The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2021

The Cars series is somewhat maligned but I think that the sequel went a long way to sully it’s reputation; the first film was pretty good, the problem was that it was following several near perfect films. It also embraced NASCAR which isn’t something that travels well outside of the US. Cars 2 was and is a terrible sequel which makes it all the more impressive that they managed to totally reverse course with this film; taking it’s cues from Rocky III it has Lightning McQueen trying to justify his place in the world as a new generation of race cars start to take over from his generation. Honestly, half the reason for this film being made is the fact that the franchise is a merch selling juggernaut but there is a heart in there especially in this film

A full on film version of Wallce and Gromit always seemed like a no-brainer but taking characters from a short film structure to a feature length is always fraught with trouble. Thankfully, they managed to pull it off with Were-Rabbit, whilst managing to maintain that particular flavour of comedy that made the rest of the series so beloved

Lets get some music on! Nice bit of Johnny Cash, it may not quite be one of the legendary prison shows but this is still sure to be good. And then War of The Worlds because its Christmas, why not?

ITV4 here showing that they aren’t afraid to through some Eastwood on the schedules, here with two of Clint’s secret best films; Kelly’s Heroes is a belter, don’t listen to those 3 stars up there, and probably his best way film. Then we have his secret best western, excluding the Spaghetti Westerns, which take a weird turn into supernatural cowboy revenge

When its looked back on, this one will probably remain Craig’s Best Bond. It all came together hugely in this film; villain, plot, opening song, casting, everything was spot on. It looks gorgeous as well, from the shiny skyscrapers in China through to the highlands of Scotland

We had its sequel a few nights ago (maybe? Can’t remember now) so why not get the first film? Pretty sure this was the first in the trend of “normal looking person has a surprising amount of killing skills” that goes from this to John Wick. The phone conversation is properly iconic, that can’t be argued with

Of course Paramount can’t stop with the Dirty Harry films so here we have another one, then we have another late 80s Manpunching Classic with Kickboxer wherein we find the origin of JCVD’s ability to do the splits

Nice double bill here; a great modern remake of probably the definitive Poirot story, this time with Kenneth Branagh taking on the role with quite the impressive moustache. Then you get what is I think the best Stepehen King adaptation, certainly if you exclude films set in prisons.

You know what, screw all that talk; lets just have Statham punching a giant shark, And another of his films afterwards, no clue of the quality but its by the director of Con Air so it might be a hidden gem. Probably not but always worth a roll of the dice surely?

Here’s a couple of films in the “What Avengers Do On Their Day Off” genre; first you have the secret origin of Captain America’s beard that isn’t afraid to get very (and I mean very) bleak. Then, yes, technically, Cabin was filmed before Hemsworth starred in Thor but it ended up being released after so it still counts. Kinda. Point is: some ending on this film