Forget family and friends: eight festive films with true meaning of Christmas

Partying with your friends is all well and good but some prefer the simple comforts of a giant sofa and the embrace of a warm screen. With this in mind, here’s eight festive film options.

Home Alone 1, 2 & 3

It is now 25 years since the first Home Alone film. Watch all three on Netflix and reflect on where Kevin could be now. Don't look up Macaulay Culkin for inspiration.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

You’ll have to wait until January 1st to watch this one on Netflix, but we care not a fig such is the brilliance on offer from Jack Skellington and co.

BoJack Horseman: Sabrina’s Christmas Wish 

BJH continues to be the bleakest, funniest TV show around, and it even has a Christmas special to appeal to the darker, festive parts of your brain. Available on Netflix.

A Very Murray Christmas

In one of the strangest film ideas ever, Bill Murray plays himself on a TV Christmas special that he worries no one will show up for, with guest cameos from Miley Cyrus, George Clooney, Michael Cera and Amy Poehler. This is the basis of some drinking game we have yet to invent the rules of. Netflix of course.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Fess-up time – I have never seen It's a Wonderful Life, which may go some way towards explaining my lack of emotions. I've lived my life. I have no regrets. It's available on Netflix.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Ah to hell with. Screw your Christmas films. Instead, head over to Volta. ie and watch this perplexing comedy that seems to have fluttered its way on to every critics’ favourite film lists for 2015. Set your chin to stroke. Bah humbug.

Scrooged

Oh alright then. Any Christmas season that passes without at least one viewing of the second greatest Christmas film of them all is not a season that we want anything to do with. Speaking of which . . .

Die Hard

The greatest. Christmas film. Of them all. Explosions. Automatic weapons. Amazing one liners. Vests. Christmas jumpers. What more do you want? The Light House Cinema, because they have a soul, are having one screening on December 19th.