightmare before Christmas.) The entire first act is essentially identical, as is the aftermath of the climax.

The new material — supplied by scripter John August, who has written for Burton since 2003’s Big Fish — comes by way of a hilariously ghoulish second chapter, as some of our young hero’s schoolmates rather unwisely tamper with things best left alone.

Dark Shadows: Toothless

Dark Shadows (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for comic horror violence, profanity, drug use and considerable sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.11.12

The casting is divine, the one-liners are appropriately snarky, and Johnny Depp's slow takes and sidelong glances are, well, to die for.

Young Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) and David (Gulliver McGrath) don't know
what to make of their newly introduced "distant relation," Barnabas (Johnny
Depp), except for the blindingly obvious fact that he's a total square, when it
comes to contemporary (1972) pop culture.

But to quote the heroine of the previous collaboration between Depp and director Tim Burton, this new big-screen take on Dark Shadows isn’t such a much. It’s slow, self-indulgent and — worst of all — rather boring.

Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith — working from a story he concocted with John August — may have tried too hard to replicate the creaky, somnambulant tone that characterized Dan Curtis’ legendary daytime soap, during its reign from 1966 to ’71. The plot here drifts haphazardly, with disparate elements either left dangling or brought to hurried resolutions that seem anticlimactic (notably, one primary character’s rather abrupt and unsatisfactory demise).

Centuries-old vampire Barnabas Collins (Depp) also demonstrates a rather inconsistent aversion to daylight. In one scene, the slightest touch of sunlight’s dappled rays on his skin prompts smoke and even fire ... and yet he spends much of this storyline wandering about by day (and let’s not pretend his hat offers sufficient protection).

The local citizens of bucolic Collinsport, Maine, also come and go at whim. When the film finally builds to a frenzied-mob climax, Frankenstein-style, everybody — including a squad of cops in several police cars — storms majestic Collinwood Manor. A few eyeblinks later, during a real estate-wrecking battle royale, all these bystanders are gone.

Granted, we get a token clip of cops telling everybody to go home, because “there’s nothing to see here” ... but the logical response to that idiotic remark, at that particular juncture, would have been a defiant “Are you kidding?” from everybody present. Besides which, there’s no reason the cops also would have vanished.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Ho-ho-ho: The best Christmas movies of all time (plus some turkeys) — 2011 edition

By Derrick Bang

[Author's note: I first wrote this article for The Davis Enterprise in December 2005. When reviving it for this blog in late 2009, I was surprised by how little had changed. Indeed, the lists themselves remained constant; it was necessary only to mention a few more holiday duds which — although dreadful — weren't quite bad enough to make the turkey list. Nothing changed in 2010 either, but 2011 is a different story entirely. The only sad news: A new entry to the list of classics also means that one must be retired to the related selection of near misses. What follows, then, is the original article with minor introductory modifications and one major update.]

Next to Thanksgiving, Christmas remains the most popular time to gather friends and family members, surround yourself with food and enjoy a holiday-themed movie or two ... or three or six, depending on your level of commitment.

Far too often, though, the roster of movies for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day suffers from an acute lack of imagination. Everybody can rattle off It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and Home Alone, but where do we go from there?

While you'll find all three of those films cited below, I worked hard not to simply state the obvious.

To a degree, the challenge becomes harder every year, because — with a few exceptions — most of the best Christmas-themed films are decades and decades old. Many are in black-and-white, but try to be patient; I promise, the absence of color won't kill you. After all, story rules everything else; you might be surprised, halfway through one or more of these selections, that you're so wrapped up in the characters that you've completely forgotten about trivialities such as film stock.

In this article's first draft, I expressed the belief that one cannot truly judge a film's impact until it has been given a chance to stand the test of time. As a result, nothing on the "classics" list had been released more recently than 1993. I also wondered where our modern holiday classics-in-the-making were hiding, and worried that Hollywood had lost its ability to produce a poignant, well-made Christmas movie. My doubts were valid, given recent trash such as Surviving Christmas, Fred Claus and Four Christmases.

Happily, on this year's first day of Christmas — actually the waning days of November — my true loves in Tinseltown brought to me ... a bona fide, game-changing movie classic. No test of time necessary for this charmer. And so the list changed, for the first time in years.

Ho-ho-ho: The best Christmas movies of all time

By Derrick Bang

Next to Halloween, Christmas remains the most popular time to gather friends and family members, surround yourself with food and enjoy a holiday-themed movie or two ... or three or six, depending on your level of commitment.

