Pop Culture Pick: Unconventional Christmas Movies

Forget Santa. See this lot...

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox

Welcome to Pop Culture Pick, a catch-all for subjects I want to highlight outside of the usual weekly Weekend Watch columns. In this edition, my thoughts on some unconventional Christmas movies. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite

Welcome to the first of a new weekly addition to the column rotation: Pop Culture Pick will now be published on Wednesdays, while reviews will still appear (almost) every week on Fridays via Weekend Watch.

To kick things off, since I’m still in a festive mood, and because the new Netflix action thriller Carry-On is about to land on the streaming service (it’ll be available from 13 December), I thought I’d follow last week’s Christmas movie recommendations with a look at some more unconventional films set at this time of year –– but which don’t necessarily focus on the yuletide staples such as Santa.

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Carry-On

As mentioned above, Carry-On is the new film landing on Netflix next week. It stars Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman, and is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, best known for movies such as Unknown and Non-Stop (both of which starred Liam Neeson). He’s also a genre-hopper who has brought us the likes of Jungle Cruise and The Shallows. I can’t review the movie yet –– look for that in Weekend Watch next week –– but I did want to flag up that it takes place on Christmas Eve, and features Egerton’s TSA Agent being blackmailed by Bateman’s character to let a particular case through security. In many ways, it is a very different sort of seasonal film; partly because though it has some Christmas trappings, they’re on the surface. Unless you count its story about someone making their way through life a particular way who is shocked into changes by an extraordinary situation. Remind you of a famous Chrimbo tale? I’m not saying Edgerton’s character is Scrooge exactly, but it’s certainly a point worth making.

Oh, and if we’re talking about Christmas movies that also feature an everyman character being thrust into a challenging situation, then we can’t move forward without discussing…

Die Hard

Yes, it’s a Christmas film. It might not have magic reindeer or a guy in a white beard delivering gifts, but Alan Rickman’s memorable villain Hans Gruber has a beard and Bruce Willis’ John McClane delivers quips. So there. Actually, it is also an action movie set at Christmas Eve and sees McClane as an NYPD cop visiting his estranged wife at her office Christmas party in the hopes of patching things up. Suffice to say, he doesn’t get to “have a few laughs” on his trip out to the coast. Die Hard works so well for various reasons. While the script was long in development, Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza’s final version (ably directed by action expect John McTiernan) is taught and entertaining and the clash between Willis (in a movie star-making role) and Rickman is fantastic, even if it mostly takes place over walkie talkie. This film is rightfully seen as a classic that straddles genres and if you’re wondering whether I’m writing about it here because I didn’t include it in my Festive Recommendations, then guilty as charged!

Trading Places

Christmas can be a tough place for comedy unless you’re willing to go subversive to cut the schmaltz. Trading Places goes for the jugular when it comes to commercialism and black-hearted business. Directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod, it sees Eddie Murphy’s wily street con man Billy Ray Valentine and Dan Aykroyd’s privileged Louis Winthorpe III swapping lives thanks to a bet by the wealthy Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche). It’s full of great lines and boasts an early breakthrough role for Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a tough hooker named Ophelia.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Shane Black loves a thriller set at Christmas –– a lot of his work is set around the holidays but takes a sideways approach. Years before he’d bring us the masterpiece that is Iron Man III, he was taking a chance on Robert Downey Jr., who knocks this one out of the park as Harry Lockhart, a small-time burglar who stumbles into an acting career who is given advice by private eye Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer). The pair ends up in all manner of scrapes and Black keeps things ticking along in his usual fashion –– which is to say that the movie’s great, but didn’t get nearly enough respect or business upon release (see also: The Nice Guys).

The Apartment

Set around both Christmas and New Year’s, Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy drama is a masterclass in, well, everything. Co-written by the legendary director with regular collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, it follows hapless Manhattan insurance clerk C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), who rents his apartment to executives for them to enjoy secret trysts in the hopes of scoring a promotion. What he doesn’t expect to find is love –– though the path to Shirley MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik is far from smooth. It won five Oscars from 10 nominations, and deserved every single one. So if you’re in the mood for something that’s both warm and a touch bleak, I can’t recommend it highly enough.