Films & Series What Christmas movies are you watching?

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My wife and I start the season slow with films that are tangental to Christmas, LA Confidential and Die Hard don't make this list (a little raw for Christmas fun), but Little Women, The Thin Man, The Nun's Story, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Goodbye Mr. Chips do (all have Christmas moments). Last night we moved on to one of the core films, My Three Angels (sweet enough to give you a tooth ache, but worth it to watch Peter Ustinov).

However, I don't like Holiday Inn or White Christmas.
 
My wife and I start the season slow with films that are tangental to Christmas, LA Confidential and Die Hard don't make this list (a little raw for Christmas fun), but Little Women, The Thin Man, The Nun's Story, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Goodbye Mr. Chips do (all have Christmas moments). Last night we moved on to one of the core films, My Three Angels (sweet enough to give you a tooth ache, but worth it to watch Peter Ustinov).

However, I don't like Holiday Inn or White Christmas.

I'm really enjoying the movie "The First Temptation of Christ", a Brazilian comedy.


The synopsis says that Jesus turns 30 and takes a special guest to meet his family, but the party has other surprises.


This is just the official trailer for the movie which premiered December 3 on NETFLIX. It contains no subtitles, but the movie served on NETFLIX can be viewed subtitled.



The film that this Brazilian comedy group made for NETFLIX last year, titled "If Drinking Don't Supper," won the Emmy for "Best Comedy" at the awards ceremony held on 11/25/2019 in New York.


Like the film aired last year and awarded this year in New York, this one is also a provocation not only to the most fervent religious but to any God-fearing that have afraid to question Christian values.


This year neopentecostal Evangelicals (neopentecostal Protestants) have a virtual petition that already has over 350,000 signatures for NETFLIX to remove the film from its portfolio. I'm a Roman Catholic and I loved the movie.


I believe in free speech. NETFLIX has a broad portfolio of biblical films. The fervorous christians can choose one to watch or, if offended, NETFLIX's unsubscribe. What cannot happen is to demand that the film be removed so that no one will watch it because it supposedly offends Christian values. People are free to watch or not what they want and no one has the right to dictate what they can and cannot watch.


I believe Jesus himself would find the movie very entertaining.


Cheers :) :)
 
My wife and I start the season slow with films that are tangental to Christmas, LA Confidential and Die Hard don't make this list (a little raw for Christmas fun), but Little Women, The Thin Man, The Nun's Story, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Goodbye Mr. Chips do (all have Christmas moments). Last night we moved on to one of the core films, My Three Angels (sweet enough to give you a tooth ache, but worth it to watch Peter Ustinov).

However, I don't like Holiday Inn or White Christmas.

Ah, you're a family after my own heart. I absolutely love Little Women and The Nun's Story, and very much like Goodbye Mr. Chips, and The Thin Man. Even if Christmas is tangential in them, it's very important, and they're right for the season.

I also dislike Holiday Inn and White Christmas. I think I watched them once. That was enough.

I'm shocked you know My Three Angels. So few people I know have seen it. I do like it very much.

The only film where we part company is Meet Me in St. Louis. I know it's heresy, but I'm not a big Judy Garland person.

Which is your favorite version of Little Women? My own favorite is the one with June Allyson.

Of the ones you haven't mentioned, I'll start with my absolute favorite "real" Christmas movie: It's a Wonderful Life. I've lost count of how many times I've watched it, and I always cry.

A Christmas Carol is also a must. My preferred version is the 1951 one with Alastair Syms.

We do also watch Home Alone for comic relief. :)

While You Were Sleeping, while not a Christmas movie per se has a lot of Christmas in it, and I really like it.

Some more of my favorites that are like that are:The Preacher's Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young, and An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.The Bells of St. Mary's is usually on there too.

I do watch Miracle on 34th Street every year, but it's not in the top five.

Honorable Mention goes to
Shop Around the Corner

As anyone can see, I don't like anyone messing with Christmas. The more sentiment the better.

