Top Ten Christmas Movies That Have Nothing to do With Christmas

Slublog starting talking about this on Twitter a few days ago -- citing Die Hard as one of his favorite "Christmas" movies -- and I joined in. It's sort of interesting for reasons I can't really explain.

Because several of my favorite movies are "Christmas" movies having nothing to do with Christmas, I sort of give any movie that does this a few extra bonus nostalgia points.

I was going to do my own post, but I put it off, and lookie here, Big Hollywood beat me to the punch and now I don't have to do any work.

Procrastination is awesome like that. If you don't do your job in a timely fashion, there's a damn good chance someone else will. I heartily recommend it to everyone.

Or, okay, maybe not everyone: I heartily recommend it to 40% of the population, and heartily recommend picking up the slack to the other 60%.

Couple of points: Searching around the internet for these sorts of movies, I was surprised to learn another great 80s actioner -- First Blood -- is actually a Christmas movie having nothing to do with Christmas. (Why do I still find it so thrilling that Stallone stitches up his wound from falling off the cliff?) A blog cited the fact that the downtown of the Washington state town the film takes place in has Christmas lights on display, and that there's a Christmas tree at the police station.

Actually... Thinking about it, I'd guess that First Blood is really a post-Christmas movie. It has that sort of down feeling you get around the 27th or so.

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Another point is that the Uber 80s Action Screenwriter Shane Black used Christmas as a backdrop for Lethal Weapon. And liked that so much he used it again for The Long Kiss Goodnight. And still liked it so much he did it yet again for the positively awesome Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And I never once got annoyed he was re-using the same element. It's an awesome element. If his next action movie is set at Christmas, I'll enjoy it yet again.

One more thing: The Star Wars trilogy (the real trilogy) is not set at Christmas, or even in the known galaxy, but by now it's oddly a Christmas series. The only time I see it now is at Christmas. It competes now with A Christmas Story for What Ace Watches Christmas-Week.

Correction: The author did say these films are in "no particular order," so my quibbling about where these movies should fall on the list is off-base.

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Oh, and on this list: Die Hard at number ten?

Really?

Number ten?

And Gremlins ahead of it?

What madness is this?

Lethal Weapon edging it out at number 9? Now I love Lethal Weapon, but look here: Die Hard is plainly a superior movie in all aspects. Lethal Weapon is now dated and I'm a little less in love with it than I once was. ("They was painted.")

On the other hand, if Die Hard is on at any time, I will watch at least 20 minutes of it, if not for the whole rest of the remaining running time.

Maybe Die Hard 2 should be at number 10, and Die Hard at one, or at least no lower than 2.

That's the problem with my procrastination strategy. You just can't rely on the person picking up your slack to do a proper job of it.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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