Review

Christmas culture

Culture

20 December 2023

5 min read

Five Christmas films to revel in

Haunting, salving, teary, side-splitting and glorious - our recommended festive films.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Muppet characters dressed as Dickensian characters stand in a snowy street.

'Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story.'

‘Tis the season to be jolly and watching a good film with a cup of tea and a biscuit, while the freezing wind and rain whip at the window, can be one of the jolliest things you can do this year. The genre of ‘Christmas’ has only grown and grown over the decades, so if you’re stumped by the myriad of choices – often dreadful schlock that feature the word ‘Prince’ and ‘Christmas’ in the title superimposed over a picture of two ludicrously attractive people staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in a blizzard – take comfort in my Top 5 Christmas films.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ Christmas films. You will not find It’s a Wonderful Life on here. It is glorious and lovely, but I saw it too late in life, and just don’t emotionally resonate with it as much as other Christmas films. I will not apologise. You will not see Die Hard. It is indeed and iconic action film, with a superb Alan Rickman performance, and it is indeed set at a Christmas party…but that isn’t enough to make it a ‘Christmas film’. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas

An animated scene shows a grandmother readng a story to children on her lap in front of a fire.

I would have put this film higher up the list if not for the fact that it straddles two seasons – All Hollows and Christmas. This film is iconic, however. The stop-motion animation gives the whole affair an extra haunting air. The music is superb – I still find myself humming What’s This every few weeks. The story is unhinged (what else do you expect from Tim Burton?) but to just the right degree, and behind the ghoulish setting and mad-cap story there is a good old-fashioned moral-of-the-story for children and adults alike to enjoy. Nightmare is a marvellous reminder of what it means to have the Christmas spirit, and the great thing about it is that it’s a film you can enjoy any time from October 31st!

4. Bad Santa

A dishevelled looking Santa, without a beard, stares to the side.

Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as an ‘eating, drinking, sh***ing, f***ing Santa Claus’. This is not one for the kids! Thornton’s Willie T. Soke is a professional thief who, with his dwarf assistant, get jobs as a grotto Santa and Elf in shopping malls during the festive season so as to case the place and rob it…but this time is different. Soake’s degeneracy has become a serious liability, and his instability and vulgar sexual exploits catch the attention of John Ritter’s mall manager and Bernie Mac’s security chief. Soake is spiralling out of control, but perhaps a romantic relationship with Lauren Graham’s barmaid and a chance encounter with a vulnerable young boy (to whom Soake becomes the least appropriate father-figure) might just be his salvation, and teach him the spirit of Christmas. The script is jet-black funny, and all the performances are spot on – although this is entirely Thornton’s film to shine in. Lewd, rude, and crude, but with a heart of gold (deep down under all the effing and jeffing), this film is the perfect antidote for those who find the jollity of the festive season a little twee.

3. The Holiday

A couple, wrapped up in winter clothes, flirt with each other.

This film has Jude Law in it. This ought to be enough to commend it to you, but I’ll go further. This film has Jude Law playing a jumper-wearing widowed single-dad, who can turn the humble napkin into a delightful children’s entertainment, and who gives smouldering glances across a crowded pub. Before you all rush out to watch it, let me finish the blurb. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett are two women, unlucky in love, who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holiday. Winslett is escaping a toxic infatuation and finds solace in a friendship with a nonagenarian scriptwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a possible romance with Jack Black (giving a genuinely restrained and enjoyable performance). Workaholic Diaz is desperate to learn how to switch-off, relax, and maybe give love a chance. She finds solace in…Jude Law’s many lovely jumpers and smouldering glances. This is not a film to be described but experienced. Its camp and frothy and silly, but its also just really lovely and gets the tears going every time. If my recommendation isn’t enough, listen to my wife – watch this film over Christmas!

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Kermit, a frog talks to rats dressed as Victorian children.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t improve upon the indominable prose of Charles Dickens…WRONG! Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story. Rizzo and Gonzo take on the role of narrators of the story, Kermit does a sparkling turn as Bob Cratchit, and Michael Cain stars as the best on screen iteration of Scrooge (go on, fight me on this!). It’s the well-worn story brought to life by glorious songs – every year I start to sing “Tis the season to be jolly and joyous” to myself – a side-splitting script, and a clear and tender reverence for the original story and its central message. I defy anyone, child or adult, to sit through to the end this wonderful film and not want to keep Christmas in their heart every day. If you don’t like this film then I can only guess that you’ll be visited by ‘Marley and Marley, WOOOOOOOOOOA’!

1. Love Actually

Richard Curtis is my favourite director. Every film of his, however flawed (and there a several flaws in Love Actually), is so warm-hearted and good-natured that I can’t help but love them. Love Actually is Curtis firing on all cylinder: a painfully funny script, an ensemble cast of Britain’s finest talent, and a score that plays your emotions like a fiddle. A series of interconnecting love stories – love found, love lost, unrequited love, misdirected love – playing out in the run-up to Christmas, this film will not fail to put a tear in your eye and smile on your face. At times it’s a little too ‘laddy’ – I’m looking at you American sexcapade storyline – and the fact that all these people live in gorgeous houses in Wandsworth in spite of doing no discernible work is infuriating, but the fact that it is number one on this list in spirt of this is mark of just how strong a film it is. The cast list alone puts it at the top: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson popping in for a bit…EMMA THOMPSON! The raw power of Emma Thompson quietly weeping as she listens to Joni Mitchell and contemplates the implosion of her marriage is stunning to behold. At its heart, it is a simple Richard Curtis film; it wants the viewer to relax in the beautiful spectacle of love, and to know that they are loved. I love Love Actually, and Love Actually loves me.

