Christmas: 12 Unconventional Christmas Movies

These days, it’s a Christmas tradition to argue about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. We’d counter that this is now a moot argument, given that Die Hard holiday merchandise is abundant, and many folks (including friends of ours) count Die Hard among their regular seasonal viewings. Moreover, surely as many people watch Die Hard each Christmas season today as the old Alastair Sim Scrooge (which we Brothers love dearly)? We can keep fretting about “what should be,” but with Die Hard, it seems it’s now so. The argument is over, as far as we’re concerned. Aren nailed the coffin in his 2019 review: “In spite of the debate that wages on social media each December, there’s no real doubt that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.”

These arguments often hinge around what defines a “Christmas movie”? For instance, the 1980s action movie classic is set during the holidays—an office Christmas party on one of the top floors of an LA skyscraper furnishes the setting. Die Hard also contains the narrative arc of family reuniting over the holidays, which is a central theme in most Christmas movies.

But is explicit Christmas content, whether narrative or thematic, necessary? If it is, how much is needed? Or does context help us define a Christmas movie? For instance, is The Sound of Music a Christmas movie, simply because, for many years, it aired on network television to fill up the empty schedule of content for Christmas Day? Is a movie you watch each winter holiday that isn’t really about Christmas still a Christmas movie, if only for you?

As you head into your holidays, the Brothers are offering up some less-than-likely choices for Christmas viewing. If you want to check out some of our more typical suggestions for Christmas, or, alternatively, note some Christmas movies we don’t recommend (like the new Home Alone), check out the Christmas page on the site, or listen to last December’s 3 Brothers Filmcast episode here.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) dir. Denis Villeneuve

The backbone of the narrative is a hunt for the offspring of a miraculous birth—and the special child is not whom we expect. As Aren argued in his 2017 essay, Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) can be read as a Christ figure, even if the coming of a special individual or saviour has become a sci-fi trope. I would add that if we also interpret Blade Runner 2049 as a fairy tale, about a replicant-cop (Ryan Gosling’s K) on a quest to become a real boy in the manner of Pinnochio, the film’s themes also speak to the Christmas season: the power of memories; the discovery of our essential nature; the deep truths of reality. Furthermore, might the film’s vision of a dystopian future help us to better understand both the ancient setting for Joseph and Mary as well as the meaning of the Advent season? The film’s depiction of deep longing in a dark world gone so wrong can clarify Advent’s urgent hope for the “arrival” (adventus) of the Messiah, remembering 2,000 years ago while looking towards the future. (Anton)

Available for rent in Canada on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

Carol (2015) dir. Todd Haynes

Carol is Todd Haynes’ gorgeous adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s (of the Tom Ripley stories and Strangers on a Train) novel The Price of Salt. Why is this a Christmas movie, beyond being set at Christmas time in the 1950s? Like many of the best Christmas movies, it taps into the underlying melancholy and longing that the season can draw out. Particularly, it draws attention to the way that holidays like Christmas and New Year’s frame and structure our relationships with others. Holidays offer an opportunity to step outside of the normal routines of social relations, and in the case of Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) and Thérese Belivet (Rooney Mara) the holiday season opens the possibility for their romantic connection in a world that is mostly hemmed in and legally proscribed.

But also, in key moments, the film simply allows one to sink into the world of 1950s New York City at Christmas time: a world of department store displays and lights reflected on windows, of the glimpse of someone across the room at a Christmas party infused with an electric possibility. Somehow, it’s like an episode of Mad Men, but shot by Wong Kar-Wai (who himself has used Christmas songs and time in some of his own wonderful Hong Kong films, such as 2046 and In the Mood for Love) and channeling the painter, Edward Hopper. (Anders)

Available for streaming in Canada on Crave. Available for rent in Canada on AppleTV, Cineplex Store, Google Play, and YouTube.

Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuarón

“Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men was released in North America in 2006 on Christmas Day, but that is not the reason that it is very much a Christmas movie. A loose adaptation of the novel by P.D. James, it presents a picture of a dystopian future, in the year 2027, where for unknown reasons no woman has given birth to a child in the last 18 years….

So, Children of Men is a film about any society, perhaps our own, devoid of hope, suffering from the literal loss of the future. What makes it a film so appropriate to Christmas is that, like the nativity story at the heart of the holiday, it is about the restoration of hope to the world in the form of a miracle: a child.” (Anders’ review)

Available for rent in Canada on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Cineplex Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) dir. Andrew Adamson and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) dir. Michael Apted

The movie adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s first Narnia book is perfect for Christmas: after all, the wicked White Witch has made it always winter and never Christmas in Narnia. Santa Claus even shows up as Aslan approaches, and the identification of Aslan with the Son (Christ in our world) enhances the story’s themes during this season. Both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movies were released at Christmas time (while Prince Caspian appeared in the springtime). I don’t remember them as being superior adaptations, but decent family fantasy movies are always a pleasure at Christmas, and I feel like revisiting them with my children. (Anton)

Both available for streaming in Canada on Disney+. Both available for rent in Canada on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Cineplex Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

Dekalog: Three (1989) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski

The third part of Kieslowski’s Dekalog series may or may not be a movie depending on your definition, but it’s an apt addition here, as it captures the way that Christmas plays into the Sabbath tradition of holy days and how it often forces people to reexamine their domestic lives and the choices they’ve made. In the film, Ewa (Maria Pakulnis) shows up at the home of her married former lover, Janusz (Daniel Olbrychski), and convinces him to spend Christmas Eve with her searching for her missing husband. But Ewa’s husband is not actually missing, and she’s simply using the lie as a pretext to force Janusz to spend the holiday with her.

