Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 6: Holiday Inn (1942 dir. Mark Sandrich)

While this film was in production, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and I can sense the tonal shift right about the time the film gets to the 4th of July. There is, for the most part (and we’ll get to that), a sense of coming together, of community and camaraderie in this movie that just works. If four years later after the war It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) was a celebration of simplicity and gratitude, then this film was the herald angel prophesying that same message.

The “plot,” I use the term loosely, concerns the romantic goings on between partners Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire) and Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby) as they vie for the affection of the same woman, Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds). Ted is a successful night club dancer and Jim is an equally successful nightclub singer, but Jim is moving on to newer pastures, literally. He buys a farm and hopes to retire, but eventually decides to turn the farm into the eponymous Holiday Inn, a venue for performers which will only be open on holidays.

All of these story points are provided as motivation for the song & dance numbers, all composed by Irving Berlin. Most famously Berlin wrote “White Christmas” for this movie, and he won and Academy Award for it. That brilliant song fueled not only nostalgia for the wartime populace but also its own film, the beguiling but somehow entertaining technicolor populist vista-vision treat White Christmas (1954).

The standout performance for me is Fred Astaire’s 4th of July firecracker tap dance number. You can just see the joy on his face when he finally nails it. I’ve been told more than thirty takes were used to complete the dance which was a mid-production addition for patriotic war-time efforts. I also enjoy Walter Abel’s giddy nervous energy as the talent manager Danny Reed.

And then there’s “Abraham” (I mentioned we’d get around to something). *sigh* As a middle-aged white male I am not particularly qualified to give a comprehensive understanding of early film studio racist tropes except to say here definitely is one of them. This musical number, for Lincoln’s birthday, stands out amongst the rest with a jaw-droppingly inappropriate black face routine which sadly was not unheard of in its day. But there it remains, and I cannot simply ignore it, as a testament to what was and hopefully never will be again.

Still I return to this film each year. Watching Astaire work is always a joy. Hearing Crosby sing his friend Berlin’s songs is also transformative. The film gave us “White Christmas” and I can feel the fun these actors had making it.

Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 5: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979 dir. Robert Wise)

I always think of Christmas when I see this film probably because I received the LP score album from my Grandmother for Christmas when I was twelve years old. It is my favorite film score even though it’s not by my favorite composer, John Williams. I hear Jerry Goldsmith’s music and I just think of Christmas.

It is not the best of the Star Trek films, but neither is it the worst; that honor lies with The Final Frontier (1989) but even that one has its well-intentioned merits. This one starts well and ends on a thoughtful, though slightly recycled, note of human discovery. The middle drags a bit as the film falls in love with its own spectacular visuals, but I still enjoy it. Premiering two and a half years after Star Wars (1977), it was Paramount’s thrown hat into the ring of big budget space adventures.

An enormous alien cloud of immense destructive power tears its way across the galaxy on a direct heading towards Earth and only the Starship Enterprise is within range to intercept it, naturally. The starship is in disrepair as it finishes refit and its new Captain, Willard Decker (Stephen Collins, enough said about him) may not have the experience needed to solve the mystery of the cloud’s origin and motives, prompting now Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) to wrest command of the Enterprise and speed toward discovery.

The solving of the cloud’s mysterious beginnings helps fuel the incidental drama at work here. Is Admiral Kirk, having been away from starship command for a couple of years, even up to the task at hand? Will Spock, who does return here, find the complete lack of emotion he desires, or is there another answer? Will the Cloud’s mystery help resolve these issues and give some further enlightenment about humanity? Of course, to all of of those questions.

All of these issues are secondary to the fun had in seeing these actors working together again after ten years of syndicated reruns on television. The movie did well financially, which is not only a testament to the endurance at work here but also the launching pad for a film franchise which, with the next film (The Wrath of Khan, 1982), eventually finds its voice and rythm.

While a bit overdone, the visuals are amazing and still hold up after more than four decades. What also remains is the aforementioned score. The music is instantly recognizable and provides at least a measure of an excuse for following the middle section’s laborious journey through the cloud. And what they find at the heart of the cloud, if not entirely surprising, is worth the trip and very much Star Trek.

Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 4: Christmas in Connecticut (1945 dir. Peter Godfrey)

I recently returned to this film for the first time in several years and I got to watch it with someone who had never seen it or even heard of it. We enjoyed it for what it is. And I keep thinking about this moment, about half-way through, when the story stops for maybe sixty seconds. It just stops, which is noticeable because the rest of the film is a flurry of zany non-stop romantic comedy hijinks. This is a very light-on-its-feet movie which crumbles under the slightest application of logic or genuine communication. You know the kind of movie I mean, where if that character would just say this one thing to that other character then the whole plot wraps up in all of ten minutes. It is the kind of story based on a big lie, a lie that must remain intact or people’s livelihoods are lost.

