THE GREAT ESCAPE (MOVIES ON CHRISTMAS TV 2020)

 

It is going to be a Christmas like no other.

After a year of living with the threat of Coronavirus hanging over our heads, 2020 has been a draining experience.

And while it has made a lot of us alter our plans for Christmas as more Covid restrictions are imposed, a lot of us will be grabbing the time to unwind with our immediate family and recharge our batteries for a 2021 that may be equally challenging.

Right through the pandemic, TV has offered us respite from the grim reality of Coronavirus.

And what better way to escape and relax than settling down to watch a good film or several of them?

Thank God, therefore, for Pomona Rewind's annual  recommendations for films on Festive TV.

CHRISTMAS EVE

Meet Me In St Louis (BBC2, 1.25pm)

Vincente Minnelli's 1944 musical with Judy Garland, Mary Astor and Margaret O'Brien begins in the summer of 1904 - a year before the World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri.

But as the film follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Smith family, we also take in Halloween, Christmas Eve and the World Fair in the Spring as well.

With a score by Roger Eden conducted by George Stoll, Garland plays the lovelorn second eldest daughter Esther Smith who falls for Tom Drake's boy next door John Truitt.

But will she win John's heart over the course of the year?

A huge critical and commercial success, Minnelli's vibrant film features some classic songs like 'Skip to my Lou,' 'The Trolley Song' and one of the greatest Festive songs ever written, 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' which just soars thanks to Garland's smooth tones.

         Handsome Devil (RTE 2, 12.50am)

John Butler's 2016 Dublin comedy drama slipped into cinemas with little fanfare in the wake of John Carney's 'Sing Street'.

But this teen movie is also a real delight.

Fionn O'Shea is Ned Roche, a teenager packed off to a rugby mad boarding school in South Dublin by his dad played by Ardal O'Hanlon and stepmum played by Amy Huberman.

Ned hates rugby, immediately ostracising himself from his fellow pupils but ends up sharing a room with the school's star player, Nicholas Galitzine's Conor Masters.

The two of them bond over a love of music but Conor is also harbouring a big secret that will test their maturity and friendship.

Galitzine and O'Shea impress in a film that delivers laughter but the supporting performances are equally good.

Moe Dunford is excellent as Connor's macho rugby coach, as is Andrew Scott as an inspirational, unvonvention English teacher in a film that riffs on 'Dead Poet's Society' and which also epitomises the strides Ireland had made as a society without sugarcoating the journey.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Coco  (BBC1, 3.10PM)

Alfred Molina and Lee Unkrich's computer animated Mexican family fantasy take gets a coveted afternoon slot - also airing on RTE1 at 1.50pm.

It's well deserved, taking Mexico's Day of the Dead holiday and crafting a thrilling and touching tale around it about a young boy named Miguel who aspires to be a great musician and enjoys a close relationship with his grandmother suffering from dementia.

Miguel finds himself in the Land of the Dead, after breaking into the mausoleum of his musical idol Ernesto and trying to borrow his legendary guitar.

But can he ever return?

Packed full of good jokes and striking animation, the film boasts strong vocal performances from Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel, Gael Garcia Bernsl, Benjamin Bratt and  Renee Victor as Coco.

Be warned - there'll be tears for some viewers but that's part of the genius of Molina and Unkrich's brilliantly judged film.

Black Panther (RTE2, 10pm)

The death of Chadwick Boseman this year robbed Marvel fans of one of their most dearly loved and highly respected superhero leads.

But at least we can celebrate his remarkable talent in Ryan Coogler's thrilling box office smash.

Boseman plays T'Challa whose leadership of the African nation of Wakanda is challenged by Michael B Jordan's US Black Ops soldier, Erik 'Killmonger' Stevens, AKA N'Jadaka.

A groundbreaking superhero movie in more ways than one, the film boasts terrific supporting performances from the likes of Lupita N'Yongo, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Forest Whittaker, Angela Bassett, Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman.

But Boseman's charisma shines through in what is the most accomplished blockbuster in the entire Marvel Avengers stable.

A Star Is Born (RTE1, 10.20pm)

The extended version of Bradley Cooper's showbiz story gets a screening two years after his onscreen chemistry with Lady GaGa stirred audiences around the world.

