He stood outside her house with cue cards! He’s a human boy raised by elves! We know the stories. We’ve seen them year after year. It’s time to look to the future of the classic holiday flick. It’s a fine balance—slightly more sophisticated than Hallmark, but not so laborious as to divide the family members assembled in the living room. Over the last decade, rising and reliable filmmakers alike have ventured into the wintertime genre to offer feel-good and formally innovative fare alike. This season, we honor a selection of their efforts. Our nominations are below.
Carol (2015)
In 1952, an aspiring young photographer (Rooney Mara) is working at a department store outfitted for holiday shoppers, one of whom is the aristocratic and titular Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). A few subtle glances and lingering hands spark a love affair that threatens to upend each of their lives. Todd Haynes barreled into the holiday season with this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s semi-autobiographical 1952 novel The Price of Salt, also a now-classic staple of queer dramas.
Watch now on HBO Max.
Tangerine (2015)
This relatively early effort from Anora director Sean Baker sees a pair of trans sex workers in LA storm the town on Christmas Eve in search of a cheating boyfriend. Doors kicked in, hair is pulled, and screaming matches abound. The entire film was also shot on iPhones, but rest assured, what it lacks in production value it makes up for tenfold with one-of-a-kind, award-winning performances from its leads.
Watch now on Hulu or Peacock.
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
It’s a horror movie—we know. But no two families are alike, and their holiday viewing selections shouldn’t be either. The second installment of director James Wan’s supernatural series sees paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren investigating the Amityville murders in 1976. Wan himself noted that he intended to make the project a “‘Christmas-themed and set’ horror film,” and it is accordingly rife with family ties and twinkling pine trees.
Watch now on HBO Max.
Little Women (2019)
The one-two punch of Lady Bird and Little Women made Greta Gerwig a household name in the late 2010s, though we’d wager that the latter is a bit more appropriate for cozy family viewing. The classic tale has the March sisters and co. growing from young whippersnappers to headstrong adults, elegantly embodied by an all-star cast including Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, and Meryl Streep.
Available to rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+.
Klaus (2019)
The directorial debut of Spanish animator Sergio Pablos tells an alternate origin story of Santa Claus, here embodied by a lonesome toymaker named Klaus, encouraged by a local postman in the “unhappiest town on Earth” to start delivering his crafts to the homes of nearby children. The animation here is beautiful, distinct, and entirely hand-drawn—three attributes that, to be frank, are no longer characteristic of most projects made for children. This holiday season, treat your little ones to something that, like Klaus’s toys, was developed with care.
Watch now on Netflix.
Happiest Season (2020)
Recall the winter of 2020: the gays were in a tizzy as rumors of a new queer holiday love story swirled, starring patron saint Kristen Stewart with her bleached blonde hair and unbuttoned power suit. Happiest Season arrived as a well-structured holiday flick with good performances and plenty of will-they, won’t-they angst. Is it a little heavy on the homophobic parents and a little light on the wintertime whimsy? Yes. But Happiest Season has earned its place.
Watch now on Hulu and Disney+.
The Green Knight (2021)
The Green Knight is more than a Christmas movie. The Green Knight is more than a chance to watch Dev Patel look dashing in his period garb and shaggy black mane for two hours and 10 minutes. The Green Knight is everything: a retelling of a bonkers Arthurian tale, visually stunning, a medieval score from classical composer Daniel Hartand, and it’s hard to follow in a way that demands a rewatch. David Lowry took on just about every other role for the film (directing, writing, producing, and editing).
Watch now on Tubi. Available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.
Spencer (2021)
Yes, Kristen Stewart is on here twice. In 2021, she starred as Princess Di in the second installment of director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy focused on iconic 20th-century women. (Jackie O. and opera singer Maria Callas comprise the other two.) The role earned Stewart an Academy Award nod and Larraín a nomination for Venice’s Golden Lion. The film follows Diana through the Christmas holiday in 1991 as her relationship is threatened by her husband’s affair and her sanity strained by the demands of her growing fame.
Watch now on Netflix.
The Holdovers (2023)
In 2023, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers arrived with such tightly packaged holiday aesthetics and feel-good redemption arcs and intimacy that it inserted itself into the canon without much pondering. The film sees Paul Giamatti as a beleaguered teacher, Dominic Sessa (in his onscreen debut) as an emotionally burdened student, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as a caring school staffer, all stuck on campus over winter break. Their dynamics are tested, but of course, in the end, they become like family.
Available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.
A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter (2024)
Seemingly scientifically engineered to be the perfect film for playback while making Christmas cookies, or while half the family is running around the house and the other half is embedded into the couch, Sabrina Carpenter’s Nonsense Christmas musical special is perfectly of-our-times—and somehow has the lasting tinge of something Cher might have put together if she had access to Netflix’s budgets back in the day.
Watch now on Netflix.
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