Years ago they used to broadcast Amahl and the Night Visitors. I can't find it anymore.


Between being taught by nuns all the way through high school, and movies like The Nun's Story, The Keys of the Kingdom, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allyson, Lilies of the Field, and especially the Song Of Bernadette, I was convinced for a long time I was meant to be a nun.
 
I find the people who still cultivate the spirit of Christmas magnificent.

I am a Christian and a fervent admirer of Jesus Christ, whom I always refer to as a father.

I take part in Christmas get-togethers and even like some sweet christmas movies that are shown on open TV at the end of the year. But I believe the true spirit of Christmas is long gone. People only think of Santa Claus, in exchange gifts and eat and drink until the new year. Does anyone remember that we are celebrating the birth of the Christ? Few, I believe.

I have a baby album made by my mother with love, with all the stages of my growth. The album has photos and even has an envelope with a strand of my baby hair, which Mom cut and saved very lovingly. Interestingly, on the album there is a question: What would you like your child to be when he grew up? She, who studied at a boarding school in a French nuns High School of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent of Paul (so much that she spoke French and Latin very well) replied: I wish my son were a priest. She would find out later that I had no vocation to be a priest and didn't even consider more that possibility anymore, poor thing. But that's another story. LOL :)
 
Ah, you're a family after my own heart. I absolutely love Little Women and The Nun's Story, and very much like Goodbye Mr. Chips, and The Thin Man. Even if Christmas is tangential in them, it's very important, and they're right for the season.

I also dislike Holiday Inn and White Christmas. I think I watched them once. That was enough.

I'm shocked you know My Three Angels. So few people I know have seen it. I do like it very much.

The only film where we part company is Meet Me in St. Louis. I know it's heresy, but I'm not a big Judy Garland person.

Which is your favorite version of Little Women? My own favorite is the one with June Allyson.

Of the ones you haven't mentioned, I'll start with my absolute favorite "real" Christmas movie: It's a Wonderful Life. I've lost count of how many times I've watched it, and I always cry.

A Christmas Carol is also a must. My preferred version is the 1951 one with Alastair Syms.

We do also watch Home Alone for comic relief. :)

While You Were Sleeping, while not a Christmas movie per se has a lot of Christmas in it, and I really like it.

Some more of my favorites that are like that are:The Preacher's Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young, and An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.The Bells of St. Mary's is usually on there too.

I do watch Miracle on 34th Street every year, but it's not in the top five.

Honorable Mention goes to
Shop Around the Corner

As anyone can see, I don't like anyone messing with Christmas. The more sentiment the better.

Years ago they used to broadcast Amahl and the Night Visitors. I can't find it anymore.


Between being taught by nuns all the way through high school, and movies like The Nun's Story, The Keys of the Kingdom, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allyson, Lilies of the Field, and especially the Song Of Bernadette, I was convinced for a long time I was meant to be a nun.

For Little Women I go with Katherine Hepburn (except for Good News, I'm not a June Allyson fan), but you're right about A Christmas Carol, Syms is the best (George C. Scott is excellent as well. I'm still on the fence about the new Patrick Stewart version.). My wife is ambivalent about Meet Me in St Louis; apparently it's Judy's bangs she can't abide. An Affair to Remember is good, but not so good as the original, Love Affair with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer (it's devilish hard to find a good copy however). Shop Around the Corner splits my wife and I - I love it, she can do without it.

I am sentimental as well (if I don't watch myself I can cry at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence; Stagecoach too).
 
I find the people who still cultivate the spirit of Christmas magnificent.

I am a Christian and a fervent admirer of Jesus Christ, whom I always refer to as a father.

I take part in Christmas get-togethers and even like some sweet christmas movies that are shown on open TV at the end of the year. But I believe the true spirit of Christmas is long gone. People only think of Santa Claus, in exchange gifts and eat and drink until the new year. Does anyone remember that we are celebrating the birth of the Christ? Few, I believe.


