November 22, 2012

Holiday Movies That Don’t Suck

"OMG, honey, I'm so glad we rented 'Die Hard!'"<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=family+movie+theater&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=11740729&src=4849b0a4eedf3b8f62221e33e6cc607f-1-95">william casey</a>/Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

We’re officially in the holiday season—which means there’s secular Christmas pop music on every radio station, families hugging, good food being made (hopefully), weeping elf-slaves meeting the demands of online shopping, and, of course, holiday movies on every TV channel.

For family viewing, there are the obvious staples: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life basically gets all the airtime in the world as Christmas approaches. Animated Disney and Pixar movies do well on TV this time of year. Charlie Brown, Kevin McCallister, and National Lampoon are also ubiquitous options.

Here are six family movies for the holidays that you might have overlooked—and another five holiday-ready flicks that you might want to watch without the kids:

Fantastic Mr. Fox: In 2009, director Wes Anderson took a critically acclaimed stab at stop-motion animation, and adapted Roald Dahl’s (Scarlett Johansson-endorsed) children’s book from 1970. George Clooney and Meryl Streep voice a married fox couple who go up against three mean-spirited farmers. The film’s soundtrack also includes the Bobby Fuller Four, the Beach Boys, and “Street Fighting Man” by The Rolling Stones:

Meet Me in St. Louis: The 1944 classic, with Judy Garland being Judy Garland:

The Muppets: This came out last year, and featured a bunch of new original songs by Flight of the Conchords member Bret McKenzie. It is arguably the best Muppet movie ever. The film also provoked a depressingly hilarious conservative backlash. (Muppets have a long-running left-wing bias.)

Bolt: This 2008 computer-animated film is easy to write off as a Pixar knock-off. But it’s actually got a lot of heart and visual oomph. Also, one of the main characters is a lovably delusional and insane hamster named Rhino, who does things like suggest snapping a security guard’s neck:

The Last Waltz: It’s never too early to introduce your small children to amazing music. Martin Scorsese’s documentary captures The Band‘s star-studded farewell concert, which took place on Thanksgiving 1976. The film is rated PG and it’s family-friendly, mostly because all the cocaine involved in the concert was edited-out. Here’s a clip, this one of Eric Clapton jamming with The Band before a giddy audience:

The Absent-Minded Professor: This 1961 Disney picture provided the basis for the 1997 Robin Williams comedy Flubber. Here’s the film in its entirety:

And now, here’s the R-rated section of this list. After the kids finish gorging on turkey and conk out decisively, here are five holiday movies that fall squarely into the category of NSFW. They are five films—filled with sex, naughty language, gore, and crude humor—that have Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and crisp winter written all over them:

The Hebrew Hammer: A blaxploitation flick, but with stereotypical Jews with guns. (The end credits read, “No Animals or Gentiles were harmed in the making of this Motion Picture.”)

This classic scene—vengeance, booze, neo-Nazis—says it all:

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas: Dolly Parton (as Miss Mona) leads the girls in singing “Hard Candy Christmas,” one of the all-time great non-Christmas-y Christmas songs that came directly out of musical theater:

Die Hard: Quite simply, the ultimate Christmas movie.

ThanksKilling: Yes, this movie exists. It’s about an evil turkey who murders college kids while they’re trying to enjoy Thanksgiving vacation. Click here for the trailer, and here for a delightful write-up from Forbes. Here’s the poster:

ViaYou heard them: “BOOBS IN THE FIRST SECOND!” Via In Broad Daylight Films

Eastern Promises: This is how Russian mobsters and Naomi Watts spend Christmastime (in a brutally violent David Cronenberg movie, anyway).

Go ahead and put your holiday movie suggestions in the comments below.

Click here to read more movie and TV coverage from Mother Jones.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate