12 Days of Christmas: Die Hard

It’s day seven of the 12 Days of Christmas and I bring you a movie that I was really hesitant on adding, but Brad Carroll insisted that it should be on the list. Today’s movie is Die Hard.
Yes, the movie is considered a holiday film by many people, because the film itself is set around Christmas.
The movie stars Bruce Willis as John McClane, a New York City detective who is traveling to Los Angeles to try reconciliation with his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). When McClane meets up with his wife, she is attending a Christmas party thrown by her employer, Takagi, in Nakatomi Plaza (it’s a high rise building).
During this party a group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) take control of the building and of course hold all the party goers hostage. McClane, being resourceful, is able to sneak away into the building’s maintenance areas. We then learn that Gruber is after $640 million in bearer bonds, which are stored in the buildings vault.
The film offers a great pace, great action and most likely the best holiday classic action film. The greatest thing about this movie is the villain Hans; he’s a great villain and a worthy advisory to put up against the common man McClane.
The movie spawned three more sequels, but as the series went on McClane became less and less of the common man and more of a superhero. If you saw Live Free and Die Hard, you know what I'm talking about. So, the first is the only one in the series that I really liked.
Do yourself a favor and check out Die Hard if you haven’t already.

12 Days of Christmas: Home Alone

Day six of the 12 Days of Christmas and today I bring you the holiday classic that made Macaulay Culkin a household name – Home Alone.
The film opens up with the McCallister family rushing around the house and getting prepared for their family vacation to Europe.
Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is the youngest of his family, the one that gets made fun of and the one that gets the bad end of the deal all the time. The night before their big trip, Kevin gets into a fight with his older brother Buzz, causing his mother to send him to bed up in the attic. He believes that his family has gone to far, so he puts a wish in place for them all just to dissapear.
The next morning the family all over sleep and are soon in a rush to catch their flight. With all the comotion they forget to wake up Kevin, which lead them to leaving him behind.
Kevin wakes up after they have left and discover that he is home alone and his wish must of worked. Little does he know that two robbers played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are lurking the neighborhood and have their eyes on the McCallister house.
A holiday movie that everyone should know about and love. The movie did give us three more sequels and those sequels weren’t as good as the original, which usually is the case in franchises such as this.The movie is a family film that keeps itself going through its runtime with any dull moments. I know some people are split on this movie and I don’t think you should be, the film captures the season of Christmas beatifully and also captures the meaning of family in a very heart tugging way. It’s a great holiday classic that everyone should have the chance to see.

12 Days of Christmas: The Bishop's Wife

It’s day five of the 12 Days of Christmas and today I bring you a movie that offers some great acting, a great story and a all around good holiday film. Today I bring you The Bishop’s Wife.
When Bishop Henry Brogham (David Niven) comes into trouble while building a new cathedral, he prays for guidance and his prayer is answered by an angel named Dudley (Cary Grant), who claims to be a clergyman.
We soon learn that Dudley’s true motives are not to help with the cathedral, but to guide Henry who has become obsessed with the new cathedral and his duties and marriage are suffering because of it.
We then meet Julia (Loretta Young), the wife of Henry, who becomes close to Dudley. He becomes very attracted to her and Henry becomes very jealous of the growing relationship.
I won’t give away what happens, but the movie has a very strong ending and one that makes you sit back and remember why you love the movies.
This film is another personal favorite of mine, like all the movies on this list, but this one is so well done, truly original and offers a great cast, Cary Grant and Loretta Young are more than outstanding in their roles and their true talents show.Many say that the movie only works because of the stellar cast and that’s not really true. I loved the cast, but another thing that makes this movie so great is how it’s a fantasy at heart, yet it feels more realistic and human then anything. So after you are done watching it, it feels like that could really happen, that when we are faced with hard time that Someone is constantly looking out for us and they’re going to make sure will find are way once again. Movies now a days just loose those solid messages and that’s why when Christmas time comes around these old classics are still the ones that truly hit the heart.

12 Days of Christmas: The Santa Clause

Welcome to day four of the 12 Days of Christmas and today’s movie stars Tim Allen as an ordinary man transforming into the Christmas icon, Santa Claus, in the holiday movie everyone should enjoy – The Santa Clause.
The film is about Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) a man who is divorced from his wife and also a father to Charlie (Eric Lloyd), who has lost his belief in Santa Claus.
That is all changed on Christmas Eve, while Charlie is spending the night; they are both woken up by a noise on the roof. They head outside to see what all the commotion is about and discover Santa on the roof. Scott yells at him causing Santa Claus to fall and become lifeless on the ground and then he magically disappears, leaving only the Santa suit behind.
Scott quickly goes through his pockets to find some sort of identification and comes across a business card that clearly stats that if something should happen to him, someone should put on the suit, get into the sleigh and leave the rest to the reindeers.
Scott puts on the suit and begins to deliver toys from house to house and at the end of their long trip, the reindeer bring them back to the North Pole. There they meet Bernard (David Krumholtz), the head elf of the North Pole and the person who brings The “Santa Clause” to Scott’s attention.
The clause is written very small on the card Scott took out of the Santa suit and says that upon the death of the previous occupant, whoever wears the suit assumes the identity of Santa Claus and all the responsibilities that go with it.
Now if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll have to now to find out how this affects his life.
The Santa Clause is the first movie in a Santa Clause trilogy and is the best out of the three. Yet, it took about eight years for a sequel to this movie to be released and it never lived up to the hype that it received over the years and the third movie should just be forgotten about.
What I enjoy most about this movie and the reason I placed it on this list is because it takes a lot of its style from older holiday movies. Also, Tim Allen’s performance as Santa Claus is great and there is one scene, where he’s being integrated by the police that is just hilarious.
If you haven’t been able to catch this movie on TV during one of its many showings, then I would recommend picking it up to watch.

