I hope by now I don't need to stress this point anymore but I really adore Christmas. As I grow ever so slowly in age I notice that finding a Christmas mood is harder and harder but films have this incredible ability to shoot us full of the emotion they contain. A book can envelope you with it's tone but films push us down into a well of hysteria and tell us we can't come out till we've reached the conclusion. At Christmas the television is brimming with adverts trying ever so desperately to pull at us, making them seem like a humanitarian company with a soul that is worth throwing money at. Shops blare the same 15 Christmas pop hits that melt into white noise and jingling bells. When I decide it is time, I sit down with one of these exuberantly jubilant films and something in me changes. Christmas isn't a season it's a state of mind. A state of mind that at anytime we can adopt or reject and forever live with those consequences.
I'm laying it on a bit thick but Christmas just wouldn't happen for me without that booster shot from Bedford Falls and a trip on that train with Tom Hanks. We've been spending our time looking at all these lovely films that idealise and moralize the Christmas spirit with the end goal of finding some of those things that make that elusive perfect Christmas film. Our score sheet was devised after a few conversations Sam and I had about the things we always seemed to spot that we felt gave us that extra Christmassy feeling.
So let us award the best in each category.
The Best Christmas Story
The Polar Express
Our Views are well known at this point but the tale of a boy full of doubt being singled out to go on an adventure to learn faith in others and in positivity and not cynicism is simply the best Christmas story. In a post-Christmas-carol world, all Christmas stories undergo a harsh comparison but I'd take this tale over Dickens anyday and I've just applied to do English Lit........which doesn't bode well
-large-picture.jpg)
The Best Best Voice of Christmas
The Muppet Christmas Carol
The Ghost of Christmas present just gets it all. Sometimes santa can miss the whole idea, too interested in giving all the gifts. But this jolly specter knows that Christmas=Love=Christmas
The Most Annoying Christmas Kid
Home Alone/Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Buzz is scum. Scum beyond scum. Sub-Human Scum.
The Best Christmas Miracle
The Grinch/The Muppet Christmas Carol
Though clearly medically inaccurate, in The Grinch, Christmas causes such an overflow of love that one filled with nothing be hate can come to be the most loving of all. Of course this is also the miracle behind Charles Dickens who in many ways created the archetypal Christmas story.
The Best Christmas Message
It's a Wonderful Life
Well I'll close us off with the full run down our Christmas scoreboard. I really hope you all had a terrifically Merry Christmas and enjoyed the company of whomever you spent it with. Honestly we both really appreciate your time reading this silly thing and if ever you want to drop either of us a message or just say you liked something we or someone else did, feel free. Happy New Year and try and keep those Christmas feelings a-rolling. Bye, and thanks for knowing us better man.
100 The Polar Express (We are a biased folk with much opinions and little fact, thinking about this feel fills my eyes with a strange sort of joyful tears. I really dig it and my siblings who make it so darn special)
25 The Muppet Christmas Carol (Light the lamp, not the rat. Sage Advice)
24.5 It's a Wonderful Life
23 Home Alone 2
23 Arthur Christmas
23 Die Hard
23 Joyeux Noël (I didn't recall this scoring so high but it certainly deserves it's place)
22 Miracle On 34th Street (1947)
22 National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
22 A Charlie Brown Christmas
21 The Shop Around The Corner
21 Scrooged
21 Jingle All The Way
21 Bad Santa
21 A Christmas Story
21 The Nightmare Before Christmas
21 White Christmas
20 Love Actually
20 National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
20 Home Alone
18 Beauty & The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
17 We're No Angels (1955)
17 Scrooge (1951)
17 The Grinch
16 March of the Wooden Soldiers
16 Nativity
16 Gremlins
15 Die Hard 2: Die Harder
15 Trading Places
13 A Very Murray Christmas
13 A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
12 Tangerine (It's falling pretty low but you really should check this out, a strong 2015 contender)
10 Black Christmas (Dude I forgot this was a thing, 10/10)
9 Frozen
8 The Holiday (Really feel I was far too harsh on this)
No comments:
Post a Comment