Holiday Classics

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy clash over the computerization of a TV network’s research department, which threatens to take the jobs of the women in this workplace — and just in time for the holidays.

Divine, director John Waters’ larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.

After spotting the delicate Françoise at Midnight Mass, Jean-Louis vows to make her his wife, although when he spends an unplanned night at the apartment of the bold divorcée Maud, his rigid standards are challenged in Eric Rohmer’s brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of the Six Moral Tales series.

When three sorority sisters find themselves under attack from a foul-mouthed killer, it’s up to the police chief to even the odds. BLACK CHRISTMAS is a terrifying and demented holiday tradition that gets everything right. We’d expect nothing less from the director of A CHRISTMAS STORY.

In the early 1800’s, Jean Kayak, a drunken applejack salesman, finds himself stranded in a surreal winter landscape with nothing but his dim wits to guide him. Against a backdrop of ruthless elements and forest creatures — all played by actors in full-sized mascot costumes — Kayak develops increasingly complex traps in order to win the hand of a mischievous lover.

Lane Meyer loves two things: skiing and his girlfriend Beth, who dumps him just before Christmas for the handsome and popular captain of his high school ski team. Lane’s teetering mental state and failed suicide attempts are upended by the arrival of Monique, a French exchange student.

“Manhattan. Christmas Vacation. Not so long ago.” So begins Whit Stillman’s surprise hit indie film, an ironically comic look at Manhattan’s endangered debutante scene that chronicles the rise of a group of young Park Avenue socialites who gather nightly to discuss love, honor and their impending demise.

“Merry Christmas, 007.” The sixth James Bond film was released on Dec 19, 1969, and stars George Lazenby in his only role as playboy British agent James Bond, who goes undercover to pursue the villainous Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), hell-bent on a holiday plan to hold the world at ransom.

An annual Belcourt tradition. Jimmy Stewart stars as George Bailey, a good man who’s spent a lifetime giving up on his dreams in order to keep life in his small town humming. When a guardian angel named Clarence finds a despondent George poised to jump off a bridge, he shows George what life would’ve been like had he never been born.

It’s Christmastime in Reno, where a world-weary gambler (Philip Baker Hall) teaches the tricks of the trade to a luckless young man (John C. Reilly). The debut feature of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson took a year to hit theaters — by which time Anderson was in production on BOOGIE NIGHTS, further cementing Hall and Reilly as Anderson mainstays.