Seven Movies that embody the Spirit of Christmas

Dec 24, 2020 Features / Columnists, News

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By Kiana Wilburg

Kaieteur News – Like opening presents, watching movies is unequivocally one of the Christmas rituals most of us simply can’t do without. Unquestionably, movie watching allows us to enter a 90 minute world of enchantment while providing that opportunity to reconnect with our loved ones, rediscover the true meaning of love and why we’re celebrating this joyous occasion, and in some cases, help us to reconcile differences with long lost friends or relatives.
As you gather this Christmas with your loved ones to engage in this most beloved tradition, the Kaieteur News team has selected below, a few movies that are sure to enrich your experience this season. The selections below, without a doubt, embody the spirit of the season and are sure to keep you on a rollercoaster of emotions you’ll never want to get off of.
Be sure to enjoy with your favourite holiday snacks and beverages with dimmed lights for a dramatic effect. Happy movie watching!

 

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 the other again before their respective weddings.
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 10 separate stories involving a wide variety of individuals, many of whom are shown to be interlinked as their tales progress. Most of the movie 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 is a 2013 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. It is the sequel to the 1999 film, The Best Man. The film was released on November 15, 2013 by Universal Pictures. It 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 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.

 

 

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 international 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. It is praised particularly for its writing and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture and has been recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, placing number 11 on its initial 1998 greatest movie list, and number one on AFI’s list of the most inspirational American films of all time. Capra revealed that the film was his personal favourite among those he directed, adding that he screened it for his family every Christmas season.

 

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. It’s one of those classics that is sure to rekindle the sweet joy that partners share on this special day while delivering a few hearty laughs.
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.

 

 

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