One movie we always try to find time for during the holiday season is Eloise at Christmastime, a made-for-TV Disney movie about a precocious kid who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Before that sets off your Suite Life of Zack and Cody alarm bells, Eloise at Christmastime is based on the book by Kay Thompson and has a great cast that includes Sofia Vassilieva in the title role, the ever-endearing Julie Andrews as Nanny, and Sara Topham and Gavin Creel as two of Eloise’s friends that the 6-year-old tries to unite.  This scenario could be annoying or cloying or both, but the movie strikes a nice balance and delivers a good message.  There’s a great musical number too.

Of course there are many other movies and TV specials without which the holidays would not be the holidays.  Just a few of my favorites:


• A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: Two absolute classics that I associate together for whatever reason.  How many decades have I been watching these?



• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and The Little Drummer Boy: Three others that all seem like part of a whole, I guess because of their similar Rankin-Bass stop-motion style.  Frosty the Snowman is a different style of animation, but it belongs with this group as well



• It’s a Wonderful Life: This one still gets me every time!



• Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman: Sort of a refined British version of Frosty, it’s an utterly charming special that’s wordless except for the song “Walking in the Air,” which is becoming a Christmas standard.



• Holiday Inn: I know a lot of people prefer White Christmas, but I like this black-and-white musical vehicle for Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire (WC was Bing’s semi-remake years later).






What do you have to watch every year?  A Christmas Story?  The Year Without a Santa Claus?  Miracle on 34th Street?  Christmas Vacation? The Santa Clause?  The list goes on… –David

Editor’s note: We asked one of our reviewers, Robert Horton, to give us his picks for the best films of the decade. Robert has been a film critic in Seattle for 25 years, writing for The Herald (Everett, Wash.), KUOW-FM, and the Seattle Channel.








“Best films of the decade” is such a grand concept it seems to place an undue amount of gravity on the process: this ten-spot had better be weighty indeed, right? A certain heaviosity required, no? But great movies are about lightness, too, so I feel fine about including films that wonderfully balanced dark and light, seriousness and humor, gravity and lift. Here are ten best of the decade 2000-2009, until somebody asks me again tomorrow.




1. Moolaadé (2004). The final film from Africa’s greatest director, Ousmane Sembene, this one perfectly embodies the sense of balance I’m talking about: on one hand its subject is grave–the still-existing practice of female genital mutilation in African communities–but on the other, the film is infused with folk humor and a rich, mellow wisdom. It’s also poised between a completely modern sophistication and ancient modes of storytelling. It seems to have the whole world in it.





2. Punch-Drunk Love(2002). Paul Thomas Anderson’s story of a button-down man (Adam Sandler) unleashed is one of those films that pull off a strange trick: you can never predict what’s going to happen from one moment to the next, and yet by the time you reach the ending it all seems absolutely inevitable that it had to unfold exactly this way.





3. Birth (2004). When Jonathan Glazer’s movie opened (and then closed a week later), I had the feeling nobody else had seen it. Since then, it has slowly found its appreciators, a process that has been one of the nicer critical movements of the decade. A fine performance by Nicole Kidman commits completely to this particular l’amour fou.





4. The Fast Runner, aka Atanarjuat (2001). Not quite like anything else, this low-budget Inuit epic by Zacharias Kunuk is much more than an ethnographic study (though it’s pretty cool as that): it’s got the epic sweep of a David Lean picture.





5. Kings and Queen (2005). A wild ride from director Arnaud Desplechin, shifting hot-and-cold tones and storylines at a moment’s notice, and featuring nimble performances by Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos.





6. A Prairie Home Companion (2006). Somehow this warm look at community and performance turned into exactly the right way for Robert Altman to leave the stage: a funny exercise that left behind traces of melancholy.





7. Before Sunset (2004). Catching up after almost a decade with the characters from Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, we find them decidedly older but still willing to talk their way through a city–an enchanted Paris, caught here in a two-person moment of clarity and connection.





8. No Country for Old Men (2007). The Coens are on an exciting cinematic journey of late; this film has all the gorgeous movie-making skills of old Hollywood combined with a distinctly modern way of telling a story.





9. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2006). A spellbinding trip through a long night of ill health, rendered in what seemed like real time by director Cristi Puiu.





10. Cast Away (2000). Could never get this movie out of my head: what appears to be a shipwreck picture from a populist director (Robert Zemeckis) turns into a kind of rebuke to audiences about how they should be watching movies (hint: slow down). Tom Hanks is splendid, too.





And there should be room for Million Dollar Baby, The Duchess of Langeais, Yi Yi, In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Drive, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Va savoir, Syndromes and a Century, Napoleon Dynamite, Sideways, Japon…but you gotta stop somewhere. Maybe next time.

OK, I admit I wasn’t thrilled with the Avatar trailer (and the fact that it was on TV every 15 minutes didn’t help), but there’s so much buzz around it that I think I gotta see it, and in 3-D. Plus James Cameron’s track record and limited output makes practically every film a milestone. And that brings up the next question: What’s your favorite James Cameron film? (I’m not going to count documentaries like Ghosts of the Abyss.)  My personal picks follow.  –David


1. The Terminator: Still one of my favorite movies, with terrific action set-pieces and plenty of scares. (It needs a new Blu-ray release, though.)  The franchise has sagged over the years, but I did like The Sarah Connor Chronicles.



2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day: A big-time action movie with groundbreaking special effects–I just don’t find myself rewatching it as often as the first movie.



3. Aliens: A thrilling movie that’s often called the best sequel of all-time (the candidates are few), but very different from the original.  I myself prefer the horror-suspense vibe of Alien, but I understand the love for #2.



4. Titanic: Cameron Confession #1: Even though I’m not a girl, I like Titanic.  Yeah, I’ll fast-forward through parts, but it’s beautifully put together.



5. True Lies: A fun film, but not one I feel compelled to rewatch often.



6. The Abyss: Cameron Confession #2: I’ve never seen it!  I will someday, but all the impressions I’ve gotten are that it’s, er, a bit slow-moving so it isn’t high on my list.



7. Piranha II: I haven’t seen this one either but I don’t feel any guilt about it.