12 Days of Christmas: Elf

Welcome to the third day of 12 Days of Christmas and today’s movie stars Will Ferrell as a human raised by Elves, who thinks he’s an Elf in a film called Elf.
It all begins in an orphanage on the night before Christmas. Santa (Edward Asner) has come down the chimney and as he’s placing presents under the tree, when an orphan baby is able to crawl out of his bed and into Santa’s sack. This causes Santa to take the baby all the way back to the North Pole, where he would be adopted by an older Elf named simply Papa Elf (Bob Newhart).
Fast forward the clock a few years and now that baby has grown into a full sized man named Buddy (Will Ferrell) and is unaware that he’s larger than all the other Elf’s that populate the world he lives in.
Soon Santa and Papa Elf decide it’s time for Buddy to go to New York City and find his real family. When Buddy arrives in New York he soon finds out that the life he led in the North Pole doesn’t apply to the real world.
After he has eaten gum off the street and twirled around in a rotating door, he decides it’s time to seek out his real father, Walter (James Caan), who is a publisher of children’s books that is addicted to his work.
Of course, Walter doesn’t think that this 6’3 elf is his son and takes him to get a blood test that proves that Buddy is who he says he is. This leads to Buddy meeting his step-mother, Emily (Mary Steenburgen) and his ten-year-old half-brother, Michael (Daniel Tay) who has no faith in the holiday and feels neglected by his father. Buddy then takes it upon himself to reintroduce the spirit of the holiday to everyone.
How can you not like this movie? It has Will Ferrell dressed up as an Elf in the role that made him into a movie star. There is just something really funny seeing a grown man running around New York as a Christmas Elf, if that's not enough to get you to watch the movie than I don't know if I can help you.
This would be my personal favorite Ferrell film, his stuff is starting to grow old; I mean Step Brothers was a total misfire and hopefully his upcoming movie Land of the Lost won’t suffer the same way.
Back to the movie, this is one of the best modern Christmas movies out there right now. Since 2003 I can name a few holiday movies that made me cringe (example: Christmas with the Kranks, Deck the Halls and Surviving Christmas) and also made me happy that we have movies like this.
If you are one of those people that haven’t seen this yet, I strongly advise you to watch it.

12 Days of Christmas: Scrooged

The second movie on my list is a movie that I’ve always considered to be a holiday classic. The movie puts Bill Murray into the role of a Scrooge like character and retells A Christmas Carol in Scrooged.
In the film Murray plays TV network president, Frank Cross, a man who has been turned from a nice guy to an evil executive that could care less about his family or employees. So because of his deeds he is visited by three ghost that bring the Charles Dickens Story A Christmas Carol into modern times and also create one my personal favorite Bill Murray movies.
I noticed three different things when I bring this movie up to people, they either love it, hate it or never seen it. I’ll be honest this movie might not be enjoyed by everyone; some of the material feels much uninspired. Yet, I think that’s all made up my Murray’s performance.
Besides Murray, another reason why I liked this movie is because of its sarcastic feel the movie carries, which makes for a very entertaining comedy.
All in all it’s an enjoyable holiday movie that everyone should check out.

12 Days of Christmas: Christmas in Connecticut

In 12 Days of Christmas I will be covering 12 different holiday movies that are on my must see list. I didn’t include any holiday specials (Example: Rudolph, Charlie Brown, The Grinch), I only included feature length films.
The first movie on the list is a classic from 1945 that stars Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan in a great Christmas story – Christmas in Connecticut.
The film is about Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) a writer who writes a cooking column for a women’s magazine, there is only one problem she has no experience in the kitchen. She is only posing as a happy housewife who has a husband and a very nice house in the country.
Soon her publisher, who believes that all she writes is true, arranges for her to entertain Sailor Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) over the Christmas holiday. This causes Lane to marry her boyfriend, find a house and prepare one of her wonderful meals that she always writes about. Things get even more complicated when Lane starts to fall in love with Jones.
The movie is a comedy and a very screwball type of comedy, that is all about mistaken identities and it’s actually done very well. Stanwyck performance is really the best reason to watch the movie; she is able to break out of what could have been a very linear performance and makes it a performance that overcomes its restrictions and boundaries.
If you don’t like older movies then you most likely will not like this movie. It’s a great comedy, but it also shows its age.