During the past week I watched four "Christmas" movies and one very UN-Christmassy one and here's what I thought:
"A Christmas Carol" (1971) Oscar winning short animated film narrated by Michael Redgrave, with Scrooge voiced by the incomparable Alastair Sim. Uses Victorian woodcuts for some of the backgrounds and despite the short (under 30 minutes) run time, delivers the Dickensian morality tale with charm and creepiness in equal measure. Scandalously it is largely forgotten these days and commercially unavailable (at least here in the UK) but I watch it without fail every Christmas Eve (the full movie is thankfully available on YouTube and I also possess a grainy taped-from-the-TV VHS copy from many years ago). Superb as ever.
"Die Hard" (1988) explosive hokum from Bruce Willis (who maintains it's NOT a Christmas movie) but I can never take him seriously, remembering him always as the paunchy stooge to Cybil Shepherd from "Moonlighting". Entertaining enough in a wham-bam- Ker-BLAM! sort of way when you're bloated with rich food and sozzled with booze. Doesn't require any thinking or plot analysis. But no way can I ever accept Willis as an action hero, sorry!
"It's A Wonderful Life" (1947). I'd dismissed it for years as likely to be too schmaltzy but surprised myself at how enjoyable I found it. Jimmy Stewart was a great actor and the unsettling "what if" alternative scenario of a world without his character's existence brought a rather intriguing X-Files type existentialist quality to the tale. Despite my reservations I thoroughly enjoyed it after all.
"Home Alone" (1990). Dire garbage with the two burglars enacting substandard Tom & Jerry routines. I'm afraid that I found the kid irritating rather than cute and even the magnificent John Candy couldn't rescue this crap!
The non-festive movie was the fabulously gripping "Cape Fear" - the 1962 version with two of my all-time favourite actors, Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck going head-to-head. A stunning film, for me it's more powerful and mesmerising than the re-make (which features Peck and Mitchum in cameo roles!).