GaGa plays Ally, a waitress plucked from obscurity by Cooper's country rock star Jackson Maine after he spots her performing 'La Vie en Rose' at a club between drag acts.

Her star quickly shoots into the ascendancy as his slides, thanks to his struggles with booze, prescription drugs and addiction.

Cooper turns in arguably his greatest performance and GaGa is a revelation but the film also boasts a great supporting turn from Sam Elliott as Maine's brother Bobby 

The winner of the Best Original Song Oscar for the wonderful 'Shallow,' Cooper's film really understands the power of live music.

It also more than holds its own against the 1937, 1954 and 1976 versions of the showbiz tale.

BOXING DAY

Some Like It Hot (RTE1, 9.15am)

If you missed BBC2's screening on Christmas Day at 1.15pm, catch Billy Wilder's sublime comedy early at this time instead.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are in terrific form as Joe and Jerry, jazz musicians who happen to stumble upon George Raft's gangster Spats Columbo and his gang carrying out a Valentine's Day massacre of rical Mobsters.

The saxophonist and double bass player manage to give Spats and his goons the slip but flee Chicago by disguising themselves as women musicians and joining an all female group, Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators.

Posing as Josephine and Daphne, both fall for Marilyn Monroe's troubled singer Sugar Kowalczyk on the train journey to Florida but must remain in character to avoid capture.

A bit of a Christmas TV favourite, Wilder's brilliantly executed 1959 farce remains one of cinema's best and daring comedies, with its jokescor musical routines never growing stale.

Packed full of quotable lines, Monroe, Curtis and Lemmon are on top form but so are the supporting cast from Raft to Pat O'Brien as the cop pursuing him, Joan Shawlee as the sassy Sweet Sue and Joe E Brown as Osgood Fielding, a billionaire who falls for Lemmon's Daphne.

Dunkirk (BBC1, 9.05pm)

If you are looking for a war movie to soak up, you could do no better than watching Christopher Nolan's epic account of the evacuation of British soldiers in 1940 from northern France after coming under sustained attack from the Nazis.

A star studded cast populates Nolan's multi layered account of how a flotilla of civilian fishing boats came to the rescue of soldiers under sustained attack, British pilots fighting to keep the Luftwaffe at bay and soldiers fleeing sinking vessels.

Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Barry Keoghan, Tom Glynn-Carbey, Jack Lowden, Aneurin Barnard and James D'Arcy are in stirring form.

But in typical Nolan fashion it is a technical tour de force, with stunningky choreographed sequences, jaw dropping cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and an epic score by Hans Zimmer.

Buckle up and enjoy a movie that matches Steven Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' for ambition and narrative sweep.

Gregory's Girl (Drama, 11.50pm)

Like Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot,' the raucous humour of Bill Forsyth's 1981 Glaswegian coming of age movie never ages.

John Gordon Sinclair is terrific as the awkward, lovelorn teenager Gregory who falls for Dee Hepburn's talented Dorothy after she outshines the boys in trials for the school football team.

Dorothy's silky skills on the pitch make her an instant star, much to the chagrin of Gregory who starts to see potential love rivals and exploitation of her everywhere.

Few movies capture the horny awkwardness of teenagers better than Forsyth's hilarious film which also boasts a raft of quotable lines.

But it is the quality of the performances that carries the movie from Clare Grogan's savvy student Susan to Robert Buchanan's sexually frustrated goalkeeper Andy, Jake d'Arcy's uptight football coach to Chick Murray's pompous headmaster and Billy Greenlees' talented cookery student Steve.

Filmed in the bland surroundings of Cumbernauld on a very modest budget, it might just be the greatest high school movie ever made.

DECEMBER 27

Pride and Prejudice (Channel 5, 4.10pm)

Keira Knightley landed a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Elizabeth Bennet in this handsome Joe Wright adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel.

That nomination was thoroughly deserved for a film which did very well to emerge from the considerable shadows cast by Robert Z Leonard's 1940 adaptation with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier and Andrew Davies' much adored 1995 BBC1 miniseries with Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth and Alison Steadman.

In Wright's version, Matthew MacFadyean does an effective job as Mr D'Arcy and there are decent performances too from Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn as Mr and Mrs Bennet, Tom Hollander as Mr Collins, Dame Judi Dench as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Penelope Wilton as Mrs Gardiner and Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan as Jane and Kitty Bennet.

