Off-Beat Christmas Films: The Orville B DeMille Guide
Ranked #30,129 in Entertainment, #371,254 overall
Great Christmas Films for the Eclectic and Eccentric
If your tastes lie outside of the mainstream and you want to get in the holiday spirit but you can do without Tim Allen, grab an egg nog and your recliner.
Rare Exports (2010)
Home for the Holidays (1995)
Christmas Story (1983)
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Dead (1987)
Table of Contents
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Rare Exports is hands down my favorite Christmas movie.
It's a gritty and strange. A supernatural thriller set in Lapland, Rare Exports starts with the dark Scandinavian folk origins of the Santa Claus. The story soon escalates to the mysterious death of the local elk herd. It just gets stranger and scarier and the dark origins of Santa are taken seriously.
Roger Ebert had this to say about the film:
"Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" is a rather brilliant lump of coal for your stocking hung by the fireside with care.
. . . It is the day before Christmas in the far Arctic north. Young Pietari lives on a reindeer ranch with his dad and other men who would feel right at home shooting reindeer from a helicopter. Yes, they are hunting food. The Scandinavians eat reindeer.
. . . There is a legend that centuries ago the citizens were threatened by fearsome monsters. They were able to trick them onto the lake, where they froze. One of them was cut out inside a giant block of ice and buried deep beneath the mound. And now ...
. . . Pietari's mother is dead (lots of lumps of coal in this stocking), and his dad, Rauno (Jorma Tommila), keeps telling him to stay in the house, and Pietari, an earnest, stubborn Ralphie type, keeps sneaking out. He's the only one who figures out what's happening: Inside the mound, inside the ice, is Santa Claus.
Here's the link to the Rare Exports WIKIPEDIA page.
Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Critics 71% Audience
It's a gritty and strange. A supernatural thriller set in Lapland, Rare Exports starts with the dark Scandinavian folk origins of the Santa Claus. The story soon escalates to the mysterious death of the local elk herd. It just gets stranger and scarier and the dark origins of Santa are taken seriously.
Roger Ebert had this to say about the film:
"Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" is a rather brilliant lump of coal for your stocking hung by the fireside with care.
. . . It is the day before Christmas in the far Arctic north. Young Pietari lives on a reindeer ranch with his dad and other men who would feel right at home shooting reindeer from a helicopter. Yes, they are hunting food. The Scandinavians eat reindeer.
. . . There is a legend that centuries ago the citizens were threatened by fearsome monsters. They were able to trick them onto the lake, where they froze. One of them was cut out inside a giant block of ice and buried deep beneath the mound. And now ...
. . . Pietari's mother is dead (lots of lumps of coal in this stocking), and his dad, Rauno (Jorma Tommila), keeps telling him to stay in the house, and Pietari, an earnest, stubborn Ralphie type, keeps sneaking out. He's the only one who figures out what's happening: Inside the mound, inside the ice, is Santa Claus.
Here's the link to the Rare Exports WIKIPEDIA page.
Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Critics 71% Audience
Home for the Holidays (1995)
Yes, Home for the Holidays is actually a Thanksgiving film. The reason why I include it in this list is that I love the film and it really captures the spirit of a houseful of adult siblings cooped up with their parents for a holiday weekend, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's not the top rated film in the world, but it's one that I've always connected with and loved.
Directed by Jodie Foster and starring Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. this film crackles with the chemistry and tension of a family that loves each other but can't help but drive each other crazy. Those two are great as brother and sister. Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft turn in very funny, very touching performances. Claire Danes, Dylan McDermont, Steve Guttenberg, Cynthia Stevenson, Geraldine Chapin and David Straitharn round out the stellar cast.
Here's Roger Ebert on the film:
What is just right about "Home for the Holidays" is that none of the characters act as if they are experiencing any of this for the first time. Even when Aunt Glady drinks too much and announces that her sister's husband kissed her the first time they met, all she draws is a resigned silence; we get the notion she may make this revelation several times a year.
Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment. And she realizes that although the Holly Hunter character supplies the movie's point of view, it is up to Durning and Bancroft to supply the center - just as parents do at real family celebrations. Bancroft and Durning have each been guilty, from time to time, of overacting, but here they both beautifully find just the right notes of acceptance, resignation, wounded but stubborn pride - and romance. There are moments when they dance together that help to explain why families do get together for the holidays, and Durning describes a memory of one perfect moment in the family's history, and we understand that although life may not give us too much, it often gives enough.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Directed by Jodie Foster and starring Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. this film crackles with the chemistry and tension of a family that loves each other but can't help but drive each other crazy. Those two are great as brother and sister. Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft turn in very funny, very touching performances. Claire Danes, Dylan McDermont, Steve Guttenberg, Cynthia Stevenson, Geraldine Chapin and David Straitharn round out the stellar cast.
Here's Roger Ebert on the film:
What is just right about "Home for the Holidays" is that none of the characters act as if they are experiencing any of this for the first time. Even when Aunt Glady drinks too much and announces that her sister's husband kissed her the first time they met, all she draws is a resigned silence; we get the notion she may make this revelation several times a year.
Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment. And she realizes that although the Holly Hunter character supplies the movie's point of view, it is up to Durning and Bancroft to supply the center - just as parents do at real family celebrations. Bancroft and Durning have each been guilty, from time to time, of overacting, but here they both beautifully find just the right notes of acceptance, resignation, wounded but stubborn pride - and romance. There are moments when they dance together that help to explain why families do get together for the holidays, and Durning describes a memory of one perfect moment in the family's history, and we understand that although life may not give us too much, it often gives enough.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Christmas Story (1983)
With the annual marathon on TBS, Christmas Story hardly lies outside the mainstream, but I still love the off-kilter Dad, the Chinese food, the Betty Grable references and the X'd out eyes when Ralphie shoots the bad guys. It hilarious and good nerdy fun.
WIKIPEDIA
Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 89% Audience: 82%
WIKIPEDIA
Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 89% Audience: 82%
The Nightmare Before Christmas 1993
Tim Burton directs a Christmas movie? Perfect. The movie is a crazy mash up of Halloween and Christmas? Even better. In some ways a modern Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The Nightmare Before Christmas was chosen by Rotten Tomatoes as the Best Christmas Film of All Time.
Here's Roger Ebert:
The movies can create entirely new worlds for us, but that is one of their rarest gifts. More often, directors go for realism, for worlds we can recognize. One of the many pleasures of "Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas" is that there is not a single recognizable landscape within it. Everything looks strange and haunting. Even Santa Claus would be difficult to recognize without his red-and-white uniform.
. . . "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a Tim Burton film in the sense that the story, its world and its look first took shape in Burton's mind, and he supervised their filming. But the director of the film, a veteran stop-action master named Henry Selick, is the person who has made it all work. And his achievement is enormous. . .
Here's Roger Ebert:
The movies can create entirely new worlds for us, but that is one of their rarest gifts. More often, directors go for realism, for worlds we can recognize. One of the many pleasures of "Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas" is that there is not a single recognizable landscape within it. Everything looks strange and haunting. Even Santa Claus would be difficult to recognize without his red-and-white uniform.
. . . "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a Tim Burton film in the sense that the story, its world and its look first took shape in Burton's mind, and he supervised their filming. But the director of the film, a veteran stop-action master named Henry Selick, is the person who has made it all work. And his achievement is enormous. . .
The Dead (1987)
Directed by the legendary John Huston, starring Angelica Huston at the height of her powers, The Dead is a brilliant adaptation of what is perhaps James Joyce's greatest short story.
This is also another holiday story that really isn't a Christmas story. It details the events of a party thrown in early January. It's winter, friends and family gather, close enough.
Here's what Pauline Kael had to say about the film:
"Huston directed the movie, at eighty, from a wheelchair, jumping up to look through the camera, with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose to a portable generator; most of the time, he had to watch the actors on a video monitor outside the set and use a microphone to speak to the crew. Yet he went into dramatic areas that he'd never gone into before - funny, warm family scenes that might be thought completely out of his range. Huston never before blended his actors so intuitively, so musically."
Wikipedia
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes Critics 92% Audience 78%
The New York Times Review
This is also another holiday story that really isn't a Christmas story. It details the events of a party thrown in early January. It's winter, friends and family gather, close enough.
Here's what Pauline Kael had to say about the film:
"Huston directed the movie, at eighty, from a wheelchair, jumping up to look through the camera, with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose to a portable generator; most of the time, he had to watch the actors on a video monitor outside the set and use a microphone to speak to the crew. Yet he went into dramatic areas that he'd never gone into before - funny, warm family scenes that might be thought completely out of his range. Huston never before blended his actors so intuitively, so musically."
Wikipedia
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes Critics 92% Audience 78%
The New York Times Review
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