Michael Bay’s 2001 movie about the bombing of Pearl Harbor is exactly the kind of movie we’ve come to expect from Michael Bay. Spectacular special effects, but rather light on anything resembling narrative, acting and credible dialogue. Throw in an abundance of clichés and an excessively long running time and you have formula that has served him well over the years. In the case of Pearl Harbor though, Bay managed to add historical inaccuracies to his already impressive arsenal.

It was deservedly critically panned and the cast, though undoubtably stellar, do very little to redeem the clunky dialogue. Nonetheless, I think if you go in expecting to see a Michael Bay movie, rather than a faithful adaptation of real life events, then it is hard to be too disappointed. It’s objectively quite a bad movie, but if you switch your brain to a suitably low setting, then it can still be entertaining.

Score for Christmasishness

The real life attack on Pearl Harbor happened on the 7th December, and in this point (if in not much else) the movie is quite faithful. It’s not overtly Christmassy, what with all the explosions and carnage, but there if you squint hard enough, you will see some signs that the season is upon us. So it’s a little bit Christmas(ish), and if watching Pearl Harbor as a Christmas movie is largely missing the point, then it’s no more missing the point than Michael Bay was when he made the movie in the first place.

Despite claiming to not be a fan of the genre, it has become apparent that rom-coms have featured multiple times in my annual Christmas countdowns and, more often than not, I’ve actually enjoyed watching them. That said, I probably wouldn’t have watched many of them if I weren’t so committed to compiling this pointless annual list.

And that sentiment is definitely true of You’ve Got Mail which is a movie I had managed to intentionally avoid for many a year but whose Christmas(ish) credentials ultimately forced me to succumb to its charms. Reuniting writer/director Nora Ephron with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks who helped her to render Sleepless in Seattle delightfully diverting, lightening proves it can strike twice (or arguably thrice given that Ryan also starred in the the masterpiece that is When Harry Met Sally, which Ephron also wrote) as the combination is just as winning this time around.

It’s formulaic and entirely improbable fare for the most part, but if you are prepared to suspend your disbelief, it is entirely charming throughout.

Score for Christmasishness

Although not all of the movie is set during the ‘season’, quite a large part of the narrative does take place around Christmas and it does seem to be fairly pertinent to the plot for the most part. And when it is Christmas on screen, it’s really Christmassy, so this would be a more than appropriate movie to add to any festive film schedule.

1995’s Strange Days seems like it should have been a success. Directed by Kathryn Bigalow, co-written by James Cameron and starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett and Juliette Lewis, it appeared to have all the ingredients of a sure-fire hit. But it was, in fact, a commercial failure and critical opinion was divided to almost polar extremes.

I saw it circa 1996 in the form of a video rental, back when such a thing was the norm and I didn’t hate it. Set in (what was then) the near future of the last days of 1999, its slightly dystopic take on the denouement of the last millennium seemed fairly plausible at the time. Of course that perception hasn’t aged well, and much more recent re-watch required much more suspending of my disbelief.

That said, I still didn’t hate it. It’s slightly too long, and occasionally slow-moving, but it still seems quite innovative and it’s entertaining enough, with some solid performances from the leads.

Maybe not an all-time classic, but it’s definitely a movie that deserved to fare a little better at the box-office than it actually did.

Score for Christmasishness

Set in the last days of 1999, in the period between Christmas and New Year, it definitely doesn’t ignore the festivity of the time of year. There are Christmas decorations and trees aplenty in various scenes throughout. We also see a store Santa Claus being mugged in the background as Fiennes character drives through an anarchic LA early in the movie. It’s never especially cheery, but it’s fairly Christmas(ish) nonetheless.

I was a little bit too old for the Harry Potter novels when they first came out, but I’m always one to jump on a bandwagon, so by the time the movies started appearing, I was well-versed in the world of wizardry and witchcraft. I quite liked the books in the main – I can certainly understand why the generation who were the target audience seemed to be so enthusiastic.

The movie adaptations were fairly well-done for the most part too. 2001’s Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone (also known as Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone depending on where you reside) certainly arrived to much fanfare. It hasn’t aged as well as it might – the CGI looks very 2001 in places. And while the cast is undeniably stellar, the main trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, though impressively adept for child actors, are nonetheless weaker than some of their adult co-stars in this entry. The movie is also a little too long, which is something the series does manage to rectify in later movies by daring to be a little less faithful to the source material than the debut outing.

It’s still not a bad effort though. If I’d grown up with this instead of Star Wars I might love it as much as Star Wars.

But I didn’t.

So I don’t.

Score for Christmasishness

A blockbuster movie about magic is entirely the stuff of Christmas viewing schedules. But if we purely stick to the plot then only a bit of the film is set at Christmas. It’s relevant to the plot and there are some very Christmassy scenes. But most of the movie is not set at Christmas. So we can only consider Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to be a bit Christmas(ish) in reality.

1997’s Boogie Nights is something of a genre-defying tour-de-force. Certainly it defied any expectations I had prior to watching it, and, for a movie that is ostensibly about the pornographic film industry in the late seventies and early eighties, it is surprisingly heart-warming at times.

Indeed it oscillates seamlessly from moments that are hilariously funny, to emphatically bleak, and from poignant melancholy to life-affirming joy, without ever missing a beat.

An early entry in the almost peerless filmography of Paul Thomas Anderson, with excellent performances from an impressive cast, Boogie Nights is never less than entertaining in spite of a hefty running time of two and half hours.

Score for Christmasishness

The timeline of the movie is roughly seven years but it does manage to incorporate a few festive scenes on the way. Notably a New Year’s Eve party, celebrating the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties, which is full of festive merriment until it abruptly ends in a less than cheerful murder/suicide. The latter part of the movie is also quite festive, at least in the background, though again not without a number of harrowing moments. Boogie Nights is definitely not a Christmas movie, but it is certainly a bit Christmas(ish) in parts.

2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks has, to date, spawned three sequels (the first of which was ingeniously entitled The Squeakquel). I haven’t seen any of them, and I’m not in any hurry to do so.

Not that I hated the 2007 outing. Objectively I can’t imagine anyone would really think this is a good movie, but it’s harmless enough childish fun, which doesn’t try particularly hard to be anything other than harmless childish fun.

There is perhaps an element of nostalgia here for anyone that grew up with the novelty high-pitched albums that were the original home of the singing chipmunks and I do recall not hating the 80s cartoon as a child (although I didn’t really love it either), but taken on its own merits the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie is a by-the-numbers cynical Hollywood cash-in, which doesn’t deserve too much attention one way or another.

Score for Christmasishness

For the first half of the film I genuinely thought I was watching a Christmas movie. The eponymous rodents start the film living in a Christmas tree, and there is general sense of festiveness for the first 45 minutes, including a recurring Christmas song, which is fairly essential to the plot. We even spend some time with the characters on Christmas Day, but then the film deviates spectacularly from the festive theme and the rest of the story is not especially Christmassy at all. So it’s probably best to split the difference and give the whole thing a rating of three out of five on the Christmasishness scale.

2004’s adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days is rather a departure from the book. I assume. I’ve never read the book. Prior to watching this film, my only acquaintance with the tale was the 1980s cartoon Around the World with Willy Fogg, which was very different. Although I don’t think Jules Verne ever meant Phileas Fogg to be a talking lion so there is a chance that the cartoon was not entirely faithful to the source material either. Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that the 2004 movie did take some liberties because I can’t imagine that there were quite so many martial arts sequences in the novel. Or indeed any.

Departures from the source material are perfectly fine in adaptations as long as those changes improve the adaptation. But really the movie is a bit of a mess from start to finish. There are certainly enjoyable moments but no coherent narrative to speak of. It’s always fun to watch Jackie Chan do his stuff, Steve Coogan and Cecile de France are perfectly charming and there are some amusing cameos along the way but the end result is a great deal less than the sum of its parts.

