For the month before Christmas...

Tis the season! Mulled apple cider, the smell of pine and chestnuts roasting over an open fire (always sounded like a euphemism to me for the emasculation of the masses by retail America at this time of year...or is that too cynical?).

But for the film minor that I was, this presents a wonderful time of year with classics like A Christmas Story, It Happened One Night, and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. I make it a point every year to watch A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life - but at the same time it's also a brutal time for film-goers with saccharine fare like 1990's A Mom For Christmas starring Olivia Newton-John, or 1941's Penny Serenade. For the most part, though, I like to go a different route.

I have a fondness for the non-traditional holiday movie. Not quite Silent Night, Deadly Night or Black Christmas - but I don't mind the occasional explosion or fight sequence in my holiday entertainment (not all of them fit that mold, but most are not the first movie that comes to mind when you think Christmas).

And here is my holiday dirty dozen, my twelve favorites for the holidays (mind you, not necessarily the best, just the order in which I am most likely to re-watch) -

1. Die Hard - The action film that keeps on giving. It made, "Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker," an acceptable holiday greeting. Okay, so it didn't quite do that, but it provided a cathartic outlet for the person who just came from the mall, allowing the frazzled holiday shopper to imagine their fellow shoppers as Hans Gruber plummeting from Nakatomi Tower.


2. The Ref - What says Christmas in America more than Dennis Leary and familial dysfunction? And it's hard to complain about a cast that includes Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis.


3. Trading Places - John Landis has directed two of my favorite holiday films (I always watch An American Werewolf in London around Halloween). Then there's this. The only thing that might say Christmas in America more than familial dysfunction is unbridled capitalism.


4. Lethal Weapon - What do the first four films on the list have in common? Guns. It's all about the Christmas violence. At least three have hostages, and two have serious violence. Don't you just love it when the in-laws get together?


5. Love Actually - Just a nice film that can be watched with the family. A whole bunch of stories intersect in this British comedy showing just about everything that a family or an individual might go through during the holiday season.


6. Millions - Another excellent British comedy that can be watched with the family, as long as the kids are of an age to understand some of the things, as this does go some places that younger kids might have a hard time understanding.


7. The Lion in Winter - Fans of good acting, rejoice. Just like any modern story about the holidays, this fictional chronicle of a family Christmas in the house of Henry II, and Eleanor of Aquitaine is filled with just as much dysfunction as any of the films on this list. The acting is absolutely brilliant from Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, and youngsters Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Daulton (yes, A View To a Kill, that Timothy Daulton).


8. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, or whatever you call him, has a showing in Narnia after the land has had 100 years of winter with no Christmas. When things look bleak, he shows up to cheer refugee children/Narnian royalty Peter, Susan, and Lucy with gifts of peace and goodwill: sword, shield, dagger, bow, arrows - you know the old saying coined by Sun Tzu, "He who aspires to peace should prepare for war."


9. Die Harder (DH2) - Back to good old fashioned Christmas violence.


10. Better Off Dead - John Cusak's Christmas classic, complete with stalker newspaper boy.


11. Scrooged - A competent modern retelling of Dicken's A Christmas Carol. Bill Murray is solid and entertaining, but the funniest stuff is from the supporting cast of Carol Kane, Bobcat Goldthwait, and David Johannson (Buster Poindexter).


12. Bad Santa - Billy Bob Thornton pretty much plays that uncle that no one wants to acknowledge they have. The guy is pretty much a screw-up, but finally gets something right. Not an uncommon story line, but done with a lot more edge than you see from most holiday films.