Christmas is great, isn't it? All those cute adverts for shops on the telly, with their sentimental music and little children. All those cute adverts for shops on the telly with their sentimental music and little children, tricking you into spending money on DVDs.

It's a lovely time of year, when you can sit down with your family and watch alll your new DVDs. You can sit down with your family and watch your new DVDs and enjoy the warmth and love as they all talk all over the best bits. And eat all your food. And then your nephew scratches the disc and you can never watch it again. 

Yeah, Christmas is flipping brilliant.

If you're sick of crying at It's a Wonderful Life, cheering on Home Alone or laughing at The Muppet Christmas Carol, you might prefer one of these Christmas films for people who hate Christmas.

Scrooged (1988)

2046 (2004)

Romance is in the air at Christmas for fools who like watching Love Actually on ITV. But not for Wong Kar-Wai. After In the Mood for Love, the director tempted Tony Leung back for this tale of a writer in 1960s Hong Kong, who finds himself surrounded by cigarette smoke and shiny stockings as he keeps drifting back to the titular, futuristic year on Christmas Eve.

Are all our memories of relationships just traces of tears? Innocent folk in the audience will swoon and coo as a couple holds hands. Everyone else will be clawing their face off as the existential doom of loneliness takes hold. And through it all Nat King Cole sings The Christmas Song like everything's wonderful. Chestnuts are roasting, baby. Yeah. IN AN OVEN OF DESPAIR.

Bad Santa (2003)

Look! It's Santa! And he's not got any clothes on! And he's swearing! It sounds puerile (it mostly is) but Terry Zwigoff's dark take on shopping mall Santas is pitch black stuff. After 90 minutes of dark humour it even manages to  stop its sweet ending being too sickly, opting instead for a little kid kicking a boy in the crotch. In the words of Roger Ebert: “the ending is happy in the same sense that a man’s doctors tell him he lost his legs but they were able to save his shoes.” 

Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane? A Christmas movie? It is if you count that superb cut from young Charles Foster Kane getting handed a toy sled to an older man arguing with his guardian over money. "Merry Christmas... and a Happy New Year" - a 15 year leap that's even more amazing once you get to the end and realise that Rosebud was Earth all along - and that every single Christmas present you've ever been given will one day be burned to pieces in an empty house as people try to remember why it was so important in the first place. Still, that's good news for anyone with an unwanted Cliff Richard album. 

Brazil (1985)

Life is a bunch of dystopian paperwork and endless bureaucracy. And then you get tortured and brainwashed by a guy dressed as Santa. They don't cover that in the Queen's Speech. 

Die Hard (1988)

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

Enough said.

For more Christmas movie lists (and other random crap), keep opening the i-Flicks Advent Calendar.