Top holiday movies: The 10 best of the rest - Entertainment, Movies - Marine Corps Times

Top holiday movies: The 10 best of the rest

1. ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ (1947)

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

When a department-store Santa (the great Edmund Gwenn) is institutionalized after claiming to be the real Kriss Kringle, he gets a chance to prove his claim in court — and in the bargain, reminds a mother (Maureen O’Hara) and her young daughter (Natalie Wood) about the real meaning of Christmas.

You know it’s all hokey schmaltz, and you just don’t care.

2. ‘Home Alone’ (1990)

Macaulay Culkin’s cute phase lasted just long enough to get this movie wrapped. John Hughes’ script offers the perfect mix of high jinks and heart strings, as Culkin, accidentally abandoned by his family just before Christmas, thwarts inept burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) and forges an offbeat friendship with a lonely old man (Roberts Blossom).

3. ‘Bad Santa’ (2003)

Put the kids to bed before you screen this one, because it’s as filthy as it is funny. Billy Bob Thornton and Tony Cox are flat-out riots as degenerates who pose as a department-store Santa and his elf to rob shopping malls — until an oddly endearing misfit kid (Brett Kelly) throws a wrench into their scheme.

4. ‘The Polar Express’ (2004)

They couldn’t get the eyes quite right, but this film’s “live-action performance capture” animation technique was still a breathtaking canvas for a heartwarming story of a young boy (Daryl Sabara) whose wavering faith in Christmas is restored by a visit to the North Pole aboard a very special train.

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Tim Burton’s darkly unique vision infuses this delightfully twisted tale of Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, who tries to get his ghouls and goblins to put on Christmas as a change of pace — with amusingly uneven results.

6. ‘Trading Places’ (1983)

It may end on a tropical beach, but this raucous comedy deserves to be on a Christmas list solely for the extended scene in which a despondent Dan Aykroyd, drunk out of his mind and dressed in a filthy Santa suit, crashes his company’s holiday party to stuff his vest full of food.

7. ‘White Christmas’ (1954)

Army buddies Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, who hit it big as a postwar musical act, help their former commander save his Vermont inn from financial ruin. The story may feel dated, but the film is worth watching for the timeless Irving Berlin tunes, including Crosby’s rendition of the title track, the bestselling single of all time.

8. ‘Fred Claus’ (2007)

Vince Vaughn takes a rare break from being annoying as the title character, the outcast black-sheep brother of Santa Claus (Paul Giamatti), who ends up saving his sibling’s entire North Pole franchise from a stone-hearted corporate bean counter (Kevin Spacey).

9. ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ (1984)

This twisted tale of a traumatized boy who grows up to become a serial slasher with a Santa fixation (Robert Brian Wilson) is fine horror fare. It was followed by sequels every two years through 1992 that suffered from the downward spiral of dilution and repetition that afflicts all such horror franchises.

10. ‘Die Hard’ (1988)

Not a Christmas movie? Au contraire, mon frère! The grudge match between Bruce Willis’ cop and Alan Rickman’s band of thugs goes down during an office Christmas party. As Willis’s chauffeur (De’Voreaux White) says: “If this is their idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year’s!”