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| Anti-Santa: the best alternative Christmas films on TV Anti-Santa: the best alternative Christmas films on TV | |
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| Bah humbug to traditional Christmas movies. At the tail end of December, the last thing you want as small-screen respite from the festivities is another heart-warming story of a magical Christmas. Or anything involving baubles. Here is a selection of films handily airing on TV over the holiday season to help you through this most magical time of the year. | Bah humbug to traditional Christmas movies. At the tail end of December, the last thing you want as small-screen respite from the festivities is another heart-warming story of a magical Christmas. Or anything involving baubles. Here is a selection of films handily airing on TV over the holiday season to help you through this most magical time of the year. |
| Jaws, chosen by Stuart Heritage | Jaws, chosen by Stuart Heritage |
| (10.25pm, ITV, 28 December) | (10.25pm, ITV, 28 December) |
| Everyone gets sick of Christmas sometimes. At some point during the festive season, the onslaught of lights and food and sincerity will pile up into an enormous drift and suffocate you alive. But there is an antidote to all this cloying sweetness. That antidote is Jaws. | Everyone gets sick of Christmas sometimes. At some point during the festive season, the onslaught of lights and food and sincerity will pile up into an enormous drift and suffocate you alive. But there is an antidote to all this cloying sweetness. That antidote is Jaws. |
| Forget about human kindness. Jaws reminds us that goodwill to all men only stretches as far as the beach, and after that you’re on your own. The sea is dark and deep, and crawling with leviathans that exist exclusively to murder you, legs first. The world is a scary place, and you had better be ready with your strychnine harpoons and exploding scuba tanks, or else it will take you out. If you look really hard, you will find flashes of Christmas spirit – the scene with Brody and his son at dinner is practically Christmas incarnate – but that’s all window dressing for a story about a shark that would kill you in a second if you let it. | Forget about human kindness. Jaws reminds us that goodwill to all men only stretches as far as the beach, and after that you’re on your own. The sea is dark and deep, and crawling with leviathans that exist exclusively to murder you, legs first. The world is a scary place, and you had better be ready with your strychnine harpoons and exploding scuba tanks, or else it will take you out. If you look really hard, you will find flashes of Christmas spirit – the scene with Brody and his son at dinner is practically Christmas incarnate – but that’s all window dressing for a story about a shark that would kill you in a second if you let it. |
| Now that all blockbusters are legally mandated to culminate in scenes in which men with inflatable muscles save a large metropolitan area from a giant space-laser, Jaws is refreshingly simple. There’s a shark. It eats people. Some people go out to kill it. They do. The end. Stripped-down and taut, it is the perfect palate cleanser. In fact, the only thing that could make a Christmas Jaws broadcast any better is if everyone who watched it received a free Mayor Larry Vaughn anchor suit. | Now that all blockbusters are legally mandated to culminate in scenes in which men with inflatable muscles save a large metropolitan area from a giant space-laser, Jaws is refreshingly simple. There’s a shark. It eats people. Some people go out to kill it. They do. The end. Stripped-down and taut, it is the perfect palate cleanser. In fact, the only thing that could make a Christmas Jaws broadcast any better is if everyone who watched it received a free Mayor Larry Vaughn anchor suit. |
| The Remains of the Day, chosen by Hadley Freeman | The Remains of the Day, chosen by Hadley Freeman |
| (Sony Channel and Amazon Video) | (Sony Channel and Amazon Video) |
