Aaahh....!!! It's that time of year again! Christmas!! Who doesn't love Christmas? Many people I suppose but I won't go into that. I will write about us, the ones who love this holiday, each for our own reasons. I, for instance, love the twinkly lights and Xmas movies. The feel-good films about love, hope, family and all around goodness. And the humour. And the sentiment.
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| Aww... |
My all time favourite Christmas film is
Love Actually, which many of you might consider to be a poor choice. Obviously, I have not seen every single Xmas movie that has ever come out but I have seen my fair share and all I can say is that naming a film your "favourite" boils down to the feelings it leaves you with. And I guess this film has left me with that warm, fuzzy feeling that relates to this particular season. And also laughing really hard!
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| He da man! |
Of course, if I sit myself down and really think about it, I will definitely have second thoughts. Since I mentioned "da man" above, there's
Scrooged, starring Bill Murray who no doubt is Da man! What a brilliant film! The best retelling of Charles Dickens' book A Christmas Carol I've ever watched and there have been so many. Then there's
Gremlins. Utter genius. Don't feed them after midnight. And the wonderful and heartbreaking
Edward Scissorhands which was Johnny Depp's first collaboration out of many successful ones with director Tim Burton and which proved to be a very good idea! Also good ideas were Tim Burton's other two Xmas films,
The Nightmare Before Christmas and
Batman Returns.
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| Or is he da man?? |
Who would have thought that the Batman would have starred in a Christmas film? But that is actually one of the many action films taking place during the yuletide. Others are
Die Hard, which ranks 3rd on the IMDb Top 100 Christmas movies list (
all hail IMDb! check out the link if you wish) and
Lethal Weapon, awkwardly enough, both first in a series of hopelessly deteriorating action film franchises.
There has been such a variety in genres when it comes to Xmas movies. From the funny (
Elf) to the horror (
Black Christmas), from the romantic (
While You Were Sleeping) to the historic (
Silent Night), from the cringe-worthy (
Jingle All The Way) to the classic children's cartoons (
Rudolp, The Red-Nosed Reindeer). Films that allowed comic geniuses to unravel their worth like Jim Carrey did in
The Grinch (yes, to me he is a comic genius), films that tried to teach people life lessons, such as
Trading Places,
The Family Man and
Miracle On 34th Street and films that kinda portrayed a more down-to-earth version of people's lives during Christmas, like
Bad Santa.
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| Decisions, decisions... |
And yet all these films have one thing in common. They all send a message of hope. Yes, they tangle themes of love and family and fun but in the end, it's all about hope. Hope that things can and will get better if you only believe they will. I am not one to allow myself to believe in miracles as I have concluded that they rarely ever happen but I am a hopeful person. But then again, miracles come in all different shapes and forms. Maybe they are happening everyday and we do not realise it. Maybe just getting out of bed in the morning is a small miracle in itself.
Anyway, if you do a quick research of all the movie sites on the internet, or talk to people who are silver-screen connoisseurs, there is one Christmas film that they all consider to be the best. Frank Capra's 1947 movie It's A Wonderful Life starring James Stewart. So if you feel like a punch in your gut and a tear in your eye for Christmas night, go watch this film. It should do the trick.
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| Merry Christmas everyone... |
