Christmas Cinema 2013 Roundup

Merry Christmas, everybody! It’s December 25th, and that means that I’m not likely to be online until late this evening — and most of you probably won’t be reading anything on the blog until late at night or tomorrow either. So, rather than put up a review that nobody will read, I’ll just do as I did last year, and put up a little bit of light content in the form of the annual roundup. Everything from this season will be found below.

This year’s Favorite Films selection for Christmas was the original Miracle on 34th Street, and it was an easy selection to make. I had been wanting to cover it sooner or later, and was fortunate enough to stumble upon an unopened DVD at a thrift store just before December. Serendipity at work. Unfortunately, that was as far as serendipity went, as — despite intending to seek out films for the season — it proved difficult to track down viable candidates to watch. Of course, I’ll admit it didn’t help that there were a few days taken out of the schedule here and there, but in truth there simply weren’t any Christmas films I had available to watch for those days anyway. Thus, counting tomorrow’s review, there were only 12 films selected for this year’s batch of Christmas Cinema. It says something, though, that this is still larger than any year past. As I’ve said before, it’s hard to find Christmas movies that aren’t made-for-TV drivel.

But enough complaining about what could and couldn’t be found. Here’s this year’s breakdown:

Arthur Christmas
Beyond Tomorrow
A Christmas Carol (2009)
Gremlins
It Happened on Fifth Avenue
Meet John Doe
Scrooge (1935)
Trapped in Paradise

The Great Rupert (A Christmas Wish)
Holiday Inn

Casper’s Haunted Christmas

Now, it’ll be pretty obvious that the breakdown is a lot less varied than in most of my holiday roundups. On the down side, I did not find any new 5-star Christmas films this year. But on the plus side, I also didn’t find any new 1-star Christmas films. Better yet, nearly everything got a 4-star rating. If I can say that I enjoyed nearly every film I watched, that’s a pretty good crop of Christmas films.

As usual, the blog decor will revert to a non-Christmas design in a few days, while the Christmas Cinema posts will retain the Christmas 2013 blog banner. And we are done with Christmas Cinema for another year. Tomorrow’s film is technically set at Christmas, but wound up having such a small Christmas influence that I don’t think it really counts. I won’t say what film it is today, but if you want a hint — those few of you checking in on the 25th — just ask yourself what possible reason I could have for reviewing a film set at Christmas, on the day after Christmas.

For now, though, there are presents to open and people to see. Merry Christmas, everyone.