Continued from last night … Let’s crack on with the Top 5!

Netflix and Chill

Once I’ve completed my favorite Christmas tradition, I might move on to other Christmas movies. But I’m not referencing the classics like Miracle on 34th Street, It’s A Wonderful Life, etc – I mean all the other non-traditional movies. I’m a grip #salty with my mother’s passing days before Christmas some 20 years ago, so pardon my aloofiness to the holiday spirit.

Now that we’re quickly coming up on Christmas, here are the top 5 non-traditional Christmas I like to watch, and my review of each.

#5 The Ref

In one of his first acting gigs, Denis Leary plays a thief on the run who breaks into the house of Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis, a married couple seemingly minutes away from divorce, to hide on Christmas Eve. This requires holding them hostage, dealing with their son who’s home from military school, hosting a bizarre holiday dinner with their extended family, and keeping Spacey and Davis from killing each other. Leary is at his acerbic best, and it should be no shock that everything turns out all right in the end.

#4 Die Hard 2: Die Harder

On a snowy Christmas Eve in the nation’s capital, a team of terrorist have seized a major international airport, and now holds thousands of holiday travelers hostage. The terrorists, a renegade band of crack military commandos led by murderous rogue officer, have come to rescue a drug lord from justice. They’ve prepared for every contingency, except one: John McClane, an off-duty cop seized by a feeling of deadly deja vu. The heroic cop not only has to battle terrorists, but also an incompetent airport police chief, the hard headed commander of the army’s anti-terrorist squad and a deadly winter snowstorm. The runways are littered with death and destruction, and McClane is in a race against time. His wife is trapped on one of the planes circling somewhere overhead, desperately low on fuel!

Die Hard 2 makes Bruce Willis look better and better. The role of John McClane is one filled with the fight for right and to trying to stop the bad guys. Again a lot of the stunts would have been done by Willis considering the professionalism of the man. Running all over an airport in a fierce snowstorm, fighting scenes on the wing of a real 747 jet and trying to save lives he has no attachment to, L.A. cop John McClane puts his body on the line, so justice is served and so did the actor Bruce Willis in my view to bring a great action movie back for a second time. Willis is one of my favorite!

#3 Clue

This is one of those movies that I would watch repeatedly and, being a movie made in 1985, it still holds up as a great source of entertainment for me.

Based on the board game of the same name by Parker Brothers, the six suspects are invited to the mansion, presumably by Mr. Boddy, to a dinner party. The host later reveals they are all being blackmailed and wanted to get everybody together to confront the perpetrator. What follows is an intriguing, yet hilarious investigation to catch a murderer.

All the characters are hilarious; I love all the screams, finger-pointing, reenactments, motives and their investigations. I think John Morris’ terrific music score enhances the eerie and mysterious feel of a murder mystery movie. This movie constantly reminds you that there is a murderer on the loose and there are obvious suspects for you to look at!

I think the humor is just great, particularly Miss Scarlet’s acid wit. This is also one of those movies that you will find something new every time you watch it. There are some downsides in this film; I believe each famous room should be emphasized more, for example, a brief dance sequence in the Ball Room and a pool game in the Billiard Room. In addition, some results on the three endings created plot holes.

But overall, a fun comedy.

#2 Gremlins

Gremlins did for Christmas what Halloween did for Halloween, made it even more terrifying. After his dad picked him up the adorable Mogwai Gizmo, Billy didn’t follow the core rules close enough and wound up exposing the sleepy little town of Kingston Falls to an army of little green murderous monsters intent on creating chaos at every turn. Thanks to some quick thinking, Billy, Gizmo and company use the Gremlins love of Snow White against them and their vampire-like aversion to light to save the day. Poor Kate just can’t catch a break on Christmas, can she?

#1 Die Hard

BEFORE anyone dives into me about Bruce Willis’s quote about Die Hard; lemme advise you that all y’all are truncating the entire quote to serve your evil purpose.

Here is the entire quote.

Willis chimed in on the matter in a 2018 conversation with Entertainment Weekly. “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie!” He said. “It’s a goddamn Bruce Willis movie!”

~ Bruce Willis

Now that is settled, let’s finish up.

“All right, listen up guys. ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except… the four a**holes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation.” Warms the holiday heart, doesn’t it? NY cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is invited to his estranged wife’s Christmas Party “by mistake” and goes up against Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.” While not exactly your traditional holiday movie, this 1987 actioner will add a little spike to your glass of eggnog.

I am not done with the holiday film cheer … tomorrow is a look at the Top 10 Traditional Christmas Movies.