Do you have a favourite Christmas or holiday season film which you normally watch at this time of year?

Film Intel asked : Do you have a favourite Christmas or holiday season film which you normally watch at this time of year? Or is the holiday break just really an excuse to spend more time watching whatever the hell you want?!

Well, we have many favourite Christmas films! Firm favourites are as follows and in no particular order…

1) Scrooge (1970) - no Christmas is compete without a version of Dickens’ classic (or two), and though the Alastair Sim version is perhaps the best of ‘em all, this musical version is great fun. Albert Finney is superb as Scrooge and who couldn’t love a movie with Alec Guinness as Marley AND gets to sing a number flying through the air surrounded by chained spectres! Plus in this version we get to see Scrooge go to Hell

2) Stalking Santa (2006) - discovered this one just last year - a mockumentary detailing one man’s quest to prove the existence of Santa. Nicely festive and very funny plus it’s narrated by William Shatner - what more do you need!

3) The Snow Queen (2005) - this is a BBC TV movie adaptation of a musical version of Hans Christian Anderson’s classic winter and it’s pure genius. Beautiful music and brilliantly played but what really impresses is the visual style - live action characters in a world created mixing traditional animation and CGI - imagine a Dave McKean illustration come to glorious wintry life and that’s pretty much what this version looks like. A real feast for the eyes, ears and heart!

4) Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - perhaps the definitive film about Santa Claus and the definitive portrayal of the man himself from Edmund Gwenn. Simply magical!

5) The Signal Man (1976) - No festive season is complete without dipping into my archive of the BBC’s Ghost Stories For Christmas short films. And this version of another Dickens classic is a great favourite featuring the late great Denholm Elliot giving a mesmerising performance as the titular character. Truly haunting!

Of course there are many others and there’s nothing better than putting your feet up in front of the box and enjoying the kind of light frothy flicks that normally you’d be too cynical to indulge in! Merry Christmas!

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