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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To finish today on a lighter note, it's the fifth day of Hanukkah. Christmas is just two weeks away and New Year's is around the corner. If you haven't gotten into the holiday spirit yet, there's no easier way than putting on a holiday movie. There were a few new ones this year you might have caught like Wonka, the Willy Wonka origin story, and of course, there are so many classics. Here to share some of the best new and classic holiday movies to get us into the holiday spirit. On the screen is Jacqueline Coley an editor at Rotten Tomatoes where she also co-hosts the Buy the Numbers podcast and the Awards Tour podcast. Jacqueline, welcome to WNYC.

Jacqueline Coley: Glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite you to share your favorite holiday movies old or new, and for that matter, your least favorite holiday movies, old or new 212-433 WNYC 433-9692. Does your family get together to watch a classic every year? Do you have any favorite holiday movie quotes? What makes a good holiday movie or a bad one? 212-433-9692 call or text. Jacqueline, I see there are three new movies on the list so let's tackle them first. Merry Little Batman is an animated superhero film about Batman's 8-year-old son. Why is this the first pick on your list?

Jacqueline Coley: I wanted to pick this one because it goes to show what we really like to talk about at Rotten Tomatoes is that Hollywood movies can often be cross-genres. We have a list that's like favorite holiday animated movies, favorite holiday rotten movies, and Merry Little Batman proves that you could put a little holiday cheer inside of a superhero story. In fact from Batman, the Animated Series one of the most favorite episodes is also a holiday episode. This falls along with that. Stay within the lore but update it with maybe an event or a time of year that really makes audiences tune in for it and WB animation is always so great.

Brian Lehrer: Also new this year, Wonka starring Timothée Chalamet and let's see. This movie shows the beginning of Wonka's life and career path including the first time he ever met an oompa loompa let's take a listen to a clip where he meets one played by Hugh Grant, who speaks first here.

Speaker 3: Do you mean that you don't even remember?

Speaker 4: Remember what?

Speaker 3: The day you destroyed my life?

Speaker 4: No, I don't remember that.

Speaker 3: Well then young man, allow me to refresh your memory in the form of a song so ruinously catchy that it may never leave your mind.

Brian Lehrer: For those who haven't seen the movie, why do you recommend it?

Jacqueline Coley: This one is great. It's actually certified fresh on the tomato meter. You do get a little bit from that one which is something that you don't get from the marketing. This is a musical and it is an unabashed musical courtesy of the director of Paddington 2 who a lot of people feel although that is not a musical, it has lot of the similar what you call blue sky beats. I think if anyone in this holiday season is feeling particularly down and out, both Wonka and The Color Purple both of which are hitting theaters around Christmas, are great family excursions. Wonka however, because it's in London and it's set at this idyllic Christmasy time, you really do feel that down-home family feel. Timothée Chalamet is just absolutely enchanting in this one. The idea that he was going to play this and Dune in the same year is a very interesting one for me. I'm glad we got this one this year and it didn't get pushed off like Dune.

Brian Lehrer: I want to go into one of your picks of an old holiday movie that might be unexpected when people hear the title. The 1990 Action Thriller Die Hard 2. Wait, what? Die Hard 2 is a holiday movie.

5: Yes, it absolutely is. There's a huge debate about Die Hard 1 being a holiday movie but as I like to tell people, a holiday movie is a movie that you want to watch at the holidays that makes you feel the spirit of Christmas and the spirit of family. That is absolutely Die Hard 2, as well as the first one. This is a guy picking up his family from the airport. What is more universal and ubiquitous about the holidays than that and he gets caught up in this crazy heist? Another aspect of this one, we have the great Fred Thompson, former senator, acting in it but also John McLean's wife is one of the planes that's been circling ahead. That danger aspect of inclement weather, not being able to get home, just the pain of holiday traffic, it's all there but we still get a great holiday happy ending.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Andy in Bay Ridge with an old Christmas movie that he likes. Andy around WNYC. Hello.

Andy: Hi Brian, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to mention National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. I've been watching it at least once every year since the late '80s with my family. Something that actually happened today, I don't know if you've seen the movie but there's a particular scene where Chevy Chase is leafing through a magazine after putting up a Christmas tree. His hands are covered in sap, he's tearing out all the pages. That happened to me this morning but I actually figured out that if you just put hand sanitizer in your hands and then wash it takes off all the sap. It'd be a useful tip for the listeners.

Brian Lehrer: Andy, thank you very much. Another one, I guess in the same mold to some degree, another reimagined classic Scrooged the 1988 Christmas movie with Bill Murray. When we say Chevy Chase, it's not long after that that we say Bill Murray sometimes. Murray's character Frank Cross is the modern-day scrooge. Let's take a listen to a clip where he shows just how much he is while firing an employee.

Speaker 5: Grace, who is that guy?

Speaker 6: Elliot Loudermilk.

Speaker 5: Okay. Call security, have them change his locks, clean out his desk, and toss him out of the building.

Speaker 6: Oh, he's fired? But it's Christmas.

Speaker 5: Thank you. Call accounting. Stop his bonus.

Brian Lehrer: Why'd you go back to 1988 for this Christmas movie pic?

Jacqueline Coley: This week I'm actually in NYC at 30 Rock and whenever I have to be near there I always think of Frank Cross because that is the old awful version of media. 30 Rock's the happy one, but really this one I love because it is the Ebenezer Scrooge story. In a modern-day setting, you really see how throughout the year we really don't take advantage of the fact that it is going to be Christmas until we see it in flashbacks. To see the line Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel, that gets me every single time. There's a great number at the end of it where you get to have Bill Murray just talk to the audience. Alfre Woodard by the way I think this is one of my favorite performances of hers. Just her not trying to give anything towards Bill Murray in this, absolutely, absolutely love it. Also, Carol Kane. There's a great cast in this movie. Karen Allen I think is also in it. It's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: If we think going back to 1988 is a long time to go back for a Christmas movie pic, how about Ellis in Metuchen, You're on WNYC. Hello Ellis.