Far too often, though, the roster of movies for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day suffers from an acute lack of imagination. Everybody can rattle off It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and Home Alone, but where do we go from there?

While you'll find all three of those films cited below, I worked hard not to simply state the obvious.

To a degree, the challenge becomes harder every year, because — with a few exceptions — most of the best Christmas-themed films are decades and decades old. Many are in black-and-white, but try to be patient; I promise, the absence of color won't kill you. After all, story rules everything else; you might be surprised, halfway through one or more of these selections, that you're so wrapped up in the characters that you've completed forgotten about trivialities such as film stock.

As is true of any potentially significant historical event, one cannot truly judge a film's impact until it has been given a chance to stand the test of time. Hence, you won't find anything on the "classics" list newer than 1993.

That said, I still wonder where our modern holiday classics-in-the-making are hiding. Has Hollywood lost its ability to produce a poignant, well-made Christmas movie? Is trash such as Surviving Christmas, Fred Claus and Four Christmases really the best they can do?

Read more >>>

Alice in Wonderland: It's a wonder!

Alice in Wonderland (2010) • View trailer for Alice in Wonderland
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for monster-battling violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.5.10
Buy DVD: Alice in Wonderland • Buy Blu-Ray: Alice in Wonderland [Blu-ray]


The knowledge that a new version of Alice in Wonderland would involve director Tim Burton, star Johnny Depp and scripter Linda Woolverton — who worked on Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Mulan — seemed a match made in heaven.

I couldn't imagine a trio of artistic sensibilities better suited to Lewis Carroll's wildly imaginative and sneakily subversive classics.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska, center) approaches her destiny -- to face the
Jabberwocky on a field of battle -- as the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and
White Queen (Anne Hathaway) offer words of encouragement, in Tim Burton's
gleefully opulent handling of Alice in Wonderland.

And, indeed, this re-booted Alice in Wonderland is an eye-popping delight: a perfect showcase for Burton's zany visual panache, Depp's whimsically eccentric performance style and Woolverton's blend of fairy-tale affectations with modern sensibilities.

Burton's film isn't actually an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; it's a mash-up of that 1865 novel and its 1872 sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, along with the nonsense poem — "Jabberwocky" — that is part of the latter book. Additionally, this interpretation of Alice takes place a bit later, after our heroine has matured into a young woman on the verge of marriage, who suffers from a recurring dream that involves all sorts of strange creatures from a dimly remembered realm.

This changes the story dynamic, transforming our protagonist from a mostly helpless little girl — who merely witnesses assorted strange events — into a resourceful, kick-ass action heroine who takes charge of her own destiny.

Not that she starts out that way. Even this more mature Alice, a practical young woman, spends a good deal of time believing that she's having another bad dream, instead of actually living it.

Events begin amid the boorish British aristocracy, where Alice (Mia Wasikowska, appropriately plucky) — having lost the father she loved dearly, and therefore forced into unpalatable options — receives a proposal of marriage from a titled lout not fit to lace up this intelligent, high-spirited young woman's corset. (Not that she believes in wearing such a pointless clothing accessory.)

Ho-ho-ho: The best Christmas movies of all time (plus some turkeys!)

By Derrick Bang

Next to Thanksgiving, Christmas remains the most popular time to gather friends and family members, surround yourself with food and enjoy a holiday-themed movie or two ... or three or six, depending on your level of commitment.

Far too often, though, the roster of movies for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day suffers from an acute lack of imagination. Everybody can rattle off It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and Home Alone, but where do we go from there?

While you'll find all three of those films cited below, I worked hard not to simply state the obvious.

To a degree, the challenge becomes harder every year, because — with a few exceptions — most of the best Christmas-themed films are decades and decades old. Many are in black-and-white, but try to be patient; I promise, the absence of color won't kill you. After all, story rules everything else; you might be surprised, halfway through one or more of these selections, that you're so wrapped up in the characters that you've completed forgotten about trivialities such as film stock.

As is true of any potentially significant historical event, one cannot truly judge a film's impact until it has been given a chance to stand the test of time. Hence, you won't find anything on the "classics" list newer than 1993.

That said, I still wonder where our modern holiday classics-in-the-making are hiding. Has Hollywood lost its ability to produce a poignant, well-made Christmas movie? Is trash such as Surviving Christmas, Fred Claus and Four Christmases really the best they can do?

The following lists are divided into four categories: