Elf (2003)

Although Christmas is a time of year for love and cheer for all, holiday cinema has not always represented diverse communities. Being a holiday with Christian origins, much of its media consists of straight white families or straight white romances. Luckily, modern years have been bringing with them plenty of POC and LGBTQ+ representation that the holidays so desperately need. Here are just a few to get you started!

Notice: If watching with children, it would be good to do some more research on these films, depending on the age of your child. Number 2, Jingle Jangle, is technically the only one marketed towards children, and several others may not be child-friendly at all.

After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, an introverted woman breaks out of her shell and flies off to Europe in order to complete her bucket list with her remaining time.

Eager to kick down the door of the official holiday season, participating in the quasi-subtlety of the commercial sales and string lights that go up earlier and earlier every year, Christmas movies in America have a tendency to enter the public sphere before the Thanksgiving leftovers have been reheated. Spirited, released on Apple TV+ on November 11

, glides through the ornament and holly-decked halls with a bang. It’s a comedic musical offshoot of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol narrative, updated for a modern-day climate of political misinformation, cultural trend manipulation, and performative self-referentiality. The film wields a keen awareness of the rigor that producing a spectacle requires, and can be seen as a paean to the work of a dedicated crew toiling to elicit an emotional response and perspective shift from the film’s main antagonist as well as the audience on the other side of the screen

Spirited assumes a behind-the-scenes vantage of the spectral organization responsible for the yuletide haunting that once befell Ebenezer Scrooge nearly 200 years ago. In 2022, the ghosts of Christmas Past (Sunita Mani), Present (Will Ferrell), and Future (a ten-foot-tall reaper voiced by Tracy Morgan) convene meetings alongside Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) to scout potential targets for moral conversion. They lead a team of the recently deceased who frequently break into song and dance as they jovially carry out their administrative, research, and pre- and post-production tasks that each haunting demands. While Past, Present, and Future strategize and tailor their approach to maximize the beneficial ripple effects of their haunting program, the technical requirements of their undertakings inject a humorous layer of production realism—stagehands with ear pieces wheel in set backgrounds, transitions are queued, apathetic HR resources oversee workplace behavior, and the importance of remaining “on-script” during the haunting is repeatedly enforced.

The target, or “perp” this year, is Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), the morally dubious president of a successful public relations firm that Jacob Marley considers unredeemable. Briggs has made his living sowing controversy, capitalizing on disseminated misinformation, and shamelessly manipulating cultural trends in a social media-centric world to steer conversations and public opinion to benefit his business interests; he has his hands in sectors that include pop music, Christmas tree grower unions, and politics, ranging from US senatorial campaigns to middle school elections. While Marley, comically unenthusiastic about the musical numbers, is convinced that Briggs is a lost cause, the onus of proving Briggs’s capacity for change falls upon Present.

The crux of the film’s forward momentum exists in the different viewpoints on people’s ability to change. Briggs operates on the maxim that people are fundamentally lazy, greedy, and desperate to be validated and seen as good. He is paid handsomely for his ability to pinpoint and exploit others’ weaknesses, a talent he charismatically employs on the ghosts who haunt him. Present believes even the most selfish and callous person has the capacity for a change of heart. Having once upon a time been considered unredeemable himself, he now yearns for a peaceful life among mortals with Briggs’s kind-hearted business partner, Kimberley (Octavia Spencer), with whom he’s smitten.

The Hawkeye season finale wraps everything up in a neat bow just in time for Christmas, though somewhat disappointingly. Spoilers ahead!

Episode six begins with a meeting between Eleanor Bishop and Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin. Fisk plays a huge role in this episode in person. I’m so happy to see Vincent D’Onofrio back in this role; he is the perfect Kingpin. During the meeting, Eleanor lays out rather obviously for the audience all that she’s done and why: she’s killed Armand, framed Jack, and laundered money all to repay a debt owed by her late husband to Fisk. Now Kate has come too close to finding out the truth, which puts her in danger. That’s where Eleanor draws the line, and she tells Fisk she’s leaving the business. Fisk tries to get her to stay, but Eleanor reveals she has backups of his files as leverage, and she exits. 

Maya later comes to Fisk. Fisk is dressed in a horrendous outfit consisting of an aloha shirt ripped straight out of the comics. This is one case in which I have to go against comic book accuracy. This outfit does not match with this character, or at least with the one we know from Daredevil. He looks tacky, cheap, and silly—three things Wilson Fisk never should be. In Daredevil, Fisk’s style is sleek, modern, and minimalistic. 

Maya communicates with Fisk with Kazi as an interpreter, using her best poker face to tell him she’s given up on hunting the Ronin. Fisk responds to her verbally and uses some basic ASL as well, which is a nice touch to establish their relationship. They exchange signed “I love you”’s, giving us a little glimpse into their supposed father-daughter bond, leaving me more curious about their relationship. But Maya knows that Fisk had her father killed. After she leaves, Fisk complains about all his problems, Maya now being one of them. Thankfully, the show makes him smart enough to see Maya’s turned on him. He plans to hurt Eleanor Bishop and Maya for what they’ve done to him. 

Back to the Hawkeyes: Clint and Kate make a ton of trick arrows in preparation for their confrontation. At the holiday party, everyone is in attendance. Clint and Kate come dressed immaculately. Eleanor arrives and Kate tries to keep her out of trouble. Jack appears, fresh out of jail and now wielding a sword. I guess he’s not a villain after all; he’s just a guy with a weird love of swords. The LARPers come as backup disguised as waitstaff. Kazi stands outside as a sniper. Finally, Yelena Belova arrives in a striking green coat on her mission to kill Clint Barton.