12 must-see movies for the holiday season

Dec 25, 2019 News

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By Kiana Wilburg

If you’re a movie buff like me, then getting in on a good film during the Christmas season is definitely on the list of “Fun things to do this year” list.
To assist you this year, I have compiled a short list of movies from various genres that are sure to have you on a rollercoaster of emotions. Besides the entire Home Alone series which local and cable channels are already playing non-stop, there are movies here to make you laugh by the minute; drown in the Christmas spirit, feel excited and of course, what is a list without a few tear jerkers.

Be sure to have fun with this list. Enjoy!
Serendipity
Serendipty is a romantic drama about how the hand of fate affects two people who meet by chance at Christmas in New York.
During the Christmas season in New York City, Jonathan Trager (John Cusack) meets Sara Thomas (Kate Beckinsale) trying to buy the same pair of black cashmere gloves at Bloomingdale’s. They feel a mutual attraction and despite the fact that each is involved in other relationships, they end up sharing dessert at Serendipity 3 together, where Sara reveals her opinion that fate determines a lot of her decisions in life. They say their goodbyes and leave, but both return to the same restaurant a short while later to retrieve missing things.
Considering this to be a stroke of fate, Jonathan and Sara decide to spend more time together, and at the end of a magical night they start to exchange phone numbers, but Sara’s gets blown into the wind, which she takes as a bad sign. However, she comes up with the idea of putting their names and phone numbers out to the universe, his written on the back of a $5 bill, hers written in the front of a used book entitled, Love in the Time of Cholera that will be sold the following day. If they are meant to be together, they will find the items and contact each other.

Several years later, it’s revealed that Jonathan is getting engaged to Halley Buchanan. On the same day, Sara (now in San Francisco), comes home to find her boyfriend Lars Hammond (John Corbett), a famous musician, proposing to her. As their respective wedding dates approach, each finds themselves with a case of cold feet resulting in each attempting to find each other again before their respective weddings. Jonathan finds an old receipt for the gloves and uses it to try to find Sara’s contact information, and Sara takes a trip to New York, hoping that fate will bring her to Jonathan.

Love actually
Love Actually is a 2003 Christmas-themed romantic comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis. It features an ensemble cast, many of whom had worked with Curtis in previous film and television projects. The screenplay delves into different aspects of love as shown through ten separate stories involving a wide variety of individuals, many of whom are shown to be interlinked as their tales progress. Most of the film was filmed on location in London. The story begins five weeks before Christmas and is played out in a weekly countdown until the holiday, followed by an epilogue that takes place one month later.

The Best Man’s Holiday
The Best Man Holiday stars Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, Monica Calhoun, and Melissa De Sousa reprising their roles from the 1999 film The Best Man, along with the supporting cast.
Mia Sullivan (Monica Calhoun), wife of Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut), has written letters requesting that the old gang should join them for Christmas: Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs) and his almost-nine-month-pregnant wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan), Julian Murch (Harold Perrineau) and wife Candace Sparks (Regina Hall), her best friend Jordan Armstrong (Nia Long) and boyfriend Brian McDonald (Eddie Cibrian), Quentin “Q” Spivey (Terrence Howard), and Shelby Taylor (Melissa De Sousa). All the friends arrive at the house, the first time they’ve come together in 14 years, and the celebration begins. At dinner, the old friends catch up while tensions grow between Shelby and Candace.
Years after his debut novel, Harper is struggling with writer’s block, financial difficulties, and pressure from his publisher to come up with newer and better material for his next book. He has also been recently relieved of his faculty position at New York University, further complicating the couple’s financial position. He kept all this from Robyn, as she is finally pregnant with their first child after years of expensive fertility treatments and the baby is almost full-term. His agent suggests he write a biography on his estranged friend, Lance, who is set to retire from football. Harper reluctantly agrees, but keeps the biography a secret.