| In my house, Christmas movies come in two flavours: 80s comedies and period dramas, and The Remains of the Day is the finest modern-day example of the latter. (Ghostbusters is obviously the finest example of the former category, but that’s another issue.) The richest and most moving film from the Merchant Ivory stable, perfectly adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, this is the film I want to curl up with on a dark, melancholy winter’s afternoon; its mood matches the darkness outside, but the brilliance of the storytelling and acting thrills me into most unwinterly optimism. | In my house, Christmas movies come in two flavours: 80s comedies and period dramas, and The Remains of the Day is the finest modern-day example of the latter. (Ghostbusters is obviously the finest example of the former category, but that’s another issue.) The richest and most moving film from the Merchant Ivory stable, perfectly adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, this is the film I want to curl up with on a dark, melancholy winter’s afternoon; its mood matches the darkness outside, but the brilliance of the storytelling and acting thrills me into most unwinterly optimism. |
| So if you’re the kind of person who bangs on about the Emma Thompson scene in Love, Actually, please – please – watch this instead to see Thompson at her heartbroken best. (Seriously, don’t watch Love, Actually. It is genuinely one of the worst movies ever made.) It’s bittersweet to watch Christopher Reeves now, vibrant and healthy, but how cheering to see him be so good in the kind of dramatic role he so rarely got to play. I can’t watch James Fox enough in this, especially when he, as the foolish Lord Darlington, realises his mistake too late. But this is, of course, really Anthony Hopkins’s movie: he has never been better than he is here as Stevens the butler, Hannibal Schmannibal. | So if you’re the kind of person who bangs on about the Emma Thompson scene in Love, Actually, please – please – watch this instead to see Thompson at her heartbroken best. (Seriously, don’t watch Love, Actually. It is genuinely one of the worst movies ever made.) It’s bittersweet to watch Christopher Reeves now, vibrant and healthy, but how cheering to see him be so good in the kind of dramatic role he so rarely got to play. I can’t watch James Fox enough in this, especially when he, as the foolish Lord Darlington, realises his mistake too late. But this is, of course, really Anthony Hopkins’s movie: he has never been better than he is here as Stevens the butler, Hannibal Schmannibal. |
| The Remains of the Day is about Britain during the second world war, but it is also about love and missed chances. So Nazi uniforms and longing looks, all in one of the finest British movies made. This is what holiday movie perfection looks like, folks. | The Remains of the Day is about Britain during the second world war, but it is also about love and missed chances. So Nazi uniforms and longing looks, all in one of the finest British movies made. This is what holiday movie perfection looks like, folks. |
| Oliver! Chosen by Xan Brooks | Oliver! Chosen by Xan Brooks |
| (7pm, W, Christmas Day, and Amazon Video) | (7pm, W, Christmas Day, and Amazon Video) |
| When citing the best Charles Dickens film adaptation, some opt for David Lean’s Great Expectations, others for 1951’s Christmas Carol. But I’m sticking with Oliver!, Carol Reed’s boisterous presentation of the Lionel Bart musical, which has been synonymous with Dickens ever since I first watched it as a kid and assumed he must have written all the songs as well. Then, as now, I accept it as an accurate representation of an 1830s London where constables and cutpurses temporarily set aside their differences in order to congregate for a knees-up beside some tavern or other. | When citing the best Charles Dickens film adaptation, some opt for David Lean’s Great Expectations, others for 1951’s Christmas Carol. But I’m sticking with Oliver!, Carol Reed’s boisterous presentation of the Lionel Bart musical, which has been synonymous with Dickens ever since I first watched it as a kid and assumed he must have written all the songs as well. Then, as now, I accept it as an accurate representation of an 1830s London where constables and cutpurses temporarily set aside their differences in order to congregate for a knees-up beside some tavern or other. |
| In fact, the last time I visited, the film looked just as good as it ever did. I love Oliver! for its rollicking gait and insouciant air and for the robust playing from Ron Moody (as Fagin), Jack Wild (Dodger) and Oliver Reed (a brooding, beautiful Bill Sikes, right before the rot set in). I suspect it might even be a more appropriate seasonal film than A Christmas Carol, in that its world of surging crowds, violent avarice and random kindness speaks more to the reality of Christmas than some pious tale of a miser who winds up buying a turkey. | In fact, the last time I visited, the film looked just as good as it ever did. I love Oliver! for its rollicking gait and insouciant air and for the robust playing from Ron Moody (as Fagin), Jack Wild (Dodger) and Oliver Reed (a brooding, beautiful Bill Sikes, right before the rot set in). I suspect it might even be a more appropriate seasonal film than A Christmas Carol, in that its world of surging crowds, violent avarice and random kindness speaks more to the reality of Christmas than some pious tale of a miser who winds up buying a turkey. |
| And maybe the musical is the perfect vessel for Oliver Twist. This takes what might otherwise be seen as the novel’s weak points (the pantomime villainy; the cloying sentimentality; the facile, bouncing-ball plot) and makes a bonus of them. Amplified to a theatrical pitch, the tale casts off its social-realist clogs and begins dancing around the stage-flats like some festive carouser; merry one moment, maudlin the next. | And maybe the musical is the perfect vessel for Oliver Twist. This takes what might otherwise be seen as the novel’s weak points (the pantomime villainy; the cloying sentimentality; the facile, bouncing-ball plot) and makes a bonus of them. Amplified to a theatrical pitch, the tale casts off its social-realist clogs and begins dancing around the stage-flats like some festive carouser; merry one moment, maudlin the next. |
| I’ve reviewed the situation; arrived right back where I started. Oliver! (big as life and twice as noisy) remains the perfect Christmas Dickens. | I’ve reviewed the situation; arrived right back where I started. Oliver! (big as life and twice as noisy) remains the perfect Christmas Dickens. |
| 22 Jump Street, chosen by Catherine Shoard | 22 Jump Street, chosen by Catherine Shoard |
| (Amazon Video) | (Amazon Video) |
| ’Tis the season for shameless repackaging and gleeful repetition. So what more fitting late-night, eggnogged-out cheerer-upper than this deliriously silly, but also remarkably smart, comedy sequel? It, too, delights in ostentatious tradition for its own sake; knowing yet affectionate cribbing from the recent past. The plot is exactly the same as the original, 2012’s 21 Jump Street, a belated big-screen transfer for the 80s TV show, this time round starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. | ’Tis the season for shameless repackaging and gleeful repetition. So what more fitting late-night, eggnogged-out cheerer-upper than this deliriously silly, but also remarkably smart, comedy sequel? It, too, delights in ostentatious tradition for its own sake; knowing yet affectionate cribbing from the recent past. The plot is exactly the same as the original, 2012’s 21 Jump Street, a belated big-screen transfer for the 80s TV show, this time round starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. |
| The undercover cops must infiltrate a place of education (first time round, a high-school; this time, a college) to try to identify the dealer trading in a new drug popular with the students. They must battle youngsters suspicious of their crows’ feet, a tough-talking boss (Ice Cube), and their conflicted feelings about each other. What 22 Jump Street manages, however, is to be a yet-crisper facsimile of the original’s script, its set pieces funnier, its jokes more creative, and its two stars now ebulliently confident of their own skills, and of our love. | The undercover cops must infiltrate a place of education (first time round, a high-school; this time, a college) to try to identify the dealer trading in a new drug popular with the students. They must battle youngsters suspicious of their crows’ feet, a tough-talking boss (Ice Cube), and their conflicted feelings about each other. What 22 Jump Street manages, however, is to be a yet-crisper facsimile of the original’s script, its set pieces funnier, its jokes more creative, and its two stars now ebulliently confident of their own skills, and of our love. |
| But the chief reason it feels fitting for the time of year at which your sense of benevolence might be under strain is that it’s just so damn nice. Rarely has a multiplex bro-romp proved that comedy doesn’t need to be cruel more effectively than this film. It advocates kindness and consideration above all else, in every relationship. It continually wrongfoots the audience with an admirable and very funny gay rights thread, which sees chief jock Tatum rebuking bullies, and himself, for their homophobic language. And its standout gag is a malapropism involving Cate Blanchett. Fun for all the family, almost. | But the chief reason it feels fitting for the time of year at which your sense of benevolence might be under strain is that it’s just so damn nice. Rarely has a multiplex bro-romp proved that comedy doesn’t need to be cruel more effectively than this film. It advocates kindness and consideration above all else, in every relationship. It continually wrongfoots the audience with an admirable and very funny gay rights thread, which sees chief jock Tatum rebuking bullies, and himself, for their homophobic language. And its standout gag is a malapropism involving Cate Blanchett. Fun for all the family, almost. |
