The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

10 great Christmas movies that are not the usual ones to watch on platforms

2022-12-23T11:20:03.409Z


An alternative list of titles that were part of the Christmas canon of yesteryear, common on television in the 1970s and early 1980s


Every year around this time the media is filled with film recommendations with which to dream of a time of love and tenderness and perhaps also of pain or longing.

However, we (almost) always go to the same titles, the best or simply the most popular, currently installed on the contemporary Christmas podium.

Stories that the vast majority of the public already knows and has enjoyed punctually and consistently to satiety:

How beautiful it is to live!, Plácido, The great family, Nightmare before Christmas, Die Hard, Gremlins, Love actually, The holiday ( Vacation), Home Alone, Peter's Friends

and a few more.

Now, along with them, not a few films that can be claimed as unbeatable for the end of the year tend to be left out of the selections, at least not of the anthologies that are not too broad.

More information

Women in politics: 10 movies to watch on platforms about figures who broke glass ceilings

That is why we have proposed this other alternative list, made up of wonderful titles that were part of the Christmas canon of yesteryear, common on television in the 1970s and early 1980s, but which over time have been left out and may be unknown to everyone. the new generations;

by gender stories that, in principle, would not fit with the most traditional Christmas values;

and by masterpieces of cinema (just plain, without the need for any party), set at the end of the year around Easter and with some involvement in their plots, but which are not usually considered Christmas movies.

They are all on platforms.

Christmas story

(1951) by Brian Desmond Hurst

Until the late eighties, it was the version of the Charles Dickens story that they used to broadcast on TV around the holidays.

However, the appearance of other notable rereadings, such as

The Muppets in A Christmas Carol

(1992) or Robert Zemeckis's animated film of the same name with Jim Carrey, from 2009, relegated Hurst's work, the best vision of Mister Scrooge ever, to the trunk of hidden classics.

His portrayal of the miser, of the passion for money over even love, and how certain vital circumstances blacken the human soul, is fierce.

With a majestic expressiveness in its staging and in the treatment of light, this

Christmas Carol

it appeals, naturally, to something so basic, but sometimes so old-fashioned, like being good people.

The gestural conversion of actor Alastair Sim in the final redemption stretch, from almost horror drama to comedy, is prodigious.

Available on

Amazon

and

Filmin

.

Hiding in Bruges

(2008), by Martin McDonagh

confessional.

Priest: "Did you murder for money?"

Parishioner: “Yes, father, not out of anger or anything.

For money".

Religious implications appear throughout the story created by playwright and filmmaker McDonagh.

Two contract killers stranded over Christmas in Bruges, on the run from a horrendous crime.

But, above all, awaiting the arrival of a personality, like a modern version of

Waiting for Godot

,

including the absurdity of some dialogues, in which this time the aforementioned does end up appearing.

And at the base, remorse, the one that comes to us at the end of the year for what was done badly, and that can lead us to a certain reconstruction;

in this case, before Judgment Day, in the Groeninge museum of the Belgian city, in front of the painting of El Bosco, moral mirror of the murderers who observe him.

Black comedy, criminal intrigue, existential drama.

Is it Bruges, or Purgatory itself?

Available in

Movistar

.

One also lives with illusion

(1947), by George Seaton

A moment from the film 'You also live with illusion'.

Seaton anticipated with his film an almost current dichotomy: the double path for children between the adult rationalization of Christmas, gifts and personal relationships, or the maintenance of magic and longing.

Also raised as a thunderous apotheosis of consumerism, to such a level that the production seems to be financed by the department stores of gifts Macy and Gimbel (although it was not),

De ilusión también se vive

tells of the arrival in our world of Santa Claus, hired to play himself in a parade and in a department store in New York.

Which leads a good and always sincere man to a trial in which he must prove that he is the true myth of Christmas.

Be careful, because children who do not yet know the secret of the cake around gifts can start to shoot their parents inconvenient questions.

And a phrase for those addicted to hope: "Faith is believing in things that common sense tells you not to believe."

Available on Disney+.

Black Christmas

(1974), by Bob Clark

A moment of 'Black Christmas'.

Before going down in the history of youth cinema with the unbridled testosterone of

Porky's,

Clark was a horror specialist who, along with Tobe Hooper and

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

had

given legitimacy to the

slasher

subgenre in 1974. series of young people by the work of a psychopath).

With the wonderful

black Christmas

also began the myth of the

final girl,

or the brave and judicious girl who usually survives the killings in this type of film.

Clark, armed with a handheld camera with wide-angle lenses, and forming continuous subjective shots from the point of view of the murderer, also offers a master lesson in the use of the color red as an element of restlessness.

A thunderous feminist film, which advocates the sexual liberation of girls in the face of the reluctance of male power (fathers, police...), which is also ridiculed, and which dares with an amazing defense of abortion and the individual decision of the woman.

Available on

Filmin

.

The Bishop's Wife

(1947) by Henry Koster

A moment from 'The Bishop's Wife'.

