Review

Christmas culture

Culture

20 December 2023

5 min read

Five Christmas films to revel in

Haunting, salving, teary, side-splitting and glorious - our recommended festive films.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Muppet characters dressed as Dickensian characters stand in a snowy street.

'Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story.'

‘Tis the season to be jolly and watching a good film with a cup of tea and a biscuit, while the freezing wind and rain whip at the window, can be one of the jolliest things you can do this year. The genre of ‘Christmas’ has only grown and grown over the decades, so if you’re stumped by the myriad of choices – often dreadful schlock that feature the word ‘Prince’ and ‘Christmas’ in the title superimposed over a picture of two ludicrously attractive people staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in a blizzard – take comfort in my Top 5 Christmas films.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ Christmas films. You will not find It’s a Wonderful Life on here. It is glorious and lovely, but I saw it too late in life, and just don’t emotionally resonate with it as much as other Christmas films. I will not apologise. You will not see Die Hard. It is indeed and iconic action film, with a superb Alan Rickman performance, and it is indeed set at a Christmas party…but that isn’t enough to make it a ‘Christmas film’. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas

An animated scene shows a grandmother readng a story to children on her lap in front of a fire.

I would have put this film higher up the list if not for the fact that it straddles two seasons – All Hollows and Christmas. This film is iconic, however. The stop-motion animation gives the whole affair an extra haunting air. The music is superb – I still find myself humming What’s This every few weeks. The story is unhinged (what else do you expect from Tim Burton?) but to just the right degree, and behind the ghoulish setting and mad-cap story there is a good old-fashioned moral-of-the-story for children and adults alike to enjoy. Nightmare is a marvellous reminder of what it means to have the Christmas spirit, and the great thing about it is that it’s a film you can enjoy any time from October 31st!

4. Bad Santa

A dishevelled looking Santa, without a beard, stares to the side.

Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as an ‘eating, drinking, sh***ing, f***ing Santa Claus’. This is not one for the kids! Thornton’s Willie T. Soke is a professional thief who, with his dwarf assistant, get jobs as a grotto Santa and Elf in shopping malls during the festive season so as to case the place and rob it…but this time is different. Soake’s degeneracy has become a serious liability, and his instability and vulgar sexual exploits catch the attention of John Ritter’s mall manager and Bernie Mac’s security chief. Soake is spiralling out of control, but perhaps a romantic relationship with Lauren Graham’s barmaid and a chance encounter with a vulnerable young boy (to whom Soake becomes the least appropriate father-figure) might just be his salvation, and teach him the spirit of Christmas. The script is jet-black funny, and all the performances are spot on – although this is entirely Thornton’s film to shine in. Lewd, rude, and crude, but with a heart of gold (deep down under all the effing and jeffing), this film is the perfect antidote for those who find the jollity of the festive season a little twee.

3. The Holiday

A couple, wrapped up in winter clothes, flirt with each other.

This film has Jude Law in it. This ought to be enough to commend it to you, but I’ll go further. This film has Jude Law playing a jumper-wearing widowed single-dad, who can turn the humble napkin into a delightful children’s entertainment, and who gives smouldering glances across a crowded pub. Before you all rush out to watch it, let me finish the blurb. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett are two women, unlucky in love, who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holiday. Winslett is escaping a toxic infatuation and finds solace in a friendship with a nonagenarian scriptwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a possible romance with Jack Black (giving a genuinely restrained and enjoyable performance). Workaholic Diaz is desperate to learn how to switch-off, relax, and maybe give love a chance. She finds solace in…Jude Law’s many lovely jumpers and smouldering glances. This is not a film to be described but experienced. Its camp and frothy and silly, but its also just really lovely and gets the tears going every time. If my recommendation isn’t enough, listen to my wife – watch this film over Christmas!

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Kermit, a frog talks to rats dressed as Victorian children.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t improve upon the indominable prose of Charles Dickens…WRONG! Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story. Rizzo and Gonzo take on the role of narrators of the story, Kermit does a sparkling turn as Bob Cratchit, and Michael Cain stars as the best on screen iteration of Scrooge (go on, fight me on this!). It’s the well-worn story brought to life by glorious songs – every year I start to sing “Tis the season to be jolly and joyous” to myself – a side-splitting script, and a clear and tender reverence for the original story and its central message. I defy anyone, child or adult, to sit through to the end this wonderful film and not want to keep Christmas in their heart every day. If you don’t like this film then I can only guess that you’ll be visited by ‘Marley and Marley, WOOOOOOOOOOA’!

1. Love Actually

Richard Curtis is my favourite director. Every film of his, however flawed (and there a several flaws in Love Actually), is so warm-hearted and good-natured that I can’t help but love them. Love Actually is Curtis firing on all cylinder: a painfully funny script, an ensemble cast of Britain’s finest talent, and a score that plays your emotions like a fiddle. A series of interconnecting love stories – love found, love lost, unrequited love, misdirected love – playing out in the run-up to Christmas, this film will not fail to put a tear in your eye and smile on your face. At times it’s a little too ‘laddy’ – I’m looking at you American sexcapade storyline – and the fact that all these people live in gorgeous houses in Wandsworth in spite of doing no discernible work is infuriating, but the fact that it is number one on this list in spirt of this is mark of just how strong a film it is. The cast list alone puts it at the top: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson popping in for a bit…EMMA THOMPSON! The raw power of Emma Thompson quietly weeping as she listens to Joni Mitchell and contemplates the implosion of her marriage is stunning to behold. At its heart, it is a simple Richard Curtis film; it wants the viewer to relax in the beautiful spectacle of love, and to know that they are loved. I love Love Actually, and Love Actually loves me.

