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Top 10 Best Holiday Movies of All Time: An Official Ranking
Well, it's that time of year again. We bought our Christmas tree off the corner, found the decorations in the basement, and have made overly ambitious baking plans. The Christmas music is blaring. The candles are blazing. There’s even talk of eggnog. All that’s left now is the battle royal over the best holiday movie of all time. Here’s my ranking. Hit me up with yours in the comments, on Twitter or shoot me a note!
10: Krampus (2015)
Adam Scott and Toni Collette star in this holiday horror flick from director Michael Dougherty. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it a B horror extravaganza fit for a snowy night. And it’s the perfect antidote when you’ve have your fill of sugar plums and saccharine stories.
9: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Jack Skellington, AKA cool cat Halloween Jack, helps run Halloween town, but the holidays go awry when Santa Claus is kidnapped. Trust me, screenwriter Tim Burton delivers the goods in this zany animated feature. Is it a Christmas movie? Halloween horror? Who’s to say!!
8: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Boris Karloff delivers the goods in this animated, half-hour TV classic. Yes, that green, goblin-like curmudgeon discovers the true meaning of Christmas and helps some Whos. There’s even Roast Beast!
7: A Christmas Story (1983)
Such a classic. The lamp. The mashed potatoes. The bullies. Licking a cold metal pole. Nothing says Christmas like a new BB gun. Screenwriter Jean Shepherd and director Bob Clark create a Christmas classic told from the perspective of a child. The movie succeeds in being charming, without succumbing to platitudes, and is funny without being jaded. (The final scene has unfortunately aged poorly, but the rest holds up.)
6: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
I love this movie. Everything goes wrong and goes right at the same time. Christmas in the Griswold family is a rolling disaster, and no matter how hard Clark (Chevy Chase) tries to make it perfect, it just keeps getting worse and worse. This is one of two films from the genius screenwriter John Hughes that made this list. It simply never gets old. And Julie Louis-Dreyfus is such a star in it.
5: Love Actually (2003)
This earnest, sweet holiday romcom from writer and director Richard Curtis features standout performances from an all star cast including Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Martin Freeman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alan Rickman, Laura Linney, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson and Kiera Knightly. Cynical viewers may find it trite, but I believe it delivers warmth and cheer without being overly indulgent. It even has some sad moments to go with the carols.
4: Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
This is a movie that has grown on me over the years. At first blush, a story about whether or not the Santa hired by a department store is the real Santa sounds kind of stupid. Yet in this classic film, that becomes a setup for some fairly profound philosophizing about meaning, truth and reality and the purpose of Christmas. If for nothing else, watch it for Maureen O’Hara’s performance. The film also has one of the strangest trailers ever made. “No kidding, it’s a good picture!”
3: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Jimmy Stewart stars in Director Frank Capra’s poignant Christmas classic, which takes a man’s entire story—encompassing a World War and the Great Depression—and uses it as a canvas to talk about the meaning of life and the importance family. Whereas a lot of holiday movies depend on some combination of pratfalls for humor and callbacks for feels, this film opens with an attempted suicide and unfurls an epic worthy of the greatest writers that ever lived.
2: Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
In writer and director John Hughes’ second appearance on this list, Steve Martin and John Candy deliver arguably the best performances of their careers as (respectively) Neal Page, a cranky ad executive trying to get home for holidays, and Del Griffith, a jolly shower ring salesman with undampened spirits. Events quickly throw this odd couple together as they seek to get from New York to Chicago during a blizzard a few days before Thanksgiving. The experience of getting stranded on the way to or from Chicago during the winter is a familiar one for many (I can certainly vouch for its authenticity), yet Hughes takes a simple road movie and uses it to create a funny, emotional and poignant character study. It’s hilarious throughout, and it has one of the best endings in movie history.
1: Die Hard (1988)
I know I’m wading into a long-running debate here, but Die Hard is definitely a Christmas movie, from its start to finish. It’s also one of the best action movies ever made, and Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman deliver next level performances throughout. The action and one liners simply never stop. The jokes are always funny. The stakes are high. And it perfectly captures the vibe of the late 1980s, from its depiction of a coke-fueled corporate holiday party to the ham fisted attempts of the FBI to take down the international terrorists who invade an office tower. It’s a tour de force, no bones about it. It’ll have you making fists with your toes the next time you get off a flight.