It’s the time of year when the world starts force-feeding us all Christmas movies. Why try to navigate the saturated field by yourself when the Santa Claus of Christmas movies is here? Alonso Duralde says the films below should be high on your list. He’s co-host of the movie podcast Linoleum Knife, author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, and co-author of I'll Be Home for Christmas Movies: The Deck the Hallmark Podcast’s Guide to Your Holiday TV Obsession.
See You Next Christmas
This 2021 rom-com follows a group of college friends and their lives over multiple holiday parties. It primarily focuses on the will-they-won’t-they flirtation between two of them: Natalie and Logan.
“It plays out over the course of this series of Christmas parties and it's a delightfully funny film. I think it really captures a lot of the holiday spirit and the way that, very often, Christmas parties are when we see people that we don't see the rest of the year, or we at least, congregate in a way that we don't always.
“The performances are great. It's very funny. There are brief appearances by some, some, some comedy powerhouses, including Marc Evan Jackson, who you might know from The Good Place, and Janet Varney. But this is a terrific ensemble, and just a wonderful romantic comedy for adults.”
Better Watch Out
This dark comedy, psychological horror film revolves around a 12-year-old boy’s crush on his babysitter, a home invasion, and lots of antics.
“He thinks that maybe a scary movie will get her in the mood and then when a possible home intruder arrives, it's going to give him the opportunity to save the day. But this is a movie that's full of twists and turns and unexpected reversals.”
“It's a film that'll keep you guessing all the way to the end. … It's a film from Chris Peckover, who I think just has a real affinity for balancing horror and comedy that he really gets that balance right where you are on the edge of your seat and also still laughing all the way through to the end of the movie.”
1985
Cory Michael Smith plays a closeted gay man with AIDS who visits his conservative family for Christmas. This 2018 film, which is shot in black and white, won OutFest’s award for outstanding screenplay.
“It's about a guy coming back to Texas, of all places, to his conservative family for what he thinks might be his last Christmas. And it really took decades for the movies to be able to tell these stories that so many of us who were alive in the 80s remember distinctly — of people who had had moved away from their small towns, had left their families because they couldn't come out to them, and then also having to deal with the fact that, ‘Oh, now I have this potentially fatal disease that if I tell my family about it, they're gonna know all the other things I haven't told them about my life.’
“...It's this kind of secret placed upon secret that was forced upon people who were also struggling just for their literal survival. This is such a powerful family drama. There's no shouting. There's no melodramatics. But it has a real haunting power. A real quiet intensity.”
Christmas, Again
This 2014 film from Charles Poekel — not to be confused with the 2021 Disney film of the same name — centers a Christmas tree salesman who meets a mysterious woman. Poekel, who also wrote Christmas, Again, based the story on his own experience as a tree salesman.
“This is a movie about what Christmas can do in the best circumstances, where it allows us to find our best selves, to reach out to other people. … It's a film that was shot by the great indie cinematographer, Sean Price Williams, who has worked with a lot of terrific directors, and he brings a wonderfully kind of frigidity to New York City at Christmas time, but also a sense of community. … This is a very low-key movie, but at the same time, it is filled with the kind of big emotion that people look for in Christmas films.”