| Bee Movie, chosen by Peter Bradshaw | Bee Movie, chosen by Peter Bradshaw |
| (10.20pm, BBC2, Christmas Day, and Netflix and Amazon Video) | (10.20pm, BBC2, Christmas Day, and Netflix and Amazon Video) |
| Most Hollywood animations, even the best of them, are put together by teams of laser-eyed professionals who know what works and don’t want to reinvent the wheel. The adorable lead character goes on a journey with songs in the company of quirky animal friends who do quickfire gags. That’s it. | Most Hollywood animations, even the best of them, are put together by teams of laser-eyed professionals who know what works and don’t want to reinvent the wheel. The adorable lead character goes on a journey with songs in the company of quirky animal friends who do quickfire gags. That’s it. |
| Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie isn’t like that: it feels almost organic, natural, a hand-crafted comedy that follows the meandering, freewheeling train-of-thought typical of this observational comic. In Bee Movie, as in Seinfeld’s TV show, there is no hugging, no learning. Well: a minimum anyway. Seinfeld voices Barry, an idealistic young Everybee who falls in love with a human florist (voiced by Renée Zellweger) but then realises that he and his comrades are being systematically exploited for their delicious honey by their human oppressors. | Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie isn’t like that: it feels almost organic, natural, a hand-crafted comedy that follows the meandering, freewheeling train-of-thought typical of this observational comic. In Bee Movie, as in Seinfeld’s TV show, there is no hugging, no learning. Well: a minimum anyway. Seinfeld voices Barry, an idealistic young Everybee who falls in love with a human florist (voiced by Renée Zellweger) but then realises that he and his comrades are being systematically exploited for their delicious honey by their human oppressors. |
| The romantic storyline is supplanted by a hilarious, but weirdly inspiring courtroom saga in which Barry takes on the big human battalions and people such as Sting, who is guilty of cultural appropriation with his contemptible “prance-about stage name”. It is a comedy that starts funny, is funny in the middle, and ends up funny, unlike the usual Hollywood model in which the movie is frontloaded with humour – the laughs are only in the premise, the opening act, before it winds down into sentimentality. Bee Movie is a rare treat and one of Seinfeld’s unsung achievements. | The romantic storyline is supplanted by a hilarious, but weirdly inspiring courtroom saga in which Barry takes on the big human battalions and people such as Sting, who is guilty of cultural appropriation with his contemptible “prance-about stage name”. It is a comedy that starts funny, is funny in the middle, and ends up funny, unlike the usual Hollywood model in which the movie is frontloaded with humour – the laughs are only in the premise, the opening act, before it winds down into sentimentality. Bee Movie is a rare treat and one of Seinfeld’s unsung achievements. |
| The Naked Gun: from the Files of Police Squad! Chosen by Steve Rose | The Naked Gun: from the Files of Police Squad! Chosen by Steve Rose |
| (10pm, ITV4, Boxing Day, and Amazon Video) | (10pm, ITV4, Boxing Day, and Amazon Video) |
| Christmas holiday? Work is a holiday compared with Christmas. Which is why my kind of film at this time of year is one that a) requires minimal brainpower, b) makes me laugh, c) I haven’t seen for a while, and d) has nothing to do with Christmas. The Naked Gun ticks those boxes. Most people remember Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker’s earlier hits, Airplane! and Top Secret! The Naked Gun is more of the same: a spoof of the hard-boiled detective thriller packed with nonsense dialogue, corny puns, movie parodies and inspired slapstick, all carried by the zen master of deadpan, Leslie Nielsen. | Christmas holiday? Work is a holiday compared with Christmas. Which is why my kind of film at this time of year is one that a) requires minimal brainpower, b) makes me laugh, c) I haven’t seen for a while, and d) has nothing to do with Christmas. The Naked Gun ticks those boxes. Most people remember Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker’s earlier hits, Airplane! and Top Secret! The Naked Gun is more of the same: a spoof of the hard-boiled detective thriller packed with nonsense dialogue, corny puns, movie parodies and inspired slapstick, all carried by the zen master of deadpan, Leslie Nielsen. |
