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Let’s face it, even the best Christmas movies can be a little corny. In fact, there are a pretty slim number of Christmas movies that don’t suck. Some flicks go overkill on the preachy messages, while others will bore you to sleep with the same old holiday values. Put simply, when it comes time to pick a quality Christmas flick, not all releases are created equal.
To get to the bottom of the holiday blockbuster blunder, we’ve worked our way through a near-endless amount of content, reviewing, analysing and lamenting each second of the cheerful footage. We’ll spare you the tokenistic ‘Is Die Hard really a Christmas movie?’ debate and instead focus on the tried and tested favourites that headline the holiday season. From loveable Muppets to tragic tales of Dickensian drama, the best Christmas movies of all time are a mixed bag of emotion, cheer and a good-cooked goose for all.
So, if you find yourself with a few hours to kill on Christmas Day, let us be your guide through the season’s best. This created list contains a selection of Christmas movies that don’t suck, or if they do, they’re good bad. You know what we mean. Consider this our gift to you.
Best Christmas Movies at a Glance
Our list of the best Christmas movies of all time includes the following.
- Best overall: Love Actually
- Best action Christmas movie: Die Hard
- Best comedy: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Best classic Christmas movie: Home Alone
- Best new Christmas movie: The Holdovers
Now we’ve rounded up our favourites, let’s check out the full list.

1. Elf
- Genre: Comedy; Kids
- Director: Jon Favreau
- Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel
- IMDB Rating: 7.1
- Release Date: 27 November 2003
Before he was Ron Burgandy, Will Ferrell was Buddy the Elf. A staple of the holiday season, Jon Favreau’s Elf makes for the perfect Christmas comedy flick, replete with a string of hilarious scenes and instantly quotable moments. From ‘The World’s Best Cup of Coffee’ to the awkwardness of the impromptu Elf Christmas Gram, Elf is one of the films that will endear itself to you and your family members forever.
The story follows Buddy, a human being who was raised by elves in Santa’s grotto. Completely unaware of his differences, both physically and emotionally, Buddy has his world shattered when it is revealed to him that not only is his real father not an elf, he’s also on the Naughty List. To right the wrongs and find his place in the world, Buddy sets off to New York City with only a snow globe to guide his way. During his journey, Buddy encounters the harsh realities of the Big Apple, but never once does it dim his light. The excitable, slightly ADHD Elf remains as chipper as ever, slowly winning over his miserable father Walter Hobbs and toy-store employee Jovie, whom he grows increasingly fond of.
It’s a simple premise that could have fallen flat had it not been for a knockout performance from Ferrell as the over-the-top hyper-positive Buddy. The comedy legend’s charming turn anchors the film in a way that never feels too much or too little, providing a perfect balance in what is a true fish-out-of-water favourite.

2. Home Alone
- Genre: Family Comedy
- Director: Chris Columbus
- Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern
- IMDB Rating: 7.7
- Release Date: 10 November, 1990
Home Alone is a must-watch Christmas movie for the whole family. A very young Macaulay Culkin plays Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old troublemaker who must protect his family home from burglars after he’s left behind from his family’s Christmas holiday to Paris.
Beyond the troubling fact that his parents just left Kevin at home, Home Alone is an incredibly fun and lighthearted movie, despite the absolute carnage the young McCallister enacts on the two burglars looking to rob his home.
The movie is filled with that John Hughes goodness you know and love from The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We can’t recommend this movie highly enough, and it’s tame enough that you can watch it with your kids or younger loved ones.

3. Love Actually
- Genre: Romantic Comedy
- Director: Richard Curtis
- Starring: Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth
- IMDB Rating: 7.6
- Release Date: 6 November, 2003
Many will tell you that Love Actually is the undisputed best Christmas movie, and it’s hard to disagree. The movie stars an ensemble cast of Britain’s best, who you will undoubtedly recognise from flicks new and old. The plot follows the lives of eight different couples, in loosely related adventures all leading to Christmas.
While there’s a fair bit of sap on display in Love Actually, it is an absolute classic for a reason. Featuring an award-winning performance from Bill Nighy as an aging rockstar looking for one last hit, to the cringy act of professing your love to someone else’s wife through handwritten cue cards, the film showcases the weird ways we all respond to the holiday.
Richard Curtis, the movie’s director, is on record as thinking the movie is a bit dated now, and it’s hard to disagree, but that’s also part of the charm.

