Happy POLLidays! (Happy POLLidays!) It's the ILX Holiday Movies Poll Results Thread

The older I get, and the more popular moviemaking swirls down the drain of franchise-driven content wheels, the more fondness I have for mid-level broad-market entertainments tbh.

(In other words, it's better than I remembered, and the one in New York is somewhat worse than I'd remembered.)

#39 is a real reach (especially since Remember the Night is doomed), save for the gift that is the amazing beauty of Ryuichi Sakamoto.

I was just old enough in 1992 to fully comprehend the sequel as the most cynical possible rehash.

That said, I totally get where you’re coming from re: broad market vs. franchise moviemaking. When I found myself growing mildly nostalgic, a few years back, for John Grisham adaptations, I knew that Hollywood was definitely no longer making movies for me.

I still remember going to school the Monday after Home Alone came out, all of us having seen it and loved it.

As a kid, I remember being slightly disappointed that the wall-to-wall carnage promised by the trailers only gets rolling in the last 20 minutes or so.

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34. PHANTOM THREAD
Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2017
(154 points, 3 votes) [TIE]

Me and my classmates all came to this conclusion xp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAz2Le8Xl0M

surprised at how much i liked home alone when i finally revisited it as an adult, very christmasy (before the mortal kombat brutality kicks in). also surprised that the carnage took up away less screen time than i remember.

helped that i saw it in a theater filled with kids who were my age when i first saw it, all of whom were waaay into it & it was very adorable hearing their shocked & amazed reactions. best moment was when daniel stern falls down the icy steps, which i think is very early in the sequence so the kids in the audience didnt know what they were in for yet, and when he landed after a long noisy painful fall you couldve heard a pin drop in the theater, except for one lone kid who I just heard very loudly whisper: "WHOOOOOA"

watched 2 recently, which sucked ass. funny comparing the "home alone" moment from each: in 1 kevin wakes up and its kind of magical bc he doesnt immediately understand what happened and is a little frightened. In 2 kevin lands at jfk, immediately realizes exactly what happened and that he has all of his dads credit cards, refuses an offer of help by some adults, and consciously & assholishly is like "im a lone in new york, sweet, time to go on a spending spree until they find me"

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33. A CHRISTMAS TALE
Arnaud Despleschin, France, 2008
(157 points, 3 votes, 1 first-place vote)

(I was the first-place vote on this.)

Still need to see this one.

me too

I think I just prefer the French take on the "my whole nutty family is in one house for a week and we're either going to kill each other or settle decades' long grudges" holiday staple.

helped that i saw it in a theater filled with kids who were my age when i first saw it, all of whom were waaay into it & it was very adorable hearing their shocked & amazed reactions. best moment was when daniel stern falls down the icy steps, which i think is very early in the sequence so the kids in the audience didnt know what they were in for yet, and when he landed after a long noisy painful fall you couldve heard a pin drop in the theater, except for one lone kid who I just heard very loudly whisper: "WHOOOOOA"

saw Home Alone once as a kid and never had any interest in rescreening but this is :D

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32. HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
Woody Allen, USA, 1986
(159 points, 3 votes)

i like Hannah v much

ranking below Miracle on 34th Street as a holiday film? bananas

Bananas is definitely not a Christmas movie.

OK, actually we'll do 11 tonight, since there's a tie at #30. Again, in chronological order:

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30. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S
Eric Rohmer, France, 1969
(161 points, 3 votes) [TIE]

didn't vote for Cat People, mostly because it has been long enough since my last viewing that I can't recall its specific Christmas content.

It's set during the holidays; the revenant (?) Irina sings the French carol "Il est né, le divin Enfant" (never mind that she was Serbian in the previous movie).

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30. KISS KISS BANG BANG
Shane Black, USA, 2005
(161 points, 3 votes) [TIE]

That's a wrap on day 1!

Xp yeah I remember seeing it the first time and being surprised that it’s not a horror movie at all, p much a straight up Christmas movie

Thanks, Eric. Drinks for everyone?
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I've never seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang yet. What is wrong with me etc (because it looks good). But had no idea it was part of some holiday movies canon. so thanks thread!

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Shamefully, I’ve never seen Maud. Didn’t think to vote for KKBB, but I like it.

