Christmas Movies 2010

Christmas movies are almost as much a tradition of the holiday season as Santa Claus and gingerbread cookies.

Of course, there’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 film about a savings-and-loan manager up against a greedy banker, and more recently, Christmas pictures like “Home Alone,”

which introduced then child-actor Macaulay Culkin in 1990, and the 2003 comedy “Elf” featuring Will Ferrell.

But this season, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a movie with a Christmas theme. One exception: “The Nutcracker in 3D.” The Philadelphia Daily News reports the Christmas plot, which has typically fueled as many as half a dozen movies at the holidays, has lost its freshness.

That fact notwithstanding, you still have plenty of cinematic options if you’re eager to hit the theater in coming weeks during downtime off from work or school.

For kid-oriented flicks there’s “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” which at $24.5 million was the top-grossing movie at the box office this past weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. For the younger set you also have “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part I,” which is based on the seventh and final book of the J.K. Rowling series, and “Tangled,” the Disney animated story of Rapunzel, with the voice of Mandy Moore.

For an adult-oriented action-packed romance, there’s “The Tourist” starring Johnny Depp, a math teacher, and Angelina Jolie, a woman who intentionally crosses his path to fool her former lover.

Another mature movie, this one already nominated for 12 Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, is “Black Swan,” a psychological drama about a ballerina played by Natalie Portman.