Christmas often forces people to make a series of reflective choices in the course of deciding who to spend the holiday with. Often unsaid in those choices is an evaluation of who holds the most importance over a person’s life: if one has to choose between spending time with separate people on Christmas, who does one end up choosing to spend time with, and why?

In Dekalog: Three, Ewa holds Janusz most dear, and while Janusz knows he should return to his wife (who suspects he’s lying about why he’s heading out on Christmas Eve), he too spends the turn from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day with Ewa, implicitly acknowledging that although their love affair has ended, she’ll forever hold a place in his heart. In terms of melancholy ruminations on Christmas, you can’t get much better than this. (Aren)

Not currently available for rent or streaming in Canada.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) dir. Stanley Kubrick

It seems I’m championing some of the darker and more perverse takes on what a Christmas film might be, but Stanley Kubrick’s story of power, desire, and the negotiations of domesticity uses the Christmas season to great effect. The journey of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is set in motion after his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) shares with him one of her fantasies one evening after a Christmas party.

Why might I consider it a Christmas movie or at least worth watching at Christmas time? Kubrick’s shots of Christmas parties and the winter streets of New York City (though shot on soundstage in London) are wonderful. But most importantly, while one could be cynical, Eyes Wide Shut is honest about the fantasies that persist even in married relationships. Even though the resolution is solidly bourgeois, it rightly sees that there is something of a strength and saving grace in the family unit against the world of raw power and desire. Christmas is a time to reaffirm our bonds, even as we party and dally and are tempted. Our sense of self is rooted in the enactment of rituals that begin in the home. (Anders)

Available for streaming in Canada on Crave and Netflix. Available for rent in Canada on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

Fanny and Alexander (1982) dir. Ingmar Bergman

The nearly hour-long opening sequence of Fanny and Alexander (it’s even longer in the television version) takes place on Christmas Eve in turn-of-the-century Uppsala, Sweden. It shows the Ekdahl family celebrating, performing a Nativity Play at the local theatre, and getting raucous to all hours of the night at the family home. In terms of Christmas celebrations on screen, it might be the most lavish and memorable ever filmed. But it’s not just the Christmas setting that makes Fanny and Alexander a Christmas movie. After Fanny and Alexander’s father dies of a stroke, their mother marries the dour, local bishop and they become prisoners in his austere home. Thus, the film becomes a story of “advent,” of arrival and anticipation, in which the siblings hope for their deliverance from their oppressive stepfather and an eventual return to a place of safety and love. The characters’ desires mirror our own anticipation of the arrival of Christ during Advent and capture the hope to be delivered back into loving communion and a place safe from hardship. (Aren)

Available for streaming in Canada on Criterion Channel. Available for rent on AppleTV.

Hook (1991) dir. Steven Spielberg

The loose connection is that Hook takes place during the holiday season, but there are other good reasons to revisit Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan sorta-sequel during the Christmas season. To start, the brilliant first half hour contains a wonderfully atmospheric portrayal of visiting a grandmother’s house as well as London at Christmas time—the wife even talks about the magic of London at Christmas. Second, the themes of family healing and changes of heart are central to holiday films. Third, it is the kind of movie that would be good to put on with the whole family: the kids will love the Peter Pan story, the parents will identify with the adult difficulties expressed by both grownup Peter Banning and Captain Hook, and everyone will enjoy Robin Williams’ humour and heart. (Anton)

Available for streaming in Canada on CTV. Available for rent on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Cineplex Store, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

Lethal Weapon (1987) dir. Richard Donner

“Secular Christmas movies like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Elf and even Die Hard are about the power of family and the need for community in times of trouble. Like these Christmas classics, Lethal Weapon is an ode to family and the stability it provides to those within it.” (Aren from his 2018 review)

Available for streaming in Canada on Crave. Available for rent in Canada on Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Cineplex Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store, and YouTube.

The Lion in Winter (1968) dir. Anthony Harvey

The Lion in Winter is about the drama of spending Christmas with your dysfunctional family. In the film, the family just so happens to be the royal family of England in the 12th century— King Henry II (Peter O’Toole), Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), Richard the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins), Prince Geoffrey (John Castle), Prince John (Nigel Terry), Henry’s mistress Alais (Jane Merrow), and French King Philip II (Timothy Dalton). There are disagreements, threats of war, domestic disputes, alliances forged and broken, earnest pleas and false entreaties. The film captures the way that Christmas can heighten family tensions, shatter bonds, and then strangely strengthen them all in the course of time spent in close corridors with each other. Anyone who has ever spent a contentious Christmas with family will recognize themselves in the film, albeit expressed in more florid, theatrical ways. (Aren)

Available for rent in Canada on AppleTV.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) dir. Peter Jackson

There are hardcore Tolkien fans who watch The Fellowship of the Ring each year on Oct. 24, particularly if that date happens to be his or her birthday. (This is because when Frodo wakes up in Rivendell, Gandalf informs him that it is “10 o’clock in the morning on October the 24th.”) Others have constructed personal liturgies for watching the trilogy over Advent. The trilogy has associations with the Christmas season, since each of the films was released in December, and my own personal rewatching habits trend towards being cyclical and thematic.

I think The Return of the King works well for viewing in the week after Christmas, leading up to New Year’s Day, or even at the start of the New Year. Gollum and the ring fall into Mount Doom on March 25 in the calendar within the books; March 25 is Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation (when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear God’s Son), and the date used to mark New Year’s Day in the Old Calendar in England. Obviously, Tolkien, a scholar and perfectionist, knew all this when he wrote it that way. What is more, the arrival of the true king and the final defeat of the forces of darkness, as well as the strong sense of a clean slate and a new beginning after the destruction of the ring, all speak well thematically to Christmas week and New Year’s Day. Plus, the winter holidays are usually the best time of the year to find three plus hours to watch a long movie in one sitting! (Anton)