Score for Christmasishness

Had the adaptation been a little more faithful to the source material, the adventure would have concluded on the 21st December, which would make it pretty Christmassy in my book. But as there is no fidelity to the novel, it may well not be December at the end of the movie. It certainly doesn’t look like it is. But no dates are explicitly mentioned on screen so it’s reasonable to draw one’s own conclusions. And given that the novel does end on the 21st December, I’m happy to conclude that the movie does too. Even if it probably doesn’t.

2021’s The Tomorrow War was denied a cinematic release due to the Covid 19 pandemic, which is a shame because it really is the kind of movie that was made for the big screen. Not that it’s especially good, because it isn’t, but it does have lots of explosions and action and stuff, which would probably make for an entertaining, if ultimately forgettable, evening, which is often all I want from my local multiplex. As it was, it launched, rather unceremoniously onto a streaming platform, and, while I can still appreciate the merits of a mindless time-travel flic that often falls foul of its own internal logic, any opportunity it ever had to wow anyone was probably lost as a result.

Not that I, in any way, hated The Tomorrow War. It’s absolutely fine if you can ignore the glaring plot holes throughout. I’m not sure it’s worth multiple viewings though.

Score for Christmasishness

One reason why I might return to this movie is that quite a lot of it is visibly set at Christmas time. Not the bit set in the future with the scary monsters, but the bit that is set in the ‘present’ (which actually would be the past at the time of writing but was the ‘near future’ at the time the movie was made) it is clearly Christmas. So The Tomorrow War might well be deserving of a place on someone’s festive viewing schedule, presuming that person quite likes derivative (and implausible) science-fiction that takes itself a bit too seriously.

Having included The Expendables 2 in last year’s Christmas countdown, I felt it only right to revisit the original movie for this year’s efforts. As someone who has always enjoyed a 90s action movie, even those of dubious quality, I was pretty excited about seeing this first instalment of Stallone’s homage to the genre. And, with my brain suitably switched to the setting I reserve for ‘mindless action and paper-thin plots’ I was not disappointed.

The Expendables is not something I could comfortably define as a ‘good film. But it absolutely satisfies the occasional craving that I have for big stupid fun.

Score for Christmasishness

As with last year’s inclusion of the sequel, The Expendables’ Christmas(ish) credentials hinge on the fact that Statham’s character is called Lee Christmas. But whereas the sequel has a picture of Santa Claus painted on an aeroplane, there is no such festive imagery in this one. So it really isn’t very Christmassy at all. But one of the main characters is still called Lee Christmas, which I could hardly ignore.

I didn’t hate 2005’s The Family Stone but I’m not sure I really liked it all that much either. It mostly seems to be about a people who are quite hard to like, not being liked by other people who are also hard to like. They mostly do seem to end up liking each other in the end, but, despite the more than decent cast, I still found it hard to like any of them.

It’s not entirely without merit, there are some genuinely funny moments and some parts which might well have been quite moving if I had been able to get past my general ambivalence to the titular family.

Ultimately though, it’s a comedy-drama that doesn’t seem to work especially well as a comedy or as a drama.

Score for Christmasishness

This might be one that deserves to be regarded as an actual Christmas film, rather than just Chistmas(ish). It is entirely centred around a family getting together for Christmas and there isn’t any part of the film that isn’t set over Christmas. However, if there is a discernible difference between a Christmas movie and a movie which just happens to be set at Christmas, then The Family Stone does, to my mind, fall into the latter category. It’s probably splitting hairs, but I have to justify this pointless annual endeavour somehow.

While my efforts to catalogue every movie with even the most tenuous links to Christmas in the form of an annual Advent calendar might seem a tad pointless, I am occasionally rewarded for my endeavours. For were it not for this yearly exercise in futility I would not have chanced upon a film called Happy New Year Colin Burstead. But I’m glad I did. Because it’s really good.

Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, it plays out as a modern-day dysfunctional family drama, interspersed with some genuinely laugh-out loud moments.

Score for Christmasishness

I suppose the clue is in the title. New Year’s Eve counts as part of Christmas right? There are certainly plenty of Christmas decorations in sight and the dysfunctional family gathering is a staple of many a Christmas movie. Indeed, the film would work pretty well had the action been set on Christmas day, although there are elements of a New Year celebration, specifically the build-up to midnight, which probably make more sense for this particular narrative. It’s far from a typical festive film, but it’s one I intend to revisit in Christmases future.

2006’s Starter For Ten is a relatively undemanding coming-of-age comedy that is as quintessentially British as they come. It’s not massively original and a little too content to indulge in clichés throughout. Also, the cast playing the supposedly first-year university students are all, quite evidently, in their mid-twenties.

However, the notion of basing the plot around the long-running TV show, University Challenge, does render the film a little more interesting. Strong performances from a very decent cast, and jokes which are, for the most part, pretty funny, also elevate the movie to something greater than it might otherwise have been.

Score for Christmasishness

Like many movies which make the cut in my annual festive countdown, Starter For Ten is not explicitly a Christmas movie, but the Christmas period does feature fairly heavily in the narrative and takes up a reasonable percentage of the running time. This is definitely a film which embraces its Christmasishness.

2008’s Step Brothers is very much the kind of movie you might expect a late 2000’s movie starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly to be. If you watch the trailer then you really don’t need to watch the rest of the movie unless you really like that kind of thing. Which sadly I don’t.

The premise of two Step Brothers, in their forties, acting like ten-year olds is exactly as compelling as it sounds. If I was thirteen when this came out, I’d probably have found it hilarious. I wasn’t though so this wasn’t really for me.

I didn’t completely hate it, and parts of it did make me laugh. I will never watch it again though.

Score for Christmasishness

As with many-a-movie depicting a dysfunctional family, Christmas does manage to sneak into the plot. Twice in the case of Step Brothers. Insofar as there is a coherent narrative to this movie (and I’m not sure that there is really), the two Christmases do juxtapose the progression from a complete family breakdown to a reconciliation of sorts so the film is (very slightly) better for it’s Christmasishness and thus the movie earns it’s place in my annual festive countdown (if not in my heart).

I don’t know if 1990’s Home Alone is a good film or not. I honestly can’t be objective about it at all. I’m not sure when I first saw it, but I do know I rented (or got my parents to rent it) from our local video shop at some point in the early 90s and I was instantly smitten.

I watched that rental tape repeatedly until it sadly had to be returned (which would likely have been 48 hours after it came into my possession). Shortly after that I purchased my own copy with saved up pocket money and continued to watch it ad nauseum.

I still enjoy it today. I don’t know how much of this is nostalgia and how much of that enjoyment can be attributed to the fact that it is actually a good movie. I have to imagine, though, that even if it were the greatest film ever made, my enjoyment these days is pure sentimentality.

Irrespective of its merits, it’s surely hard to argue that Macauley Culkin is not one of the finest child actors ever to grace the silver screen. And although Joe Pesci is renowned for more prestigious acting credits, his collaboration with Daniel Stern as the inept Harry and Marv, must be among the great comic double acts in cinema.

Score for Christmasishness

Home Alone very nearly made the inaugural version of this ridiculous annual countdown. But I left it out on the grounds that it has, over the years, become pretty established in my head as an ‘actual Christmas film’ as opposed to one, which is a bit Christmas(ish). But I’ve reviewed that position this year on the basis that a terrestrial UK TV channel elected to show it in April. April is definitely not Christmas. And it occurred to me that as a child I watched Home Alone all year round and never really considered it a movie solely to be consumed at Christmas. And,while if you took Christmas away from the narrative you would definitely lose something, there is the potential for the story to work at a different time of year. But it is set at Christmas, and it is very very Christmassy throughout. So irrespective of whether there is an argument to be made about it not being a bona fide Christmas movie, it is certainly Christmas(ish) in the extreme.

