Well if everyone else can produce a fave list, why can’t I? Here’s my personal list of movies that I must see in the month of December or I will be on the naughty list all year long.
5. Bad Santa- Billy Bob Thorton as a washed up, apathetic, alcoholic con artist who gets over on a hopeful, naive yet compassionate young boy is a scream. Santa (aka Willie) is foulmouthed, rude, and just what this overweight little boy needs to shake up things. Willie is a welcome change from the kid’s brain dead grandmother (Chloris Leachman) who only comes alive to make sandwiches. My favorite quote “Things are f*cked up at the North Pole. Mrs. Claus caught me f*cking her sister, now I’m out on my ass.”
4. Scrooged- Another bad boy lead that steals my heart. Bill Murray plays a wicked modern day Ebenezer Scrooge (aka Frank Cross). He really doesn’t give a damn about anything but winning. Gotta love a man with ambition. Alfre Woodard plays his wise and sassy assistant who can keep him in check with a smart remark and a good eye roll. I have loved this flick for many years. My favorite quote “The bitch hit me with a toaster. Oh I love a girl with spirit.”
3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation- Oooooooh!! It’s not Christmas without Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his family picking out an obnoxiously huge Christmas tree and having cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) emptying feces from his trailer bathroom in the front yard. Hilarious times seven. My favorite quote is from Eddie, “She falls down a well, her eyes go cross. She gets kicked by a mule. They go back. I don’t know.”
2. A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott version)- No crude humor this time. There are like a million Christmas Carols out there but George C. Scott nails is as Ebenezer Scrooge. Aloof. Stingy. Stone-faced. Unforgiving. If I met Scott while he was still alive I would have been shaking in my boots. My favorite quote from the ghost of Christmas Present, “So perhaps, in the future, you will hold your tongue until you have discovered where the surplus population is, and WHO it is. It may well be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than MILLIONS like this poor man’s child.”
1. It’s A Wonderful Life (are you surprised? It’s probably the top of a billion people’s list). This flick is not just a great Christmas movie. It’s a great movie, period. It is chock full of pearls of wisdom. It has solid Christian values embedded all the way through and it warms my heart every doggone time I watch it. It reminds me that there really is hope in a hopeless situation and that life is a gift. One of my favorite quotes from Clarence Goodbody the aspiring angel (there are too many to list from this movie) “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
Merry Christmas everyone!!! Hope your holiday season is lifts your spirits in many, many ways.