What's New To Streaming In December 2024
Judy Garland and Jimmy Stewart in two Christmas classics to watch this month
For this December’s new to streaming recommendations, we bring you two Christmas classics from the 1940s, one a musical starring Judy Garland and the other a Jimmy Stewart romantic comedy that inspired You’ve Got Mail. Put these straight on your Christmas watchlist and see what else is new to streaming this month below!
Drew recommends…
Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis has been in my life for as long as I can remember. Not only is it the most famous movie set in my hometown, but it was tradition in our house to watch it every Thanksgiving Eve (it’s one of my mom’s favorite movies) to get ready for the holiday season. Whenever I see a single frame of this classic 1944 MGM musical I get a massive rush of nostalgia, so strong I can almost smell the Thanksgiving food my mom would be preparing in the kitchen for the next day as Judy Garland sings “The Trolley Song” on the TV.
The story spans across roughly a year in the life of the Smith family, starting in the summer of 1903 and leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, but many of the best parts of the movie take place around the holiday season. Garland plays Esther, a young woman in love with the boy next door and distraught at the thought of leaving St. Louis for her father’s job in New York City. In the movie’s most famous scene, she croons “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (originally written for this movie!) to her youngest sister “Tootie” to console each other before they leave their hometown. As good as the ensemble cast is in Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland’s gorgeous voice and radiant presence have helped it remain in the classic movie rotation for so many. She married the movie’s director, the legendary Vincente Minnelli, a year after its release and she gave birth to Liza Minnelli a year after that.
Growing up, I wasn’t at all aware of the significance of Meet Me in St. Louis in film history; it was just something we watched every year, lovingly poking fun at upper-class life in the early 1900s and marveling at the eye-popping Technicolor and Garland’s ever-lasting star power. There’s never a bad time to watch Meet Me in St. Louis, but trust me when I say Christmas time is when it hits hardest.
Streaming on Max
Billy recommends…
The Shop Around the Corner
It took years for me to get over the fact that this was the movie that You’ve Got Mail remade as a modern classic. Now that I have gotten over that I just found out that this movie is inexplicably set in Budapest!? Totally missed that on my only viewing. Makes me nostalgic for an era where we didn’t have to have actors do bad accents all of the time. The Shop Around the Corner is the Christmas movie that It’s a Wonderful Life distracts you from. This movie stars Jimmy Stewart as Alfred, a salesman at a leathergoods gift shop. He reveals to his good friend Kralik at the shop he is corresponding with an anonymous young lady. The excitement of love and the holidays are intersecting.
Klara (Margaret Sullavan) is a patron looking for a job at the store and after resistance from the owner Hugo he enthusiastically hires her when she is able to sell a cigarette box as a candy box. Alfred and Klara immediately begin to butt heads similarly to how you do on the Kindergarten playground. Cooler heads never prevail, but the chemistry from the banter is completely obvious. I mean, that mouth-full-of-marbles Jimmy Stewart will do that to anyone. If you’ve seen You’ve Got Mail, then you get most of the rest, but it doesn’t matter with this movie.
Late nights decorating for Christmas, anonymous letter exchanging, a grumpy old boss, and romantic chemistry that this era of movies does better than most modern films, lead us down a breezy 99-minute runtime. This movie is infectiously sweet and a movie I recommend to anyone looking to change up their Christmas watching routine.
Streaming on Max
New To Streaming In December 2024
Netflix
Midway
Project X
Run All Night
The Dead Don’t Die
Top Five
Transformers
We’re the Millers
Shiva Baby (December 7)
It Ends With Us (December 9)
Zero Dark Thirty (December 16)
Amazon Prime Video
After Hours
Almost Famous
Amistad
Cop Land
Fatal Attraction
Green Room
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Murder on The Orient Express (2017)
Out of Time
Rain Man
Revolutionary Road
Road to Perdition
Sicario
The Untouchables
Thelma & Louise
Total Recall
The Bikeriders (December 10)
Beau Is Afraid (December 13)
The Creator (December 19)
Hulu
Cast Away
Cheaper by the Dozen
Moulin Rouge
Mr. Holland’s Opus
The Muppets
Speed
Bad Moms
Gladiator
The Quick and the Dead
The Twilight Saga
Step Up (December 9)
HBO and Max
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Megamind
The Goonies
The Maltese Falcon
Juror #2 (December 20)
DYLA Podcast
This week was all about catching up on a variety of recent releases. We did a review roundup of six new-ish movies, from small horror flicks to massive blockbusters. First, hear our thoughts on the massive box office success of Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2 (or, Gloanaed 2, as we dubbed the three movies), before we give our reviews for Gladiator II, Anora, Blitz, Nickel Boys, In a Violent Nature, and MadS.
Apple Podcasts:
Spotify: