team | The Film Magazine https://www.thefilmagazine.com A Place for Cinema Fri, 01 Dec 2023 21:55:20 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 https://www.thefilmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/cropped-TFM-LOGO-32x32.png team | The Film Magazine https://www.thefilmagazine.com 32 32 85523816 50 Unmissable Christmas Movies https://www.thefilmagazine.com/50-unmissable-christmas-movies/ https://www.thefilmagazine.com/50-unmissable-christmas-movies/#respond Fri, 01 Dec 2023 20:17:44 +0000 https://www.thefilmagazine.com/?p=41064 The most famous, most rewatchable, most iconic, most popular, best ever Christmas movies. 50 unmissable festive movies to watch this Christmas.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The one period in our annual calendar where selflessness is celebrated and we are all encouraged to forgo aspiration in favour of mutual appreciation – any excuse to get together with loved ones seems vitally important in a world moving as fast as this one.

It’s the hap-happiest season of all. We bring nature inside as we adorn our living spaces with seasonally appropriate trees, and we light up the longer nights with bright and colourful lights. Music from generations long since passed is re-played and re-contextualised, and centuries old iconography is re-evaluated and repurposed.

There’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and carolling out in the snow. If we’ve been good, we’ll receive gifts (thanks Santa!), and if we’re lucky we’ll eat so much food we can barely move. Almost certainly, we’ll watch a movie. From the Netflix Originals of the current era to the silver screen classics of wartime Hollywood, Christmastime movie watching doesn’t discriminate based on picture quality, colour or the lack thereof, acting powerhouses or barely trained actors – if it works, it works. And if it’s good, we’ll hold onto it forever.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’ve scoured the annals of Christmas movie history to bring you the very best of the best to watch this holiday season. These films are Christmas classics and beloved cult hits, some culturally significant and others often overlooked. These films are seasonal treats; two advent calendars worth of movie magic from the big-wigs in Hollywood and beyond.

Short films (those with a runtime of under one hour) will not be included here, nor will films that cross multiple seasons but feel like Christmas movies – sorry You’ve Got Mail and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Debatable Christmas movies like Gremlins have also been omitted because of their inclusion in our alternative list “10 Excellent Non-Christmas Films Set at Christmas“. Seasonal classic The Apartment has also been disqualified on the grounds that it covers Christmas and beyond, and is arguably more of a new year’s movie.

These are 50 Unmissable Christmas Movies as chosen by The Film Magazine team members. Entries by Mark Carnochan, Kieran Judge, Martha Lane, Sam Sewell-Peterson and Joseph Wade.

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1. Remember the Night (1940)

Golden Era stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (who would go on to star in The Apartment) spark an unlikely romance when Stanwyck’s Lee Leander steals a bracelet from a jewellery store and MacMurray’s John “Jack” Sargent is assigned to prosecute her over the Christmas holidays.

One of the era’s many beloved studio romantic comedies, Remember the Night features all the elements that would come to define the genre while encompassing some screwball comedy and classic transatlantic accents. The tagline read “When good boy meets bad girl they remember the night”, and it’s likely you’ll remember this seasonal treat too. JW


2. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Few things signal classic Hollywood Christmases like Jimmy Stewart, and 6 years before arguably his most memorable performance in the iconic Frank Capra Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, he starred in a seasonal favourite that was just as beloved by critics, The Shop Around the Corner.

This holiday romance from Ernst Lubitsch (who also directed Heaven Can Wait) sees Stewart’s Alfred fall in love with his pen pal who, unbeknownst to him, is the colleague he most despises at his gift store job – You’ve Got Mail has got nothing on this. With some hearty moments and all of the circumstantial comedy of the best movies of the era, The Shop Around the Corner will make you laugh and fill your heart in that special way that only the best Christmas movies can. JW


3. Holiday Inn (1942)

Early sound pictures were revolutionised by famed tap dancer Fred Astaire, and by 1942 he was a certified movie musical megastar. In Mark Sandrich’s seasonal musical Holiday Inn, he teams with would-be Christmas icon and man with a voice as sooth as silk, Bing Crosby. The result is one of the most iconic and influential Christmas movies ever made.

The film’s outdated attitude towards race are cringe-inducing and inexcusable in a 21st century context (there’s a whole sequence featuring blackface), but its other dated sensibilities shine bright amongst more modern and commercial Christmas films; its wholesome aura, classic dance scenes, and era-defining songs making for an unmissable experience. To top it all, Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas” for the first time in this film, cementing it in history as a seasonal classic. JW


4. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Widely acknowledged as one of the holiday season’s best-ever films, Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris) illuminates his would-be wife Judy Garland in arguably her most established performance, bringing Christmas cheer to all without sacrificing any of the harsh realities facing the American people in the first half of the 20th century.

