One of the best ways to celebrate the holiday season is by watching festive movies with your loved ones. They’ll bring you lots of laughs and comfort in different ways. Dating all the way back to the 1960’s, here are some of the best movies you should enjoy to end the year.
1960s: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (4/5 Stars, Apple TV)
One of the most heartwarming classic movies of the season is “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which was made in 1965. The 30-minute animated classic is a nostalgic and feel-good holiday special. While I think that the storyline was sweet and well developed, it would have been nice if it was a little longer. But I did appreciate the smooth animation.
The story revolves around Charlie Brown’s sadness of Christmas becoming too commercial as he recognizes how the whole holiday season seems to revolve around material belongings instead of the true holiday’s meaning.
Because of this, he decides (with guidance from Lucy) that he will direct the school pageant, which involves some challenging shenanigans, including the infamous bare Christmas tree he selects for the show.
Thanks to his friend Linus’ moving speech about the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown rediscovers the real meaning of the holiday in this movie. Plus, his sad little tree comes to life with a little love and warmth from Linus’ blanket. Overall, the story had a really good message and the animation was fairly good considering it was created in the 1960s.
1970s: “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” (2.5/5 Stars)
This movie was confusing, to say the least. I watched this a lot when I was younger though, so I do have to attribute some credit for entertaining my younger self. The movie is a crossover of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, which you can probably infer from the title of the movie.
The plot is centered around how Rudolph is concerned because he notices his nose is becoming dimmer. Out of concern, he goes to discuss the issue with Santa Claus, who explains that his nose’s glow was gifted to him by Lady Borealis, the Queen of the Northern Lights, in order to help him guide Santa during a storm, which was created by the Queen’s enemy, Winterbolt, the main villain of the movie.
The plot and explanation is a little confusing, and brought my rating down. There’s some side story about Frosty trying to help Rudolph keep his nose lit and protecting his family from melting, but I kind of got bored and gave up on watching it because it was almost two hours long. The stop-motion animation was okay, and the graphics were fine. The movie was good, but it wasn’t amazing.
1980s: “A Christmas Story” (4/5 Stars)
“A Christmas Story, which contains some of the most iconic lines and references of any holiday movie, is about a young boy named Ralphie Parker. Set in the 1940s, the story chronicles Ralphie’s obsession with getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Ralphie wants this gift more than anything, but everyone reacts to his desire with the famous line: “You’ll shoot your eye out!”
There are also more comical subplots incorporated into the movie, such as when Ralphie’s friend Flick is triple dog dared to stick his tongue to a frozen flagpole, which he does actually end up doing. This results in the fire department coming to rescue him.
There are more humorous stories leading up to Christmas, but the one with the flagpole was my favorite. On the actual day of Christmas, Ralphie is initially disappointed when he doesn’t appear to receive a BB gun and has to try on his aunt’s gift, which is a horrific pink bunny onesie which his father says makes him look like a deranged Easter Bunny.
In the end, Ralphie does get his BB gun and the family goes out to eat Chinese food for dinner because the neighbor’s hound dogs snuck in the house and mauled the family turkey. The movie takes on a comical tone and does a really good job of creating opportunities for famous pop culture moments. Although I enjoyed this movie, I don’t know if it fully lived up to its blown up classic Christmas movie reputation, which is why I dropped it a point.
1990s: “A Nightmare Before Christmas” (4.5/5 Stars)
This movie never gets old. I could watch this every day from Oct. 1-Dec. 31, and still be entertained. The stop-motion animation, storyline, and struggle of the characters in relation to the plotline all blends together exceptionally well to make the best movie of fall and winter.
The movie ties in elements of Halloween and Christmas, making it the perfect watch for the last few months of the year. The movie’s premise is that each holiday has an origin town that is responsible for conducting the holiday and making sure it goes smoothly. The center of this movie is the origins of all the holidays, with a focus on Halloween and Christmas.
The main character is a depressed Jack Skellington, who originates from Halloween Town and is tired of the routineness of Halloween every year. Depressed, he leaves his home and wanders around until he finds the entrance to Christmas Town, though he doesn’t know it yet. Entranced by the wonders and newness of the holiday, he tries to take it for himself, creating a war between worlds. While this is my personal favorite, I took off 0.5 stars since it’s not entirely a Christmas movie.
2000s: “Elf” (5/5 Stars, Prime Video)
Hilarious and uplifting, “Elf” is another classic that many people watch during this time of year. The movie is about an elf named Buddy (Will Ferrell), who crawled into Santa Claus’s sack at an orphanage when he was a baby and ended up in the North Pole by mistake.
He doesn’t fit in because he is human and finally asks his adopted father (Bob Newhart), who isn’t his biological father, if he is really an elf. He is shocked when he finds out that he is actually a human and decides to travel to New York City (in full elf costume of course) to meet his biological father (James Caan), who Buddy doesn’t realize is a cruel businessman who doesn’t have time for him.
Buddy’s comical endeavors include yelling at a department store Santa for being a fake, moving in with his real father’s family and befriending his half-brother, and eventually helping the real Santa (Ed Asner) save Christmas. Everyone ultimately falls in love with Buddy as his kindness is infectious. I love this movie, and I think Ferrell does a really good job of accurately portraying Buddy’s character throughout the film. Overall this movie doesn’t disappoint.
2010s: “Klaus” (4/5 Stars, Netflix)
“Klaus” is an animated children’s movie released in 2019 about a pessimistic postman named Jesper, who is sent away since he failed academically during his training to become a postman. He is sent to a gloomy, faraway snow town called Smeerensburg, where he has to operate a running post office. He is required to mail thousands of letters before the year is over or he will be cut off from his family’s large fortune.
The people of Smeerensburg aren’t very welcoming, so he wanders off and finds a toymaker and lumberjack named Klaus, who seems closed off but genuinely cares about his community. Jesper is scared off by the toys in his workshop, and runs away, leaving a drawing that one of the kids in town had dropped off.
This inspires Klaus to make a toy for the child, and forces the postman to team up with him in order to drop it off. After this initial partnership, the two team up to help build toys for the kids in town, which alludes to Klaus becoming Santa Claus, and winds up becoming a pretty cool origin story.
I really liked the animation and I thought it was a good mix of humorous and emotional moments. Again, this movie was a little long, coming in at 1 hour and 36 minutes, so I took off a point for that.
2020s: “Spirited” (4/5 Stars, Apple TV)
I thought this movie was the closest thing to a modern Christmas classic movie right now. The movie is based on a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol,” but it’s refashioned in musical form. It includes catchy, modern songs and an accomplished cast, including Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell as the two main leads, and Octavia Spencer as a side character.
The movie’s premise is that Reynolds’s character, Clint, is a modern day Scrooge, and Ferrell’s character is the Ghost of Christmas Present. It is not revealed until the end of the movie that Ferrell is not entirely who he says he is.
The plot of this movie is like “A Christmas Carol,” where the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future work together to haunt Scrooge. The goal of this process is to create more positivity in the world each year for Christmas.
But Clint is seen as unredeemable by most of the ghosts. The movie focuses on his journey and how he and the Present ghost befriend each other. One of the subplots involves a romance between Present and Spencer’s character, Kimberly, who is Clint’s secretary. I thought the plotline and songs were exceptional, but the movie is really long (a little more than two hours), so you have to be really dedicated if you want to watch it.
