Christmas-adjacent films worth watching
Check most lists of holiday-themed movies, and you’re bound to find the same old films: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
Those are all great movies, but the ones I watch over and over are those that are sometimes referred to as Christmas-adjacent films: movies that are based at Christmastime — or contain scenes of Christmas — but Santa Claus and his elves are nowhere to be found. Neither are angels, Red Ryder air rifles or sappy Christmas trees for that matter. (Think “Die Hard,” but not.) My list of best Christmas-adjacent films are:
“The Family Man”: Nicolas Cage stars as a self-absorbed investment broker who, on Christmas Eve, is given an opportunity to meet up with his college sweetheart and get a glimpse of what life would have been like had he taken a different path.
“The Family Stone”: In this funny yet heartfelt film, an uptight career woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) is invited to her boyfriend’s tight-knit family’s home for Christmas and feels left out in what happens to be the last Christmas for the matriarch (Diane Keaton).
“Moonstruck”: A widowed bookkeeper from Brooklyn, played by Oscar-winner Cher, finds herself in a predicament when she falls for the brother (Cage) of the man she has agreed to marry.
“Silver Linings Playbook”: After a stint in a mental rehab facility, a former teacher (Bradley Cooper) moves back in with his mother and father (Robert De Niro) while trying to reconcile with his ex-wife, but life gets complicated when he meets a young widow (Jennifer Lawrence) with issues of her own.
“Sleepless in Seattle”: In this Nora Ephron film, reporter Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) falls for a widower after tuning in to a talk radio show on Christmas Eve to hear a young boy tell the world his father (Tom Hanks) needs a wife.
“Stepmom”: An unlikely friendship develops when a mother of two (Susan Sarandon) must teach her husband’s fiancée (Julia Roberts) how to raise her children after she receives a cancer diagnosis.
“When Harry Met Sally”: This Ephron classic answers the age-old question of whether men and women (played by Ryan and Billy Crystal) can be just friends.
“While You Were Sleeping”: Sandra Bullock plays a hopeless romantic working a token booth on the Chicago L when she saves the life of a man mistakenly thought to be her fiancé, only to fall for his brother.
“You’ve Got Mail”: Unbeknownst to each other, two nemeses, a struggling bookshop owner and a corporate bookstore exec (Hanks and Ryan again), fall for one another in an internet chat room in this Ephron film.
Worst holiday movies: “Christmas with the Kranks”: Adapted from a good novella (John Grisham’s “Skipping Christmas”), it could have been so much better — even the title is worse than the book’s.
“The Holiday”: This film has an excellent cast that is wasted on a movie in which Santa Ana winds are mentioned much too often.
“Love, Actually”: Too many characters, and who cares about any of them?
“Love, the Coopers”: Again, this film features a great cast in a terrible, drawnout, unfunny story.
Rosemarie Leenerts, San Carlos