Leonard Maltin's Top 5 Christmas Movies That Aren't About Christmas

The movie-guide maestro's non-traditional holiday picks.

Fanny and Alexander - "I saw it originally as a feature film, but it's now on DVD as the full miniseries. It's a brilliant, beautiful, emotional and sweeping film about a family, but the centerpiece of the feature-film version is this glorious turn-of-the-twentieth-century Christmas celebration."

Meet Me in St. Louis - "'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.' The irony is that it's sung when Judy Garland is contemplating the unhappy fact that their father's moving them away from their beloved home."

The Family Man - "An underrated film which is sort of a paraphrase of It's A Wonderful Life, and happens to take place during the season. This season stirs so many emotions and feelings of being with your family, sharing, that if there's any disruption of that, it causes natural drama and good story material."

Babes in Toyland (1934) - "I grew up watching this on TV: Laurel and Hardy play workers in Santa's workshop. But again, it's not about Christmas; it's about their year-round job making toys.  It's just a wonderful setting for their childlike characters."

"A tie - Edward Scissorhands happens to have a seasonal setting for part of the film, and it's about a boy who hasn't had a real family and who's not fully formed in the conventional sense. I think that ties in very well with the needs and desires that people feel around Christmas time. In Remember the Night, Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman who's picked up for shoplifting, and the assistant DA who's prosecuting her agrees to take her home with him so that she doesn't have to spend the holidays in jail. It's a lovely film."

Leonard Maltin's 2012 Movie Guide is now available in stores everywhere.

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