Sumptuously shot by Roman Osin, only the most obsessive fan of the BBC version would begrudge this bright and shiny adaptation.

Singin' In The Rain (BBC4, 10.45pm)

If you missed Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's 1952 musical on Christmas Day on BBC2 at 11.35am, BBC4 provides another opportunity to catch it.

And what a classic it is, with Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor in sparkling form in a tale about Hollywood's transition from the silent movie era to the talked.

Kelly's Don Lockwood is a silent movie matinee idol with an electric onscreen partnership with Jean Hagen's arrogant Lina Lamont.

But when the talkies arrive, Millard Mitchell's studio boss RF Simpson is faced with a dilemma - how does he keep Don and Lina bankable stars when her voice is so grating?

The solution offers itself up when Don and his vaudeville partner O'Connor's Cosmo Brown stumble upon Reynolds' charming Kathy Selden but will she ever get the credit for dubbing voice?

Donen and Kelly thrillingly pull back the curtain on Hollywood's illusion factory with the help of a smart, sassy script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

But it is the execution and quality of many of the musical numbers that most captivates - particularly the sheer physicality and comic timing of O'Connor's performance of 'Make 'Em Laugh' and Kelly's sublime song and dance routine for Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed's title track.

DECEMBER 28

The Breadwinner (RTE2, 11.15am)

Nora Twomey's Academy Awards nominated 2017 animated feature for the Irish production company Cartoon Saloon deals with the experiences of an 11 year old girl in Afghanistan living under the Taliban.

But don't let this potentially heavy subject matter put you off.

Produced by Angelina Jolie, it is an impressively told, beautifully animated, absorbing drama about a world that very few Western films explore.

Saara Chaudry is excellent as the voice of the 11 year old Parvana whose crippled father is unjustly arrested by the Taliban. 

With the family struggling to support itself, Parvana disguises herself as a boy to get around restrictions on women and girls going outside in order to earn money and buy food.

Sobering and gripping, Twomey's film was a major leap away from the Irish mythology that Cartoon Saloon has built its reputation on and she handles it impressively.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Channel 4, 4.05pm)

John Hughes' 1987 road movie looks very Festive but is mostly a Thanksgiving comedy about two very different businessmen trying to get home from New York to Chicago amid winter storms.

Steve Martin is in career best form as the uptight marketing executive Neal Page who will endure anything to get back to his family.

John Candy is more than a match for Martin as a warm hearted, shower ring salesman Del Griffith who clings to him like a limpet after swiping his taxi, their flight is aborted, they are robbed in a cheap motel, a train they ride on breaks down and a car they hire gets wrecked.

Hughes delivers one great comic set piece after another but also a huge dollop of sentiment.

There are also some wonderful moments of pure spite - most notably a scene where Neal rants and rages at Edie McClurg's car rental agent.

And I'll defy anyone to say they don't have a lump in their throat in the finest moments of the film.

Hughes and Candy were huge losses to American film comedy but it is great to see a movie where they were both on top of their game.

DECEMBER 29

The Vikings (RTE1, 7.50am)

The Christmas TV schedules are always stacked with musicals, Westerns, war movies and historical epics.

And as historical epics go, few are as rewarding as this 1958 classic from Richard Fleischer starring Kirk Douglas, who passed away earlier this year, and Tony Curtis.

Douglas is Einar, son of Ernest Borgnine's Viking king Ragnar and half brother of Curtis's Eric.

Initially the half-brothers clash but eventually they wind up as comrades in a thrilling take about the Viking raids on Britain and dreams of Valhalla.

Evocatively shot by Jack Cardiff, this is historical epic filmmaking at its best with notable supporting performances from Borgnine, Janet Leigh and Dandy Nichols.

It also spawned a flotilla of Viking movies - none of which matched it for ambition or thrills.

Jimmy's Hall (Virgin Media One, 10pm)

Ken Loach's true story of Catholic Church oppression in the Free State makes a rewarding companion piece to his Palme d'Or winning Irish Civil War tale 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley'.

Barry Ward plays Jimmy Gralton, a left wing activist whose efforts to set up a community hall in Co Leitrim brings him into direct conflict with Jim Norton's authoritarian Father Sheridan.

Gralton wants the community hall to become a hub for music, dance, study and debate but the Church uses its influence with the fledgling state to suppress it, believing it is being used to foment communist views.

Ward gives a performance of great integrity as Gralton, while Norton is in classic Bishop Brennan mode as Father Sheridan.

But watch out too for Simone Kirby's touching performance as Oonagh who falls for Gralton, as well as Andrew Scott as the more liberal Father Seamus who is appalled by the harrassment of those peope involved in the hall, Aisling Franciosi as Marie, one of the young people who inspires it and Brian F O'Byrne as her father and a conservative republican enemy of Jimmy's.

Mixing Loach's flair for gritty politics with moments of lyricism, the film features some lush cinematography from Robbie Ryan that brings out the best in the Leitrim countryside.

DECEMBER 30

Early Man (BBC1, 10.30am)

If you missed its screening on , there's another chance to catch animator Nick Park's typically witty 2018 Aardman feature.

Eddie Redmayne, Tom Huddleston, Maisie Williams, Timothy Spall, Miriam Margoyles, Johnny Vegas and Rob Brydon are among those lending their voices to the story about cavemen and football.

Redmayne is engaging as Dug, a young caveman bored of hunting rabbits at the end of the Stone Age and aiming big instead with woolly mammoths in his sights but his efforts are rebuffed by Spall's chief Bobnar.

Dug's life is turned upside down when Huddleston's villainous Lord Nooth arrives on mammoths, declaring the arrival of the Bronze Age and claiming dominion over the valley where the Stone Age inhabitants live.

A failed attempt by Dug to attack Booth's forces finds him being unwittingly transferred to a Bronze Age city where he is mistaken for a football player and ends up in a stadium in a challenge match for control of the valley.

Packed full of jokes and visual gags that will amuse adults and children, this is a perfectly executed and very British family comedy that will make great Festive relaxation viewing.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Film 4, 10.50pm)

This time last year before Covid raged, audiences went to see New Zealander Taika Waititi's sharp satire 'JoJo Rabbit' about a 10 year old boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler.

Waititi ended up winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar but arguably this 2016 comedy is even better.

Julian Dennison is wonderful as Ricky Barker, a troubled child who ends up in foster care on the remote farm of Rima Te Wiata and Sam Neill's Bella and Hec Faulkner.

But when Bella dies, grumpy old Hec tells Ricky he is likely to be returned to child services, prompting him to fake his own suicide and burn down a barn before running into the woods with his dog, Tupac.

Hec breaks his ankle trying to track Ricky down and the odd couple end up living in the woods, while Rachel House's child welfare officer misconstrues the situation and triggers a manhunt for Hec believing he is deranged and has kidnapped the boy.

The result is a joyous movie packed full of wonderful gags and quirky characters.

Rhys Darby of 'Flight of the Conchords' fame has a particularly delicious cameo as a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist in a film that pounds its audience with superb one liners and sight gags.

NEW YEAR'S EVE

White Christmas (More 4, 11.30am)

Show me a person who hates Bing Crosby's rendition of Irving Berlin's classic song and I'll show how that person has got no soul.

Directed by Michael Curtiz's colourful 1954 musical is built around the song which first appeared in 'Holiday Inn' and  features other great Berlin songs like 'Sisters' and 'Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)'.

Bing is a former Broadway star Bob Wallace who serves as an Army captain during World War II and falls in with Kaye's Private Phil Davis an aspiring star, entertaining the troops on Christmas Eve in 1944.

Striking it big after the war, they are engaged by an old Army body to check out his sisters, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen's Betty and Judy Haynes' double act.

Fate conspires that they end up spending Christmas with the girls in Vermont instead of New York and in true musical fashion romance blossoms.

Curtiz conjures up a beautiful looking movie and the dynamic between Kaye and Crosby is perfect for a musical that never really taxes the viewer and just entertains.

Rio Bravo (BBC2, 1.15pm)

Looking for a classic Western to enjoy in the run-up to New Year's Eve?

Then look no further than Howard Hawks' 1959 classic 'Rio Bravo' which not only boasts John Wayne in the lead role of a sheriff but Dean Martin as his alcoholic, former deputy.

Ricky Nelson is also on board and Ward Bond as a wagon train operator as the town comes siege from John Russell's Nathan Burdette and his men.

