Our 7 Favorite Christmas Movies in Disguise

These 7 Christmas movies in disguise will entertain whether you're looking for a Christmas movie or tired of typical Christmas movies.

Die Hard (1988)

Let's get this out of the way: Die Hard is the ultimate "is it a Christmas movie" Christmas movie. No one thought of it as one when it came out — it was just a great action movie about NYPD cop John McClane trying to save his estranged wife Holly Gennero (Bonnie Bedelia) from a Los Angeles office tower.

But in decades of internet hot takes and interpretation, Die Hard has come to be pretty universally recognized as a Christmas movie, after all.

Holly's name is very important to this reading of Die Hard — not just because of the Christmas overtones of "holly," but also because she's dropped McClane as her last name, a signal of how the family is disintegrating. Die Hard, like Christmas, is ultimately about a family reuniting and creating a future.

It also has a proud place on our list of the 11 Most Helpful Ventilation Shafts in Movies.

The Apartment (1960)

Like everything in Billy Wilder's magnificent The Apartment, the Christmas element of the film is wisely, beautifully understated. The film is about Fran (Shirley MacClaine), an elevator operator, and her secret affair with bigwig Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray).

Meanwhile, the well-meaning Bud Baxter (Jack Lemmon) pines after her, even while he allows Sheldrake and other executives to use his apartment to carry out their affairs, including Sheldrake's liaisons with Fran.

At the company Christmas party — a symbol of office excess — Fran learns Sheldrake is stringing her along. At a time for celebrating family and togetherness, she realizes she's not just the other women, but one of many other women with whom Sheldrake has had affairs. Things take a dark turn — but turn out rather merrily by New Year's Eve.

Like It's a Wonderful Life — which isn't on this list because it's so obviously a Christmas movie — The Apartment succeeds by acknowledging the grim parts of life, not just highlighting the jolly ones.

Little Women (2019)

Nothing about Greta Gerwig's lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's 1868-89 two-volume novel about the March sisters screams Christmas movie... until a Christmas scene where, joyously, Bob Odenkirk's Father March returns home from the Civil War.

"My little women," he declares, with total naturalism, underselling the title of the film with one of the best line readings in a movie that's filled with wonderful acting.

It's an incredibly cathartic and moving moment, in large part because it doesn't try too hard for big emotion.

Tangerine (2015)

Like Die Hard, Tangerine takes place around Christmas in Los Angeles — a place where winter temperatures in the 70s can make it easy to forget its the holiday season, unless you're at an outdoor mall.

Add to that the fact that when this excellent Sean Baker film came out, coverage of it focused mostly on two noteworthy points: First, that it is a frank, compassionate and funny look at the lives of transgender sex workers (played by Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, both outstanding), at a time when trans people were rarely well-represented on film. And second, it was shot all on iPhones, when that was very rare. It heralded a potential breakthrough in indie filmmaking.

But underneath those two points is something very traditional: Tangerine is a movie about a family at Christmas. It's a found family, yes, and not the kind of family that is typically depicted in sugarcoated Christmas movies. But that makes Tangerine all the more compelling.

The Terminator (1984)

Yes, The Terminator. No, it doesn't take place around Christmas. And no, you didn't miss a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger dresses up as Santa. But The Terminator is perhaps the most true Christmas movie of any film on this list, because it is so obviously inspired by the Biblical account of the birth of Christ.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor symbolizes the Virgin Mary — a teenager who will soon give birth to humanity's savior, by extraordinary means: her meeting with Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese, a time traveler from the future. Her son, John Connor, shares initials with Jesus Christ.

SkyNet, the terrifying AI that sends The Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before her baby is born, is not unlike King Herod of Judea, who ordered the "massacre of the innocents" — the murder of Bethlehem's newborns — because he feared Jesus would one day seize his kingdom.

Interestingly, James Cameron came up with the idea of The Terminator in Rome, not so far from the Vatican.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Set around Christmas in — again — Los Angeles, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the directorial debut of screenwriter Shane Black, who is rather famous for setting films around the holidays (including Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout.)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starts off as a play on perhaps the least Christmas-y movie genre, noirs, with some deft Hollywood satire. But it embraces the Christmas season as actor Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) and private investigator Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer) team up with Santa-suited Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), a woman with many secrets.

Notably, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang came at a point in Robert Downey's career when he was still considered a risk, due to a history with drugs. He started his comeback with 2003's The Singing Detective, and built up to landing the lead role in 2008's Iron Man — a casting choice that made him one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood history. Christmas is all about second chances, and Downey seized his.

Which brings us to the final film on our list...

Iron Man 3 (2013)

You would think more Marvel movies would embrace the Christmas spirit, given how tied in they are to marketing and toys. Disney+'s Hawkeye made great use of the holiday season, and so does Iron Man 3.

When Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, decided not to direct Iron Man 3 (though he did return as Happy Hogan), Downey took the opportunity to reunite with his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director, Shane Black.

Despite Black's long history of Christmas-based action movies, he didn't originally intend to set Iron Man 3 during the holiday — but co-writer Drew Pearce brought him around to the idea, as SlashFilm reported.

Black told the outlet: "There's something at Christmas that unites everybody and it already sets a stage within the stage, that wherever you are, you're experiencing this world together."

Iron Man 3 is, appropriately enough, about reunions, second chances, and finding hope when things seem dark. It even has an apparent resurrection, so maybe it's also an Easter movie.

Liked This List of Our 7 Favorite Christmas Movies in Disguise?

You might also like our list of the 12 Spookiest Christmas Movies to Add Some Scary to Your Merry.

Or you might like this talk with Tangerine director Sean Baker about his latest film, Anora, which is very much in awards contention this holiday season.

Main image: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Warner Bros.

Editor's Note: Corrects Iron Man 3 photo credit.