UnChristmassy movies

2016 kicked off its death roster of clebrities early this year, with Alan Rickman.  Myself and a friend had watched only a month earlier the original Die Hard at the cinema, claimed as it was (somewhat ironically) as a Christmas movie.  Now, in the wake of Rickman's passing, Die Hard is acclaimed uncritically as a Christmas movie.
I have no problems with that.  There are other films which definitely do not fit the Christmas spirit.  A colleague of mine at work said he got this family to watch Requiem for a Dream on Christmas Eve.  A compelling picture, apparently it was so distressing it ruined Christmas day for everyone.  Other movies that can sour the festive cheer could be ones like The Piano Teacher and Mystic River, though my colleague says he has learnt his lesson.
On Christmas Day this year, on Channel 5, The Dallas Buyers' Club was broadcast.  I knew it was about AIDS and was a critical smash, but maybe not your average Christmas flick, yet I was determined to see it.  To my surprise, I didn't find it depressing - despite downbeat events throughout, I took from it a vibrant human desire to not just survive, but live and there was much ingenuity on display against the odds.
The story arc was fairly standard - bigoted man has life-changing event/news and comes around to value though he once treated with contempt - and those representing Big Pharma a little too unctuously villainous and money-grabbing.  This, however, could not detract from a film with powerful performances and enough local detail (1980s Texas and its gay scene, government agencies and hospitals in hock to Big Pharma, the entrepreneurial creation of buyers' clubs), plus topicality with LGBT rights, to give the film a grip it doesn't loosen.  In the end, a man who was given 30 days to live by his local hospital, managed 2,557 before succumbing to the consequences of the virus probably acquired through unprotected sex.  What I took from the movie though was how life-affirming it was and the ordinary person's struggle against malign corporate forces and bought government agencies and medical professionals acting as henchmen.  In some ways, maybe it was an appropriate Christmas film.