I’ve failed. My goal was to watch and review 25 Christmas movies before the big day, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I thought I could climb that mountain. Writing the reviews in time proved the challenging part. I came within seeing distance of my watching 25 movies goal. Here are the ones I saw. Let me count:

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas
2. A Christmas Prince
3. Home Alone
4. Four Christmases
5. Christmas Inheritance
6. The Man Who Invented Christmas
7. The Princess Switch
8. The Christmas Chronicles
9. Elf
10. Arthur Christmas
11. The Santa Clause
12. Frosty the Snowman
13. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
14. A Christmas Prince:The Royal Wedding
15. It’s a Wonderful Life
16. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
17. Santa’s Surprise
18. Santa’s Workshop
19. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
20. Angela’s Christmas
21. Twas the Night Before Christmas

Of the films I viewed, It’s a Wonderful Life remains the best. I’m a traditionalist, so seeing this classic in its original black and white form every Christmas is a must. The Nightmare Before Christmas is also a great movie, but these are both films I’d seen before. Most of the new movies I watched this year were Netflix originals, and pretty basic. The Man Who Invented Christmas is probably the best new Christmas movie I had the opportunity to see. The twenty minute, amateurish short, Twas the Night Before Christmas is the worst film I watched. The animation is very poor, and even working from the classic poem, the reading of it felt stilted. Anyways, I’ll have to try this again next year.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-