Favorite: “A Christmas Carol”
Most Dislike: “Monster Elves From Outer Space”
Best, Jingle All the Way, A Christmas Story.
The best- Patton! Liberating Bastogne on Christmas Eve makes this a real Christmas movie
best : Elvis the Rocking Reindeer! and recent Theater version of Nativity Story.
worst : march of the wooden soldiers - it freaked me out as a kid when the soldiers kept going even as parts of them broke off.
Best: A Christmas Story
Worst: Jim Carry as the Grinch (bring back the cartoon!)
My 2 all-time favorites are “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” (have it on DVD and just saw it yesterday with my kids) and
“White Christmas” with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
My annual Christmas movie list:
Christmas Story
Badder Santa
The Ref
Die Hard
Nightmare Before Christmas
and the latest addition Rare Exports
Most enjoyed with one of the Christmas beers from Ridgeway (Criminally Bad Elf, Reindeer Revolt, Santa’s Butt etc). I’m really more into a grown up Christmas.
My favorite, which hardly anyone has even seen, is “The Ref” with Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey, and Judy Davis. It is a dark comedy set during Christmas, with a pretty screwed up family. Being from Conn, my favorite line is “Connecticut is the 5th ring of Hell”. If you like any of Denis Leary’s comedy, it is worth a rental.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110955/
Worst, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” some slasher movie.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Best: It’s a Wonderful Life (no contest!)
Runners up: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Home Alone
A Christmas Carol
Worst: Any remake of A Christmas Carol featuring a female pop diva playing a modern day Scrooge. Ugh!
The best AND worst: “Toys” (Robin Williams)
The both of us also think the George C. Scott interpretation of Ebenezer Scrooge is the best one, though I also like the musical with Albert Finney.
"Magoo's Christmas Carol" was the very first made-for-TV chrstmas special--ever! I'm All Alone in the World is very moving and We're Despicable! is hilarious.
I don't know why everyone is hating on It's a Wonderful Life. Frank Capra was certainly no Communist (he was a very conservative Republican who sympathized with Generalissimo Franco), but of course that doesn't mean that leftist writers didn't have something to do with the plot, as they allegedly also had with Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But to condemn Wonderful Life and make a hero out of Old Man Potter in the name of Ayn Rand? Absolutely uncalled for! Besides, I thought Communism was secretly run by super-rich bankers???
The absolutely most unusual chrstmas special/cartoon I have ever seen was one that was telecast only once that I'm aware of, back in December of 1987: "Santa Bear's High Flying Adventure":
Part I
Part II