Eight More Alternative Christmas Movies
Had enough of Elf, It's a Wonderful Life and The Muppets Christmas Carol? Will you maim a family member if you're forced to watch Love Actually again this year? Fear not, here are some great alternative Christmas movies to help you through the holiday season
This time last year, we suggested seven alternative Christmas movies to help you through the festival period. Assuming you’ve exhausted those recommendations by now, here’s another clutch of great alt Christmas films that are easy on the shmaltz and might help you avoid watching Home Alone for the 29th time.
Children of Men (2006)
Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
At first glance, you might think there’s nothing particularly Christmassy about Children of Men? In fact, there’s no suggestion that Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 masterpiece takes place over the festive period at all. But then, in a world without children, would we even bother with tinsel, fairy lights and Santa Claus, who’s most certainly out of a job?
You don’t need to squint too hard, however, to see this is an apocalyptic take on the Nativity. Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the first woman on earth to fall pregnant for 18 years is clearly a Mary stand-in (she even jokes that her pregnancy was similarly immaculate), while Theo (Clive Owen) is our reluctant Joseph, simply trying to get his pregnant companion and her cargo – who might hold the key to mankind’s salvation – to safety. In its own bleak way, Children of Men’s moments of hope convey all you need to know about the holiday season.
Batman Returns (1992)
Dir. Tim Burton
In the early 90s Tim Burton was compelled to produce three weirdo Christmas films on the trot – Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992) and A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – and this wintery trilogy still remains the most inspired and inventive period in his career. Surprisingly, the weirdest by a long way is the comic book studio gig.
Burton was given carte blanche to let his imagination go wild on this sequel after his first stab at the Dark Knight became a box-office juggernaut. Watched in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and in the middle of Marvel’s comic book dominance, Batman Returns looks positively avant-garde. As the snow falls in Gotham, three emo misfits – Batman (Michael Keaton), Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito) – try to work out their issues, but as far as the Batman is concerned, there’s only room for one lonely man-beast in town.
While the winged creatures with parental issues beat lumps out of each other, Michelle Pfeiffer gives the most memorable performance as the film’s leather-clad femme fatale, a mild-mannered cat-lady who’s had enough of the patriarchy and decided to kick ass this Christmas.
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Dir. Ernst Lubitsch
Is there any place less festive than the hurly burly of high street shops in the lead up to Christmas, with panicked shoppers cramming their baskets full of gifts they know their loved ones will be exchanging come Boxing Day?
In Ernst Lubitsch's dazzling romantic comedy, set mostly within a upmarket gift shop in pre-war Budapest ahead of Christmas, the department store becomes a place where love blossoms… eventually. Until then, it's a cauldron of petty professional and personal grievances – there’s even some adultery and attempted suicide to add the Christmas cheer.
The biggest arguments come from the simmering tension between the shop's lanky, likable manager (James Stewart) and its supercilious sales clerk (Margaret Sullavan), who both revel in getting under each other's skin. Little do they know they are actually anonymous pen pals, and that they’re desperately in love. Billy Wilder, Lubitsch's talented protege, would go on to make a similarly timeless work-based Christmas romance 20 years later with The Apartment.
Black Christmas (1974)
Dir. Bob Clark
John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween often gets credited as the beginning of the slasher craze, but this Canadian holiday horror cemented many of the sub-genre’s hallmarks first. There’s the creeping camera putting the audience in the killer’s point-of-view, the nubile college kids as targets, and a killer whose face we never see and whose motives remain murky.
The setup is ingenious: a sorority house is slowly emptying as Christmas approaches, but it’s not because the girls are heading back to their family home for the holidays – it’s because a psychopath in the attic is picking them off one by one. This is a film to take some of the sugar out of the festive season and it'll make you think twice before taking your tree out of the loft. Director Bob Clark would show his range by going on to direct A Christmas Story, an altogether more family-friendly entry in the Christmas film canon.
The Thin Man (1934)
Dir. WS Van Dyke
Childish behaviour, dinner parties with undesirables ("Waiter, will you serve the nuts? I mean, will you serve the guests the nuts?") and copious amounts of drinking – The Thin Man has the Christmas holidays down to a tee. This delightful screwball comedy from the hard-boiled pen of Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) concerns Nick and Nora, a husband and wife detective team – he's a former cop, she's a rich heiress – who are basically functioning alcoholics with too much time on their hands.
While spending their Christmas break in New York, Nick is teased out of retirement when an old friend (the eponymous Thin Man) goes missing, and Nora cracks wise at his side as the simple-looking case becomes more murky. The Thin Man’s fate is revealed at a lavish New Year’s Eve party where all the suspects are in attendance. You might have similarly tense family gatherings over the holidays: we hope you have as much fun at them as Nick and Nora.
Trading Places (1983)
Dir. John Landis
As a satire on the insanity of our global economy, Trading Places is more potent than either Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short and funnier than both combined. A pair of morally bankrupt stockbrokers take a break from gambling on the stock exchange to play out their own personal tale of The Prince and the Pauper as they swap the lives of Dan Aykroyd's snooty rich kid and Eddie Murphy’s street hustler.
Both comedians are in their element; Aykroyd’s fall from grace, who hits his lowest point dressed in a grubby santa suit raiding the buffet of an office party, is particularly hilarious. Blending the wit and verve of a 40s screwball with the saucy humour of a raunchy 80s comedy, John Landis hits a brilliantly irreverent note that manages to be both cynical and sweet.
Morvern Callar (2002)
Dir. Lynne Ramsay
This intoxicating fable from Lynne Ramsay begins with our title character, an unremarkable supermarket stacker from Nowheresville, Scotland, finding a rather unpleasant gift under the tree one Christmas morning: the body of her boyfriend, who’s committed suicide. He’s left her some strict instructions: use the money in his bank account for the funeral and send the novel he’s written to be published posthumously. Morven inexplicably has some other plans.
With a new year on the horizon, she does a bit of reinvention. She claims the novel as her own, carves up her boyfriend's body with the grim determination you might use to carve up your Christmas turkey, and uses the funeral money and book advance for an extended clubbing holiday in Spain. Has she had a breakdown? Does she now feel liberated with her man out of her life? Is she taking revenge for him leaving her alone? Samantha Morton’s luminous face and Ramsay’s heady visuals give away little, but you can’t keep your eyes off them.
Tangerine (2015)
Dir. Sean Baker
The vibrant American indie scene has produced some notable Christmas films of late – Zack Clarks’ White Reindeer, Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas – but perhaps the most vivid is Sean Baker’s Tangerine. From its opening line – “Merry Christmas, bitch” – it’s clear this odyssey following two trans sex workers' adventures on Christmas Eve isn’t your typical holiday movie.
For director Sean Baker, he initially jumped on the holiday setting for aesthetic reasons. “From a director’s point of view I was like, 'Yeah, that’s cool, it’ll give us eye candy and lots more colour and lights',” he told us last year. “And why not, these little movies need that.” After spending some time with his two transgender leads, however, he recognised the Christmas-setting had a more profound meaning.
”I realised that whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you associate the holidays with family, but unfortunately many of these women, transgender women of colour who come from poverty have been forced on to the streets because they’ve been rejected by their families... what I’m trying to say is that their only family is themselves. And they only have each other to rely on. That idea, the Christmas idea, for me, became way more profound than just nice twinkly lights.”
Read our original list of seven alternative Christmas films, from Kubrick to Stillman