When it comes to holiday movies, I prefer the ones that don’t wallop you on the head with it, but rather nibble around the edges of the season. Movies, well, like 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, which is set in the lead-up to Christmas at a leather goods store in Budapest. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan play bickering shop clerks unaware that, via a newspaper ad, they’ve been anonymously corresponding with each other, and falling in love along the way. (Nora Ephron adapted the story in You’ve Got Mail.) This one’s a total charmer – as heart-on-sleeve as filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch ever got. – Kimberley Jones
