BRIAN VINER: Ten films you’d never realise are Christmas classics and they’re all available to watch

Christmas movies come in a variety of forms. There are cherished classics with a distinctive holiday theme, like It’s A Wonderful Life (C4, Christmas Eve) and White Christmas (BBC2, Christmas Day).

Then there are those we associate with the season to be merry because they’re a Christmas fixture: the likes of The Great Escape (C4, Christmas Day) and The Magnificent Seven (BBC2, Boxing Day).

But there’s another category: top-tier movies that aren’t considered traditional holiday food, but in which Christmas looms large.

Here’s my Top Ten, each a festive treat and in one way or another, all available to view in the coming days. Merry Christmas!

1 The Apartment (1960, PG, 125 minutes)

Has any director/star combination in film history ever followed up a masterpiece, 1959’s Some Like It Hot (BBC2, Christmas Day), with another as quickly as Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon? I doubt it.

An enduring joy, worth watching for the office Christmas party scene alone, in which CC Baxter (Lemmon) drunkenly talks to the elevator attendant, Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), whom he is very much in love

(Amazon Prime Video)

2 Goodfellas (1990, 18, 145 minutes)

There’s another great Christmas scene in Martin Scorsese’s fantastic gangster flick, when Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) chides his wise men for spending their ill-gotten gains too conspicuously on Cadillacs and fur coats: “What are you, moron!?” It’s played almost for laughs, and it’s all the more memorable for it.

(BBC2, Boxing Day, 10:15 p.m.)

3 Catch me if you can (2002, 12, 141 min)

Christmas features repeatedly in Steven Spielberg’s compelling dramatization of the life and crimes of con man Frank Abagnale Jr., seductively played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who is finally caught on Christmas Eve by headstrong FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks).

(C4, Christmas Day, 10:55 p.m.)

4 LA Confidential (1997, 18, 138 minutes)

Surely the biggest Christmas fight in history, but based on a real-life scandal: the brutal beating of seven prisoners on Christmas Day 1951 by Los Angeles police officers at the Central City Jail.

James Ellroy fictionalized the episode in his novel LA Confidential, which was later made into this excellent movie starring Russell Crowe in the role that made him a star.

(Amazon Prime Video)

5 Little Women (2019, U, 135 min)

Of the many big screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, this latest one, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is, in my opinion, the best.

The Christmas morning scene, in which the March sisters are urged by their mother (Laura Dern) to give their food to poor neighbors, is charmingly done.

(Amazon Prime Video)

6 Batman Returns (1992, 12A, 126 minutes)

Gotham City is decked out in fairy lights in Tim Burton’s hilarious superhero show, starring Michael Keaton in the title role.

It was released in the summer and not exactly kerpow! the box office, but I think they missed a trick by not releasing it in December; it is a festive film from a charming beginning to a brilliant ending.

(Amazon Prime Video)

7 The Thin Man (1934, U, 91 min)

“The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill them,” says a hungover Myrna Loy in this glorious noir film, which casts Loy and William Powell as crime-solving, hard-drinking socialites.

It was so successful that five sequels followed, but none are as fun, or as Christmassy, ​​as the original.

(Netflix)

8 Babe (1995, U, 91 minutes)

It’s easily forgotten, but this story of a pig who thinks he’s a sheepdog was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and for a moment I wish Braveheart would take the grand prize.

But if you’re roasting a turkey, be warned: The farm animal lament that “Christmas is a butcher shop” still has the power to turn kids into vegetarians.

(Amazon Prime Video)

9 Edward Scissorhands (1990, 12, 105 min)

Another Tim Burton film that should be considered a festive classic, though it subverts the notion of Christmas as a time of goodwill, as society rejects the singularly odd lead character Johnny Depp.

But the scene where Winona Ryder’s Kim dances in the ‘snow’ – actually flakes of ice created by Edward frantically carving an angel – is truly moving.

(Amazon Prime Video)

10 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, PG, 142 min)

The most treasured Christmas traditions are those forged in childhood, and I can’t remember going through the holidays without sitting down to watch at least one Bond movie. Because this? Well, George Lazenby may be the stiffest of all the 007s, but he’s got plenty of picturesque snow, and the great Telly Savalas as Blofeld, menacingly saying “Merry Christmas, 007!”

(Amazon Prime Video)

EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE CASE OF THE HEARTLESS CADET

The Pale Blue Eye (15, 128 min) Classification: ****

Verdict: heavy but elegant

This classy murder mystery, featuring a heavyweight cast headlined by Christian Bale, is adapted from a witty novel of the same name.

Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel imagined how the young Edgar Allan Poe, now considered the father of the whodunit and a master of the macabre, might have developed his later literary enthusiasms during his time as a cadet at West Point Military Academy.

The story is set in the 1830s. Bale plays Augustus Landor, a grim detective hired by the commandant of West Point (a heavily whiskered Timothy Spall… one of the peculiarities of this production is that all the British play Americans) to investigate. the murder of a cadet, found hanging from a tree and having his heart torn out.

Landor soon recruits another of the cadets, Poe (Harry Melling), to help him investigate. Poe is a strange, cerebral young man, unpopular with his peers, though he and his fondness for poetry attract Lea (Lucy Boynton), the beautiful daughter of the West Point doctor (Toby Jones) and his wife (Gillian Anderson).

A second cadet is then found dead under the same gruesome circumstances, intensifying Landor’s suspicions that someone might be committing ritual murder as a form of satanic worship. He seeks confirmation from a mustachioed old academic (played by none other than 91-year-old Robert Duvall).

This all plays out rather heavily, but it’s beautifully shot and skillfully written, and of course features a top-notch, mostly British cast (also including Simon McBurney and Charlotte Gainsbourg).

The writer-director is Scott Cooper, who made another couple of movies that I admired, Black Mass (2015) and Hostiles (2017). The Pale Blue Eye, its title taken from one of Poe’s short stories, further enhances its impressive list of credits.

The Pale Blue Eye opens in select theaters today. It will be on Netflix starting January 6.