What is the best Christmas movie for every year since 1982?

Barry Levinson tapped into his Baltimore upbringing for his debut film “Diner,” still one of his best works. The film is not unlike a hangout sitcom, with a group of friends returning to town for one of their upcoming weddings. It also happens to be around Christmastime. The idea of seeing old friends and going to old haunts is a holiday event many people can relate to, though most people’s friends aren’t as quippy as these guys.

“Trading Places” is a beloved ‘80s comedy, though we think it is a smidge overrated. The movie features Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as two guys who are socially engineered into swapping roles in life, with the former going from wealthy to destitute and the latter the opposite. While the image of Aykroyd in a dirty Santa costume chowing down on food is not pleasant, it’s better than everything in 1983’s “A Christmas Story,” the worst of the “classic” Christmas movies.

Yes, “Gremlins” was released in June. Big deal. The movie is fully set at Christmas. Also, it’s one of the best horror-comedies ever made. The story of Mogwai turned sinister gremlins features plenty of Christmas décor one much-remembered Santa story.

Rocky wins the Cold War on Christmas Day. That’s a bit hyperbolic, but it does feel like the culmination of “Rocky IV” is that Rocky Balboa changes Soviet minds about communism and such by beating Ivan Drago on Christmas and giving a rousing speech. Plus, there’s the robot. The robot is one of the top five “Rocky” characters.

The pickings were slim in 1986, especially without TV movies being in the mix. Plus, Jim Henson’s “The Christmas Toy” is mostly a moodier, eerier version of “Toy Story.” You probably haven’t seen “Christmas Present,” as it is an Italian film, but it was well received and won Italian movie awards. The action takes place at a high-stakes card game on Christmas Eve.

Shane Black didn’t direct “Lethal Weapon,” but the film did help make him one of the rare celebrity screenwriters. It also established a troop of Black’s screenplays, which is set around Christmas. Does this quippy, snarky action movie about two mismatched cops need to be set during the holiday season? Nope, but it does give it a slightly different feel. Plus, to Black’s credit, he did the “action movie set at Christmas” just before…

…the greatest Christmas movie of all time. Possibly the great action movie of all time. “Die Hard” is a fantastic movie, one that hums and pops and features star-making turns from Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. It also happens to be set on Christmas Eve, which is admittedly a bananas day for a company to have its holiday party, but quibble with “Die Hard” at your peril.

Also known as “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” The Griswolds returned for a third film in this series. We’d call “Christmas Vacation” the best of the bunch. While it is no comedy classic, it is entertaining, and it features Chevy Chase in action before his film work started to get spotty at best.

Yes, “Home Alone” came out in 1990. Yes, it was a massive hit and spawned multiple sequels. We just think “Edward Scissorhands” is better. It’s not as much of a “Christmas” movie, but it has plenty of Christmas in it. Tim Burton’s style and tone were really threading the needle, and the movie is clever and sweet in equal measures. We’ll take Edward over Kevin any day of the week.

We were essentially left without a choice but to go with “All I Want for Christmas,” a forgotten, forgettable rom-com. It’s a premise we’re surprised hasn’t been done more often. A kid asks Santa for the gift of her divorced parents getting back together. At least Leslie Nielsen plays Santa in this movie, so there’s that.

Look, we weren’t going to shut out Kevin and company entirely. We know “Lost in New York” loomed when we didn’t go with the original in 1990. In fact, we let this movie beat another Burton offering, “Batman Returns.” It’s fair, all things considered. “Lost in New York” is more coherent as a sequel than “Batman Returns,” even if the quality level is fairly equal. The cameos in the latter are less of a bummer now, though.

The movie that built Hot Topic. We do like to point out that this is a Henry Selick film that Burton produced, even though the latter’s name was all over the promotional material. It was even presented as “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” at the time. Well, it’s Selick who had the magic with the stop-motion animation and the one who crafted this Mall Goth favorite about a skeleton man who steals Santa’s job.

Do you go with one of the sweaty, “edgy” comedies like “Mixed Nuts” or “The Ref?” Nah. We’ll stick with the fine, watchable family movie. Tim Allen, at the peak of his career, plays a man who, present at the death of Santa Claus, is, well, cursed to become the new Santa, whether he likes it or not. The first one is solid, even if the sequels are iffy. 

Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes reunited for “Money Train,” which is not necessarily thought of as a “Christmas movie” by many. It’s that action movie about two cops who are also foster brothers. One of them decides he plans to rip off New York City by heisting a trainload of subway fares. His plan also takes place on Christmas, so this is a movie that is truly set on the holiday.

Two of the worst Christmas movies, “Jingle All the Way” and “Santa with Muscles,” came out in 1996. However, fortunately, we also got a remake of the 1947 Cary Grant classic “The Bishop’s Wife.” Denzel Washington plays an angel sent to Earth during the holiday season to help a preacher save his church. In the process, though, the angel becomes infatuated with, well, the preacher’s wife. Said wife is played by Whitney Houston, so you’d better believe this movie is packed with music. The soundtrack was an even bigger hit than the film.

This came down to a better movie (“Donnie Brasco”) with a slim section set on Christmas, or a lesser movie that is more Christmas-focused. That would be “Turbulence,” as you likely surmised. Ray Liotta plays an alleged serial killer who is being transported across the country by plane from New York to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. He has a plan to escape. The whole thing is pulpy, but it is Christmas-y!

Did you know there was a feature-length Rudolph movie in 1998? It’s true. It’s also understandable you haven’t heard of it, given that it made $113,484 off a budget of $10 million. “Enemy of the State” is an over-the-top Tony Scott thriller, but one of his better offerings. Will Smith plays a lawyer who, for reasons he doesn’t know, is being targeted by the NSA. His only hope is Gene Hackman as a paranoid former NSA agent. The action is taking place during the Christmas season, including scenes of Smith’s character Christmas shopping.

Stanley Kubrick’s last film has already gotten plenty of critical reconsideration, so there’s no need to go into a hard sell. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, a couple at the time, play, well, a couple who have a frayed moment at Christmas that leads Cruise down the rabbit hole. He finds himself in a sordid world of sexual exploits and prurience in one of the artier erotic thrillers we can recall.

“The Family Man” is kind of interesting. Nicolas Cage plays a rich bachelor who wakes up one Christmas morning in an alternate reality wherein he is a married, middle-class family man. He has the knowledge of his other reality, though, leaving him to wonder which life is right for him. While the execution is hit-or-miss, “The Family Man” is way better than Ron Howard’s Grinch movie with Jim Carrey. Less creepy aesthetically, too.

Even for a romantic comedy, the premise of “Serendipity” is a bit much. John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale play two strangers who meet in 1991 and hit it off, but Beckinsale is a rom-com female lead. That is to say, she’s quirky and possibly cuckoo, so she decides fate has to decide if they get together. Numbers are written on five-dollar bills and books. Conveniently, they run into one another exactly one decade later. Both days? Christmas Eve.

Well, we could have gone with either the second “Santa Clause” movie, or the third “Friday” movie. At least “Friday After Next” was freshly set at Christmastime, so it got to do more than just the same stuff a second time. Somebody dressed as Santa robs Ice Cube’s Craig’s house on Christmas Eve, and he and Day-Day go looking for the perpetrator.

“Elf” is the one Christmas movie of the new millennium that has fully ensconced itself in the Christmas canon. You know the drill. Will Ferrell is Buddy, a human who is raised as an elf. He leaves the North Pole to trace his roots, so to speak, and we get a lot of Ferrell-style comedy. Of course, that style of comedy works really well in “Elf,” leading to a huge hit and a perennial TV staple.

“The Polar Express” was a bigger hit, but it looks like a waking nightmare. “Christmas with the Kranks” is one of the softly-cynical holiday movies of 2004, but this one is better than “Surviving Christmas.” Tim Allen is back, this time as one half of the titular couple. The Kranks plan to skip Christmas, which doesn’t sit well with their holiday-obsessed neighbors.

“The Ice Harvest” is a film of the “What if a dark comedy was set during Christmastime, wouldn’t that be wild?” ilk, but it’s a good version of that, all things considered. While “The Ice Harvest” was not a hit, it’s a good noir-ish comedy. John Cusack plays a cynical lawyer who partakes in a massive robbery on Christmas Eve, but when he can’t get out of town due to the weather, everything unravels.

This is a chance to shout out 1974’s “Black Christmas.” It’s one of the first North American slasher films, and it was directed by Bob Clark, who also directed “A Christmas Story.” Of course, that was too far into the past to be able to include it in this list. Thus, in a down year, we honor the first “Black Christmas” remake. Also, we’ll shout out the 2019 remake as well.

“This Christmas” is…palatable. It’s about a large family that reunites for the first time in four years for Christmas. Idris Elba is in it! Also, um, Chris Brown. “This Christmas” certainly beats “Fred Claus,” though,” and also the generic horror movies released in 2007 as well.

We know a lot of people just adore “In Bruges.” So we will step lightly when saying the film is… a bit overrated. It’s fine! Good, even! We just don’t think the pitch-black comedy is a great film. It’s too quirky by half, but features some strong performances. “Step Brothers” is a better movie, but it only has a couple of Christmas set pieces in it.

Snicker if you want. In fact, we encourage it. “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” is a wonderfully dumb title, and Kevin James’ security guard character is goofy as all get out. This movie was still a big hit and spawned a sequel. “Paul Blart” starts at the traditional beginning of the Christmas season. The action kicks off on Black Friday with a gang of criminals pretending to be Santa’s Village employees to pull off a heist.

“Finnish horror-comedy” is not a well-trod genre, but “Rare Exports” did actually manage to make a splash in America. Not as a big movie, but as a cult hit. The late Roger Ebert (who was, you know, alive at the time) gave “Rare Exports” 3.5 stars! The action focuses on a group of people living in Northern Finland who trap “wild” Santa Clauses and train them to be the kind of Santas we know around the world. Now you’re intrigued, aren’t you?

