Movie Night: Holiday-ish Films

BuzzSugar — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:58:22 -0800

So many movies, so little time. Thankfully, BuzzSugar is here to help you sort through them all! Each week, we'll choose a theme for a Movie Night and feature three must-see movies in keeping with that theme. This week's theme: holiday-ish films.

There are two types of holiday films. The ones, like Deck the Halls, that are entirely driven by holiday-based plots, and movies like The Holiday, where the action just happens to unfold over a holiday backdrop. Here are three of my favorite holiday-ish films that are fun to watch this time of year.

Love Actually

Nothing puts the warmth and cheer of the season into your heart quite like a film all about love in its various forms. Love Actually brings us many love-centric storylines at once: There are the coworkers awkwardly courting, the little boy whose world revolves around his beautiful classmate, the new marriage threatening to become a love triangle, and the old marriage starting to show cracks in its foundation. The wonderful cast (Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightly, and Laura Linney, to name just a few) is stellar enough to make the movie truly enjoyable, and it's even more fun to see how the stories intersect. And if you're anything like me, the real footage of people greeting loved ones at the airport in itself will be enough to get you all misty-eyed.

To see the rest, read more

Beautiful Girls

In Beautiful Girls, the holidays are the perfect time for Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) to go back to his hometown, introduce his soon-to-be-fiancee, Tracy (Annabeth Gish), to his father and brother, reconnect with old buddies, and reevaluate his life. The movie explores the idea of growing up, making sacrifices to live the life you want to live, and learning to be content with what you have. Willie's in a very mature relationship with a nice woman and lives in New York City, while his old buddies stuck around their old hometown. He befriends precocious 13-year-old Marty (Natalie Portman) next door, a fast-talking, dry-witted mini-adult who develops a crush on Willie. It's a highly realistic and funny film about the old problem of wanting what we can't have, and coming to terms with adulthood. Added bonus: Rosie O'Donnell goes on an absolutely classic tirade about women's magazines, men and relationships. Priceless.

While You Were Sleeping

Yes, the idea of someone fooling an entire family into thinking that she is their comatose son's fiancee is far-fetched. Yes, it requires some serious suspension of disbelief, and yes, the characters in said family are caricatures. Still, it's all worth it for this sweet, familiar comedy of mistaken identity. Basically, Lucy (Sandra Bullock) saves the life of a man named Peter (played by Peter Gallagher), though he is knocked into a coma in the process. When she goes to see him in the hospital, his family assumes she is his fiancee and she chooses not to correct them. She ends up spending holiday time with the quirky clan, quickly falling under their warm, charming spell. Before long, she realizes she is in love with her "fiance's" cute brother, Jack (Bill Pullman), which of course sets up an awkward situation, especially when Peter wakes up.

Source, Source, and Source