It's that time of year again when mall Santas hand out candy to children, Starbucks advances its War on Christmas with their gingerbread lattes, and Hollywood floods the market with a mixture of Oscar bait and sappy holiday dramas. Some people love the holiday season, just as some people love Christmas movies. There is no shortage of material for them to enjoy.
Unfortunately, for those who long ago tired of the candy cane nostalgia of Hallmark original movies and sentimental tales about the virtue of buying presents, there is not a lot to watch. With that in mind, here are the ten best Christmas movies for people who hate Christmas movies:
10 The Life of Brian (1979)
Starting this list is one of the greatest of Monty Python's films. Life of Brian is a comedy about a young man named Brian who was born in Roman-occupied Judea at the same time as Jesus, his life paralleling the life of the young Nazarene. With irreverent humor, this film can poke fun at elements of the story of Jesus without ever mocking Jesus or Christianity.
Like a lot of older movies, a few of the more off color jokes are not in keeping with modern sensibilities. That said, this movie is genuinely smart and sidesplittingly funny.
9 Bad Santa (2003)
This comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton as a hard-drinking lewd foul-mouthed mall Santa is just the sort of movie to remind audiences why Santa has a penchant for repeatedly invoking the word "ho." While much of the humor of this film comes from its off color jokes and the outrageously horrible things one can encounter while working with children, this is actually a heist film in which Thornton's character tries to rob the malls he works at.
Directed by the indie filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, the movie's sharp dialogue and bitter rebuke of holiday spirit are genuinely engaging. Bad Santa is the perfect film for anyone exhausted with the superficial commercialization of the season.
8 The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
There are two types of people: those who like Christmas and those who would rather spend their time celebrating Goth Christmas (known to most people as Halloween). While Halloween is also a spiritual holiday to some religions (known as Samhain to those who worship), it has been highly commercialized, something it shares with Christmas.
Tim Burton's stop motion classic The Nightmare Before Christmas takes the best non-religious elements from both holidays and combines them in a movie that's fun for people of all ages. It has all of the monsters a Trick-or-Treater could want, but also features a great scene in Santa's workshop. Plus, how many movies have Santa getting kidnapped by a sentient skeleton who then delivers deadly toys to children in a flying sled pulled by undead reindeer?
7 Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
There are just not a lot of movies out there about Chanukah. While Hallmark has claimed they wanted to start making Chanukah movies, their first attempts have not inspired a lot of confidence. Thankfully, at the height of his career, Adam Sandler gave the world Eight Crazy Nights.
This animated comedy has Sanders playing the part of Davey Stone, an alcoholic sentenced by a judge to perform community service work for his old high school basketball coach, Whitey Duvall. While Whitey is a lover of everything involving Christmas, Davey is caught between his fond childhood memoirs of Chanukah and his chronic state of misery. Eight Crazy Nights is both the best Chanukah film around and also a powerful rejection of the sentimentalism of forced joy during the holiday season.
6 The Godfather (1972)
Considered one of the greatest films of all time, The Godfather is not usually considered a Christmas movie. In fact, it's not usually considered to have anything to do with any holiday. To most, it's just another gangster movie, albeit possibly the best one ever made.
That said, many of its central events evolve around Christmas. Michael and Kay's relationship becomes closer while Christmas shopping. Vito Corleone is nearly assassinated around Christmas. In fact, one of the high points of the film is when Michael protects his father from assassins, which also happens during Christmas season. Plus, when Luca Brasi is sent to sleep with the fishes, the message is sent as a wrapped present (though this last example might be a bit of a stretch)!
5 Krampus (2015)
To those unfamiliar with this figure from Bavarian folklore, Krampus is the German anti-Santa. A horned monster with cloven hooves, fur, fangs, and a penchant for beating bad children before dragging them off to hell, this figure is believed to pre-date the introduction of Christianity into Europe and to have been adapted into the Christmas traditions during the period of conversion.
The 2015 German horror movie Krampus is all about this character (though in truth, there are as many comedic beats in the film as horror tropes). This is the movie that puts the blood-slick claws back in Santa "Claws."
4 Home Alone (1990)
This 1990 children's movie is now considered a classic. The film stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, a small child whose parents travel abroad for Christmas. After the family oversleeps due to a power outage turning off their alarms, they rush out the door to the airport, accidentally leaving Kevin home alone (in case the title wasn't obvious). Shortly thereafter, he engages in altercations with two career criminals.
While this movie and its sequels all seem to take place around Christmas and are thus branded Christmas movies, a recent trend online has begun to take a closer look at these films, claiming they're not really comedies but movies about a sociopathic child hunting adult criminals for sport.
3 I'll Be Home For Christmas (1998)
This is considered by many people to be one of the worst Christmas movies of all time, which is what makes it such a perfect fit for this list. The movie is about a college boy who agrees to go home to visit his family for the holidays only after his father bribes him with a Porsche! To make matters worse, the character is beaten unconscious and stranded in the desert by his "friends" while glued into a Santa costume.
From the selfish sociopath characters to the casual way attempted murder is handled, there is nothing about this movie which isn't terrible. However, it is actually brilliant in its lack of self-awareness, glorifying selfishness and thus holding up a mirror to much of the audience.
2 Gremlins (1984)
Gremlins is a cult classic about a young man named Billy who is given a new pet for Christmas, a Mogwai. It turns out that Mogwai are small supernatural creatures that come with three rules. 1. They can't be in sunlight (which is lethal to them). 2. They can't get wet (water makes evil clones of them). 3. They can't eat after midnight (as they turn into horrifying sadistic scaly monsters called Gremlins).
While Christmas horror movies are a bit of a trope nowadays, part of what makes Gremlins brilliant is it never takes itself too seriously. Also, there is a real dearth of holiday movies about cat-sized sociopathic murder-imps, something this film set out to correct.
1 Die Hard (1988)
Die Hard is simultaneously the greatest Christmas movie of all time and the best all around anti-Christmas movie. It also singlehandedly reinvented the entire action movie genre.
While this movie happens to take place during a Christmas party, the main plot of the film is concerned with the terrorists who attack the building where the party's being held and the lone hero John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) who defies them. There are elements of holiday symbolism in this film (notably a motif about a gift another character gives to McClane's ex-), but the real reason to watch is that Die Hard's just a fun action-packed rollercoaster of a good time.
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