Santa Claus is coming to town, but you still have days to look for holiday movies of all kinds.
Naturally, there are the classics, like Macaulay Culkin playing a foolish con man in the popular “Home Alone,” or Bill Murray’s self-centered TV executive learning something about the meaning of Christmas in “Scrooged,” an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Or maybe you want a more modern option, like Netflix’s new romantic comedy The Jingle Bell Heist or A Merry Little Exmouth or the Michelle Pfeiffer family film Oh, What, Fun. (all streaming now).
To celebrate the holiday season, let’s rank the 20 best Christmas movies of all time.
20. “Home Alone” (1990)
Culkin remains precocious, and it’s perfectly fine to watch an eight-year-old kid take down a pair of clueless adult robbers in an inventive way. But what’s often forgotten amid all the children’s shenanigans is what this movie has to say about the importance of family.
19. “Ice Harvest” (2005)
Set in Wichita, Kansas on Christmas Eve, this twistedly cool and funny film noir stars John Cusack as a mob lawyer who has trouble stealing $2 million from his boss (Randy Quaid) and running him out of town due to bad weather.
18. “Happy Season” (2020)
This inclusive, feel-good, and clever romantic comedy stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as a lesbian couple whose relationship is tested by deep secrets, conservative parents, and competitive siblings at a family gathering.
17. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993)
Is this a Halloween movie? of course. Is that also a Christmas movie? surely! Tim Burton puts a crazy twist on the holiday mash-up as Halloween Town bigwig Jack Skellington decides to take over various aspects of Christmas Town and arrange the kidnapping of Santa, until he realizes it wasn’t the best idea.
16. “Lethal Weapon” (1987)
As such, it’s one of the best buddy-cop action movies that forces Danny Glover’s aging Roger Murtaugh and Mel Gibson’s loose cannon Martin Riggs together. Seasonal elements enhance the story, such as the gunfight at the Christmas tree lot and Riggs grappling with suicidal thoughts and eventually finding a family to share a holiday dinner with.
15. “Merry Christmas” (2005)
This war drama, nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, explores humanity’s triumph over brutality, chronicling the true story of the 1914 Christmas Truce, when hymns were accepted in place of carnage on the battlefields of World War I.
14. “White Christmas” (1954)
“White Christmas” has been featured in two Bing Crosby musicals. Forgoing 1942’s “Holiday Inn” (which included a cringe-worthy scene of blackface), Crosby teams up with Danny Kaye to sing a World War II soldier trying to save his old commanding officer’s country inn with the help of sister actors (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen).
13. “Gremlins” (1984)
This holiday story also serves as a great entry point into horror for young adults, with a small town plagued by wayward gremlins as a teenager fails to follow simple instructions. Also, Baby Yoda can only try to match the level of cuteness of little Mogwai Gizmo in a Santa hat.
12. “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s romantic comedy “You’ve Got Mail” is based on a Hungarian holiday jam in which Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, who play bickering colleagues in a Budapest leather goods store, unwittingly fall in love through an anonymous letter.
11. “A Christmas Story” (1983)
Full disclosure: I despised this movie as a kid who wasn’t interested in BB guns or leg lamps. But as an adult, this comedy resonates more as an ode to the exhausting nature of holiday parenthood and how everyone, including a tired Santa at the mall, is just trying to get through the holidays.
10. “A Christmas Carol” (1951)
Among the various “traditional” versions of Charles Dickens’ classic, from “The Muppet Christmas Carol” to the excellent George C. Scott TV movie, this version stays true to the dark tones of the original, telling the story of Scrooge (Alastair Simm) surviving an insightful horror film and coming out the other side a better man.
9. “Apartment” (1960)
This romantic drama stars Jack Lemmon as a scrappy office drone whose boss is known for renting out his place to take his mistresses. He begins to be intensely attracted to Elevator Girl (Shirley MacLaine), and when his boss (Fred Mummery) secretly takes her to the Love Den on Christmas Eve, he returns his focus to himself.
8. “Holdovers” (2023)
Alexander Payne’s 1970s-set flashback is a sarcastic yet heartwarming reminder of the holiday spirit. Paul Giamatti plays a grumpy teacher stuck at school over winter break, befriending and bonding with a rebellious student (newcomer Dominic Sessa) and a grieving head chef (Daveen Joy Randolph, who won an Oscar for the role).
7. “Die Hard” (1988)
Oh yeah, this is a Christmas movie, just in case there was any doubt. And, sorry Santa, no one can squeeze through tight spaces in a building to get the job done. When it comes to stopping terrorists and saving estranged wives in this classic action movie, who better than Bruce Willis’ iconic John McClane?
6. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989)
Anyone who has ever gone completely overboard during the holidays will empathize with Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his hilarious battle to decorate the house, deal with his eccentric relatives (we’ve got Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid)), and have the most fun Christmas imaginable while often acting as his own worst enemy.
5. “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947)
If you can stomach the baseless pranks, here’s an interesting “Law & Order” episode in which Kris Kringle himself (Edmund Gwenn) is a little too good at filling in for a drunk Macy’s Parade Santa, only to be put on trial for being mentally unstable because he claims he’s the real deal.
4. “Love Actually” (2003)
Often imitated, but never duplicated. The intertwined love story, featuring British and other people, is completely manipulative, evoking all kinds of holiday emotions, some happy and some melancholy. But when we see a boy running around Heathrow trying to find the one he loves, or see Andrew Lincoln’s quiet ode to Keira Knightley, we’re too busy being emotionally assaulted to care.
3. “Elf” (2003)
Will Ferrell plays one of his best roles as a naive grown-up elf who discovers he’s actually human, and the late James Caan plays his grumpy biological father, but the mayhem that ensues when he encounters “civilization” is full of heart, humor, and childlike wonder.
2. “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)
In the Christmas movie Citizen Kane, everyone has seen Jimmy Stewart’s journey to heaven as George Bailey. Similar to the Scrooge model, focusing on the importance of second chances and showing how much worse life would have been if a man had never been born, this production will kick the Christmas spirit inside of you and make you scream.
1. “Scrooged” (1988)
Born out of ’80s greed, Scrooged is timeless in its relevance, but its perfect blend of slapstick and dark humour, love and loss, life and death, couldn’t be more surprising. The cast is great, from Bill Murray’s modern-day Scroosie-like Frank Cross to Carol Kane’s lovably sadistic fairy. And if you’re not feeling up to it by the time “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” rolls around, you might be visited by three ghosts.
