Pick of the festive flicks

So you've eaten the turkey, stuffed yourself full of pudding and gulped down a glass or two of champers. Now you are ready for a few Christmas movies. But what to watch? From Amelie to Chicken Run,

CHRISTMAS EVE

CHICKEN RUN
BBC1, 6.10pm

the first full-length feature by Aardman Animation, which delivered such classics as Creature Comforts and The Wrong Trousers. This is a brutally funny pastiche of every WWII stalag movie ever made, with nods to PoW classics such as The Great Escape, Stalag 17 and The Wooden Horse. The fact that the would-be escapees are flightless fowl trapped behind the wire of a chicken farm only makes things funnier, even if it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one chicken from another. Is that chickenist?

SHANGHAI NOON
BBC1, 9.55pm

Rather good comedy action Western with Jackie Chan teaming up with train-robber Owen Wilson to find a Chinese Princess in the Wild West. Terrific stunts and a good rapport between the two stars raise this martial arts concept movie above the average fare. Immensely likeable.

THE GO-BETWEEN
ITV, 12.50am

Quite brilliant screen adaptation by Harold Pinter of LP Hartley's classic tale of cross-class romance in Edwardian England is made even more exquisite by Joseph Losey's subtle direction, which conceals a tropical hothouse of sex beneath its genteel and bucolic surface. Julie Christie and Alan Bates are perfectly cast as the upper-class girl and her rough-hewn lover and Dominic Guard is appropriately wide-eyed in the title role.

FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE
C5, 2.05am

Joseph Losey's strangest film is a kind of existential exploration of paranoia in which two men (Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell) on the run from prison in an unnamed Latin American country are endlessly chased by a black helicopter. Gripping and savage, it's like Duel with intellectual pretentions.

CHRISTMAS DAY

MY FAIR LADY
BBC2, 1.30pm

One of the most opulent musicals ever made, this Lerner and Loewe score based on Shaw's Pygmalion is driven by Rex Harrison's central performance as Professor Henry Higgins, a crusty phonetics expert and confirmed bachelor who takes in an East End flower-seller and attempts to make a lady of her for a bet. Julie Andrews originated the stage role but was passed over for non-singing Audrey Hepburn (she is dubbed in the film) as she wasn't famous enough. But then came Mary Poppins and the rest is history. Cecil Beaton's costumes are sensational, the music is fab and the cast (including Jeremy Brett and Wilfrid Hyde-White) superb.

BELLEVILLE RENDEZ-VOUS
BBC2, 7pm

A gobsmackingly brilliant cartoon, Sylvain Chomet's masterpiece is a heart-warming, exciting tale of a French granny who travels to America by pedalo to rescue her grandson who has been kidnapped by gangsters during the Tour de France. Dog dreams, a captivating song by the ageing cabaret trio The Belleville Triplets - who exist on a diet of frogs - plus the bizarre and breathtaking imagery (the Atlantic crossing sequence is eye-popping) are just some of the delights of this unique cartoon. If you only watch one movie this Christmas, this is it.

AMELIE
C4, 9.15pm

Enormously popular French fantasia about a young goody-twoshoes girl who just wants to make the world a better place and, incidentally, find love. An epic confection spun out of gossamer celluloid by Jean Pierre Jeunet, this is the kind of feelgood movie that transcends criticism due to the sheer exuberance of its film-making. Some French critics took it to task for its picture-postcard representation of Paris, but nobody paid them much attention. It made a star of Audrey Tatou, who played the titular heroine like Audrey Hepburn on Dexedrine.

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
BBC1, 11.20pm

First-rate remake of a rather overpraised Seventies movie which is a vast improvement on the original. Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo take over from Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in this sophisticated adult entertainment about a millionaire art thief and the woman assigned to nail him.

BOXING DAY

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
BBC2, 1.55pm

Last of the great studio epics set in ancient Rome before the the mighty Gladiator, Anthony Mann's movie is set around the same time as Ridley Scott's bloodstained version. Alec Guinness plays Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor who is worried about the suitability of Commodus to take over the reins of the Empire. Stephen Boyd is Livius (the Russell Crowe-type character) whom Aurelius cites as his heir until Commodus makes his lethal move. A very high-calibre epic with heaps of great action sequences from chariot races to gladiatorial contests, it is slightly let down by a wordy script.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
BBC1, 1.35am

Of all the Mel Brooks parodies this spoof of the classic Universal movie is my personal favourite. With an extraordinary eye for detail, Brooks shot it on what remained of the original 1931 Frankenstein set in shimmering black-and-white, which elevates the film to the level of classic pastiche. Plus, the performances of Gene Wilder (as Frankenstein's grandson) and Peter Boyle (as the Monster) are brilliantly observed parodies of Thirties acting style. Most importantly, it is howlingly funny; the first time I saw the Puttin' on the Ritz sequence I nearly had a hernia.