Interesting. I have the same feelings about Christmas, yet I and my wife are both atheists. For us Christmas is, as with you, about love and family, but we do it without the other stuff. We come to the same beliefs, but from different directions.

BTW, my wife never considered being a nun and I never a priest (though I'm partial to the Irish variety, you know, the drinking ones).
 
For Little Women I go with Katherine Hepburn (except for Good News, I'm not a June Allyson fan), but you're right about A Christmas Carol, Syms is the best (George C. Scott is excellent as well. I'm still on the fence about the new Patrick Stewart version.). My wife is ambivalent about Meet Me in St Louis; apparently it's Judy's bangs she can't abide. An Affair to Remember is good, but not so good as the original, Love Affair with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer (it's devilish hard to find a good copy however). Shop Around the Corner splits my wife and I - I love it, she can do without it.

I am sentimental as well (if I don't watch myself I can cry at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence; Stagecoach too).

I can cry at Hallmark commercials, so I may have you beat. :)

As for 'really' tragic movies...well, when my friends and I went to see Schindler's List, my friends brought two boxes of Kleenex just for me. It haunted me in dreams for weeks and I'd wake up weeping. My husband may be an even bigger softee. He has refused to see it to this day. He said he just wouldn't put himself through it.

I was actually angry when someone told me to watch the video of "Christmas Shoes". I was a sobbing, sniveling mess a couple of bars in. That's one that doesn't forget what Christmas is about.

Again, you're preaching to the choir. Really like those two westerns. I really like westerns in general. I used to watch re-runs of them with my grandmother when she lived with us. It helped both of us with our English.:)

Both the George C.Scott version and the Patrick Stewart version are good, but I still think Syms has them beat, although it may be because I saw it first.

Again, I know it's heresy, but my liking for Katharine Hepburn as an actress has dimmed over the years. Unfortunately, I've grown to think she overacts a lot, although not in things where she's brilliant, imo, like Bringing Up Baby.
 
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Angela, I was sure you'd have a comment about the musical Good News . . .

Oh dear...sorry. I had to look it up.

I don't remember it, but it does have Peter Lawford in it, which means it deserves a look. There was a whole genre of those "college" movies, wasn't there? I wasn't much into them.

I forgot a Christmas one: Love Actually...only the storyline between Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, though. The rest was too hokey even for me, and I'm not a huge Hugh Grant fan. Only so much dithering and stuttering I can take. :)

There are some much beloved musicals I could never get into as well: Oklahoma, Carousel, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, things like that.
 
Oh dear...sorry. I had to look it up.

I don't remember it, but it does have Peter Lawford in it, which means it deserves a look. There was a whole genre of those "college" movies, wasn't there? I wasn't much into them.

I forgot a Christmas one: Love Actually...only the storyline between Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, though. The rest was too hokey even for me, and I'm not a huge Hugh Grant fan. Only so much dithering and stuttering I can take. :)

There are some much beloved musicals I could never get into as well: Oklahoma, Carousel, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, things like that.

Yes, Good News has Peter Awful in it, but that doesn't ruin it. The plot is awful (kind of like an Astaire-Rogers movie), but the musical numbers are great, especially a number called, I think, Pass the Peace Pipe. It couldn't be staged today, but its energy is compulsive. As they say, worth a look.

My wife is both dismayed and amused by my love of this quirky film.
 
Last night my wife and I watched another Christmas movie, The Lion In Winter. Not a feel good movie, but it occurs during Christmas and it is full of great power and great acting (Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn). However, I abhor its too-clever dialogue and historical inaccuracies. But, you can't have everything . . .

Tonight it's on to a real Christmas movie, 1939's A Christmas Carol.
 
Well, no one ever accused Peter Lawford of being a good actor, but God he was great to look at. :) Is Good News available on netflix or youtube or something?