Like

Cuento de Navidad

and

De ilusione también se vive,

another with which decades ago it was common to come across on these dates and now, on the other hand, it is necessary to search for it.

The protagonist is an Anglican pastor who intends to build a cathedral, but the conflict is transferable to any labor, social and political field: or how to lower oneself before the power that can make our purposes come true, no matter how laudable they may be, even at the cost of of constant personal humiliation.

The mangoneo, from the hand of the mamoneo, and a guardian angel that comes from heaven to give common sense to the bishop's intentions and, incidentally, hopelessly fall in love with his wife and any woman or man with whom he comes across in the earth.

But there was never a more attractive angel: Cary Grant.

The naturalness and sense of entertainment as a way to live and enjoy.

Available in

Amazon

and

Filmin

.

Tangerine

(2015), by Sean Baker

A moment from the movie 'Tangerine'.

The first sentence of the film already sets the Christmas tone against the current: "Happy Christmas Eve, bitch!".

A prostitute says it to a transgender friend, who spends the entire story looking for her boyfriend (or something similar to a boyfriend).

With an almost documentary style, Baker, one of the champions of the best contemporary American social cinema, with magnificent later films such as

The Florida Project

and

Red Rocket,

shows its usual color: ranges of blues and pinks to illustrate a story of sadness, loneliness, genius, claw, sweetness and sorority about human beings with the desire to live and improve.

Christmas carols are sung, as in any classic Christmas movie, but here neither the characters nor the settings are the usual ones.

In fact, it takes place in Hollywood (Tinseltown, in slang), with summer weather even in December.

Available on

Filmin

and

Mubi

.

fanny and alexander

(1982) by Ingmar Bergman

Three and a quarter hours of indelible images with Bergman's own childhood as a seed: the son of a rigid Lutheran pastor, and a lover of theater and the creation of stories since he was a child.

“Anything can happen.

Everything is possible and plausible.

Time and space do not exist.

On an insignificant basis of reality, the imagination spins and weaves new patterns”, is said in the film, quoting Strindberg.

Thus, the contrast between a delusional, libertine, theatrical and drunk with life first family, and a second, violent, austere, gloomy and cruel, is always experienced through Alexander's eyes, with its temptations and, above all, with its ghosts. .

Or how the Christmas glow of the first part of the story goes out in pursuit of a painful and suffering righteousness.

Winner of four Oscars.

Available in

Movistar +

,

HBO

and

Filmin

.

Metropolitan

(1990) by Whit Stillman

A moment from the movie 'Metropolitan'.

Cheeky

snobs

theorizing about socialism at a Christmas party.

Posh New York snapping at the newest member of the gang, a humble university student, why not buy a quality coat instead of wearing that trench coat with which he usually embitters their eyes every night.

Social and sentimental relationships from the end of the 20th century that seem to be from the beginning of the 19th century.

If even Jane Austen and her

Mansfield Park

, she is the engine that moves them, even making it explicit in one of the dialogues.

Stillman, one of the most famous

indie

directors of the nineties, nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay, came out with a warm, cynical and sophisticated film that, as is also stated in the text, can come to seem

The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

in a Christmas and youth version.

Available on

Mubi

.

Eyes Wide Shut

(1999), by Stanley Kubrick

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in 'Eyes Wide Shut'.Eyes wide shut

Infidelity on dates of concord, fidelity, tenderness and love, is it a double infidelity?

The adultery of thought, or desire, which can sometimes be worse than work (and forgetfulness), is inviting the perfect couple to a tempting slip.

"If you didn't fuck those models, it was out of consideration for me, and not because you didn't really want to," Nicole Kidman's character, also married in real life, says to Tom Cruise's character in one of those perverse

casting games.

that Kubrick liked so much.

Perhaps that is fidelity, or definitely, the need to practice what makes explicit the last (and historic) word of the film, and of the filmography of the master of all genres.

Meanwhile, as Cruise wanders through a hell of depravity, humiliation and various bacchanalia, Kubrick places dozens of Christmas trees indoors and outdoors, as a reminder of the time of hope and glory in which his sexual fantasy unfolds.

Available on

HBO

.

A Christmas Carol

(2008), by Arnaud Desplechin

A moment from 'A Christmas Carol'.

The definitive film about dysfunctional families who must spend Christmas together in one house, despite the disappointment.

A grandmother with a rare form of leukemia;

a schizophrenic grandson;

a tarambana son who has not been able to see her own family for the last five years, as a form of exile imposed by her sister who paid her million-dollar debts in exchange for never having to see or endure it again.

And all this, in the form of comedy.

Black, of course, with dialogue bright and dark as coal.

Desplechin addresses tenderness and family meanness from the most disastrous affinities, not exactly elective.

And the search among the family for a bone marrow donor for the matriarch played by Catherine Deneuve ends in a strange form of delicacy within a delirious microcosm,

Available on

Filmin

.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-12-23

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-05T14:51:51.897Z

Trends 24h

Life/Entertain 2024-03-28T17:17:20.523Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.