| I still find it difficult to keep a straight face thinking of, say, Nielsen’s “casing the joint” outing, which ends with him inadvertently destroying Ricardo Montalbán’s office, fellating a gargoyle, then threatening a woman with a stone dildo. Or his mangling of the national anthem while posing as an opera singer at the baseball match. It’s all funnier because it’s him doing it. | I still find it difficult to keep a straight face thinking of, say, Nielsen’s “casing the joint” outing, which ends with him inadvertently destroying Ricardo Montalbán’s office, fellating a gargoyle, then threatening a woman with a stone dildo. Or his mangling of the national anthem while posing as an opera singer at the baseball match. It’s all funnier because it’s him doing it. |
| There’s an added nostalgia element seeing The Naked Gun now. It was a time when Weird Al Yankovic could be a celebrity cameo, when the US’s enemies included Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini and, er,, er, Mikhail Gorbachev, and when OJ Simpson was a lovable former sporting hero (in a karmic running gag, he is accidentally clobbered every time he appears). | There’s an added nostalgia element seeing The Naked Gun now. It was a time when Weird Al Yankovic could be a celebrity cameo, when the US’s enemies included Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini and, er,, er, Mikhail Gorbachev, and when OJ Simpson was a lovable former sporting hero (in a karmic running gag, he is accidentally clobbered every time he appears). |
| Yes, The Naked Gun is dated, occasionally dodgy, and very silly, but the carpet-bombing of comedy will satisfy the sternest of critics, the shortest of attention spans and the weariest of festive souls. At this time of year, I’m all three. | Yes, The Naked Gun is dated, occasionally dodgy, and very silly, but the carpet-bombing of comedy will satisfy the sternest of critics, the shortest of attention spans and the weariest of festive souls. At this time of year, I’m all three. |
| Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, chosen by Ryan Gilbey | Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, chosen by Ryan Gilbey |
| (11am, ITV, 30 December, and Netflix and Amazon Video) | (11am, ITV, 30 December, and Netflix and Amazon Video) |
| There are only three main performers in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Michael Caine as a debonair conman living high on the hog in the Côte D’Azur; Steve Martin as the uncouth pretender who becomes Caine’s own Eliza Doolittle; and Glenne Headly as the out-of-towner whom the tricksters compete to swindle. But the list of aliases distributed among the cast (including Dr Emil Shaffhausen, Lady Fanny of Omaha, Chips O’Toole and Ruprecht the Monkey Boy) suggests a far larger ensemble. | There are only three main performers in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Michael Caine as a debonair conman living high on the hog in the Côte D’Azur; Steve Martin as the uncouth pretender who becomes Caine’s own Eliza Doolittle; and Glenne Headly as the out-of-towner whom the tricksters compete to swindle. But the list of aliases distributed among the cast (including Dr Emil Shaffhausen, Lady Fanny of Omaha, Chips O’Toole and Ruprecht the Monkey Boy) suggests a far larger ensemble. |
| This 1988 romp is a celebration of performance and play-acting, of putting on daft voices and spinning tall tales. The scoundrels have transformed their lives into playgrounds where they do nothing but lark around in pursuit of money. For once, women get to play too: Headly is a hoot, and watch out also for Barbara Harris, from Nashville and Family Plot, as a credulous holidaymaker with more riches than sense. | This 1988 romp is a celebration of performance and play-acting, of putting on daft voices and spinning tall tales. The scoundrels have transformed their lives into playgrounds where they do nothing but lark around in pursuit of money. For once, women get to play too: Headly is a hoot, and watch out also for Barbara Harris, from Nashville and Family Plot, as a credulous holidaymaker with more riches than sense. |