Featuring the original (and arguably the best) rendition of Christmas classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and being anchored by some heartbreaking story elements, Meet Me In St. Louis maintains its power and relevance 80 years on. It offers a Christmas movie that will forever mark the height of its sub-genre, as well as the two filmmaking careers (of Minnelli and Garland) that helped to define the era. JW

Recommended for you: There’s No Place Like St. Louis at Christmas


5. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Remember the Night star Barbara Stanwyck is once again front and centre for a Golden Era Hollywood Christmas movie, this time playing a city magazine editor whose lies about being a perfect housewife are put to the test when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her house.

This is screwball comedy with all the spirit of the festive season is as romantic as it is funny, and prominently features the shadows of World War II to gift the film a unique emotionality that has ensured it is rewatched year on year. JW

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Every Pixar Movie Ranked https://www.thefilmagazine.com/every-pixar-movie-ranked/ https://www.thefilmagazine.com/every-pixar-movie-ranked/#respond Mon, 16 Oct 2023 17:30:02 +0000 https://www.thefilmagazine.com/?p=39946 Every Pixar Animation Studios movie ranked from worst to best. List includes 'Toy Story', 'The Incredibles', 'Finding Nemo', 'Wall-E' and 'Coco'. Article by The Film Magazine team.

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Pixar Animation Studios are one of the world’s leading feature animation houses. The studio, which started in computer graphics in 1986, was once a pretender to the Disney throne but built a legacy for itself that was so critically-acclaimed and popular that the House of Mouse had to forgo a simple partnership and instead buy the company outright for $7.4billion in 2006.

The studio’s now iconic brand of 3D computer animation changed studio animation across the world forever, even causing industry leaders Disney to change from 2D into 3D over the course of the 2000s. Among Pixar’s many hits and acclaimed award winners are Toy Story, the film that changed it all, and Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Up, Coco, and Soul.

In this edition of Ranked, we here at the Film Magazine have teamed our writers up to complete a joint ranking of Pixar Animation Studios’ feature offerings, judging each film in terms of enjoyability, resonance, longevity, critical acclaim, and artistry.

Written by Mark Carnochan (MC), Jacob Davis (JD), Katie Doyle (KD), Martha Lane (ML), Sam Sewell-Peterson (SSP), and Joseph Wade (JW), these are the Pixar Animation Movies Ranked.

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27. Lightyear (2022)

Budget: $200million
Box Office: $226.4million
Director: Angus MacLane

Coming out of the lockdown era that had forced many Pixar releases directly to Disney Plus (thus skewing their box office totals), the so-called “2nd Disney Studio” needed a big win with Lightyear that just didn’t come. It barely made its budget back, and with promotional costs taken into account actually made a loss for its parent company. The film was Toy Story, but not quite; a spin-off origin narrative explaining what the Buzz Lightyear toy was based on, a movie from the world of the Toy Story movies. In it, Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) fought a mysterious power-hungry evil force, finding his own ragtag group on a quest across galaxies to cement himself as a legend and save humankind.

Conceptually, Lightyear isn’t unlike many other Pixar movies: an underappreciated but cocky hero is humbled before achieving greatness with the only people (or creatures) that are willing to put up with him. This in-movie predictability, paired with the lack of clarity pre-release regarding exactly what Lightyear was, curtailed all of the usual Toy Story-universe excitement. It looks shiny, and some high-contrast space battles make for stunning sequences, while there is enough by way of stakes and twists to ensure an enjoyable time, but Lightyear was a cash-in and people could sense it; an expensive version of those direct-to-video Disney movies from the 1990s.

JW


26. Cars 3 (2017)

Budget: $175million
Box Office: $383.9million
Director: Brian Fee

By 2017, the only reason Pixar were forcing out new Cars instalments is because parent company Disney wanted some of those sweet merchandise profits. In 2011, following the release of Cars 2, Pixar revealed that the Cars franchise had made the company more than $10billion; current figures aren’t available, but even with a large curtailing of revenue, this franchise would be one of the most profitable film franchises of all time. In this fairly inconsequential film, Lightning McQueen plays the archetypal old sportsperson inspired to return for one last shot at glory. It isn’t quite Rocky Balboa, which isn’t even exceptional in the first place, but some of the animation is leaps beyond what was on offer in the first film.

Those charged with gifting this cash-grab with some kind of meaning or heart certainly tried – a feminist subplot indicated society’s advances in representation (both in sports and movies) in the decade since the original film and McQueen’s return to the spotlight held weight for those who enjoyed the original Cars movies – but these strangely designed cars were seemingly only ever destined for children’s bedrooms, the imaginations of those who played with the toys far outliving the impact or influence of this less-than stellar Pixar offering.

JW

Recommended for you: 10 Great Anime Films for Newcomers

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