From the festive to the not remotely festive (the jury is still out on whether Die Hard is a Christmas film), here are 10 movies not to miss over the season
Monday, 22 December
Dr Zhivago, BBC Two, 2.55pm
Doctor and poet Yuri Zhivago is brought up in the family of Alexander Gromeko, whose daughter Tonya he eventually marries. But his true love is for the passionate and beautiful Lara, the mistress of a political opportunist. With the outbreak of the Great War, and with Moscow transformed by the Revolution, their romance is disrupted by the social upheaval surrounding them. David Lean's Oscar-winning epic set in revolutionary Russia is based on the novel by Boris Pasternak.
An Cailín Ciúin, TG4, 9.45pm
This quietly devastating adaptation of Claire Keegan's short story, Foster, was one of the best movies of 2022. Set in early 1980s Ireland, it follows Cáit, played by Caitríona Clinse, a young girl whose family send her to her mother's cousin to be cared for while her mother has another baby. She is cared for by Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and her initially distant husband Seán (Andrew Bennett). It is a whole new world for the neglected child as she is ushered into an idyllic domestic tableau full of love and proper care. The first Irish language film to be nominated for an Oscar, An Cailín Ciúin is among the greatest movies ever made about an adult world seen through the eyes of a child. Read our full review.
Searching for Sugarman, Sky Documentaries, 9.45am
This film became one of the great cult hits of 2012. it follows a record store owner and a journalist from South Africa who go in search of their hero, a man from Detroit, who, after releasing two albums which were monumental flops in America, became bigger than Elvis in South Africa. The artist’s name is Rodriguez and legend has it that his first album Cold Fact only ended up in South Africa because a girl was visiting her boyfriend and brought it with her. One interviewee comments that in everyone’s record collections growing up they had Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon and Cold Fact. Sinead Brennan. Read our full review.
Die Hard, TG4, 9.45pm
Yippy aye ay, eh, holly pluckers! Is it a Christmas movie? Who cares! Is it the best action flick ever made? Quite possibly. Bruce Willis is at his charismatic best as New York cop John McClane (he's Irish, you know?) who is visiting his estranged wife in LA when he gets caught up in a hostage situation and battle single-handedly to save her and many more during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza. It's an exhilarating shoot 'em up with zinging one-liners and a great supporting vast, including a truly villainous Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia.
Christmas Eve
It's a Wonderful Life, RTÉ One, 1.10pm, Christmas Eve
It ain't Christmas if you haven’t watched this for the 74th time. Jimmy Stewart is at his career best as hard-working, smalltown man George Bailey, who falls into deep despair when he faces financial ruin and sees his dreams shattered. He even contemplates suicide until the comic arrival of his bungling guardian angel, Clarence, who shows him what life would have been if George had never been born. It’s one of director Frank Capra’s finest films and while it ventures into some very dark places, this tale of redemption and hope always shines all the brighter at Christmas. Read more about the fascinating background and making of It’s a Wonderful Live here.
Christmas Day
Barbie, RTÉ One, Christmas Day, 9.40pm
Barbie the movie comes from the husband-and-wife team of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and there was some mighty silly gnashing of tweets on this film's release in 2023 - namely, what were these two giants of indie filmmaking doing making a comedy about an icon of trashy consumerism. Which is rather missing the point. Margot Robbie plays the living doll brilliantly, living a serenely virtuous life in a Stepford-like Barbie Land where men are Ken and women are prettified vessels for little girls and men in suits to dream about and mould into their own fantasies. However, when Barbie awakes one day to find herself troubled by something as verboten as her own sense of mortality and, worse, the appearance of cellulite on her thighs and eek! flat feet, her world begins to collapse. This uncanny valley of the dolls is a very well-made, fun film with real heart and a wink but perhaps too many smooth areas. Read our full review.
St Stephen's Day
Oppenheimer, RTÉ Ome, 9.20pm
Cillian Murphy clinched a well-deserved Oscar for his lead role in this epic and unnerving portrayal of 'the father of the atomic bomb' J Robert Oppenheimer. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, this 'biographical thriller' from writer-director Christopher Nolan - his sixth project with Murphy after The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk - justifies its three-hour duration as it spans from the 1920s to the 1960s.
An every-second-counts energy courses through scenes involving science, morality and political power plays, with the audience in constant suspense - while knowing all along how the man at the centre will ensure that our world will never be the same again. Harry Guerin. Read our full review.
27 December
The Banshees of Inisherin, RTÉ One, 9.40pm
14 years after first pairing them together in In Bruges, director Martin McDonagh reunites the dream team of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell for this macabre tale of the end of a friendship between two men on a windswept Irish isle during the Irish Civil War. They play pals, Colm (Gleeson) and Pádraic (Farrell) - until one day, seemingly out of the blue, the older man decides to sever all ties.
Watch our interview with Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell
It leads to a bizarre game of tit-for-tat and self-destruction that is both bleakly funny and terribly moving. The excellent cast also includes Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Jon Kenny, David Pearse, and Gary Lydon. Half western, half spooked Irish fable and all gruesome, this is a much-watch. Read our full review,
30 December
Back to Black, RTÉ One, 10.00pm and RTÉ Player
A near pitch perfect performance from Marisa Abela raises this warm and affectionate biopic of tragic retro torch singer Amy Winehouse above the usual standard of recent rock star flicks. It's both a sweet and sometimes torrid examination of her personal and professional life. The final word on the gifted Londoner will always be Asif Kapadia’s harrowing 2015 documentary Amy and unlike that landmark work, Back to Black can be overly sanitised. However, it does a very good job of reclaiming a troubled soul back from tabloid infamy. Read our full review.
2 January
Wolfwalkers, RTÉ One, 1.55pm and RTÉ Player
Cartoon Saloon does it again! Following the success of movies like Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kells and their latest movie, Éiru (which has been shortlisted for the Best Animated Film prize at next year’s Oscars), 2020’s Wolfwalkers is another gem from the Kilkenny production company.
Seven years in the making, Wolfwalkers is set in the Marble City itself during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and stars English actress Honor Kneasfy as Robyn Goodfellowe, a young apprentice hunter who journeys to Ireland with her father - and her falcon, Merlin - in a time of superstition and magic to wipe out the last wolf pack.
While exploring the forbidden lands outside the city walls, she befriends a free-spirited girl, Mebh - Eva Whittaker, making her film debut - a member of a mysterious tribe rumoured to shape shift into wolves by night.
Wolfwalkers also stars Jon Kenny and Tommy Tiernan as a pair of bungling woodcutters with rebel hearts, and Sean Bean as Robyn’s kindly man mountain of a father. It’s a gorgeous piece of work and won high praise for its exquisite animation, which marries a unique 2D style, a woodblock aesthetic and loose, expressive line work.
Full TV listings here