EMMA THOMPSON!

Article

Culture

Film & TV

3 March 2025

5 min read

The Oscars celebrate a basic human trait - telling stories

A ‘seemingly absurd ritual’ reveals a little of who we are.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Mikey Madison, wearing a ball gown, clutches a golden Oscar statue.

Mikey Madison, star of Anora.

ABC.

I’m becoming more and more resolute in my belief that nothing is ever trivial.

Not really.

Not when you look at it for long enough, not when you offer it the gift of your curiosity, not when you’re convinced that culture is made up of a myriad of restless hearts.

This resolute belief is the reason I tend to give the Oscars my attention. My full, non-judgmental, attention.

The Academy Awards may seem trivial, especially this year. Especially this week, even. I mean, are we really going to talk about Timothée Chalamet’s yellow suit or Demi Moore’s gracious-loser-face when pockets of our world are being torn to shreds? I get it. Even the people in the eye of the showbiz-storm (mostly) get it. In his opening monologue, this year’s host, Conan O’Brien, called the ceremony a ‘seemingly absurd ritual’.

And it is.

But we are story-telling creatures. We are, to quote Charles Taylor, ‘Storied Selves’. Story is how we wrestle with what has been, what is, and what we think/fear/hope may be. And so, I want to know what stories we’re telling: what stories have we deemed worthy of excavation? What stories are drawing us in and sending us out again with slightly tweaked perspectives? What are we celebrating? What are we lamenting? What are we trying to change? What are we trying to hold on to?

Plus, I’m religious – who am I to assume there’s no meaning behind ‘seemingly absurd ritual’, aye?

The Oscars is an event dedicated to just a handful of the stories that have been told over the past year – the ones that are being told the loudest, I guess. That makes it a sample pool of our collective heart-cries, the tip of our meaning-making iceberg, the headline that sits atop our cultural moment.

Is it somewhat superficial? In part.

Is it a little sanctimonious? Oh, heck yes.

Is it opulent to the point of discomfort? Most definitely.

Is it meaningless? Absolutely not. Storytelling never is.

So, in that vein – what are the stories that were celebrated at last night’s 97th Academy Awards? And what do they teach us about... well… us? I noticed a couple of interesting themes.

In so many ways, movies are humans telling humans what it means to be human.

Firstly, the ceremony opened with a tribute to The City of Angels, herself. The most sparkly city there is, the home of Hollywood – Los Angeles. Terrifyingly large swathes of which were, of course, razed to the ground by historic wildfires earlier this year. Borrowing a line from The Wizard of Oz, ‘there’s no place like home’ was spoken over a montage of the city acting as a backdrop for so many iconic movie scenes.

It made me think of the role that ‘home’ plays in many of the movies that were platformed last night – and I realised, it plays a leading role. ‘Home’, in itself, is a character. There’s the omnipresence of Brighton Beach, New York, in Anora (by far, the big winner of the night), Mexico in Emilia Perez and, of course, ‘Oz’ in Wicked. These films aren’t just set in these locations, they’re utterly dependant on them.

Then there’s the more complicated stories of ‘home’ – stories of home being both here and there. The Brutalist, for example (for which Adrien Brody won the ‘best actor in a leading role’ award), tells the story of a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor trying to make a new home for himself in the United States. Or A Real Pain, in which Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed the film) and Kieran Culkin (winner of ‘best supporting actor’) travel to Poland to honour their late grandmother, and therefore, their own lineage. In both movies, ‘home’ is a stranger that the characters must introduce themselves to and befriend.

It's fascinating.

In art, as in life, home provides identity. It’s the geography that we’re made of, the history that runs through our blood, the place where our circumstances become our meaning. At least, that’s what these movies tell us.

Another, more obvious, theme I noticed was that so many of the movies on display were telling notably complex stories of a female experience.

The Substance, one of the most interesting films of this year, tackles the theme of aging. Age-a-phobia, you could say. The experience that countless women have of becoming less valuable as they move through life – the feeling that you’re vanishing from society’s sight with every change of your body. Or there’s the afore-mentioned Anora. I’ll be honest, this one took me by surprise, racking up the most awards of the night, including ‘best picture’. Its story centres upon ‘Ani’, a young Russian American sex worker who weaves in and out of powerful ranks. Wicked, the story of a drastically misunderstood, commonly marginalised and terribly manipulated woman (who just so happens to be a witch). And winner of ‘best international picture’, I’m Still Here, tells the true story of Eunice Paiva. Her husband, Rubens Paiva, is abducted by military operatives in 1971 and never returned. Eunice is left to care for their five children as she seeks justice for her husband as well as indigenous people in the Amazon.

Female experiences – in all their complexity, nuance, grit, strength, and truth – truly took centre stage.

Movies are humans telling humans what it means to be human. And I just love that we do that. I’m never not fascinated by how much we all share – how the particular can tap into the universal. We have so much to learn about each other, and movies are a way we seek to do that, but one of the things that we constantly have to learn, re-learn, and learn again is how much we have in common.

And I know that a sentence like that sounds face-palmingly glib. But if it weren’t true, if we weren’t – at some deep and true level – made by the same stuff and for the same stuff, I’m not sure movies would exist. I’m not sure that they could exist.

And so, all of this to say that there’s more to the Oscars than meets the eye – even when what meets the eye makes it roll. Give it the gift of your curiosity, it’s worthy of it. I promise.

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