‘Carol’, ‘Holidate’, ‘Dash and Lily’ - we have sorted your Christmas weekend viewing list

Even though the arrival of Omicron has put a dampener on many of our ‘outdoor’ Christmas plans, we can always turn to movies to teleport us to fabulous ‘snowy’ holidays that we cannot take ourselves now, or allow us to escape the drudgery of everyday work-from-home week with their holiday cheers and stories. While in most years, a re-watch of ‘Elf’ or ‘ The Grinch’ would have been enough, if you are looking for movies and series to fill your Christmas day itinerary, here’s a list to choose from.

‘The Holiday’: Before Airbnb became a thing, two women – one from London, named Iris (Kate Winslet) and the other from Los Angeles, named Amanda (Cameron Diaz) swap their homes, and find a new life for themselves, in a new environment. As Amanda navigates the snowy lanes of an English village and starts a new romance, Iris finds her own pick-me-up love in LA. This film about reinventing, and changing scenes when burnout or bad life choices makes it harder to continue, is the definition of a holiday chick flick, and for good reason.

‘Carol’: A far more nuanced and melancholic romantic film, ‘Carol’ set in 1950s Manhattan is a treat to watch with its brilliant cinematography, and wonderful music score. A young and inexperienced woman (Rooney Mara), who works at a department store meets a sophisticated, rich and older woman housewife (Cate Blanchett), and the two start an unusual romance during the holiday season, when the older woman’s marriage is falling apart.

‘While You Were Sleeping’: Lucy (Sandra Bullock), an orphan, finally gets to feel like she is part of a family after she saves her crush from a train accident during the holiday season. While her crush sleeps in a coma after the accident, she meets his family in the guise of being his fiancée and is immediately made to feel welcome. All goes well initially until Lucy meets Jack (Bill Pullman), her crush’s brother. Jack and Lucy fall in love but before either of them can confess their true feelings, her crush Peter wakes up from coma, with selective amnesia, thinking that Lucy is indeed his fiancée.

‘Holidate’: Tired of her family making her love life a topic of discussion every holiday season, Sloane (Emma Roberts) gets herself a holidate, a.k.a. a holiday date. Initially the guy she picks (Luke Bracey) is a random person whom she doesn’t find attractive, but things soon start to change as she makes him meet the family.

‘Godmothered’: Watching this movie is like being hugged by a fleece blanket, it makes you instantly cosy and warm, so it can be your perfect companion on Christmas eve. In this satirical spin on the classic fairy tales like ‘Cinderella’, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’, a modern-day TV producer is stuck with a fairy godmother who had escaped from her fairy school, to visit the real world and perform a ‘miracle’. The TV producer, who is a cynic, eventually warms up to her new godmother who doesn’t quite know how to perform miracles. The two begin a friendship which is far better than any CGI-performed miracles, and makes the movie significantly more enjoyable.

‘Home Alone’: For this Christmas classic, the version we are recommending today – for pure nostalgia for those who have loved it over the years, and for fun’s sake for those who want to join the fanclub of ‘Home Alone’ movie series – is the first ‘Home Alone’ film, featuring Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister.

It is always fun to watch Kevin, with a bunch of tricks and innovative plans, save his Chicago home from burglars, after his family accidentally forgets to take him on their vacation to Paris. But, it is especially fun on Christmas.

‘Dash and Lily’: Books, a quaint bookstore, snow, holiday season, and a string of dares – if these things sound exciting enough for Christmas, then we definitely recommend the first season of Netflix’s ‘Dash and Lily’. The show based on ‘Dash And Lily's Book Of Dares,’ by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, chronicles the interactions between a holiday-hater Dash (Austin Abrams) and a bubbly, Christmas-loving Lily (Midori Francis). The two, who had not met in real life, trade messages and dares through a red notebook, which takes them to many beautiful and off-beat locations across New York.

‘Gilmore Girls’: Although this cult show has nothing to do with Christmas, it is the best thing to binge-watch, or re-watch during the holiday season given its wonderful setting – an imaginary small town in Connecticut called, Stars Hollow, which looks like ‘it is set in a snow globe’ . The show chronicles the lives of a mother-daughter duo - Lorelai and Rory Gilmore (Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel respectively) and is packed with wit and charm, with a generous dose of humour, and pop culture references thrown in.

If you are feeling particularly Christmas-y, then we recommend you turn to season 2 Christmas episode, titled ‘The Bracebridge Dinner’ which shows the early signs of a Jess-Rory-Dean love triangle.

Some honorary mentions that deserve to be on this list are ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ and ‘Love Actually’.