10 Christmas movies to get you through the holidays

Do you spend the holidays caroling, crafting wreaths and making gingerbread houses?

I didn't think so.

If you're anything like me, Christmas has always been about the movies.

And, since there's still time to binge watch a few before the big day, here's a list of my 10 favorite Christmas movies for inspiration:

10. "Lethal Weapon" (1987)

Sure, Mel Gibson is still considered a Hollywood pariah. But the movie opens with "Jingle Bell Rock." It includes a drug bust, shootouts and a hostage situation at a Christmas tree lot. The bad guy (Gary Busey) shoots a TV tuned to "A Christmas Carol." And it ends with Murtaugh (Danny Glover) inviting Riggs (Gibson) inside for "the world's lousiest Christmas turkey."

9. "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (2005)

"Lethal Weapon" writer Shane Black continues his fascination with Christmas — see also, "The Last Boy Scout," "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Iron Man 3" — with this pulpy, winking, neo-noir thriller about a small-time New York hood (Robert Downey Jr.) who stumbles into a movie audition, is flown to L.A. during the holidays and paired with a private investigator named Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) to research his role.

8. "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (1989)

Aunt Bethany's cat. The squirrel in the Christmas tree. Snot the dog yakkin' on a bone. The jelly of the month club. The Christmas lights you can see from outer space. Take away the ridiculousness of Clark's (Chevy Chase) warp-speed sled ride and the nonsense with the Griswolds' yuppie neighbors, Todd (Nicholas Guest) and Margo (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and the serialized nature of the sequel plays out like a poor man's version of "A Christmas Story."

7. "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947)

The original black-and-white film starring Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara and Natalie Wood. Not that colorized mess. Or the 1994 Richard Attenborough version. And certainly not the 1973 remake with future "Good Morning America" co-host David Hartman.

6. "Home Alone" (1990)

The second entry from writer John Hughes ("Christmas Vacation") makes zero sense. It's basically a live-action cartoon. Also, Kevin's (Macaulay Culkin) parents should be put in jail. Still, much like Kevin and his VHS copy of "Angels With Filthy Souls," it wouldn't be the holidays without "eating junk and watching rubbish."

5. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)

Anytime you think you're having a rough holiday season, just check in with George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) and watch as he's smacked around by a drunken druggist as a child, defers his dreams to work at a struggling savings and loan, gets in a bar fight, wrecks his car and tries to end it all by jumping off a bridge into the icy waters below. Despite all the gloom, it's still hilarious that the worst thing his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), can show him about a world in which he'd never been born is that his beloved Mary (Donna Reed) has become an "old maid" librarian.

4. "Scrooged" (1988)

Bill Murray going off the rails always makes for a good time. But "Scrooged" would earn a spot on this list just for the promos for "Bob Goulet's Old-Fashioned Cajun Christmas" and Lee Majors in the action-packed "The Night the Reindeer Died," plus the "acid rain, drug addiction, international terrorism, freeway killers" spot for the live "Scrooge" special.

3. "Die Hard" (1988)

"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs." Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) picked the wrong Christmas party to crash as a barefoot John McClane (Bruce Willis) single-handedly dismantles his entire criminal organization while taking the time to scrawl — "Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho." — on the corpse of one of his victims.

2. "Love Actually" (2003)/"About a Boy" (2002)

Yes, they're separate movies. But, released just a year apart, both showcase the beauty of London at Christmas, and both feature Hugh Grant crashing a pageant. The former boasts an absurdly talented cast — including Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy, Laura Linney, Martin Freeman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Billy Bob Thornton, "Die Hard's" Rickman and "The Walking Dead's" Andrew Lincoln — in a series of charming vignettes.

The latter, meanwhile, offers the awful holiday song "Santa's Super Sleigh," a weird little kid (Nicholas Hoult) and his suicidal mom (Toni Collette).

1. "A Christmas Story" (1983)

Essentially a series of short stories revolving around young Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) and his quest for an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, it just may be the perfect Christmas movie. Whether you watch it in its entirety or just stumble upon a couple of minutes of it during the annual TNT/TBS marathons, every segment is a welcome burst of nostalgia — assuming political correctness hasn't ruined the scene where the employees of a Chinese restaurant sing "Jinger Bears."

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch