There's nothing like a heart-warming film to make you feel Christmassy. What's On's film writer Mike Shaw gives us his list of favourites.

It’s been a quite a few years since I saw a Christmas movie that felt like it deserved a place on my hallowed list of Christmassy films.

The festive films of the last, I don’t know, 15 years, have not scratched that seasonal itch I get every December.

And while it’s easy to assume it’s because I’m older and harder to please, I don’t think that’s it. I think modern Christmas movies aren’t as effective any more because they’re too scared to take risks.

Think back to It’s A Wonderful Life, probably the best Christmas movie of them all. Across the course of the movie We encounter domestic abuse, drunk driving, suicide, a child drowning. But what’s the takeaway emotion at the end of the story? Joy and love. George Bailey has been a stupid, selfish man, but he is redeemed.

And I think It’s A Wonderful Life sums up exactly what’s missing from most Christmas films in the 21st century: darkness. They’re not miserable enough; there’s no despair. To attract the widest audiences possible and avoid the possibility of doing something that’ll upset one of the columnists at The Guardian, they play it so safe it’s boring.

The thing that helps a Christmas movie generate that warm and fuzzy feeling is redemption. Our characters have to experience despair for salvation to mean anything at all, and where was the last Christmas film with the guts to do that?

What’s more, when the relief comes, it has to be from a proper predicament. I’m thinking death, homelessness, and things like that. Not "oooh dear, I can’t find the toy my kid wants."

But, importantly, the film has to be family-friendly. It’s easy to have a dark Christmas film if you’re happy with an 18 certificate, much harder to do it when you want the whole family to be able to see it at the cinema.

Look at some of the other great Christmas films, and see how downright miserable they are underneath the tinsel.

On the surface, Home Alone is a slapstick comedy. Look closer though, and it’s about two burglars hellbent breaking into a house containing an eight-year-old boy who has been abandoned by his parents. Meanwhile, the eventual hero is an isolated old man, shunned by the community because of rumours he killed his family.

And then there’s Miracle on 34th Street. The first half of the film is an indictment of the commercialism that has overrun the religious holiday, while the second depicts a sad old man, alone in a psychiatric hospital because his kindly nature is viewed as dangerous.

Armed with this perspective, is it any wonder that A Christmas Carol is so regularly adapted.

A proper Christmas film needs to have a dark heart buried within, and the more sinister, the better.