Tinged with magical passages, buckets of good will and an alternate plotline with the disturbing kick of a Black Mirror episode, this tribute to the efforts of a small-town do-gooder (James Stewart, in his most beloved role) cements the idea of Christmas as a time for giving.
Even if you’re predisposed to diving headfirst into the holiday season and embrace every peppermint-flavoured cliché, it’s still easy to be a bit of a Grinch when it comes to Christmas movies, especially now. Every year, streaming platforms roll out another clutch of cheaply-made yuletide romcoms starring resurrected TV actors you haven’t thought about in a decade, cynically hoping for enough ironic virality to land themselves a hit. It’s enough to turn a dyed-in-the-ugly-wool-sweater noelophile into an eye-rolling Scrooge.
But all of us have those movies we throw on every December to remind ourselves that the most wonderful time of year is approaching. Maybe it’s an inescapable TV classic like It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story. Maybe it’s something sillier, like Elf or Home Alone. Maybe it’s caustic and crude, like Scrooged or Bad Santa. Shoot, maybe it’s even horrifying, like Black Christmas. No matter what your personal cup of warm cocoa happens to be, there are plenty of legitimately great Christmas movies – and as this list of the all-time best proves, they don’t all have to be saccharine and schmaltzy to get you into the spirit.
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