Whether you think so or not, the action classic starring Bruce Willis and the late, great Alan Rickman proves that one can set a movie at the most magical time of year without packing it full of seasonal tropes. After all, Christmas isn’t fun for everyone. It can be a dark, gritty, dangerous time, especially if you’re a downtrodden bureaucrat, an alcoholic cop, or a kid who has just been gifted an apparently harmless and adorable mogwai.

In this Movie List, we here at The Film Magazine have scoured the annals of film history to put together this selection of 10 Excellent Non-Christmas Films Set at Christmas. Ten films we’re sure will add a different flavour to your holiday watch lists.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

1. In Bruges (2008)

10 Best In Bruges Moments

Martin McDonagh’s thrilling feature debut transports us to Bruges, the Belgian town that’s “like a fairy tale”, as Ralph Fiennes’ cockney villain constantly reminds us.

The plot, twisting like the canals of Bruges itself, features comedy, betrayal, love, blood, and guts, whilst Christmas lights just happen to gleam all around.

If you want to feel a little seasonal without being beaten over the head with Christmas spirit, this Irish dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson may be exactly what you need.

2. Brazil (1985)

Terry Gilliam’s dystopian epic shows us what those shopping-mall Santas can be like off-duty. Much like the Christmas industry, every kind face has a nasty one beneath.

Very little is nice about Brazil, which tells the story of Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) seeking love and freedom in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Cinematically beautiful and ultimately terrifying, Gilliam’s vision of the future mirrors much of today’s world. We see that, behind the shiny consumerism, there are systems upon systems upon systems of red tape, corrupt officials, and crushed dreams.

Recommended for you: Katie Doyle’s ‘Movies I Had a Religious/Spiritual Experience with’ Part 3 (featuring Brazil & In Bruges)

The way our world is visualised in movies and tv affects the way we visualise ourselves. And the way people with glasses are visualised in popular storytelling is bogus, bizarre and irritating. Needing to wear glasses couldn’t just mean an eyeball lens that’s infinitesimally too thick… no, it must mean that the person sporting them is a fragile liability, an individual with no personality outside of being a nerd, or, still more likely, perverted or morally deviant.

Howard in Uncut Gems peeks through the crack in a closet door at his half-naked girlfriend who does not know his creepy ass is in the apartment. The glint of his lenses in the dark is the sickly glow of voyeurism. Patrick Bateman in American Psycho puts on glasses in a boardroom scene where he fantasises about killing a fellow CEO just because of his more expertly watermarked business card. The way he looks at women in particular is proprietary, lethal. Ripley in The Talented Mr Ripley, another serial killer, wears glasses. A pattern emerges: glasses become a simplistic shorthand not for a deficiency in physical sight but a troubling, sometimes even psychotic way of perceiving other people.

In Jaws, Roy Scheider as the central (human) character, police chief Brody, wears glasses and is a good, likable man not purely defined by book smarts. But, (and there’s always a but,) he is average in the scenes where he sports his specs, essentially following around shark-expert Hooper and hunter Quint onto the high seas, where he is only brave enough to go when drunk. In the plunging mayhem of the sea, as the shark writhes its bulk in the quest for blood, a pole knocks off Brody’s glasses. After a few token seconds of disorientation, he shoots the shark in the mouth, detonating the explosive canister in its mighty chompers and making a boom fitting for the Fourth of July. Essentially, at the film’s climax Chief Brody assimilates the characteristics of his more qualified but indisposed colleagues. He has gained the specialist shark knowledge of Hooper and channels some of the gun-toting, macho bravery of Quint, all the while conquering his childhood fear of the sea. But the problem is the way this transformation is symbolised; removal of the glasses means the making of the man. This is perverse. Ok, maybe his sight issue is so minor that he can still get by without his specs, but to be able to pull off this precise, insanely difficult shot that even war-veteran Quint cannot come close to? That is pure movie hokum, and a minor blot in an otherwise glorious film.

That most fundamental symbol of American heroism, Superman, wears glasses in his disguise as Clark Kent. He does not need them, however. It is striking that this is his concession to humanity and human appearance. Christopher Reeve’s classic good looks and buff physique are impossible to ignore, and it is clear to the audience that Superman as Clark Kent is no different as a person, and that he looks the same. But the fiction maintains that this slight physical addition is enough to neuter heroism and make Kal-El an average office worker in the eyes of all around him, unrecognisable even to those who know Superman.