I love "The Lion in Winter"; I think it's one of Hepburn's best films, and O'Toole is wonderful as always. Anthony Hopkins hammed it up a bit too much as Richard, however, imo; I think it was one of his first movies and he hadn't quite made the transition from stage acting yet. Actually, I quite like the witty dialogue, and as for the historical inaccuracies, well, Hollywood so rarely gets it right that I just quickly suspend my disbelief, as they say.

I love Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Christmas Candle, and the tv movie The Homecoming.

Movies with Christmas in them that I also really like: Penny Serenade, It Happened on Fifth Avenue, I'll Be Seeing You, The Shop Around the Corner, Meet John Doe, and The Bells of St. Mary's.

Careful, they're all so sweet your teeth will hurt :)

I was definitely born at the wrong time.

My mother was addicted to

The French film A Christmas Tale is wonderful, imo, if very sad, and even though it has Catherine Deneuve in it, whom I've always rather disliked.
 
I don't so much dislike the witty dialogue in The Lion In Winter as that it's too stagey . . . no one is that on point all the time. The brilliance of it, its unnaturalness, takes me out of moment. It's rather like in The Silence of the Lambs when Anthony Hopkins calls the wine Kee-anti. What! And suddenly I'm no longer immersed in the film, but rather thinking of the crazy choices actors make.

We watched the 1938 (not 1939) A Christmas Carol (the MGM production with Reginald Owen) last night. I remember watching it as a child on TV, but, boy, has it gotten saccharine over the years! And a little heavy handed. It seems rushed as well. The dialogue passes back and forth without the pauses (and facial expressions) that would be the natural reflection of the kind of mental considerations that should be passing through the actors' minds. Also, the Cratchits seem far too happy leaving little room for the uplift at the end. I guess I didn't like it . . .

Tonight it's on to Meet Me in St Louis.
 
We're now working through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; it has a lovely Christmas scene. The young girl that stars here is also in my favorite version of Jane Eyre, the one with Orson Welles. \

The final movie will probably be A Christmas Story unless we see the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol being broadcast.
 
My wife has corrected me (when has that ever happened before?). Tonight, instead of A Christmas Story, we watch Christmas in Connecticutt. This is really one of the best; a great turn by Barbara Stanwyck as well as by Sidney Greenstreet. Both of them are a joy to watch; true professionals who seem to be enjoying themselves.

We'll only get through half of it tonight (we're old enough to go to bed early), but tomorrow we'll finish it while setting out Champagne and caviar for Santa (and carrots for the reindeers). This is an old tradition of ours that began one Christmas when someone I know had to assemble tricycles that just wouldn't go together (big hammer required). Santa gets treated right in my household.

Merry Christmas to all!
 
I'm really enjoying the movie "The First Temptation of Christ", a Brazilian comedy.


The synopsis says that Jesus turns 30 and takes a special guest to meet his family, but the party has other surprises.


This is just the official trailer for the movie which premiered December 3 on NETFLIX. It contains no subtitles, but the movie served on NETFLIX can be viewed subtitled.



The film that this Brazilian comedy group made for NETFLIX last year, titled "If Drinking Don't Supper," won the Emmy for "Best Comedy" at the awards ceremony held on 11/25/2019 in New York.


Like the film aired last year and awarded this year in New York, this one is also a provocation not only to the most fervent religious but to any God-fearing that have afraid to question Christian values.


This year neopentecostal Evangelicals (neopentecostal Protestants) have a virtual petition that already has over 350,000 signatures for NETFLIX to remove the film from its portfolio. I'm a Roman Catholic and I loved the movie.


I believe in free speech. NETFLIX has a broad portfolio of biblical films. The fervorous christians can choose one to watch or, if offended, NETFLIX's unsubscribe. What cannot happen is to demand that the film be removed so that no one will watch it because it supposedly offends Christian values. People are free to watch or not what they want and no one has the right to dictate what they can and cannot watch.


I believe Jesus himself would find the movie very entertaining.


Cheers :) :)

I want to watch it!
 

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