If they wanted to mine a third film out of “Harold & Kumar,” Christmas was probably the way to go. This allowed them some creative avenues for raunchy jokes and weed humor. Since it was a 2011 film, they also decided to make hay of the 3-D trend going on at the time, which likely helped the box office (but did not yield a fourth movie).

If you’re British and reading this, you’re thinking, “Oh, sure, the ‘Nativity’ series.” In the course of a decade they made four “Nativity” movies, none of which really popped in the United States. They are all basically, “What if ‘School of Rock’ was British and Christmas-y?” Because 2012 was wholly lacking on the holiday movie front, the second film gets the nod. Plus, “Danger in the Manger” is a delightfully-dumb subtitle.

Alright, Shane Black gets one more shout-out. He both wrote and directed “Iron Man 3” because he’s buddies with Robert Downey Jr. Because the third “Iron Man” film feels as much like a Black movie as an MCU movie, it’s one of the more polarizing offerings in the Marvel series. Yes, of course, Black set it at Christmastime.

Britain loves itself a Christmas comedy. “Get Santa” features a litany of character actors you likely recognize if you don’t know them by name. Santa is sent to prison. An ex-con, a couple of eccentric buddies, and the ex-con’s son are dead set on getting him out.

Todd Haynes’ movie could be set any time of the year, but “Carol” is set during Christmas, so it has a spot on this list. Plus, there is plenty of “Christmas” in the mix in this period piece that has a lot of the '50s-style melodrama that Haynes loves so much in it. Rooney Mara plays a young woman who begins an illicit affair with an older woman played by Cate Blanchett. ‘Tis the season?

Why is there so much plot to “Office Christmas Party?” It’s so clearly just an excuse for a raunchy party to be the driving force of a 2010s comedy. Instead, we get a gruff CEO planning to shut down her party-hardy brother’s branch, so said brother rallies to throw an epic holiday party to try and win over a crucial client. Yeah, it’s just a bunch of R-rated office party jokes. Some of them are good, though.

Let’s get meta! There have been several “Christmas Carol” movies. What if there was a movie about the creation of “A Christmas Carol,” though? That’s what “The Man Who Invented Christmas” is. The film depicts Charles Dickens coming up with the idea for, and then writing, his famed story. Maybe you’d rather, you know, just watch the story play out, but at least this is a chance of pace.

No, “The Grinch” isn’t as good as the TV special based on Dr. Seuss’ book. It’s much better than the Howard-and-Carrey one, though. Wisely, “The Grinch” is full-on animated, as opposed to some weird live-action thing. By the way, did you know that “The Grinch” is the highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time? It’s true! Well, not adjusted for inflation, it’s true.

The times they are a-changin’. “Noelle” is a Disney+ original, making this our first streaming offering on this list. Anna Kendrick plays Noelle Kringle, the daughter of Santa Claus. That’s good casting. She has to take over for her father while trying to get some help from her ne’er-do-well brother, played by Bill Hader. The movie is decent, but Hader and Kendrick dated for a bit, so we assume they met on this movie. That was probably nice for them.

As you likely remember, 2020 was a tough year for film. Unsurprisingly, this is a streaming movie, a Netflix offering to be exact. “The Christmas Chronicles” is a film series in which Kurt Russell plays Santa. In this movie Goldie Hawn plays Mrs. Claus. That’s fun.

We were a little bummed when we found out this HBO Max original wasn’t an 8-bit-animated movie. However, the ultimate product was still worthwhile. It’s basically a movie about a kid who really wants a Nintendo in 1988, even if his parents don’t want him to have one. Sure, it’s a play for the Gen Xers out there, but it worked.

You may have noticed that while there are a lot of “What if Santa was different than the usual version of Santa?” out there, few made this list. That probably speaks to that whole thing being a bad idea, perhaps even a lazy one. “Violent Night” is a bit sloppy. The comedy doesn’t fully work. That being said, this action-comedy does have good action set pieces and does live up the “violent” part of the title. David Harbour plays a version of Santa who’s not afraid to get down and dirty to protect a young girl and her family from a team of highly-trained thieves.

It feels possible that “The Holdovers” will end up a modern Christmas classic, or at least an alternative one. If you aren’t the “Die Hard” or “Gremlins” type, you might be a “The Holdovers” type. Alexander Payne’s film is set in 1970, and he intentionally gave it the look and style of actual 1970s dramedies. The film focuses on kids left behind at a boarding school during the Christmas break and the two staff members left to watch over them. Paul Giamatti was nominated for an Oscar, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph won one.

No, "Hot Frosty" isn't good. It's bad. However, it's entertainingly bad because it's so dumb. Lacey Chabert, queen of dumb romcoms and dumb Christmas movies (she's a Hallmark Channel icon), plays a widow whose snowman comes to life as a hot guy. Yes, as we said, it's dumb, but 2024 was terrible for Christmas movies. We're talking "Dear Santa," "Red One," and movies equally dreadful. Okay, maybe not as bad as "Red One."