MUST WATCH CHRISTMAS MOVIES🍿

TOP 05 CLASSIC CHRISTMAS MOVIES 🎥 🍿

1. Home Alone 2 (1992)

Director: Chris Columbus

Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern

Following on from one of the most iconic Christmas movies, Home Alone 2 is a sequel that doesn’t shame the original, so something of a rarity right off the bat. It inevitably tries to up the stakes of the previous film by stranding our hero away from home rather than in his house. While that does make a lie of the title, it gives him a bigger canvas to play on and, in a major New York department store, a lot more tricks and weapons to turn against would-be thieves Pesci and Stern. At this point, however, we do think that parents Catherine O’Hara and John Heard should be arrested for negligence. To lose a child once may be a misfortune; to lose him twice looks like carelessness.

2. The Polar Express (2004)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye, Leslie Zemeckis, Peter Scolari

Robert Zemeckis’ first feature-length effort in performance capture, The Polar Express may get a lot of grief for dead eyes and its plunges into the uncanny valley, but it does have some rather thrilling action scenes (especially in 3D on the big screen) and some moments of beauty aboard the magical train that takes children to the North Pole to meet Father Christmas. It also gives Tom Hanks the chance to play six different characters, which may not be quite up there with Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets but it’s a worthy attempt and definitely a Christmas movie classic.

3. Elf (2003)

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Mary Steenbergen, Zooey Deschanel, Ed Asner, Bob Newhart

A more recent entrant onto the Christmas chart, but one that went straight to the top of everyone's affections and deserves to be there for its extraordinary quotability alone. Buddy the Elf is, along with Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell’s finest comedy creation and is bound to be one of those iconic christmas characters in future years. You’d have to be a cotton-headed ninnymuggins not to love this one.

4. White Christmas (1954)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Starring: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger, Mary Wickes

The song had been used before, in 1942’s Holiday Inn, but what with that being a wee bit racist around the edges, it got upcycled into this rather better and thoroughly Christmassy romp instead. Crosby and Kaye play soldiers-turned-entertainers, who travel to their former commanding officer’s inn to put on a show, help him out and romance a couple of sisters with their own musical act. Cue skating, singing, romantic entanglements and one of the best Christmas songs ever. Sure, it’s sappy, predictable and a little OTT, but the Irving Berlin songs are good enough, and the energy high enough, that you won’t really care.

5. The Snowman (1982)

Directors: Dianne Jackson, Jimmy T. Murakami

Starring: Peter Auty, David Bowie, Raymond Briggs

It’s less than 30 minutes long, wordless apart from a song sung by a boy soprano, and features a frankly weird David Bowie introduction (in some versions), with the Goblin King wearing a scarf covered in snowmen. And yet, despite or because of all these things, this is as necessary for Christmas as mince pies and binging on Quality Street. The pencil-drawn animation is gorgeous, the music unforgettable and the story much less schmaltzy-happy than you might expect for the season. In fact, it’s likely to move small children, and indeed grown men, to tears. Still, it has to be watched or you’re not allowed your Christmas dinner; that’s just the rules.

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