In this case the big lie is that Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is not only a kept homemaker living on an idyllic farm in Connecticut with her husband and new baby but also someone who has time to write a very popular monthly article about delicious home cooking and the 1940’s wartime housewife lifestyle. The writing part is true, the rest is entirely fictional. Which, when you think about it, is fictional anyway because, well, it’s a movie. But I’m getting off course already. It doesn’t matter and I’m thinking too much.

What does matter, however, is the con against Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet, thank you very much), Elizabeth’s boss. If he finds out her entire persona is a fiction then she’ll be fired and won’t be able to afford the mink coat she bought for herself at the start of the movie. Still with me? Good. Because there’s also John Sloan (Reginald Gardner) who wants to marry Elizabeth and means well, but he’s a smarmy, whiny little man…who just happens to own an idyllic farm in Connecticut. What a coincidence. So when Yardley invites himself to Christmas dinner at Elizabeth’s fictional farmhouse, she can use Sloan’s farmhouse to perpetuate the lie in order to save her livelihood.

But in order to use the farmhouse Elizabeth agrees to marry Sloan the Imp. Further complicating matters is the arrival of Naval Officer Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) whose knowledge of rocking chairs and their various uses borders on criminal stalking. It’s weird and creepy, but somehow endearing to Elizabeth who immediately falls in love with him and he falls for her. Of course.

There’s also the matrimony judge who has to keep escaping the farmhouse, the baby who is one day a girl and then the next day a boy (or maybe it’s the other way around), the morally empowered Irish housekeeper (Una O’Connor, thank you very much again), a cow, and the breath of fresh air that is Felix (S.Z. Sakall) who is a joy in every frame he occupies. Look…it’s all set-up and pay-off. If the set-up fails, the pay-off is a bore; if the pay-off fails the set-up was flawed. This time it all works, not flawlessly but with a little charm and a lot of dedication from the cast it comes together. If you’ve seen Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage (1996), you get the idea.

Oh and that moment when the story stops. The camera just sits in position filming Dennis Morgan playing a piano in the foreground and Barbara Stanwyck walking around in the background. It’s a quiet, contemplative, even melancholic moment and it was really nice. Thankfully it didn’t last must longer or I would’ve started thinking about the plot too much right in the middle of the movie which would’ve been, as Felix says, a “Catastroph!” Not Hunky-Dunky at all.

Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 3: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946 dir. Frank Capra)

How quickly life can change in a moment. Living a simple life can be so rewarding, loving, and joyful…but then it can all suddenly seem to vanish. A car accident, an illness, a miscarriage, or anything really that suddenly just happens without our consent or free will clouds one’s perspective, hopefully for just a short time. The love and support from family, friends, and community can help keep us going, one step at a time, until routine and life just seem to start again. Yet other times, despair reigns and the joy of life remains distant, perhaps even unreachable. It is within those unreachable places where miracles can happen.

What Capra and Stewart accomplish with It’s a Wonderful Life is that miracle in unreachable places. Here is a dark and terrifying film that perfectly lands upon unheard of cinematic emotional truth without any real redemption or comeuppance to its antagonist, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). He is still there, at the end, waiting to cause more problems for the Bailey family, but I suppose that is the point. Such life obstacles are always, always present. It is in how we deal with them that develops experience, maturity, and wisdom.

What a gift hindsight can be. After contemplating suicide and wishing he had never been born, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) get his wish when his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), changes reality so that George actually never was born. This is an ingenious concept, owing more than a little bit to Charles Dickens. But again this is not Scrooge’s story of redemption, but rather Bob Cratchitt’s story. George is a simple man with big unrequited dreams who finds happiness only after the darkest moments of his life open his soul to the possibility of meaningful joy in what he already has.

The film itself lived its own redemption story. It did not fare well with the post-war audience in 1946, and I can only surmise that the public was just not ready yet for this beautifully heavy shadow play on gratitude and simplicity. After nearly being lost forever it actually fell out of copyright at exactly the right time, allowing distributors to constantly resell it on home video cassettes and broadcast it on public television stations, all at practically no cost. It was everywhere, over and over again, until it thankfully got caught up in a kind of worldwide zeitgeist. And now, here we are at time when it is typically the top of lists, not only of the greatest holiday films ever made but also of just the greatest films ever made. And it is that good.

I have heard the film called sentimental, but I disagree. This movie earns its emotional catharsis. It does not ask more from its audience than it is willing to provide. It actually takes its time to tell a full story. And when George stands for the second time on the bridge, praying for his life, we feel his honest transparent desire. The snow begins to quietly fall again and we rejoice at both answered prayers and yes, even also at miracles in unreachable places.

Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 2: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017 dir. Rian Johnson)

Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi is one of the best chapters in the Star War saga, second only to The Empire Strikes Back. Watching it the first time I was reminded of Sam Mendes’ James Bond film Skyfall and how it took a long-established franchise in a different but ultimately rewarding direction. What Johnson and his team get away with here is so deeply psychological, dealing with trauma and motives, I call it a wild act of bravery for the studio to even allow this story to unfold as it does. It is a remarkably emotional experience.

After destroying the First Order’s Starkiller Base at the end of the The Force Awakens, the Resistance evacuates their headquarters, retreating from the persistent pursuing enemy. Having located Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammil), Rey (Daisy Ridley) attempts to convince him to not only reconnect with the force but also train her in its ways in order to help her defeat Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). More than any other chapter, this Star Wars film is a direct sequel, picking up right where the previous film ended.

The film concerns itself with discordant generational history, accepting the past how it actually was while hopefully not destroying it. The mystery surrounding Ren’s origin works as a template for this approach, exercising a Rashomon-like approach to finding possible truth and exacting justice for the remembrance of things past. Much of the conflict revolves around finding middle ground for explaining why things are the way they are and the different viewpoints that ultimately do not match and cannot compromise.

At the center of this war of history is Luke Skywalker. Expectations about who is he and what he stands for further deepen his dramatic arc in this story because where he is emotionally and what he does are completely unexpected. Mark Hammil’s performance is absolute perfection. In a better reality it would have been Oscar-worthy. The trauma creased into his face and the anguish he allows the audience to witness are also brave choices. He is not afraid to go where the director needs him to go in order to build tension for the film’s climactic confrontation between him and Kylo Ren.

It is unfortunate that The Rise of Skywalker, Episode IX, did not chose to build further upon what Johnson constructed here. Moments like the tender exchange between Luke and Leia (Carrie Fisher) do not exist in that next chapter. Here Luke, finally determined to confront the past embodied by Kylo Ren, makes amends with his sister while also clearly stating her son, Ren, cannot be saved. These actors have worked together for decades and so much emotion becomes clear with simply words and meaningful looks.

It is a beautiful, heartfelt, world-building film, expanding on what came before and giving promise to what might come next. What a gift this movie is.

Twelve films for Christmas, or at least ones I associate with the Holidays, listed between now and through the New Year. I had originally hoped to complete this list for Christmas Day, but a family emergency changed that plan. These are not in any particular order.

Day 1: West Side Story (2021 dir. Steven Spielberg)

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is as much about the joy of filmmaking as it is about its story, and it needs to be. Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics are already well-loved, but those alone do not guarantee a successful film. What Spielberg carefully and seamlessly creates here is an unforgettable vision of shadows, color, and movement, elevating it into one of the greatest of all movie musicals ever produced. It is an astonishing achievement.

During the late 1950’s two rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, fight for territory on Manhattan’s lower west side, an area soon-to-be refurbished as an artistic neighborhood forcing out the area’s long-term residents and recent immigrants. Amidst this growing rumble, Tony (Ansel Elgort) a former Jet hoping to live a more peaceful life and Maria (Rachel Zegler) the sister of the Sharks’ leader fall in love, further complicating the street level warfare. It famously is a less complex, but emotionally resonant, retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

The acting from everyone, yes everyone, is on point. Carefully watch Mike Faist (Riff) and his wiry, almost skeletal, visage always ready to pounce while his unemotional gaze belies a passionate resolve. Ariana DeBose (Anita) gives such a complex characterization that even though I am familiar with this story, her eventual choices about loyalty and love gave me genuine suspension of disbelief. The anguish on Ansel Elgort’s (Tony) face when told The Big Lie is an image straight from Edvard Munch. And Rita Moreno (Valentina), her delivery of the monologue to The Jets is particularly touching given her history with this material, and she could get an Oscar nomination for that tragic turnabout.

And this is a tragedy, make no mistake. No one cleanly escapes the violent, bloody final act. Life, innocence, and optimism are all at stake and I could feel the drama, sense the affection, and almost touch the admiration this company has invested in this project. The film is a joy to behold.

Having just seen it this past Saturday night I will gratefully forever associate it with the Holidays. Give yourself a gift and see it on the biggest screen you can find.