I was going to start this entry by saying, “I’m a big fan of Christmas,” but that’s ridiculous. Everyone is a big fan of Christmas! If you don’t have a religious or cultural reason to not like Christmas and you still don’t like it, get over yourself. Actually, even if you have a religious or cultural reason, you should probably get over yourself, at least a little bit.
I didn’t include any made-for-TV movies here, so there’s no Grinch or Charlie Brown. I wanted to include a Harry Potter movie, because a lot of those have really nice Christmas moments, but those aren’t really Christmas movies, obviously. I also wanted to include Jingle All The Way, not because it’s a good movie, but because Johanna and I watched it one time and at one point Sinbad runs into a person dressed as a Christmas present in a parade and yells “Get outta my way, box!” and we literally still say that to each other, like, on the reg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmwe0rxWabs
As always, the standard disclaimer: these are my favorites, not necessarily the best.
5) The Family Stone (2005)
I’m pretty sure this movie featured the most purposefully misleading advertising campaign for a movie ever. Look at this poster:
Now watch this trailer:
Lighthearted, slapstick family comedy, right? This was the perfect movie to go see on Christmas Day with my mother, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer at the time. I mean, if a major part of the movie was that the matriarch of the family has breast cancer that has metastasized and she’s probably going to die, that would have been alluded to in at least one of the trailers, surely.
Nope. By the end of the film I was barely keeping it together and my mom was a mess. Despite this, or maybe because of it, we both loved it. I have not watched it since, because every time I mention it Johanna gets really worried that I’m going to get bummed out. Lighten up, Johanna!
Of Modern Proportions 