CHRISTMAS NON-TRADITIONS
You won’t find Santa in these movies, but they remind us of the holidays just the same
MEAN GIRLS (2004)
Ariana Grande’s recent Thank U, Next music video parodies this Tina Fey-produced millennial classic comedy and reminds us of one very important festive scene — the popular clique The Plastics dancing in the holiday show. The quartet of high school girls, featuring Lindsay Lohan as the new kid in school and Canada’s own Rachel Mcadams as the queen bee, strut their stuff in a choreographed dance the group does annually to Jingle Bell Rock. But this year, things go awry: Someone ends up with a broken nose, and the group has to improvise when the music cuts out. Don’t miss Snl-alum Amy Poehler’s hilarious role in this holiday scene from an otherwise Grinchy movie about high school drama.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998)
This Nora Ephron classic reminds us that Christmas isn’t a happy time for everyone. Independent bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) writes in an email to her online crush (Tom Hanks) that as she decorated her Christmas tree with homemade ornaments, she missed her mother so much she “almost couldn’t breathe.” Alone in her shop, she watches as children lug a tree of their own with their parents down the street. “I wish I had a river I could skate away on,” she quotes from Joni Mitchell’s song River. “Such a sad song, and not really about Christmas at all.” Neither is this rom-com, but the melancholy holiday scenes make the happy ending much sweeter.
SERENDIPITY (2001)
This starry-eyed rom-com kicks off as Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sara (Kate Beckinsale) are Christmas shopping in a department store and grab for the same pair of black gloves. Cue the instant, almost-eerie connection between them. But alas, that initial meeting wasn’t meant to last. Sara writes her name and phone number in a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, and Jonathan does the same on a $5 bill. Sara says if they each find the other’s item, well, it’s fate. Years later — after failed relationships and near-misses — they reunite on a snow-filled skating rink in New York as snow falls softly around them. We’re not crying, you are.
CINEMA PARADISO (1988)
A bittersweet soundtrack sets the tone of yearning and poignancy in this tale of innocence lost and found. Vividly set in a postwar Italian Village, the autobiographical film, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, explores the wonderful relationship between a boy, “Toto,” (charmingly played as a child by Salvatore Cascio and as an adolescent by Marco Leonardi) and the local film projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) who imparts his intense love of cinema to his mischievous protégé. Nostalgic without being sentimental, intelligent, funny and passionate, Cinema Paradiso embodies the sort of uplifting things we associate with the holiday season and because of its power to inspire the “spirit” of Christmas, without being a Christmas film in the traditional sense.
THE LITTLE FOXES (1941)
Directed by William Wyler and based on the play by Lillian Hellman, who also wrote the screenplay (with contributions from Dorothy Parker), this dark, incisive and somewhat melodramatic tale of capitalism gone sideways features an elegantly malignant performance by Bette Davis as its gothic centrepiece. Unrelentingly theatrical, The Little Foxes indirectly answers the question: What if Ebenezer Scrooge had resisted redemption and heedlessly pursued his grim fate? Davis as the black-hearted Regina makes Scrooge seem like a blustery variation on
Mr. Rogers. And though you won’t feel good, you will feel something — and that is always a good if elusive thing — at this film’s sublime conclusion.
THE REF (1994)
King of the rant Denis Leary stars as cat burglar Gus in this R-rated comedy that features Kevin Spacey (yes, we know) and Judy Davis as a bickering Connecticut couple who end up getting some much-need marital advice from their unwanted house guest.
Gus eventually takes the whole family and visiting relatives hostage as he attempts to figure out a way to escape the small town and its bumbling cops. With Christmas Eve as the backdrop, the movie — if you can manage to dodge the many festive F-bombs — actually stands the test of time.
A sample scene: As the arriving family gets stopped in a police road block, the young daughter asks her mother, played by Christine Baranski, why they can’t arrest the crook and let him go. “It’s Christmas Eve, after all.” Mom says who would catch a criminal and let them go. Without missing a beat, the daughter replies: “Republicans.”
DIE HARD (1988) AND DIE HARD 2 (1990)
The debate should really be over by now. Yes indeed, the first two Die Hard movies are Christmas movies, despite their wanton violence and yippee ki-yay profanity. Not only is each of them set at Christmas time — Bruce Willis as world-weary cop John Mcclane just wants to be with his family but bad guys keep getting in the way — but also there’s the suitable seasonal music: Let It Snow in the first one, the wintry Sibelius classic Finlandia in the sequel. For many fans, watching these Die Hard movies has become as much holiday ritual as watching It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)
When you think of Christmas, does Austria’s singing von Trapp family immediately come to your mind? It’s almost guaranteed that, instead of revelling in the likes of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Silent Night or Angels We Have Heard on High, someone (or three or a dozen people) watching this classic movie will have the urge to belt out with operatic, soprano-fuelled glee, “The hiiillls are aliiive, with the sound of muuusic (ahhh ah-ah ahhh) …”
In pre-netflix/crave/amazon Prime times, traditional TV networks aired family movies such as this one on or near the holidays to attract the largest viewing audiences. Thus, it oddly developed into an annual holiday tradition for people to view Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, the von Trapps, the lively hills, the yodelling lonely goatherd and the rest.