25 best alternative Christmas movies

Brazil (1985)

Terry Gilliam's Orwellian satire opens on an idyllic Yuletide scene – a mother telling her child about Santa's impending visit down the chimney.  "But Father Christmas can't come if we don't have a chimney," says the youngster. Whereupon paramilitary police descend through the ceiling, grab the kid's father (and put him in a sack, of course) before hauling him off for questioning. Later scenes savage the consumerist nature of Christmas, before Gilliam wheels out a Santa who advises the luckless Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) to give in to his torture at the hands of Brazil's faceless bureaucrats.