Holiday movies for the forever alone

If the sight of Jude Law bawling over Cameron Diaz in The Holiday gives you more pleasure than getting past those jelly-covered sweets in Candy Crush, then you are my person. The kind of person who — despite the constant urging of friends to find a suitable mate, any mate, at least for the two weeks that make up the core of the holiday season — still chooses to watch movies at home, cuddled up in bed with a bag of chips, a spirited bottle of anything, and a spicy scented candle burning into the night.

The holidays come with a chill, all right — and it can either make you seek the nearness of other warm bodies, or want to sleep through it burrito-ed in a comforter. By this same chill, the season brings out two kinds of single people in the world: those that watch depressing Katherine Heigl movies and those that watch Santa run with a knife. Sometimes these two people, perhaps triggered by illegally snuggly weather, live in a single human being. Hence this list: a mix of comic horrors and terrifying ideals of Ever After trapped in film. Never mind what Santa thinks; everyone needs a healthy balance of naughty and nice. And since it’s the season of hope, let me just say that no one is actually forever alone. It just feels that way sometimes. For those times, you’ll always have movies.

• Love actually

On the first weekend of December, I put myself through the torturous process of watching every popular Christmas rom-com movie I could find. Love Actually came up in almost every list — and I had never seen it. Assuming it was just another one of those 120-actor films with multiple subplots, I didn’t expect much insight from it. But it was nice, actually.

Watch it for: The cards scene, of course, where Andrew Lincoln tells Keira Knightley through handwritten note cards: “For now let me say, without hope or agenda, just because it’s Christmas (and at Christmas you tell the truth), to me you are perfect and my wasted heart will love you until you look like this…” and he puts up a picture of what looks like the Insidious witch, without hair.

And Liam Neeson. #swoon

• Bridget Jones’ diary

Given a choice between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, whom would you pick? Bridget Jones is a 30-something female who smokes 42 cigarettes a day, drinks too much alcohol, wears bunny suits, makes blue soup and belts out Celine Dion songs. Bridget Jones’ Diary is the ultimate chick flick — the heroine is not skinny, not particularly obsessed with primping, and not very smart when it comes to men. When two of what are projected to be prime specimens of the male species fight over her, she becomes torn — between bad, bad, bad Hugh Grant and soft-spoken, proper, slightly boring Colin Firth. Firth, despite possibly being the only other actor who can go up against Kristen Stewart in a no-expression contest, gets the girl. It’s mind-boggling. It’s frustrating. It’s supposed to teach women everywhere an important lesson: if you can make a man eat blue soup, you can make him do anything.

Watch it for: Hugh Grant’s hair and a barely squinty Renée Zellweger.

•P2

After watching the first two films, my heart was literally in pain. I needed a break. I needed ridiculous violence. P2 is an unloved thriller about a pretty, young workaholic (Rachel Nichols), and an obsessed security guard (Wes Bentley). The film is set on Christmas Eve and, in particular, at P2, a parking level at Nichol’s office. Here she is trapped, kidnapped, forced to have a candlelit dinner with Bentley, and chased around the parking lot in a white dress that eventually gets dirty and very wet. Template slasher. Why bother watching it? It’s an hour and a half you’ll never get back, but I guarantee it will make you feel better about your current single state and rethink spending too many hours at the office. Consider its blurb alone: “The only thing more terrifying than being alone is discovering that you’re not.” Ooh.

Watch it for: Wes Bentley’s Elvis impersonation.

• Serendipity

I hate John Cusack. To me, he is as lacking in sexiness as Tom Hanks or Colin Firth. His hair is too greasy. His speech is too panicky. And his clothes are too … brown. I’ve only seen Serendipity twice — first as a wide-eyed, hopeful college student and now, as a 30-something who makes blue soup and belts out Journey songs. You never really see the same movie twice. I became obsessed with the movie once — it makes you see destiny as an invitation to be proactive. When I saw it again last weekend, I thought it was silly. Kate Beckinsale’s character seemed out of her mind. If she had been played by Kristen Wiig, with the exact same lines it would be an SNL skit.  And John Cusack, with his brown coat, made me realize destiny is just an excuse to be complacent. Our ’80s lover boy may not have changed, but apparently I have.

Watch it for: The soundtrack — and weep.

• Edward Scissorhands

In a Tim Burton fairytale, there are no grand declarations of love via a flash mob at Grand Central Station, no moping around in brown coats, no airport chase, no bursting into song. In a Tim Burton fairytale, strange creatures are adorable and can do gardening. They can make anatomically correct ice sculptures and produce snow you can twirl around in with their bare scissorhands. See this movie as an impressionable teen and you are forever doomed to be 1) a Johnny Depp-Winona Ryder fan; 2) a sucker for fairytales of the twisted kind; and 3) therefore, fatally idealistic by your own mangled standards, with one foot on this world and another foot in Wonderland. At once nightmarish and dreamy, methinks this is a movie the #foreveralone must watch and revisit from time to time, if only to rekindle that childlike wonder that separates the happy 30-somethings from the Scrooge 30-somethings. The hopeful from the damned.

Watch it for: Winona and Johnny, one of life’s greatest could’ve beens.