It’s Christmas Eve once more and so once again the folly of my annual advent calendar of movies that are a bit Christmas(ish) must draw to a close.

And what better way to go out than 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home? That is a clearly a rhetorical question for there is no better way.

As big a fan as I am of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and of superhero films in general, they are now so ubiquitous that it’s not often that they live up to the hype. But I genuinely loved this movie. Spider-Man was always my favourite superhero as a kid, which is a pretty high accolade from a kid who really liked superheroes. As a child I was mainly a fan of Spider-Man cartoons, what with there not actually being a live-action cinematic version of the Web-Slinger until 2002 (I know that may not be factually accurate and but it’s reasonable to state that anything ‘live action’ relating to Spider-Man pre-2002 was not widely known or particularly good). I’ve enjoyed the highs and lows of all the cinematic iterations of Peter Parker and his alter ego since the 2002 movie (some are clearly better than others) but, just when I thought the world didn’t need a new version of Spider-Man, Tom Holland made the part his own in the MCU, first through a cameo in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and then in subsequent stand-alone Spider-Man movies alongside the brilliant third and fourth installments of the Avengers movies. Sometimes the MCU can be hard to keep up with, but the addition of Spider-Man was genuinely wonderful.

The bar was pretty high for No Way Home, and on paper it seemed like it might be biting off more than it could chew by incorporating several villains from both the Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions of the franchise, as well as uniting Holland with Maguire and Garfield (in one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood) to have three iterations of Spider-Man in one movie. Incorporating all five non-MCU Spider-Man films into the already fairly bloated MCU might have been disastrous. It was, instead, a triumph.

I have no idea if this film is remotely appealing to anyone that isn’t a well-established Spidey-fan because I am so far down that particular rabbit-hole that I can’t even understand the concept of not being a Spidey fan.

This is definitely a movie that was made for my inner child and my inner child will forever be grateful.

Score for Christmasishness

As if a movie containing three versions of Spider-Man were not reward enough, imagine my delight when I realised that the end of the movie is explicitly set at Christmas time. It isn’t clear exactly when the rest of the movie is set beyond the fact that it is established quite early on that we’re into a period that is post-Halloween. There is one subtle reference that Christmas is coming shortly after that, but as it involves a department store and as department stores are quite heavily invested in promoting Christmas for much of November and December, there is no conclusive proof that we’re into ‘the season’ prior to the final scenes of the movie. But those scenes are very Christmassy and would be enough for me to include a much lesser film in this annual countdown. So for a movie as great as No Way Home those scenes make it a shoe-in for the Christmas Eve slot.

As I write this, some potatoes are roasting in my oven. They are basking contently in olive oil, garlic and rosemary. I’m quietly confident they will be delicious in about 45 minutes from now. At various points I will need to pop a few vegetables into the oven to keep them company on their journey to the plates of the Proclaims family. Oh and a massive side of salmon that could feed about 8 large people but will only need to feed one large person and three small people. Mrs Proclaims is fairly diminutive in stature and my daughters are still very much small children.

The all like a roast potato though.

And they all like salmon.

Which is good, because there will be quite a lot of both.

I could have purchased a smaller portion of salmon, but such are the supermarket deals in the festive build-up that it was more economical to buy too much fish than an appropriate amount. Fortunately I’m a big fan of festive leftovers so the excess will form the basis of a fair few sandwiches over the coming days.

Little Proclaims has already stated that she will not eat sprouts. Mini Proclaims has not voiced any objections but will be rather more physical in her protestations towards unwanted vegetables when faced with them on her plate and may hurl them directly at my head if I misjudge her requirements.

There is no turkey because Mrs Proclaims is the kind of strange vegetarian that refuses to eat meat but will happily eat fish. A pescatarian some might say. A pesky-tarian if you have to cater for her though.

