Christmas movie grinchiness

I'm not a huge fan of Christmas movies. I have nothing against them, apart from the occasional overweening sentimentality. I enjoy Christmas for various reasons, but I'm not overly crazy about it, and the same goes for seasonal movies.

On the other hand, for some reason, I do enjoy trying to compile random lists of things from memory: books I read in high school, plays I've seen, things like that.

So, apropos of nothing (except that it's Christmas Eve), I thought I would try to list every Christmas movie I've seen, along with some brief comments.

First, a few negatives:

• No Hallmark movies. Not my thing. I'm restricting myself to feature films. Possibly a very well-known TV movie might slip through.
• No, Die Hard doesn't count. I'm sure this brands me as some sort of infidel. But a movie that takes place during Christmas and a movie that is about Christmas are two different things. The same goes for any other action movie that happens to have Christmas things in it.
• Although it's one of the few Dickens novels I've read, I've never never seen a film adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Not all the way through, anyway. I think I've seen a few minutes of about four versions, including the classic Scrooge with Alastair Sim, Mickey's Christmas Carol, and A Muppet Christmas Carol.

After some brainstorming, I came up with:

The Bishop's Wife (1947)

Cary Grant stars as an angel who visits a bishop (David Niven), ostensibly to help him with raising money for a new cathedral, but really to help fix the strained relationships with his wife and daughter that his obsession with fundraising have caused. Anything with Grant and Niven in it is OK in my book.

A Christmas Story (1983)

I first saw this classic in university circa 1990, and I've probably watched it a dozen times since. Famous for its "leg lamp," bully Scut Farkus, and the running gag about shooting your eye out with a Daisy "Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time," A Christmas Story is inarguably my favourite seasonal fare.

Holiday Inn (1942)

This classic film is about two partners in a song-and-dance act, played by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, their rivalry in love, and the former's efforts to launch an entertainment venue that opens only on holidays. The movie is famous for debuting the Irving Berlin song "White Christmas," for which it won an Oscar.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Specifically, the live-action adaptation starring Jim Carrey as the titular Grinch. I think I enjoyed it at the time, though clearly it wasn't all that memorable.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

This is considered one of the greatest films ever made, and yet I've only ever seen it once. James Stewart stars as a banker contemplating suicide on Christmas Eve, until his guardian angel shows him what the world would have been like without him. Some people wonder why It's a Wonderful Life didn't win the Best Picture Oscar that year. To be fair, The Best Years of Our Lives, which swept the awards, was a worthy competitor.

Joyeux Noël (2006)

This is a fictional war drama about the "Christmas Truce" of 1914. It was an international film (primarily French) produced in French, English, and German. I'm a sucker for a good WWI movie, and this one wasn't too bad, if a little sentimental.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

This one seemed to play pretty regularly on local TV on Christmas day during the 90s. It's about a year in the life of an upper-middle-class family just prior to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Apart from The Wizard of Oz, it's the only movie starring Judy Garland I've seen. Meet Me in St. Louis was notable for its music, especially for debuting "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (along with the title song and "The Trolley Song"). It's a spectacularly colorful movie, too.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

A kindly department-store Santa claims to be the real thing, and he winds up in court to prove he isn't delusional and in need of institutionalization. It's not often a Christmas movie turns into a courtroom drama. The name "Kris Kringle" was in use for a hundred years before this film, but I personally suspect it was instrumental in popularizing it as a nickname for Santa Claus.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

Clark Griswold wants to have an old-fashioned family Christmas, but once again his plans go awry. Like its two Vacation predecessors, this movie relies on crude and slapstick humour, but you'll probably laugh in spite of yourself. The best jokes involve Aunt Bethany's cat and, of course, the over-the-top Christmas-light installation. (After I wrote this last night, we pulled this one out.)

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Awful. Terrible. One of the worst movies ever made. And yet, a longtime guilty pleasure. The Martians, believing their culture to be too rigid, kidnap two Earth children to help them find the real Santa out of all the fake ones, then kidnap Santa to teach Martian children to have more fun. Hilarity, supposedly, ensues. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is like an extra helping of Christmas turkey.

Scrooged (1988)

OK, I guess I've seen one film of A Christmas Carol, though I didn't count it because it's a loose adaptation and modernization in which the Scrooge character (Bill Murray) isn't a miserly, misanthropic businessman, but a selfish and cynical TV executive. (Bill Murray. Ghosts. Coincidence?) Scrooged, as I recall, is rather mean-spirited and coarse, but the thing I remember most is an unexpected cameo by Miles Davis as a street musician.

White Christmas (1954)

The song "White Christmas" was such a runaway hit when Bing Crosby debuted it in Holiday Inn, they made a whole 'nother movie around it. This time, Crosby teams up with Danny Kaye as two Army buddies with a successful song-and-dance act, who learn that their beloved former general has fallen on hard times after leaving the service. Rosemary Clooney's in it, too. I enjoyed this movie more than Holiday Inn.

So apparently it's not an especially long list. As I said, I'm not particularly sentimental. But that's fine: it just means there's more to see in the future!

Merry Christmas, Faithful Readers. Until later.