30 Movies to Get You Through the Holidays

Even the unexpected casting is on the money. James Caan as the elf’s biological father. Yes! Bob Newhart as his adoptive elf father. Yes! Mary Steenburgen as Caan’s wife, who welcomes an adult son into her family. Yes! Zooey Deschanel as the girl who works in a department store and falls for his elfin charm. Yes! Faizon Love as Santa’s elf manager—does it get any better than this? Yes, it does. Peter Dinklage, who played the dwarf in The Station Agent, has a brief but sublime scene in which he cuts right to the bottom line of elfhood.

Elf, directed by Jon Favreau and written by David Berenbaum, begins with a tragic misunderstanding on a Christmas long ago. As Santa is making his rounds, a human orphan crawls into his sack and accidentally hitches a ride to the North Pole. Raised as an elf by Papa Elf (Newhart), he knows he’s at least four feet taller than most of the other elves, and eventually he decides to go to New York and seek out his birth father.

This is Walter (Caan), a hard-bitten publisher whose heart does not instantly melt at the prospect of a six-foot man in a green tunic and yellow stretch tights who says he is his son. But when Buddy drops the name of Walter’s long-lost girlfriend, a faraway look appears in the old man’s eyes, and soon Buddy is invited home, where Mary Steenburgen proves she is the only actress in America who could welcome her husband’s out-of-wedlock elf into her family and make us believe she means it.

The plot is pretty standard stuff, involving a crisis at the old man’s publishing company and a need for a best-selling children’s book, but there are sweet subplots involving Buddy’s new little brother, Michael (Daniel Tay), and Buddy’s awkward but heartfelt little romance with the department store girl (Deschanel). Plus heart-tugging unfinished business at the North Pole.

Of course there’s a big scene involving Buddy’s confrontation with the department store Santa Claus, who (clever elf that he is) Buddy instantly spots as an imposter. “You sit on a throne of lies!” he tells this Santa. Indeed, the whole world has grown too cynical, which is why Santa is facing an energy crisis this year. His sleigh is powered by faith, and if enough people don’t believe in Santa Claus, it can’t fly. That leads to one of those scenes where a flying machine (in this case, oddly enough, the very sleigh we were just discussing) tries to fly and doesn’t seem to be able to achieve takeoff velocity, and . . . well, it would be a terrible thing if Santa were to go down in flames, so let’s hope Buddy convinces enough people to believe. It should be easy. He convinced me this was a good movie, and that’s a miracle on 34th Street right there.

Fanny and Alexander

R, 188 m., 1983

Gunn Wallgren (Helena Ekdahl), Ewa Froling (Emile Ekdahl), Jarl Kulle (Gustav Adolf Ekdahl), Mona Malm (Alma Ekdahl). Jan Malmsjo (Bishop Edvard Vergérus). Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Produced by Jörn Donner. Screenplay by Ingmar Bergman.

Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) was intended to be his last film, and in it, he tends to the business of being young, of being middle-aged, of being old, of being a man, woman, Christian, Jew, sane, crazy, rich, poor, religious, profane. He creates a world in which the utmost certainty exists side by side with ghosts and magic, and a gallery of characters who are unforgettable in their peculiarities. Small wonder one of his inspirations was Dickens.

It is 1907, in an unnamed Swedish town. The movie plunges into the Christmas Eve celebration of an enormous family, introducing the characters on the fly as they talk, drink, flirt, and plot. They are surrounded by voluptuousness; the Ekdahl family is wealthy and the matriarch, Helena, lives in an enormous home crowded with antique furniture, rich furnishings, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, rugs, flowers, plants, and clocks—always clocks in a Bergman film, their hours striking in a way that is somehow ominous. One room spills into another, as we see when the half-drunk guests join hands for a song while parading through the flat.

Family intrigues are revealed: Gustav Adolf, Helena’s third son, is a philanderer whose adventures are forgiven by his merry, buxom wife, Alma, because she likes him as he is. The second son, Carl, is a failed professor, married to a German woman no one likes (although they should), deeply in debt to his mother. The first son, Oscar, runs the family theater, and is moved to tears in his Christmas Eve speech to the staff before joining the party. Oscar is married to Emilie, a grave beauty, and they have two children, Fanny and Alexander. Much of the film is seen through their eyes, especially Alexander’s, but other moments take place entirely within the imaginations of the characters.