5 Must-Watch Christmas Movies to Stream This Weekend

If your holiday watchlist needs a tune-up, same. Christmas movies are everywhere and wildly inconsistent, but there are a handful I go back to every year because they actually deliver: heart, craft, and a little chaos. Here are the ones I keep pressing play on when the lights are up and the cocoa is hot.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

This one did not roar out of the gate. Reviews were lukewarm, crowds were meh, and then, over the years, it quietly became a December security blanket. Now it is a bona fide classic for Jim Henson’s shop (and Disney, which owns it), the kind families rewatch on autopilot.

The secret sauce: total sincerity smashed into total silliness. Michael Caine plays Scrooge like he is gunning for an Oscar, never winking once, while surrounded by Muppets absolutely going for it. That contrast is the magic trick. The songs have settled into permanent holiday-playlist status, the wintry production design still charms, and there is irrational comfort in letting Gonzo and Rizzo (a whatever and a rat) bicker about snacks while narrating Dickens.

Elf (2003)

The movie that vaulted Will Ferrell into 2000s superstardom also happens to be a genuine crowd-pleaser. Yes, saying you love it is basic. Also yes, it rules. Beneath the sugar rush of yellow tights and a department store with big-time Macys energy, it is a warm story about belonging and hope.

Jon Favreau directs from David Berenbaum’s script, and they both clearly get that Christmas means different things to different people, but connection is the point. The comedy is stacked: wordplay, absurdity, pratfalls. It is extra by design, and that is why it works. A perfect season-starter or Christmas-morning watch with hot cocoa, Santa, and full-on, joyful nonsense.

Batman Returns (1992)

Same year as The Muppet Christmas Carol and Home Alone 2, but cut from a very different stocking. Tim Burton blankets Gotham in snow and gloom, Danny Elfman’s score goes grand and gothic, and suddenly you have a comic-book fairy tale that is chilly in every sense.

Batman faces Catwoman and the Penguin, sure, but setting that showdown at Christmas gives it a beautifully odd mood: spiky, elegant, aggressively unsentimental. When you have hit your limit on twinkle lights and cheer, this is the anti-Christmas Christmas movie that still feels festive without hugging you about it.

Go (1999)

If you want holiday-adjacent mayhem, this is the move. It is set around Christmas, it never stops moving, and it is criminally underseen. The cast alone is a time-capsule flex: Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant, Taye Diggs, James Duval, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, and a pile of other familiar faces.

The structure is three intersecting stories that start out chaotic and then snap together in the best way. Along the ride you get Christmas tracks, a Vegas detour, a drug deal detonating in slow motion, raves, a hit-and-run, and even an MLM pitch dropped in like a grenade. It is a great rewatch because the payoffs keep stacking, and it is ideal if you want seasonal flavor without being smothered in tinsel.

Die Hard (1988)

'It is not Christmas until I see Hans Gruber falling off Nakatomi Plaza.'

The internet turned that into a ritual for a reason. The movie treats Christmas as the backdrop rather than the point: office-party setting, carols woven into the score, and then glass, gunfights, and one very tired New York cop saving the day. Bruce Willis nails the gruff-everyman thing he would ride for years, and the whole machine is still ridiculously watchable whether it is your first spin or your hundredth. People still argue it is not a Christmas movie. They are wrong.

• Runners-up: The Long Kiss Goodnight, Scrooged, 3615 Code Pere Noel, Treevenge, The Brentwood Strangler, Shazam!

Those are my go-tos. What are yours? Which movies absolutely have to run at your place before the decorations come down?