Because I know you are all dying to know, here’s the Chez Herkes list of preferred holiday movies. It is not an “Advent Calendar of Movies.” Blizzard binge-watching, maybe. Overall Spouseman & I usually watch at least one from each category per year. Tradition is important.
Action:
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- Die Hard(s)
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- Lethal Weapon
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- Deadpool (new addition!)
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- Batman Returns
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- Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
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- Long Kiss Goodnight
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- Iron Man 3
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- Go
- Assault on Precinct 13
**Shane Black is to blame for several of these. The man has a weird THING about Christmas.
Classics:
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- The Shop Around The Corner
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- The Bishop’s Wife
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- Bells of St. Mary’s
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- We’re No Angels
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- It’s A Wonderful Life
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- Christmas Carol in B&W w/Alistair Sims
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- ” with Reginald Owen
- all the Bing Crosby musical holiday movies: it’s a sub-genre on its own
Offbeat/comedy:
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- The Ref
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- Bad Santa
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- About A Boy
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- Love Actually
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- Better Off Dead
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- Coming to America
- Ice Harvest
SF/fantasy/Animated:
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- Nightmare Before Christmas
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- Muppet Christmas Carol
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- Rise of the Guardians
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- Elf
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- Strange Days (New Year’s Eve, close enough )
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- Gremlins
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- Rare Exports
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- HogFather
- Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas (otters!)
There are holiday movies others love (or love/hate) that we will not watch:
- A Christmas Story: worth special mention because I loathe it. I could write a whole post on all the many reasons I find this movie repulsive for reasons both personal & political, but others have done such a good job I will leave that to the reader & the reader’s favorite search engine.
- Reindeer Games. Singled out because I usually adore bad movies and dislike this one. It commits the one unforgivable sin for a bad movie: it’s DULL.
- All the assorted Holiday Horror Flicks: I’m not against horror movies. They just don’t ring my bell, so to speak. Slapping some holly and tinsel on the genre adds nothing to its appeal.