Maud’s was my #1

(oops, sorry, forgot to designate that #1 vote)

Ive has it in my ‘to watch’ pile for months and haven’t gotten around to it, I had no idea it had a holiday element!

xp - on it, if you can get a mod to swap out the screencap.

That’s ok, it’s not important

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29. ELF
Jon Favreau, USA, 2003
(194 points, 4 votes)

Elf has a good number of very funny Will Ferrell moments but as a movie it is, tbh, kinda dumb and flimsy.

I actually haven't seen it. 2003 was the height of my "Will Ferrell isn't funny, people!" phase. I'll check it out with my future in-laws this weekend.

If that's the point you're starting from, Elf of all Will Ferrell films is probably unlikely to sway you.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang rules and is considerably more Christsmassy than several other placements. The world would be a better place if RDJ and Shane Black had just done a bunch more of those instead of getting dragged into the MCU.

can't imagine wanting to revisit Elf

Like a few seconds of this particular clip might be all I need from Elf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZnTC-epgcA

One of the movie's biggest problems is that it's just so weirdly/badly cast, pretty much across the board.

The idea that Elf is a classic Christmas film is a millennial conceit for people who didn't grow up with Tom Hanks's 'Big'

^ I like Elf okay, but this is pretty much otm.

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28. NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
Jeremiah S. Chechik, USA, 1989
(200 points, 4 votes)

find the Lampoons too successfully loathsome to revisit tbh

Yeah, I think it's hard to get hold of--all I can see is Region 2 stuff from Amazon. Did find this appreciation:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/dec/06/jonathan-coe-comfort-joy-forsyth

HOME ALONE: Two-thirds of this is a modest, sweet, surprisingly affecting Christmas movie. One of third it is Tom & Jerry's Straw Dogs, and it is really impossible to express how fucking weird that is.

— The Zack of Christmas Yet To Come (@zhandlen) December 8, 2019

Yeah I watched it last night and was roaring at the pay-off then I missed Tom and Jerry

yeah catherine ohara really is phenomenal in HA1, low-key one of her best performances imo

tried to see Comfort and Joy for this poll, but it wasn’t available via any of my streaming services or libraries.

Watching it on Hoopla rn (apparently from a pan & scan NTSC-converted VHS transfer)

thank you Eric! I enjoyed seeing the results

and Pillbox!

Watched Elf again on Christmas eve with my family. There are a lot of good lines, and I always like “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" at the end

I had a "no Elf, no Home Alone" rule this year. I like Elf but not enough for it to be an annual tradition.

the narwhal's sad-voiced "bye buddy, hope you find your dad" is my new favorite line from Elf

didn't remember until seeing it again that "Baby It's Cold Outside" features in a scene

My Night at Maud’s
Carol
La Grande illusion
Fanny and Alexander
Tangerine

2046
The Apartment
Eyes Wide Shut
The Shop Around the Corner
Far From Heaven

Call Me By Your Name
Boogie Nights
The Ice Storm
A Tale of Winter
Hannah and Her Sisters

It’s a Wonderful Life
Metropolitan
Phantom Thread
Holiday (1938)
Mon Oncle Antoine

LA Confidential
Joyeux Noël
A Christmas Tale
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Elf

Dan S: Does Boogie Nights have anything Christmas-related? There's the big New Year's Eve sequence ("Goodbye '70s, Hello '80s"), but I've seen it a bunch of times and I'm not remembering anything having to do with Christmas.

agree it's not really a holiday film. what I remember besides the New Year's Eve party scene is the donut shop shoot-out scene where Don Cheadle gets an unexpected Christmas gift

Forgot about that, you're right.

Those who didn't vibe with Scrooged: try again. I wasn't that into it for the longest time but now I don't go a holiday season without rewatching it.

Just finished watching Wonderful Life in its entirety for the first time in many years. I might agree with its placing here. It seems to have become more affecting in my dotage.

Forgot to share the full results spreadsheet:

https://bit.ly/37myWBZ

If it had been a top 50...

41. Remember the Night
42. Female Trouble
43. Blast of Silence
44. 2046
45. Krampus (2015)
46. A Junky's Christmas
47. Home for the Holidays
48. A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas
49. Call Me by Your Name
50. Inside (2007)

Goddamnit...how did I forget that Cobra is a Christmas movie?