Holiday Movies - Winter Solstice

I'm looking for some.

Not what passes generally as a Christmas movie release these days -- they are all horrible, most horrible.

But films on the order of Hercule Poirot's Christmas or Desk Set or action historicals like Beowulf & Grendel (2005) -- not that Zemeikis thing!  Why o why hasn't the BBC poured millions per episode to create a full series of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?  That would be the perfect Yule season watching!  For a while the extended Lord of The Rings was the perfect darkest week of the year watching, but I've watched them now so often that the bad Jackson choices are far outweighing the good parts -- and there are so many very bad -- not to mention just stupid -- choices Jackson made.  There just aren't enough dark, cold, historic - fantasy adventure movies made that are filled with landscape, fascinating heroes and brilliantly beautiful horses and weapons.  Sir Gawain isn't any of these, of course, but more in the tradition of Desk Set, I guess.  :)  I love nordic, germanic, saxon, gaelic, celtic, roman adventure hero films -- they are so in the season of the darkest week solstice.  I think Europe does more of these than we do.

Finding a good one isn't easy.  Braveheart does NOT qualify; you simply cannot have a royal princess galloping all over the country by herself in the 13th century.  I can't sink into that. Neither does The 13th Warrior, which has some marvelous things, including one of the best horses, but way too much sillyness.   Ring of the Nieblungs is a good one.  But over here, released as The Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, over an hour of the German production has been cut.  I've watched The Vikings too lately, and besides, it's really sunny, not dark, with boy gets girl, and in the sunshine no less.  There aren't enough leaps into the wolf pits to make this one work for the long nights. Ah, we need a BBC series of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon berserker warrior Uhtred, who perceives of himself as Danish, committed to Thor, despite his place as one of King Alfred's Christian soldiers.

I have the Thanksgiving week films: Walk on the Wild Side and Buccaneer's Girl -- both with some connection to New Orleans.  I think I've run to the end of New Orleans films, alas, having watched last week Sean Penn's All The King's Men, which I thought was excellent, though evidently I'm the only one.  I wonder why.  For a long time the right movie for Thanksgiving was My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburne.  But as these days AH makes me want to throw cold water into her face so she stops pretending to impersonate a sleepwalker as her idea of ingenue, or tape her mouth closed to stop the silly supposed idea of ingenue breathy babble, the wardrobe no longer is the focus.  Dang, I hate it when that happens.