10 Movies to Stream Tonight If You Can't Stand Christmas

The Holdovers

Christmas horror movies are never not popular—but what about those holiday-themed dramas, film noirs, and action comedies that never seem to surface on festive watch lists? We’ve gathered 10 movies to stream if all the traditional titles make you want to gouge your eyes out with candy canes.

L.A. Confidential

Cops—corrupt and otherwise—find Hollywood’s glamorous gleam conceals a seedy underbelly in this 1997 neo-noir James Ellroy adaptation; it stars Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, an Oscar-winning Kim Basinger, and a young Russell Crowe. (Netflix)

Read more

• Read About Everything Wrong With The Chevy Blazer EV That Edmunds Bought With Its Own Money

• The Biggest Gaming Disappointments Of 2023

• What Hacked Files Tell Us About The Studio Behind Spider-Man 2

• Mercedes Gets Approval For Turquoise Automated Driving Lights So Cops Won't Pull You Over For Watching A Movie

• Aaron Rodgers was never going to play and he knew it

After you stream Todd Haynes’ current awards-buzz title May December on Netflix, watch Carol, his 2015 drama about another age-divided romance—this time between a wealthy, soon-to-be-divorced housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a department store clerk (Rooney Mara) she meets while shopping for Christmas gifts. As this elegant melodrama explores, personal circumstances and the 1950s setting mean substantial roadblocks spring up to keep them apart. (Netflix; not available on ad-supported plan)

Meet Me in St. Louis

The movie that brought the world “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (with lyrics more bleak than the standard version we know today) spans a few holidays in St. Louis as the Smith family eagerly awaits the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair. Judy Garland is the big star, but after you watch this one you’ll find the antics of Margaret O’Brien—as her mischievous younger sister, Tootie—living rent-free in your brain, especially the ghoulish Halloween scenes. (Max)

Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick’s final film is remembered for a lot of reasons—the paranoia that comes from infiltrating top-secret masked erotica parties is generally top of the list—but the fact that it takes place around Christmas tends to be overlooked. Remedy that by revisiting Tom Cruise’s very strange and surreal New York City holiday odyssey. (Rent on Prime)

They Live By Night

Nicholas Ray’s 1948 directorial debut follows a pair of young lovers who impulsively get married and must live in hiding thanks to his checkered past, which includes a prison escape, bank robberies, and being framed for killing a cop. It all comes to a head just before Christmas, and since this is a film noir, you can expect not everybody to have a merry one. (Max via Prime Video, Criterion Channel)

Blast of Silence

Another Christmas noir, 1961's gritty Blast of Silence follows a Mafia hitman (Allen Baron, who also directed) who returns to his hometown of New York City to complete a particularly risky assignment—and finds his past has more of a hold on him than he’d realized. (Criterion Channel)

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Speaking of assassins: this 1996 entry from director Renny Harlin and screenwriter Shane Black stars Geena Davis as a Pennsylvania mother and teacher who realizes, right around Christmas, that the amnesia she suffered eight years prior is hiding a past as a deadly government agent. Samuel L. Jackson, just post-Pulp Fiction, co-stars as the private eye who helps her unravel her twisted past. (Rent on Prime)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Make it a Shane Black mini-festival (he wrote and directed) with this stylish 2005 Christmas-adjacent tale of a crook (Robert Downey Jr.) turned reluctant movie star who teams up with a Hollywood detective (Val Kilmer) when he accidentally gets entangled in a deadly caper. (Rent on Prime)

The Holdovers

Still in theaters but now available for home viewing, Alexander Payne’s latest stars Paul Giamatti as a 1970s boarding school teacher tasked with chaperoning the students forced to stick around over Christmas break. Giamatti makes for an excellent curmudgeon, but Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) steals the show as the school’s wry head cook, who’s facing her first holiday without her son after his death in Vietnam. (Rent on Prime)

More from Gizmodo

• Why is Wonka considered a box office success compared to The Marvels?

• Self-Checkout Is Coming To Airport Security, Testing Begins In Las Vegas

• Automakers Are Trying To Prevent The Second-Largest Recall In History

• Cops In California Will Have To Tell Drivers Why They Pulled Them Over Starting January 1

• Bobby Kotick’s Goodbye Letter Calls Xbox ‘The World’s Most Admired Company’

Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.