The closest a movie actor has ever gotten to Superman in the American psyche is Cary Grant. In film after film he was the epitome of alpha leading man energy – suave, sexy and capable. Bringing Up Baby, therefore, plays off the image that was developing around Grant, by giving the actor glasses, a surprise move that the studio producing the film tried to put a stop to. The shift in person is negligible, but the accompanying shift in persona is huge. Grant’s character David is nerdy – initially defined entirely by his work on dinosaur skeletons at a museum – and bumbling – over the course of the film he trips over telephone wires and tumbles down ditches. He is awkward, especially with women, extra-especially with Katherine Hepburn’s Susan, the most energetic American to own a leopard pre-‘Tiger King’. He is a reasonably likable, if rather prissy underdog, a relatable figure baffled by a chaotic universe where leopards come to Connecticut. But David breaks and eventually loses his glasses, and this provides the opportunity for Susan to say ‘you’re so good-looking without your glasses’. Cary Grant’s leading man and romantic hero persona emerges in the moment when glasses are destroyed, and he marries Susan.

Grant’s change in Bringing Up Baby is the inverse of countless other films, such as The Princess Diaries, in which, to be considered attractive, women and girls must take part in a makeover scene where their glasses are dispensed with and their hair is literally let loose. For decades, the pursuit of a man was an apparent requirement for women to be protagonists, and to get the guy you had to get rid of the glasses. This is the effect of the male gaze, but in Now, Voyager the transformation of Bette Davis’ character Charlotte Vale is portrayed as an escape from tyrannical matriarchal control. Her mother insists on her wearing glasses at all times and drives her into mental illness with her domineering attitude not to mention her sharp insistence that, ‘No member of the Vale family has ever had a nervous breakdown’. The eye-wateringly problematic element in this otherwise swoon-worthy romantic film is its specious conflation of mental illness with lack of conformity to popular beauty standards. Because at the psychiatric home run by Claude Rains, not only does Charlotte ‘get better’, it turns out she no longer needs her glasses. Rains snaps them, symbolising Charlotte’s transition into the role of a romantic lead. This exact same eye-fixing miracle happens to another girl later in the film. Sign me up to Claude Rains’ magic clinic! Or, actually, don’t. These women are now happier and more appealing to men, and the two are made to seem interrelated. Davis’ glasses don’t snap under Rains’ hands, but under the weight of dodgy patriarchal logic.

What is fast emerging is that glasses and protagonists rarely go together; if we refine our gaze still further and look for heroic glasses-wearers, the pickings are even more scant. This is one of the reasons that (TERF author notwithstanding) “Harry Potter” is a brilliant series of books. The main character is a thoroughly decent, kind boy who is the hero of his own story and also wears glasses. This surprisingly unusual hero is even translated faithfully into that place most beguiled by the cleft jaw and perfect body: Hollywood. Such is Hollywood’s record on characters with glasses I half-expected there to be an added scene in the films where Harry’s sight is magically fixed by Madame Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing. Hagrid would come to say: ‘Now yer not just a wizard Harry, yer a hero too!’

Where a book leaves visualisation largely to the reader’s imagination, the movies fix what a character looks like for everyone. The audience of the Harry Potter series sees someone who can’t see and who is the hero, a decent human being who isn’t in disguise and isn’t defined by either being a nerd or being perverted. This has not entirely changed our culture, but has given a tonic to the millions of partially sighted people used to being told their identities are limited by that fact. I can remember kids on World Book Day wearing glasses they did not need (Clark Kent-style!) to try and be a part of the in-crowd. Fi-nal-ly!

Of course the lack of glasses in films is a minor example of their reductive vision of the nature of heroism: more egregious is the overwhelming whiteness of screen heroes. This is not the place to deal in depth with the appalling history of the representation of black lives on screen (that has been done better elsewhere by writers like Ashley Clark). What is fascinating here is that one of the most engaging portrayals of heroism in any film of recent decades was given by a black man in glasses – Denzel Washington as the eponymous character in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.