The Polar Express
The Polar Express is a 2004 American Christmas 3D animated musical fantasy film based on the 1985 children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, who served as one of the executive producers on the film. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film features human characters animated using the live action performance capture technique.
The film stars Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Jimmy Bennett, and Eddie Deezen, with Tom Hanks in six distinct roles. The film also included a performance by Tinashe at age 9, who later gained exposure as a pop singer in 2010, as the CGI-model for the female protagonist. Castle Rock Entertainment produced the film in association with Shangri-La Entertainment, Image Movers, Playtone and Golden Mean, for Warner Bros. Pictures. The visual effects and performance capture were done at Sony Pictures Image works. The film was made at a budget of $165 million, a record-breaking sum for an animated feature at the time. The studio first released the film in both conventional and IMAX 3D theaters November 10, 2004. It grossed $307 million worldwide.
On Christmas Eve, a boy who is doubting the existence of Santa Claus witnesses a train called the Polar Express that is about to depart for the North Pole. When the boy examines the engine, the conductor lets him board the train. The boy meets other children, including a girl and a know-it-all kid who has a hyperactive personality. When the train picks up another boy, whose name is later revealed to be Billy, the hero boy applies the emergency brakes. Billy initially declines to board but changes his mind. The conductor summons a waiter team, who give the children hot chocolate, and the girl stows away one cup under her seat to give to Billy, who is alone in the observation car. The girl and conductor go to deliver the hot chocolate cup to Billy, but the hero boy discovers the girl’s ticket is unpunched. He loses it before he can return it. After the ticket is abused by the wind and animals, it slips back in the train. The girl explains her lost ticket, and the conductor considers ejecting her before taking her for a walk on the top of the train instead. The hero boy locates the lost ticket and pursues them.
It Happened on Fifth Avenue
It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) is a motion picture comedy, directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Victor Moore, Ann Harding, Don DeFore, Charles Ruggles and Gale Storm. The film received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Story. This film has been remade in Hindi twice in India: Pugree (1948) and Dil Daulat Duniya (1972).
Aloysius T. McKeever (Victor Moore), a New York City hobo, makes his home in a boarded-up Fifth Avenue mansion, using the back door, while its owner, multi-millionaire (“the second richest man in the world”) Michael J. O’Connor (Charles Ruggles), winters in the South. McKeever winds up taking in homeless ex-G.I. Jim Bullock (Don DeFore), who has been evicted from an apartment building O’Connor is tearing down for a new skyscraper, and runaway 18-year-old Trudy “Smith” (Gale Storm) who is actually O’Connor’s daughter. Soon Jim invites war buddies Whitey (Alan Hale, Jr.), Hank (Edward Ryan) and their families to share the vast mansion while they seek permanent homes of their own.
Trudy falls in love with Jim, and when her father demands to meet him, convinces O’Connor to also take up residence, pretending to be the panhandler “Mike”. She wants to win Jim’s love without the temptation of her wealth. McKeever “allows” Mike to move in, but treats him as a servant. When Mike warns Trudy that he intends to have them all arrested for criminal trespass, she persuades her mother Mary (Ann Harding) to fly up from Florida and pretend to be the 11th interloper, a cook. Determined to derail the budding romance, Mike has one of his construction companies offer Jim a great job in Bolivia, but Jim turns it down to pursue his dream.

It’s a Wonderful Life
It’s a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story “The Greatest Gift”, which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945.The film is now among the most popular in American cinema and because of numerous television showings in the 1980s has become traditional viewing during the Christmas season.
The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born.
Despite initially performing poorly financially because of high production costs and stiff competition at the time of its release, the film has come to be regarded as a classic.

Central Intelligence
Central Intelligence is a 2016 American action-spy comedy film directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and written by Thurber, Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen. The film stars Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson as two old high school friends who team up to save America after one of them joins the CIA in order to save the world from a terrorist who has an intention to sell satellite codes. Amy Ryan and Aaron Paul also star. The film premiered in Los Angeles on June 10, 2016 and was theatrically released in the United States on June 17, 2016. Central Intelligence received mixed reviews and grossed $217 million worldwide against its $50 million budget.

Four Christmases
Four Christmases (Four Holidays in Australia and New Zealand, Anywhere But Home in the Netherlands, Norway, United Arab Emirates and in South Africa) is a Christmas-themed romantic comedy film about a couple visiting all four of their divorced parents’ homes on Christmas Day. The film is produced by Spyglass Entertainment released by New Line Cinema on November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, with Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw, Dwight Yoakam, and Kristin Chenoweth as supporting cast. The film is director Seth Gordon’s first studio feature film. The DVD and Blu-ray Disc was released on November 24, 2009.
Last Christmas
Last Christmas is a 2019 romantic comedy film directed by Paul Feig and written by Bryony Kimmings and Emma Thompson, who co-wrote the story with her husband, Greg Wise. Based on the song of the same name, and inspired by the music of George Michael, the film stars Emilia Clarke as a disillusioned Christmas store worker who forms a relationship with a mysterious man (Henry Golding) and begins to fall for him; Thompson and Michelle Yeoh also star. The movie was theatrically released in the United States on November 8, 2019. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances and chemistry of Clarke and Golding.

 

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