Ellis: Hi Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a senior citizen. My mother introduced me to It's a Wonderful Life when I was a kid. She always cried at the ending and I always used to laugh when she was crying. Now I do the same. [chuckles] I watch the movie, I think of her and the message of the movie and it always makes me sentimental and think of the holiday spirit.

Brian Lehrer: It's A Wonderful Life with James Stewart and all those people. Wonder why that wasn't on your best old holiday movies list. Maybe that's the ultimate classic Christmas movie.

Jacqueline Coley: It is. One of the classic Christmas movies that is on our list however-- actually A Wonderful Life I think is on our best holiday movies list. On mine, I have The Apartment which is actually a New Year's Eve movie because I always like to say when we do holiday movies, Thanksgiving gets their love. Christmas gets more love than anyone deserves. People don't give New Year's Eve its due and The Apartment is a movie that very much appreciates the beauty and sometimes the tragedy of New Year's Eve and going into a new year with new resolutions plus you get a young Shirley McClain and Jack Lemon. I cannot talk to you enough about that. I'm the hugest Billy Wilder fan and it's another movie with a slightly tragic woman at the center of it. That's usually something that gets me to sign up.

Brian Lehrer: I think Mariah in Hurley in upstate New York has another New Year's Eve movie. Hi, Mariah on WNYC.

Mariah: Hello Brian. Happy holidays. I have two movies. The first one is The American President. It's a 1995 romantic comedy and it was directed by and produced by Rob Reiner. It was written, what I think brilliantly and almost prophetically, by Aaron Sorkin. It has underlying themes of gun violence, the environment. This is 1995 and when you hear the speech that Michael Douglas gives as the president towards the end of the movie it just makes you think he could be giving it now. Even though it's a romcom, it's so well written and it touches on such important and very current political issues. I would highly, highly recommend it.

Brian Lehrer: Mariah, Thank you.

Mariah: Even if it's just that you listen to that speech. Then the second one is what we do every New Year's Eve-

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Mariah: -is watch When Harry Met Sally. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal is a treasure. It's just a great, funny, insightful movie and we watch it every New Year's Eve.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Mariah. You know both of those, pre-West Wing Aaron Sorkin.

Jacqueline Coley: Yes, I do know pre-West Wing Aaron Sorkin because I am someone that memorized sections of a few good men. I will say too with both The American President and with Harry Met Sally, they also play into this idea of the whole movie doesn't need to take place at the time of Christmas for it to be a holiday movie and still be very insightful. Another movie that I like that's like that is The Holiday and it's a movie that is timeless in the sense it doesn't say exactly what time it is. It's leading up to Christmas, but it's still one of these ones that's played a lot at Christmas because again it's about family, bound family, maybe sometimes dysfunctional family, but it's still the family that you want to have.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to read a smattering of the text messages that are coming in with people's favorite holiday movies. My takeaway from this whole segment really and certainly what we're seeing in our text message feed is there are just so many darn holiday movies. Here we go, Holiday with Cary Grant and Catherine Hepburn, Miracle on 34th Street, March of the Wooden Soldiers, Planes, Trains and Automobiles with the great late John Candy.

Listener writes, "A Muppet's Christmas Carol is mandatory on my house on Christmas Eve since the '90s." Writes another person, "Topper Returns.' Someone else times in, "Die Hard is absolutely a holiday movie and a classic and the best way to get your ode to joy this time of year, no debate." Jacqueline, I could go on.

Jacqueline Coley: You really could. I just want to make sure before we get out of here, The Holdovers by Paul Giamatti. That one just got all these Golden Globes this morning, including some for Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Best Supporting Actress. Paul got Best Actor. It is written by Alexander Payne who did Sideways. This is a brand-new holiday movie that I really want folks to check out while it's still in theaters. It's the perfect one for absentee families.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us a little more, The Holdovers for people who don't know it yet.

Jacqueline Coley: The Holdovers. This is actually the story of a somewhat curmudgeonly history professor who is stuck over the holiday, babysitting basically, the holdovers, the folks that don't get to go home. It stars Dominique Cessna as the lead character. He is the one that is really desperately trying to get to Boston to see part of his family and Da'Vine Joy Randolph is dealing with the fact that her young son just got killed in Vietnam and she's experiencing the very first Christmas without him. It's really again, one of these found family holiday movies that you will absolutely love.

Also, another one that's Christmas in LA because it's always sunshine. If you want a nice green Christmas one, check out Sean Baker's Tangerine. It's a great movie about the holidays when you really are maybe with found family. It's about two sex workers trying to find their boyfriend on Christmas Eve after she just got out of jail. It was shot all in an iPhone, 99% certified fresh the last time I checked, absolute masterpiece.

Brian Lehrer: The text messages just keep on coming. "One of the best Christmas movies is Tokyo Godfathers and Jingle All the Way is a classic. No apologies." Christmas in Connecticut. Is that a movie? I don't even know.

Jacqueline Coley: It is.

Brian Lehrer: There we are going to leave it with Jacqueline Coley, editor at Rotten Tomatoes, where she also hosts the Award Tour podcast. Since it's Rotten Tomatoes, Jacqueline, can listeners weigh in? 10 seconds.

Jacqueline Coley: Absolutely. Go into Rotten Tomatoes and you can vote on any of these in our audience store. Also just check out all of our lists for best holiday movies, best Rotten movies, best comedy movies, all of that. Great place to find your next watch.

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