With Angie Dickinson playing a love interest called Feathers, the American film critic Roger Ebert claimed Hawks' movie was the work of a "master craftsman".

And as an added bonus, the great Walter Brennan pops up as a peg-legged deputy in an absorbing drama packed full of memorable characters. 

NEW YEAR'S DAY

The Misfits (TG4, 1pm)

With the great John Huston directed Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach from an Arthur Miller script, how could this 1961 movie be a dud?

Vividly shot in black and white by Russell Metty, Gable turns in a performance to rival Rhett Butler as the ageing cowboy Gaylord Langland who falls for Monroe's soon to be divorced younger woman Roslyn Tabor.

Monroe also sparkles in an intense ranch drama with Clift as Perce Howard, a troubled cowboy friend of Gay's.

An intense romantic drama, Huston's movie has grown in stature over the decades and would turn out to be both Gable and Monroe's final film.

Bugsy Malone (ITV3, 2pm)

The world lost the mischievous and versatile English director Alan Parker in July who wrote and directed this gangster musical.

Scott Baio, many years before he became a Trump supporting buffoon, is a streetwise, penniless Prohibition Era boxing promoter who lands in a speakeasy run by John Cassisi's Fat Slam.

He catches the eye of Florrie Dugger's wannabe Hollywood starlet Blousey Brown but soon gets embroiled in a Monster turf war between Fat Sam and Martin Lev's Dandy Dan.

With its lively jazzy numbers and splurge guns, Parker created a fun, tongue in cheek family musical.

But the most memorable performance to come out of it is Jodie Foster's sassy Tallulah, an old flame of Bugsy and chanteuse which is so self assured it blows everyone else offscreen.

It can also be seen on ITV3 on December 28 at 10.50am.

War Games (Film 4, 6.45pm)

Back in the days when we lived under the spectre of the Cold War and a thermonuclear attack, John Badham's 1983 techno-thriller was a big hit with audiences.

Matthew Broderick plays Seattle high school student and computer whizz David Lightman who likes to hack into systems like the school system and change the grades of him and his friend, Ally Sheedy's Jennifer Mack.

However he inadvertently hacks into what he believes is a war game but is actually the system belonging to the military's Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

Assuming the role of the Soviet Union, he triggers a panic in Army circles that the US is actually under thermonuclear attack but can Dabney Coleman's Dr John McKittrick and John Wood's Dr Stephen Falken avert a nuclear armageddon?

A gripping thriller, Badham's movie has a certain nostalgia value now with its clunky computers and black and green screens.

With the threat of nuclear annihilation still very much alive, this is one 1980s film crying out for a 21st Century reboot.

JANUARY 2

Charade (ITV3, 6.30am)

If you missed it on ITV3 on New Year's Day at 11.50am, now's your chance to catch Stanley Donen's delightful romantic comedy adventure with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Grant is as suave as ever as a man with four different identities who repeatedly stumbles into the life of Hepburn's interpreter Reggie Lampert, embroiling her in a tale involving the CIA and gold.

Walter Matthau is Hamilton Bartholomew, a CIA operative, in a twisty thriller that plays on its leads' previous screen history and subverts it.

James Coburn and George Kennedy also appear in a movie that some have regarded as a last hurrah for the classic Hollywood movie.

Donen's film has also been hailed as the best Alfred Hitchcock tale never directed by Hitchcock - high praise indeed.

The Witch (Film 4, 11.50pm)

Having given us one of the most visceral movie experiences of 2020 with 'The Lighthouse', thiscis a good opportunity to see an earlier work by Robert Eggers'.

Set in Puritan New England in the 1630s, Anya Taylor Joy is Thomasin who suffers the trauma of playing with a baby brother, only for him to vanish amid rumours he has been taken by a witch and sacrificed.

Soon Thomasin becomes the subject of suspicion that she may have had a part in his disappearance and events spiral.

Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie are excellent as Thomasin's increasingly paranoid parents, while Taylor Joy is eye catching in a disturbing role.

Eggers and his cinematographer Jarin Blaschke spririt up so many vivid images in this unsettling horror film that they will haunt you for days.

It is an impressive debut by a very talented director who knows the power of cinema as a visual storytelling medium and when to let the images do the talking.