If Harry Potter is the gentle rebuke to the decades of limited portrayals of characters with glasses; Malcolm X is the radical one. Bespectacled characters in films have so often been one-dimensional nerds, but ‘nerds’ of course is one of those terms, like jock, used to distinguish schoolyard groupings. Many Hollywood movies encourage the infantilization of their audiences, maintaining childish ways of viewing other people, such as ‘popular’ vs ‘outsider’ or ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Malcolm X is not a nerd. He becomes an intellectual, but a public one who uses his intellect and rhetorical flair to inspire political action both in himself and others. This is poignantly shown in the film when Washington’s Malcolm saves the life of an African American Muslim being held, grievously injured and without care, at a police station.

Malcolm is first shown in glasses over an hour into the film at the same point as he shaves his head in prison and changes his surname to X. Mental liberation, success and the love of a remarkable woman (Angela Bassett) all come to the person he becomes in glasses. The treatment of characters who lose their glasses in films has shown that mainstream movie character change is usually boiled down to becoming more attractive or a better fighter, but Malcolm X was someone who dramatically changed as a person at multiple different stages of his life. He started as Malcolm Little, alias ‘Red’, conducting robberies and swinging at Harlem dances in his garish red suit. He became ‘Brother Malcolm’ in prison, a follower and spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. Finally, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, whilst still an advocate for black nationalism, he grew to believe in the beauty and necessity of racial co-operation in fighting the sickness of racism.

This film busts the limiting dichotomy of a man of action on the one hand, versus an intelligent man on the other. And it is a representation of a man who really existed, not a cultural fantasy, but a leader and inspiration for millions. It is telling that Nelson Mandela himself appears in a cameo at the end of the film delivering one of Malcolm’s speeches. Denzel Washington’s Malcolm is an invigorating antidote to the brand of heroism typically envisioned by mainstream Hollywood. Yes, he is stunningly engaging and attractive, but his heroism is located in his capacity to think, change and engage with the real world. What if, instead of marking a lack or a deviance, glasses function as a symbol of the ideal person?

Written by Ciaran Duncan

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Blog – An Intellectual Carrot

These are the types of people who may, for a brief moment, appear intellectual or interesting, but once they’ve wormed their way into your bed will stay there without invitation for the next three months, eventually chastising you for your choices in clothes and your apparently “robotic” choices in movies – why don’t you just unlock yourself from all of that studio-driven, corporate shilling and watch a real “picture” like The Godfather? The irony here will, of course, never be lost.

We all know the type; but how do you avoid making said mistakes and falling deeply into sex with a person so fundamentally narrow-minded and judgmental? Well, handily there are some telltale signs to look out for, and perhaps the most obvious is their choice of favourite film.

In this Top 10 list, we’re looking out for all of those poor souls who may one day lose weeks, months and even years of their lives to undeserving assholes with superiority complexes, and reversing said assholes’ unfounded judgement back on to them to present our 10 choices for The Only Films Your Douchebag Ex Has Ever Seen.

If you’re ever at a party and someone begins to be wax lyrical about any of these films, run…

10. Pulp Fiction (1994)

“It’s like… cinema, but completely unlike anything you’ve seen. Really, how can you say you like film without seeing the most important release in modern history?”

Your go-to douchebag will dub Pulp Fiction a revolution, a new standard bearer of outlandish techniques and originality without ever truly acknowledging where Tarantino got any of his inspiration from. They’ll throw shade at your go-to film because of its linear narrative and ask just how many “mother f*cker” quotes your favourite movie has in it.

The kind of person who judges others for their choices of films while listing Pulp Fiction as their life-inspiration is the same kind of white person who wants to say the N word and will defend Tarantino’s troublesome gender politics to the hill with no remorse. If you’re just meeting him, know that he’ll never respect you, and if you’re just leaving him… good riddance.

Recommended for you: Quentin Tarantino Movies Ranked

9. Fight Club (1999)

“But what about that twist?”
Man, we all know about it whether we’ve seen it or not, so how about you and others like you do us a favour and save us hearing it for the 999th time?

We get it, you’re such a revolutionary. Your not-so-secret God complex of being anyone and everyone, and sticking it to the man, are just so badass we can’t comprehend it.

Oh wait… we can, and guess what dude… your time is up.

Nobody needs the pseudo-right-wing bullsh*t philosophiser “just playing devil’s advocate” to every possible discussion topic, and this guy is definitely that guy. He is well and truly the centre of his universe and hasn’t quite yet come to understand how the established order he’s fighting against is actually just himself…

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Recommended for you: David Fincher Films Ranked

We always think we are great judges of character. The truth is, however, that more often than not all of us have been deceived by a shiny exterior. As we go about our everyday lives, we witness the existence of many people. Some of them have a constant presence in our peripheral vision, while others are fleeting glimpses of a hand, a hair flip, or a smile.