4. Die Hard
- Genre: Action
- Director: John McTiernan
- Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia
- IMDB Rating: 8.2
- Release Date: 12 July, 1988
Starting off our list of the Christmas movies that don’t suck is Die Hard. This is the perfect example of a movie where it just happens to be Christmas, without dominating the story. Rather than handing out presents, Bruce Willis delivers ass-kickings and bullets, as he takes on a league of terrorists led by Alan Rickman. Whether it’s technically a Christmas movie or not, Die Hard is well worth your time, just don’t ask Roger Ebert.
The film critic extraordinaire gave the movie a cold-blooded 2/5 and found particular disinterest in the character of the Deputy Police Chief. “Here’s a suggestion for thriller-makers,” he wrote. “You can’t go wrong if all of the characters in your movie are at least as intelligent as most of the characters in your audience.”
Ouch. Despite his less-than-blazing critique, Die Hard managed to nab a ridiculous USD$139 billion at the box office and gave birth to one of the most significant action franchises of all time.

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Genre: Animated Musical
- Director: Henry Selick
- Starring: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara
- IMDB Rating: 7.9
- Release Date: 9 October, 1993
Is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? We’d have to say both. Jack Skellington, king of Halloween town, is starting to feel a bit bored with the usual scares. Halloween comes and goes each year, and Jack wants to do something new. When he discovers Christmas town, Jack is inspired and starts trying to hold his own Christmas celebrations, with a Halloween-town-twist.
Things don’t quite go according to Jack’s plan, and soon, he is fighting to save Santa from the evil Oogie Boogie. The claymation (animation with clay, like Wallace & Gromit) is visually stunning, and every scene could be paused and hung on your wall. If you’re after something a bit different this year but don’t want to go fully into ‘Holiday Horror’ mode, this isn’t a bad shout.

6. Christmess
- Genre: Australian; Comedy; Drama
- Director: Heath Davis
- Starring: Darren Gilshenan, Nicole Pastor, Hannah Joy
- IMDB Rating: 6.2
- Release Date: 30 November, 2023
A Christmas film you may not have heard of, Christmess is a surprising homegrown delight that hits all the right notes. Coming from the brain of Man of Many favourite Heath Davis, the uniquely Australian story focuses less on the charm and joy of the holiday season, instead exploring the loneliness and challenge that Christmas can bring. While that might sound a little dark, Christmess plays out like a true message of hope, bringing so much-needed reality to the genre.
It follows the plight of Chris Flint, a once-famous actor battling severe alcohol addiction. After a stint in rehab, Chris takes a job as a strip mall Santa Claus, leading to a chance encounter with his estranged daughter. With his life at rock bottom, Chris makes the snap decision to get himself together and win his daughter’s forgiveness. Turning to his sponsor, along with a sharp-tongued musician in recovery (played by real-life alt-rocker and Middle Kids singer Hannah Joy in her screen debut), Chris starts the slow journey to redemption.
As I wrote in our full review of the Australian Christmas film upon its release, the heavy subject matter might seem out of place for the holiday period, but the performances from Joy and comedy star Darren Gilshenan add a surprising level of warmth. It’s a full-blown authentic view of the Australian experience, warts and all.
“I really want to tell people that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed, lost and melancholy at Christmas because you’re are not alone,” Davis told me. “A lot of people feel the same it’s just not cool to talk about it. The sentiment of Christmas and the reality of Christmas are vastly different things. The notion of the Hallmark happy family ideal is a fantasy.”
If you are looking for a Christmas movie that you haven’t seen before, that feels entirely different from any out there, Christmess might be the story for you. Full of heart and emotional to the core, this is a true-blue Aussie triumph and a great way to ring in the holiday season.

