The Definitive list of must-see Chrismas Movies

By Laura Martínez

Christmas is coming, meaning loud carols, streets decked in Christmas lights, kids singing, and the streets crowded with people carrying an infinity of shopping bags. If you prefer to stay at home watching movies in your Grinch jumper while wearing the slippers that Granny gives you each Xmas, to going out in the cold, we bring you our definitive list of Christmas flicks that will add the finishing touch to your festive season.

Love Actually

The message “To Me, You Are Perfect” with Christmas carols playing on a boombox, delivered on large cue cards by lovestruck Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead), was etched into our minds during that tender Christmas of 2003. The recipient of themessage, à la Bob Dylan, is Keira Knightley, who was the most envied woman of that year. This is just one drama in a cocktail of parallel stories, happening at the same time during Christmas, and in the most beautiful city to experience this time of year: London.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Robert Downey Jr, Michelle Monahan and Val Kilmer… in a Christmas movie? Yes, you read that right. This curious film from 2005, which ended up lost in the annals of cinematic history, is, in essence, a complete film: Intrigue, comedy, romance and action amidst Christmas lights. Robert Downey Jr. plays a petty thief from New York who, as fate would have it, is sent to Hollywood to train under a private eye for a potential movie role, but the duo are thrown together with a struggling actress into a murder mystery. This fantastic film is so, so recommended!

The Grinch

Everything beautiful, sweet and happy has to have a counterpoint, an opposite, an antagonist, an enemy. And that, indeed, is The Grinch. We continue in the 2000s with a film from the same year starring the unclassifiable Jim Carrey as a green monster who hates Christmas and wants to end to it at all costs. You might identify with him a little because, to be honest, when we grow up and Christmas fever wears off, we all have a bit of The Grinch in us.

It’s a Wonderful Life

To close this definitive list, we couldn’t leave out this masterpiece based on “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. This 1946 film is broadcast annually at Xmason American TV and considered one of the 100 greatest American films of all time. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams because of his great sense of duty and responsibility. Bailey’s emotional burden is so heavy that he decides to take his own life on Christmas Eve, but something gets in the way of his plans. A hymn to life, a film of steely and purely American optimism.

Office Christmas Party

Jason Bateman (Ozark) and Olivia Munn (The Newsroom) headline this hilarious Christmas comedy about a company party gone wrong. One of those films that pass (in my opinion, unjustly) without much fanfare, but deserves much more as it is an entertaining and fun film about the shenanigans that take place in offices across the world at this time of year.

Home Alone

Who doesn’t remember the adorable, scared face of a young Macaulay Culkin in this classic among Christmas classics? It’s a film that works, whether you put it on as after-dinner entertainment or leave it on in the background while the kids (or the dogs) play. You might judge the Macaulay’s parents harshly, but don’t take it too seriously, it’s just light-hearted Xmas fare.

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