We evaluate people by the way they carry themselves; their tone of voice, their attitude and their clothes. Programmed as we are, we have to assess our surroundings to experience life, or in extreme cases, determine whether there is a possibility of immediate danger.

Considering that we go through the same process when we meet fictional characters, filmmakers had to discover a way of introducing their protagonists and antagonists to compel their audiences to keep watching. After all, that first impression is the basis of a viewer’s position toward a character, and possibly toward the film itself. Of course, finding a character’s introduction intriguing doesn’t equate that one will empathize with the character; it will only lead to the viewer wanting more.

There is a magnitude of different ways in which a character can be introduced to a spectator in order to establish a link between the two.

In this list, we’ll take a look at 5 of the very best examples of this for 5 of the Best Character Introductions in Movie History.

1. Patrick Bateman

American Psycho (2000)

Early on in the 21st century, Patrick Bateman, played excellently by Christian Bale, waltzed onto our screens and threw our intuition off in every way possible through a masterfully crafted introduction.

We meet Bateman as he is having dinner with his colleagues at a posh restaurant. Significantly, while we have been accustomed to recognize a protagonist due to his/her distinctiveness in relation to his/her immediate environment, that’s not the case with Bateman; early on he’s at one with the mass. The film’s opening scene is making a statement about collective identity and how it has distorted this group of men’s sense of self. After all, Bateman’s need to “fit in”, as he says, is the cornerstone of his life, because underneath that cool and collected exterior lies a coldblooded serial killer.

It is only after a female bartender is slightly rude to him that Bateman’s psychopathic predispositions come abruptly to the surface. He goes from reacting with a charming smile, to very graphic descriptions of violence in a split second, and that’s when we truly meet Patrick Bateman. Then, as if it isn’t clear at this point, in comes the morning routine sequence which brings to the fore the next important aspect of the character: his fixation with his image. It’s here that we see the real Bateman; his obsessive exercising, and the monologue about the exhaustingly time-consuming system he follows to maintain an illusory image of perfection, point back to his narcissism. It’s all perfectly summed up in Bateman’s words: “there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity; something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can sense our lifestyles are probably comfortable, I simply am not there.”

Significantly, this performance of success and tranquility that Bateman has developed over the years has granted him the reputation of normalcy; he is “the voice of reason. The boy next door”. The irony of these labels works on two levels here: firstly, it’s clear that Bateman isn’t “the voice of reason” and secondly if Bateman is the sane one, we are forced to question the very nature of sanity or, better yet, how capitalism has redefined sanity to begin with.

2. Captain Jack Sparrow

The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Prior to the 2016 scandals, Johnny Depp, known to this day for his numerous portrayals of an Outcast character, landed the role of Captain Jack Sparrow in Gore Verbinski’s The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).  We saw before how a character can be introduced through a use of a diction, but now we move on to how a character can be constructed through his reactions to external stimuli non-verbally.

Sparrow’s first scene begins with him on a ship; a ship that will inevitably sink. Being fully aware that the ship cannot be saved, Sparrow goes to a best case scenario mode and is determined to keep it afloat for the remaining time he needs to reach the dock. There’s no panic or despair; he trusts himself to utilize the means he has at hand to succeed. And so he does. Sparrow finds land moments before his ship gives in to the waves with an expression of a grandiose confidence that we’ve become accustomed to by now.

Notably, amidst this chaos, he sees the corpses of three hanged pirates and salutes; it’s evident, therefore, that Sparrow has a code of honor even if it’s not a conventional one. Of course, it’s not only that he pays tribute; it’s also the way in which he does that sheds more light to who he is. Sparrow, most probably because he’s played by Depp, is sort of a caricature. We see a playful attitude in everything he does, even if that entails showing respect to the dead.

Overall, Sparrow might be the “worst pirate [one] has heard of”, as James Norrigton (Jack Davenport) once said, but he has a purpose, and that purpose is regaining his stolen ship The Black Pearl. Even if we don’t know that from the very beginning, we instantly understand that nothing will stand in the way of him achieving his goals, and that’s the essence of the character’s most visual introduction.