7. The Santa Clause
- Genre: Holiday Comedy
- Director: John Pasquin
- Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson
- IMDB Rating: 6.6
- Release Date: 11 November, 1994
The snarky wit we all know and love from Tim Allen is on full display in The Santa Clause. When the current Santa falls off his roof, Allen must deliver the presents instead. This enters him into ‘the Santa Clause’, an agreement that makes him the new Santa.
As in, Allen literally becomes Santa. Slowly, he starts gaining weight, his hair and beard start growing white, and try as he might, he cannot get out of the clause. Eventually, he’ll have to step up and take on the challenge of delivering billions of presents: with the help of some elves and reindeer, of course. It’s a fun family movie with minimal stakes, and Allen gives a hammy performance as Saint Nick that doubles as a touching story of togetherness on Christmas.

8. Violent Night
- Genre: Dark Comedy
- Director: Tommy Wirkola
- Starring: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Beverly D’Angelo
- IMDB Rating: 6.7
- Release Date: 12 November, 2022
You probably wouldn’t expect it, but Violent Night stars Stranger Things‘ David Harbour as a vengeful yet charming Saint Nick. Forced to go up against a team of mercenaries invading a family’s home on Christmas Eve in search of $300 million, Harbour’s Santa dishes out a seemingly endless amount of ass-whoppings. It’s like if Die Hard, Home Alone and The Santa Clause got mixed together in a blender.
It’s a different kind of Christmas movie, but one that those tired of the same old tropes being paraded out every holiday have welcomed: us included. Here, Santa isn’t just a deliverer of presents, but a force to be reckoned with: using tinsel, decorative star lights or hand grenades to spread the cheer. There are a lot of these kinds of mature retellings of children’s tales out there today, but Violent Night is one of the more successful ones, and there’s never been a better time to check it out.

9. The Muppet Christmas Carol
- Genre: Holiday Comedy
- Director: Brian Henson
- Starring: Michael Caine, David Goelz, Steve Whitmore
- IMDB Rating: 7.8
- Release Date: 6 December, 1992
If you’ve ever wondered what it’d look like to see Sir Michael Caine yell at a bunch of Muppets, this is the movie for you. The Muppet Christmas Carol is exactly what is says on the tin: The Muppets’ take on the age-old story by Charles Dickens.
In it Caine plays the ever-dour Ebenezer Scrooge, a real Christmas Grinch that treats his workers and family like crap until he is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Scrooge is forced to see that, actually, he’s a bit of a prick and should probably be a bit nicer. A classic Christmas story that flies over the head of most. A Christmas Carol is a classic for a reason, and what better way to revisit it than with a bunch of famous hand puppets and one of the greatest actors of our time?

10. Scrooged
- Genre: Dark Comedy
- Director: Richard Donner
- Starring: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe
- IMDB Rating: 6.9
- Release Date: 17 November, 1988
From one version of A Christmas Carol to another, Bill Murray stars in Scrooged. It marked Murray’s return to cinema following a self-inflicted hiatus after the huge success of Ghostbusters, and though he called working on Scrooged ‘misery’, he does a pretty good job of hamming it up on screen.
Here, Dickens’ Christmas Carol is given a modern spin, as Murray plays a cynical television executive seeking to air a version of the original Dickens story on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, he is targeted by the three ghosts of Christmas himself and must contend with the fact that he’s made a lot of people miserable and that some of them might even want to kill him.
While it was panned at release, Scrooged is being re-evaluated by a new generation of movie fans that appreciate the film for what it is: a modern retelling of classic story, told with the wit and sarcasm of Bill Murray. Honestly, what’s not to like?

11. Black Christmas
- Genre: Slasher Horror
- Director: Bob Clark
- Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder
- IMDB Rating: 7.1
- Release Date: 11 October, 1974
Black Christmas is a Christmas horror movie that’s been remade a few times now, and we can see why. The latest 2019 remake hasn’t had the best reception, so we recommend watching the original this Christmas.
The film finds a group of sorority girls being stalked by a stranger over their holiday break, and is one of the earliest examples of what would go on to be called ‘Slasher Horror’. It’s not quite as graphic as some of its contemporaries, though, and instead focuses on psychological horror with a sprinkling of physical violence. That’s not to say it’s family-friendly, but it’s certainly not as graphic as something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which came out earlier in 1974. Still, if you’re after a creepy Christmas movie with a hint of violence, Black Christmas could be just what you’re after.

12. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Genre: Dark Comedy
- Director: Shane Black
- Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan
- IMDB Rating: 7.5
- Release Date: 6 September, 2005
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a movie set around a murder, that partners a private detective and a thief. Witty, quirky, this movie has every bit of banter you’ve come to expect from characters in a Shane Black movie. Also, like almost all Black movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang takes place over Christmas, making it eligible for our list.
Robert Downey Jr plays Harry Lockhart, a thief who finds himself accidentally auditioning for an acting gig while attempting to escape from the police. When he gets the part, he’s paired with a detective, played by Val Kilmer, to learn how to act as a detective.
After a series of murders starts, and Lockhart meets back up with his high school sweetheart, things start getting complicated. You can see shades of Downey Jr’s work as Tony Stark in this movie, and that’s because he essentially based his portrayal of Iron Man on his performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Even without that link to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is a flick well worth your time.

13. Jingle All The Way
- Genre: Holiday Comedy
- Director: Brian Levant
- Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman
- IMDB Rating: 5.7
- Release Date: 16 November, 1996
Jingle All the Way is a fantastic Christmas departure from Arnie’s usual high-octane, action flicks. Howard Langston, played by Arnie, promises his son that he’ll find him the super popular Turbo Man action figure for Christmas after letting him down one too many times. The only problem is that Turbo Man is Pokémon-level popular and sold out everywhere.
It’s as ridiculous a premise as they come, but watching the Governator navigate a series of holiday hijinks is a welcome reminder that the man has some level of acting range. Is Jingle All The Way as good as True Lies or Last Action Hero? No, but it’s a damn good time, and seeing Arnie dress up as a literal superhero is pretty fantastic. It’s dumb fun, and is absolutely appropriate for kids and adults.

14. Batman Returns
- Genre: Superhero Action
- Director: Tim Burton
- Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer
- IMDB Rating: 7.1
- Release Date: 16 June, 1992
Back in a time when Batman still couldn’t turn his neck, we were blessed with one of the best superhero movies ever made in Batman Returns. Here you have three incredible characters, played by three incredible actors, in one of the most memorable movie locations of all time: Tim Burton’s Gotham City at Christmas.
In this version of Gotham, The Penguin (played by Danny DeVito) climbs his way out of the sewers to enact his revenge against the elite of the city, while Catwoman (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) seeks to deliver her own brand of justice. Michael Keaton’s Batman is caught in between the two, and has to, as usual, save the day. Only this time, he’s also saving Christmas.
It’s a silly romp that keeps fun at the fore while continuing director Tim Burton’s twisted version of the world of Batman. It’s a shame we never got the proper threequel Burton had planned, but at least we got two absolute classics out of Keaton’s time as the Bat.

15. The Holdovers
- Genre: Comedy
- Director: Alexander Payne
- Starring: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa
- IMDB Rating: 7.9
- Release Date: 10 November, 2023
The newest movie on the list more than deserves its place, with The Holdovers delivering a Christmas Carol-esque tale of learning not to be a prickly asshole in a more sophisticated way. Here, rather than being visited by ghosts, teacher Paul Hunham is left to man the boarding school he works at over the Christmas break, supervising the ones left behind with no one to celebrate with.
For two weeks, Hunham is trapped on campus with a student he repeatedly fails, as well as the school’s cook, who recently lost her son. Though they all come from vastly different places, the trio learn more about each other and bond during their time together.
It’s typical Christmas fare told in a new way. The movie is suitably R-rated and brings some new spice to the holidays without distracting from the overall message. However, maybe rethink watching this one with young kids.
Alternatives to Best Christmas Movies
Don’t have an itching to get into the Christmas spirit? No worries! Why not have a browse of some of the best movies and shows on Netflix and across the streaming world?
- What’s New on Netflix This Month
- Best Movies on Netflix Australia
- Best Sci-Fi Movies on Netflix
- Best Australian Shows on Netflix
How We Choose This List of the Best Christmas Movies
Think of us like IMDB/Rotten Tomato/data-crunching ninjas who’ve scoured the internet to find the best Christmas movies of all time. We’ve read reviews from critics and fans alike to get a real gauge of what’s worthy of your time – no snooze-fest films show here! Better still, this list of full of flicks that don’t always directly involve Christmas, they simply need to be set around the holiday. This means movies with a key event or scene involving the festive season will qualify for our list, along with all the classics.