EMMA THOMPSON!

Article

Advent

Attention

Christmas culture

Culture

21 December 2024

4 min read

The Visitation and Wicked taught me about welcoming

See, behold, recognise, welcome.

Jessica Brown

Jessica is a researcher, writer, and singer-songwriter. She is studying at Trinity College Dublin, and is an ordinand with the Church of Ireland.

A Renaissance painting of Elizabeth greeting the Virgin birth show two woman reaching out to hug, while others look on.

Pontormo's Visitation, 1528.

Pontormo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It is a gift when we encounter something — a walk, conversation, work of art — that gives insight into a story we’ve long held dear (or often, long wrestled with). Last week in a cinema in Limerick, a moment in the film Wicked did just that.

For the last year or so, I have been thinking about an event in the Gospel of Luke traditionally called the Visitation. This is the moment when Mary, the mother of Jesus, after realizing she was pregnant, traveled from Galilee to the hill country in Judea where her cousin Elizabeth lived. Elizabeth was also pregnant with a son, who would be John the Baptist. When these two women see each other, the word ‘greet’ is used several times in quick succession: a moving ethos occurs of this very human act of greeting — seeing, beholding, recognizing, welcoming. In a moment of abundant overflow, they vocalize praises from the deep heart; Elizabeth calls out to Mary, and Mary responds back.

This Visitation moment has captured hearts and minds through the centuries. One of my favourite examples is the sixteenth-century painting by Pontormo, and a 1995 work of video art by Bill Viola, which brings this painting to life. In both of these pieces, we see the kind of beholding that the Visitation involves. We see warmth enveloping warmth. We see the brightness of recognition. We see tender enfolding and embrace. We see welcome. I have come to believe that this greeting we humans long for.

They see, greet, and welcome each other in an overflowing moment of beholding and recognition.

So, last week in the cinema. I am a big fan of Wicked and from the start of the film was thrilled with the cinematic version. But at the start of the scene when Elphaba (played luminously by Cynthia Erivo) walks onto the dance floor of the local disco, the film shifted. It was as if the whole movie slowed into something different: a kind of halved-open, shadow-light play of the heart.

Elphaba, realizing how the hat she had put on was all too wrong, instead of running, leans into this electrifying space of vulnerability and exposure. As silence pounds, she lifts her hand to her forehead and bizarrely wriggles her fingers. Steps of a strange dance follow. Others look on, mortified and disgusted. Galinda (played incandescently by Ariana Grande) watches, her face stamped with distress. She had given Elphaba that hat, as a trick. Then, she decides and acts: she joins Elphaba on the dance floor and tries to follow the steps.

Narratively, the moment is the hinge to their friendship, securing them together in scenes that follow. But, before the narrative arc moves on, it dips down and stretches out. The lens rests closely on the two faces, separately, and we are drawn into the slopes of Elphaba’s face and the shine in Galinda’s eyes — and in the way they are drawn into the reality of the other’s face.

They see, greet, and welcome each other in an overflowing moment of beholding and recognition. Such seeing shapes both. Such seeing brings them to be part of something whole. Sitting there in the cinema, my breath caught: I felt I was watching an iteration of that moment in Judea’s hill country from long ago, when two women also greeted each other.

Serendipitously, because we are in Year C of the Anglican Church’s Lectionary — as in, we are in the third set of scheduled readings from the Bible — this year’s fourth Sunday of Advent reading presents the Visitation. This Sunday, as we tip from Advent season (a stretch of time marked by waiting) into Christmas (celebrating the birth of Christ and God-made-flesh, God-with-us), the long-suffering waiting of Advent funnels through this stunning moment of recognition. As the nativity narrative unfolds around them, Mary and Elizabeth enact this mutual, abundant recognition, and we have the chance to behold them beholding each other, so that our own sensibilities for seeing and being seen are given a glimpse into how this kind of wholeness-making can happen.

I think too their praises give us an even deeper glimpse into what makes this wholeness real. They rejoice in the God who comes to us, and is-with-us, who heals us so that we too can participate in this kind of greeting — with God, with ourselves, and with one another. And that healing is so needed; as Mary’s words ring out unfettered, she praises God for empowering the lowly, those caught in dreadful structures of power. The ethos of deep greeting can happen no other way.

A dear thing happened right after that Wicked dance moment. In the dark theatre, I looked over to my friend, three kids between us, with a smile — and without missing a beat, she raised her hand to her forehead and wriggled her fingers. Her daughter and I followed suit. We were all wriggling our hands at our foreheads, communicating a new, just-seen signal for the abiding welcome that friendship means.

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