Max’s Christmas stockings are looking a bit thin in 2024, as many of the classic Warner Bros. seasonal films are notably absent this year. They are definitely missed among the sea of Lifetime made-for-TV Christmas movies, most of which are largely indistinguishable from each other.
Having said that, we’re not desperate enough to dive into those this year. Max still has some more widely known Christmas films, including Last Christmas, Gremlins, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. This is also the streaming home of A Christmas Story, one of the most perfect Christmas movies ever made. If you’re looking for the best Christmas movies on Max, then you’ve come to the right place.
Looking for more holiday picks? We’ve also assembled guides to the best Christmas movies on Netflix and the best Christmas movies on Amazon Prime.
Warning: If you’re trying to make it through the holiday season without hearing the songs of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, you will be Whamed if you watch Last Christmas. It is, after all, based on the Wham! song of the same name. Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke goes the full rom-com as Katarina “Kate” Andrich, a young woman whose life has been aimless since nearly dying the year before.
Kate is working at a year-round Christmas store run by Santa (Michelle Yeoh) when she meets Tom Webster (Henry Golding), a man she quickly becomes attracted to. However, Kate is put off by Tom’s constant disappearances, even as he inspires her to pick up the pieces of her own life.
Forget Die Hard, Gremlins should be the ’80s movie of choice at Christmastime. By 1984 standards, it dips pretty heavily into horror when the title characters are unleashed. Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) brings home a mogwai called Gizmo as a gift for his son, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan). However, mogwai are mystical creatures and not meant to be pets. Gizmo is a sweetheart, but getting him wet causes him to spawn more mogwai. And when those mogwai are fed after midnight, they mutate into malevolent gremlins.
Phoebe Cates co-stars as Billy’s girlfriend, Kate Beringer, and she’s on hand when all hell breaks loose. The gremlins are spreading their own brand of holiday cheer, leaving death and mayhem in their wake. But they pushed Gizmo too far, and now he’s going full Rambo to save the day.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was meant to be a parody of Christmas movies, but it’s turned out to be a beloved holiday flick on its own. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo return from the previous Vacation films as Clark Griswold and his wife, Ellen, while Juliette Lewis and The Big Bang Theory‘s Johnny Galecki appear as their children, Audrey and Rusty.
Clark’s never been the picture of mental stability after the Walley World incident in the first film, but he definitely puts in the extra effort to give his family a wonderful Christmas. That becomes a lot harder when Clark’s boss cancels his Christmas bonus, and his wife’s cousin-in-law, Eddie Johnson (Randy Quaid), shows up unannounced with his entire family in tow. If Clark can make it through the holidays without going insane, it just might be a Christmas miracle.
Elf is too big to be contained by a single streaming service. Max and Hulu are both streaming the film this holiday season, which helped firmly establish former Saturday Night Live star Will Ferrell as a comedic leading man. Ferrell plays Buddy, a human who was raised by elves at the North Pole.
Since Buddy knows Santa and his elves are real, he takes offense to the way they are portrayed in New York City when he finally visits his biological father, Walter Hobbs (James Caan). The Hobbs family isn’t quite sure what to make of Buddy and his eccentricities, and neither is Jovie (New Girl‘s Zooey Deschanel), the beautiful young woman who catches Buddy’s eye.
The Polar Express exists in the rare gray area of being both visually stunning and off-putting at the same time, because the human characters aren’t as convincing as the CG backgrounds. Those were the limitations of performance capture animation at the time, when animators just didn’t have all of the tricks and advancements that they do now.
Regardless, director Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s book The Polar Express has become a perennial favorite during the holiday season. Asteroid City‘s Tom Hanks lends his voice to several characters in the film, most notably the conductor of the Polar Express, a magical train heading directly for the North Pole that allows some lucky children to meet Santa Claus (Hanks) and have their Christmas wishes come true.
You can really tell that A Hollywood Christmas has the Hollywood part down because the Christmas movie within the movie is being filmed during the hot California summer. Said film is being directed by Jessica (Jessika Van), a woman who is exceptionally talented at making Christmas romance movies. Unfortunately for Jessica, a network executive named Christopher (Josh Swickard) informs her that this one might be her last Christmas flick unless it performs exceptionally well.
Jessica’s assistant, Reena (Anissa Borrego), is the first to realize that Jessica’s predicament is almost exactly like the plot of her Christmas movies. And if Jessica can put her knowledge of Christmas films to good use, she may save her career and start a romance with Christopher.
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek Monthly, SYFY Wire, Superhero Hype, Collider, DC Universe, and the official sites for Star Trek and Marvel. He also lends his pop culture expertise to Digital Trends on a variety of TV, movie, and streaming features.
Nick Perry is a freelance writer who bounced from Hollywood to Silicon Beach to pajama pants. His work has been featured on Digital Trends, Good Morning America, Entrepreneur, Mashable, and more media outlets.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
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