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Since the Christmas weekend begins tomorrow, this week's «Film Friday» is going to be a little bit different than usual. Instead of telling you about only one Christmas film, which was my original plan, I thought I would compile all the Christmas-y films I have written about since starting this blog. Most of them are part of a « 12 Days of Christmas Films » feature I did last December. If you are looking for a film to watch over the holidays, I think these are some good choices. Let's begin with The Thin Man (1934), an excellent comedy-mystery starring the delightful duo William Powell and Myrna Loy. They play Nick and Nora Charles, a debonair detective and his sophisticated wife, who find themselves embroiled in a murder case during the holidays. While Christmas is not crucial to the central plot of the film, there is still a lovely scene between the Charleses on the morning of December 25. W. S. Van Dyke directed from a script by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, based on...

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) tells the story of the Smiths, an upper-middle class family living in St. Louis, Missouri at the turn of the century. The family consists of father Alonzo (Leon Ames); mother Anna (Mary Astor); two teenage daughters, Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland); two younger daughters, Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien); one teenage son, Lon Jr. (Henry H. Daniels Jr.); one grandfather (Harry Davenport); and one maid (Marjorie Main). Lon Jr. is preparing to leave to Princeton University; Rose is anxiously awaiting a long-distance call in which she hopes to be proposed to by Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully); Esther is infatuated with the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake); and Tootie and Agnes occupy themselves by burying dolls.   The film is divided into four sections, each covering a season during a yearlong period from 1903 to 1904. Summer finds the Smith family eagerly anticipating the 1904 World...