Celebrate a Holiday(-Lite) Movie!
Scores of movies are about the Christmas holiday season, its traditions, and Santa Claus. Other movies just happen to be set in December amongst festivities or feature pivotal events during a Christmas party. We’ve curated a collection of such movies that just happen to be set during Christmas. Be sure to get in the quasi-holiday mood by joining us on December 3 for a presentation of Krampus, a horror movie about a demon that torments a dysfunctional family that rejects the Christmas spirit.
In 1996, a deadly virus nearly exterminated humanity. In 2035, the subterranean survivors have developed a crude means of time travel to counteract the apocalypse, caused by an obscure group called the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Prisoner James Cole (Bruce Willis) is selected to travel to the past to help scientists in their search for a cure. Unfortunately, Cole struggles to arrive at the right time and place and is institutionalized by Dr. Kathryn Reilly (Madeleine Stowe)…but at the mental hospital he meets a hardcore environmentalist named Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), implicated in future activity by the 12 Monkeys. Inspired by the short film La Jetée. (1995, dir. Terry Gilliam, 129 minutes)
Suburban New England widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is in a rut. The company of her adult children and country club friends aren’t enough to satisfy her. She is drawn to her arborist, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), a rustic, Bohemian man 15 years her junior. After Ron proposes marriage, Cary is faced with harsh disapproval from her neighbors and especially her family, who are bewildered by her wish for a new lifestyle. Based on the novel by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee. (1955, dir. Douglas Sirk, 89 minutes)
C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the key to corporate success is the key to his apartment. By loaning out his home as a sexual hideaway for his philandering bosses, Baxter reaps a series of promotions. But when Baxter lends the key to big boss J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he ends up abetting Sheldrake’s affair with Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator with whom he’s in love. If Baxter wants a romance of his own, he may have to upend the system that has advanced his career. (1960, dir. Billy Wilder, 125 minutes)
Gotham City tycoon Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) is plotting to build a fake power plant to drain the city’s electricity when he is kidnapped by the avian mutant Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito). Cobblepot, also known as the Penguin, was abandoned by his rich parents because of his deformities and wants Shreck’s help reentering high society. As if that weren’t enough, Shreck’s meek secretary survives an assassination attempt to become the vengeful Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer). It’s up to Batman (Michael Keaton) to protect Gotham from the trio of villains amidst Christmas festivities. (1992, dir. Tim Burton, 126 minutes)
Barb (Margot Kidder) and Jess (Olivia Hussey) are holding a sorority Christmas party with their sisters when they receive a phone call. The caller, calling himself Billy, blathers at them in strange voices before making a death threat. When one of the girls goes missing, their Canadian college community begins a search, but the perpetrator may be closer than expected. (1974, dir. Bob Clark, 98 minutes)
Merry Christmas, Los Angeles! There’s an employee party on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Corporation building, but the revelry is cut short when the partygoers are taken hostage by terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). Their goal: steal the $640 million in bearer bonds locked in Nakatomi’s high-tech safe. With the skyscraper locked down, the hostages’ only hope is John McClane (Bruce Willis), an off-duty New York City detective trying to meet with his corporate executive wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), and an LAPD sergeant (Reginald VelJohnson) outside the tower. Based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. (1988, dir. John McTiernan, 132 minutes)
Doctor Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), enjoy a seemingly stable marriage (although they both flirt with guests at a Christmas party). Later, Bill is disturbed when Alice reveals she was so infatuated with a man she saw on vacation that she considered ending their marriage. He wanders New York City and ultimately arrives at a secret society’s masked orgy. He escapes the organization’s party after being exposed as an outsider, but encounters ominous signs of surveillance as he retraces his strange night out. Based on the novella Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler. (1999, dir. Stanley Kubrick, 159 minutes)
A struggling salesman (Hoyt Axton) purchases a cute critter called a mogwai as a Christmas present for his son. The boy, Billy (Zach Galligan), is told to keep his new pet away from water and sunlight and to never to feed it after midnight. The creature is inadvertently dampened almost instantly, and the mogwai spawns half a dozen ill-behaved replicas of itself. When the trouble-making creatures have a midnight snack, Billy and his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) must wrangle the empowered imps before their mischief destroys the town. (1984, dir. Joe Dante, 106 minutes)
It’s Christmastime in New York, and self-professed Fourierist radical Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) has stumbled into the debutante balls of young Upper East Side socialites. His new social circle includes cynical Nick (Christopher Eigeman); Jane Austen buff Audrey (Carolyn Farina); and bumbling philosopher Charlie (Taylor Nichols). As the group frets about the declining prospects of the New York elite and the sleazy behavior of their erstwhile friends, Audrey takes a shine to Tom, who is not quite the outsider he pretends to be. (1990, dir. Whit Stillman, 98 minutes)
The Los Angeles Police Department of 1953 is desperate to improve its corrupt public image. Detective Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce) seeks to live up to his murdered policeman father’s legacy, while fellow dicks Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Wendell White (Russell Crowe) try to get ahead with tabloid-worthy arrests and brutality, respectively. All three will try their hands at unraveling a conspiracy surrounding a massacre at a coffee house and a prostitution ring that surgically alters women like Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) to resemble movie stars. Based on the novel by James Ellroy. (1997, dir. Curtis Hanson, 138 minutes)
Christmas, 1183: Henry II (Peter O’Toole) of the Angevin Empire summons the royal family to a holiday get-together at his castle in Touraine, France. His sons– the martial Richard (Anthony Hopkins), the plotting Geoffrey (John Castle), and the juvenile John (Nigel Terry)– all have designs on becoming the next heir to the throne. Meanwhile, the presence of the King’s mistress (Jane Merrow) adds spice to his exchanges with Henry’s estranged wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), whom he has sentenced to house arrest. Adapted from the play by James Goldman. (1968, dir. Anthony Harvey, 134 minutes)
Transgender prostitute Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) has finished a brief stint in jail and meets her friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) at a Hollywood donut shop. She learns that her boyfriend and pimp Chester (James Ransone) is cheating on her. Thus, she tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve on a quest of retribution. Meanwhile, Alexandra struggles to entice people, such as a regular client of hers (Karren Karagulian), to attend her upcoming musical performance. (2015, dir. Sean Baker, 88 minutes)