I don’t mind this state of affairs. We’ve been together so long that having salmon for Christmas dinner is now as much of a tradition for me as turkey ever was. It’s a bonus that both of my children like it too. I think they would be open to turkey but they really do seem to like salmon and, given the tendency of small children to reject healthy food, if they are prepared to eat salmon, I am happy to provide it.

Prior to lunch, the day has mainly been devoted to the unwrapping of presents. Little Proclaims is quite good at this, and once she’d raced through her own selection of plastic unicorns, she was quite happy (and indeed quite insistent on) helping other family members to unwrap their presents. In our early days of parenthood, we used to try and eke out the present unwrapping, but Little Proclaims finds the idea of an un-unwrapped present offensive to her personal beliefs. And she can be quite loud and annoying so like all good parents, we bow to her demands and commercialist sensibilities on Christmas morning.

Mini Proclaims seems quite pleased with her gifts, but is more circumspect about the whole thing, and is frankly just as happy with the wrapping paper as the toys contained therein.

Mini Proclaims is now napping. Little Proclaims is watching TV. Mrs Proclaims is pretending to work on her PhD while actually browsing the post-Christmas sales online and I am cooking dinner.

I like cooking Christmas dinner, but I am not doing it for altruistic reasons. I’m mainly doing it because I really like eating Christmas dinner and I’m quite good at cooking. I’m not sure if I’m good at cooking because I like eating. It could be a chicken and an egg situation but as I’m cooking neither chicken nor eggs I wouldn’t wish to speculate.

I have not yet consumed any alcohol, but there is a bottle of sparkling wine chilling in the fridge and I plan to be mildly inebriated for most of the rest of the day.

We may attempt some kind of post-lunch walk. It sounds quite pleasant in principle but a combination of uncooperative children and indigestion may make it less than joyful.

I expect there will be chocolates at some point. Indeed there have already been quite a lot of chocolates.

As a parent I do think it’s important to teach my children the true meaning of Christmas. Which I’m quite sure is over-indulgence and rampant commercialism.

So wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas and planning to be slightly fatter tomorrow.

‘Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house,
Not a calorie was burning, no-one would espouse,
Any kind of activity, except watching telly,
For more had been consumed than a bowl full of jelly

And just before resolutions of New Year we make,
(The ones that we keep for days and then break),
The post Christmas fallout increases their need,
As on festive treats we continue to feed

On chocolates, on peanuts, on stollen we nibble,
On whiskey, on lager, on mulled wine we tipple,
From the top of the fridge to the cupboard so tall,
We stashed away, stashed away stashed away all

But now is the time to consume all this fare,
Without second thought, or even a care,
And as bellies bulge, and trousers get tight,
Have a great Boxing Day and a better Boxing Night!

Sirens blare
Are you listening
In the lanes
Drivers bristling
A depressing sight
It’s crappy tonight
Sulking in a Christmas traffic jam

Gone away is all hope now
Here to stay is a new low
The queue looks so long
As we don’t go along
Sulking in a Christmas traffic jam

At the junction we can try a new route
And pretend that it will some how commute
The time that we tarried
Though we know that
We’ll just rejoin the gridlock
Further down

Later on
We’ll still be here
As our dreams disappear
And we have to delay
All the plans that we’ve made
Sulking in a Christmas traffic jam

Have yourself a calorific Christmas,
Take another bite
From now on,
Our slippers will be out of sight
Have yourself a lazy little Christmas,
Eat the Yule-tide log,
From now on,
We’ll resolve not to ever jog

Here we gorge on unhealthy food,
Full of sugar we adore
Chocolate boxes so near to us
That we need to have one more.

At New Year we’ll resolve to be better
If our will allows
Hang onto that goal without a plan of how
And don’t regret the bad decisions you make now.

I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I’ve never known
With my gas bill rising
There’s no disguising
The last thing that I need is snow.

I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas
The Christmas cards I sent were late
But I’m still quite full of good cheer
Because all my Christmases have beer