Christmas classics to light up your week of festivities

As Christmas falls on this Sunday, Guardian 20 guides you to the best classic films based on Christmas. Instead of hunting for new ones, here is the full list of films that you should watch to get into the festive spirit of Christmas and New Year. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is a 1992 American Christmas comedy written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. It is the second film in the Home Alone series and the sequel to Home Alone. The film revolves around 10–year–old Kevin McCallister who is lost in New York. The McCallister family is preparing for a Christmas vacation in Miami. Kevin accidentally boards a flight bound for New York City while trying to replace the batteries for his tape recorder, carrying his father’s bag containing his wallet and a large amount of cash. The film is a must watch for chil- dren who love entertaining tricks and the idea of spending a day in a 5-Star hotel on Christmas. The role of Kevin McCallister was essayed by Macaulay Culkin. The film is much cherished as a comedy in the form of children’s based plot of John Hughes. A Christmas Carol is a 2009 American 3D computer animated motioncapture fantasy film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. It is an adaptation of the Charles Dickens story of the same name. The plot revolves around Christmas Eve in 19th century London, where Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old moneylender at a London counting house, does not share the merriment of Christmas. The film is about Scrooge and his encounter with the three spirits of Christmas. The warm beauty lies in how he changes into a man that starts treating everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion in the spirit of Christmas. It stars Jim Carrey in a multitude of roles, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle–aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge. This film is best remembered for one of the best novels of Charles Dickens and Jim Carrey’s fantastic job as Ebenezer Scrooge. For those who feel no inkling what so ever to respond to this season could just watch this movie and instantly turn into Christmas lovers. The Polar Express is a 2004 American Christmas 3D animated musical fantasy film based on the 1985 children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, who served as one of the main producers on the film. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film features human characters animated using the live action performance capture technique. On Christmas Eve in the mid–1950s, a boy who doubts the existence of Santa Claus witnesses a train called the Polar Express that is about to depart for the North Pole. The boy meets other children in the train, including a girl and a know–it–all kid who has a hyperactive personality. The story is about a magical Christmas bell which can only be heard by those who truly believe and have faith in Christmas. The film stars Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Jimmy Bennett, and Eddie Deezen, with Tom Hanks in six distinct roles. It remains a classic and celebrates the faith in Christmas tales. It’s a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas f antasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story “The Greatest Gift”, which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945. The film is based on Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey is suicidal. Prayers for him reach Heaven, where Clarence Odbody, Angel 2nd Class, is assigned to save George in order to earn his angel wings. To prepare, Clarence is shown flashbacks of George’s life. Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born. The film stars James Stewart Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell and Henry Travers. The film is now among the most popular in American cinema and because of numerous television showings in the 1980s has become traditional viewing during the Christmas season. Love Actually is a 2003 Christmasthemed romantic comedy film writ- ten and directed by Richard Curtis. The screenplay delves into different aspects of love as shown through ten separate stories involving a wide variety of individuals, many of whom are shown to be interlinked as their tales progress. The film begins with a voiceover from David (Hugh Grant) commenting that whenever he gets gloomy with the state of the world he thinks about the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport, and the pure uncomplicated love felt as friends and families welcome their arriving loved ones. The story begins five weeks before Christmas and is played out in a weekly countdown until the

It’s quite hard to faze me. I’m fairly un-shockable.

holiday, followed by an epilogue that takes place one month later. Each story is linked in some way. The film stars Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson. The film is best remembered for its interconnections between the Love Actually characters as the story progresses with Christmas snow and bells tolling in the backdrop.

I don’t want to become known as just a body.