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A Minecraft Movie
Director Jared Hess has a history of extreme silliness (see Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre) so is a great choice for this flight of fancy based on the popular building-block video game. In a superbly imagined right-angled world that runs on its own surreal logic, siblings Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers) – guided by Jason Momoa’s ex-gamer Garrett and Jack Black’s salesman Steve; a double act without a straight man – have to use their construction skills to defeat baddies from the Nether. Catnip for the under-12s. Simon Wardell
Christmas Day, 7.10am, 6.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
Oppenheimer
Although it appeared a leftfield choice at the time, it isn’t actually that big a shift for Christopher Nolan from the physics-defying plots and tormented heroes of films such as Inception to a biopic of the scientist who brought us the atomic bomb. Here’s a man (played with magnetic intensity by Cillian Murphy) who changed reality for all of humanity with his devastating weapon, then was haunted by the fact for the rest of his life. Robert Downey Jr as his nemesis, admiral turned politician Lewis Strauss, provides the wider context for his world-shattering actions. SW
Sunday 21 December, 9pm, BBC Two
Challengers
Luca Guadagnino’s love-triangle drama set on and around the tennis court teases and thrills, with the game itself never filmed so creatively before. Zendaya stars as the woman in the middle, Tashi, a former player who coaches her husband Art (Mike Faist) to grand slam success. Josh O’Connor is a smash as Art’s estranged best mate Patrick, who is more talented but less focused than his old partner. A challenger tournament match-up provides them with the chance to replay old entanglements and resolve long-held animosities as the temperature rises. SW
Monday 22 December, 10.40pm, BBC One
The Favourite
With Kinds of Kindness and now Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos seems intent on retreating to the more cerebral end of his film-making spectrum. However, The Favourite shows how much fun he is when he simply tries to be human. A glorious pile-up of wigs, jealousy and rabbits, The Favourite is a fevered retelling of the 18th-century court of Queen Anne. Olivia Colman teeters on the verge of a breakdown throughout, while Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz vie for her attention. Historical dramas don’t get any more sumptuous, vicious or absurd than this. Stuart Heritage
Monday 22 December, 11.05pm, Film4
Goodbye June
For her directorial debut, a tear-stained tale of family and fatality in the lead-up to Christmas, Kate Winslet has wisely stuffed it with quality actors. So we have Helen Mirren as the titular, terminally ill mum and Timothy Spall as the slightly feckless father. And their four grownup kids are played by Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough and Winslet herself. Joe “son of Kate” Anders’s script keeps the schmaltz to a minimum (despite the presence of small children), with most of the action set in the far from festive environs of a hospital. SW
Christmas Eve, Netflix
Citizen Kane
Widely cited as the greatest film ever, Orson Welles’s meditation on power and loneliness has a reputation you can see from space. Bulldozing convention with its cavalier approach to staging and structure, its ambition is evident from the very first scene. True, in the decades since it was released, its power has been diluted by parodies and copyists, but that only makes it more ripe to revisit. And what could be more Christmassy than the tragic tale of a man who has everything except the thing he really wants? SH
Christmas Eve, 9am, BBC Two
Photograph: Ronald Grant/Amblin Entertainment/Universal
A raft of billboards recently suggested that Steven Spielberg is about six months away from releasing another movie about aliens. But it would be a miracle if his new endeavour contained even a tenth of the heart of ET. Equal parts sci-fi adventure and childhood fever dream, this is the tale of a lonely boy, Elliott (Henry Thomas), who befriends a stranded being from another world and learns about connection, wonder and the importance of home. ET is now 43 years old, and the fact that it can still reduce people to puddles is proof that it is a stone-cold classic. SH
Christmas Eve, 1.35pm, ITV1
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Sixteen years after our previous peek into the world of wensleydale cheese addict Wallace and his dog (and perennial life-saver) Gromit, the release of this beguiling caper was like a family reunion. Also back in the fold is the big bad from The Wrong Trousers: the silent but deadly Feathers McGraw, who manipulates Wallace’s latest invention – irritatingly cheerful robot gnome Norbot (Reece Shearsmith) – into carrying out his plan of revenge. And a nod to Ben Whitehead, who takes over seamlessly from Peter Sallis as the voice of Wallace. SW
Christmas Day, 11.40am, BBC One
White Christmas
Mulled wine in film form, Bing Crosby’s musical has been a yuletide mainstay for decades. Ostensibly this is about entertainers tasked with saving a failing Vermont inn from closure, but really it’s just an excuse for someone to make a movie out of Irving Berlin’s famous song. The result is a warm, twinkly vehicle for the stars of the day. Danny Kaye steals scenes with his elastic-faced joy, Vera-Ellen dances like she predates gravity, and Technicolor Christmas cheer pours from every frame. SH
Christmas Day, 1.05pm, BBC Two
The Little Mermaid
Disney’s insistence on making “live-action” versions of its most beloved cartoons has only been a partial success, but Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid from 2023 is one of the better attempts. Halle Bailey’s Ariel is luminous, and possesses a voice that could melt stone, plus she’s matched by an underwater world that’s even more vibrant and alive than the animated version. True, not all of it lands – the world is still not ready for a song performed by a photorealistic fish – but it is sweet -and sincere, and more emotionally complex than you might imagine. SH
Christmas Day, 6.30pm, E4
Sinners
With his latest, Oscar-worthy film, Ryan Coogler storms the territory occupied by Jordan Peele: twisting genres in startlingly original ways to shed light on the African American experience. It begins as an immersive historical drama centred on the Black community of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932. Michael B Jordan doubles up as gun-toting twins Smoke and Stack, who return from Chicago with a plan to open a juke joint. Miles Caton is their young cousin Sammie, a talented blues guitarist who’s there for opening night, as is Smoke’s hoodoo-practising wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). But then Jack O’Connell’s malevolent Remmick appears and the film tips into the supernatural. In a world where evil is human as well as demonic, the threatened partygoers have to decide which is the lesser. SW
Boxing Day, 11.25am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
Cover-Up
Seymour Hersh may be a near-legendary investigative journalist in the US, but he’s a most reluctant interviewee (“I barely trust you guys,” he warns the film-makers at one point). However, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus have managed to tease out a series of fascinating insights into a career that has taken him from Vietnam to Iraq via the dirtiest corners of the CIA. He is so dogged that he quit a prestigious job at the New York Times so he could investigate corporations such as the one that owned his own newspaper. Inspirational. SW
Boxing Day, Netflix
Trust
In which Sophie Turner plays a Hollywood television actor who retreats to a cabin after a scandal, despite the fact that rule No 1 of Hollywood is never, ever retreat to a cabin. What follows is a tense survival thriller in which Turner’s Lauren Lane finds herself up against just about everything: thieves, a peeping tom Airbnb owner and an obsessive ex with access to hitmen. Carlson’s Young’s film is remarkably silly, but if you’re in the mood you’ll probably have fun with the sheer claustrophobic paranoia of it all. SH
Boxing Day, Paramount+
Paddington 2
Citizen Kane may be called the greatest movie ever, but there’s a strong case for Paddington 2 being the most perfect. A glorious balance of wackiness and sentimentality, this is the film where national treasure Paddington is wrongly imprisoned while Hugh Grant has the time of his life hamming it up around him as an actor turned villain. The real trick, however, is how deftly the film manages to suspend itself in air with its irrepressible sense of kindness. It will make you cry. It will make your children cry. It made Nicolas Cage cry in a film once. See? Perfect. SH
Boxing Day, 5.20pm, BBC One