| Frank Oz directs briskly on sets and locations that would make a department store lighting section look murky. This may not be great cinema, but it is great comedy, with no end of delirious set-pieces, from Martin trying and failing repeatedly to remember Caine’s name while stuck in prison, to the torture Caine puts him through during one ruse when he is feigning paralysis. Such casual venality may not sound so funny when the world is staring down the barrel of the next US administration. The film is a good way, though, to forget for a few hours about any real-life dirty rotten scoundrels out there. | Frank Oz directs briskly on sets and locations that would make a department store lighting section look murky. This may not be great cinema, but it is great comedy, with no end of delirious set-pieces, from Martin trying and failing repeatedly to remember Caine’s name while stuck in prison, to the torture Caine puts him through during one ruse when he is feigning paralysis. Such casual venality may not sound so funny when the world is staring down the barrel of the next US administration. The film is a good way, though, to forget for a few hours about any real-life dirty rotten scoundrels out there. |
| The Terminator, chosen by Andrew Pulver | The Terminator, chosen by Andrew Pulver |
| (9pm, Spike, 27 December, and Amazon Video) | (9pm, Spike, 27 December, and Amazon Video) |
| There is a special category of films that don’t get much acclaim: The Ones You Always Watch When They’re On. You know: you turn on the TV, tired and/or bored, can’t be doing with anything that takes effort. There’s this thing, it’s on, you think about flipping channel but for some reason, you keep going, and going, and going … | There is a special category of films that don’t get much acclaim: The Ones You Always Watch When They’re On. You know: you turn on the TV, tired and/or bored, can’t be doing with anything that takes effort. There’s this thing, it’s on, you think about flipping channel but for some reason, you keep going, and going, and going … |
| The king of TOYAWWTO used to be Bond, or the Carry Ons – but who, seriously, can be doing with them nowadays? For me, the archetypal TOYAWWTO is Starship Troopers: I must have seen it 50 times. Close second: The Matrix. But neither of them is on over Christmas as far as I can see, so it’s down to No 3 on the list: The Terminator. | The king of TOYAWWTO used to be Bond, or the Carry Ons – but who, seriously, can be doing with them nowadays? For me, the archetypal TOYAWWTO is Starship Troopers: I must have seen it 50 times. Close second: The Matrix. But neither of them is on over Christmas as far as I can see, so it’s down to No 3 on the list: The Terminator. |
| More than 30 years on, The Terminator looks distinctly odd in parts: Linda Hamilton’s fuzz-brush haircut for one, the slavering worship of naked Arnie for another. It’s also strange to dwell on James Cameron’s idea of an early 80s nightclub for punks and hipsters, as well as his not-far-beneath-the-surface homicidal hatred of those selfsame punks and hipsters. But The Terminator remains as fantastically watchable as ever, in the purest sense of the word: it’s like gobbling down a whole tube of glucose tablets in one go, without the long-term medical consequences. | More than 30 years on, The Terminator looks distinctly odd in parts: Linda Hamilton’s fuzz-brush haircut for one, the slavering worship of naked Arnie for another. It’s also strange to dwell on James Cameron’s idea of an early 80s nightclub for punks and hipsters, as well as his not-far-beneath-the-surface homicidal hatred of those selfsame punks and hipsters. But The Terminator remains as fantastically watchable as ever, in the purest sense of the word: it’s like gobbling down a whole tube of glucose tablets in one go, without the long-term medical consequences. |
| When you are punchdrunk from festivity, Christmas is a great time for TOYAWWTO. (It’s not just about action or sci-fi; Room with a View, for me, is a big one, and I don’t think it’s possible to watch End of the Century, the Ramones doc, too many times.) The only downside that I can see is that The Terminator doesn’t seem to have been double-billed with Terminator 2. So perhaps all our Christmases haven’t come at once. | When you are punchdrunk from festivity, Christmas is a great time for TOYAWWTO. (It’s not just about action or sci-fi; Room with a View, for me, is a big one, and I don’t think it’s possible to watch End of the Century, the Ramones doc, too many times.) The only downside that I can see is that The Terminator doesn’t seem to have been double-billed with Terminator 2. So perhaps all our Christmases haven’t come at once. |