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Top-ten lists of holiday films abound right about now, but what about picking the top three Christmas movies ever made? Certainly there's plenty to choose from. Christmas movies are almost a genre unto themselves: between live-action and animated features, there are literally hundreds of titles out there. Inevitably, some are pretty bad, others amusingly cheesy.

Cheap knockoffs are usually pretty easy to spot in real life. Buying a purse for my wife once in Chinatown, I asked, “is this a REAL Coach bag?” The vendor produced a hot glue gun and a Coach emblem and said, “It will be when you buy it.”  This kind of thing shouldn’t surprise us — in movies, it happens all the time. For those who don’t already know, Hollywood’s unspoken mantra is: “If it works, buy it or steal it!” This means that studios pilfer from successful foreign films all the time, and have for years. After all, as more than one sage has noted, there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them... Sometimes it’s just plotlines that get recycled. Example: observe how certain scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) resemble a little movie called “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” (1977).

The key, of course, is the music; from the splashy upbeat production number to the show-stopping heartfelt ballad. To anyone ready to help a loved one cure the sad affliction of “musical denial,” we offer this list of smart, buoyant and very sophisticated musicals.

I’ll never forget the segment on “60 Minutes” a couple of years ago, when Morley Safer interviewed our most famous living historian, David McCullough.

James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," will finally get his due in director Tate Taylor’s "Get On Up," out this week some 12 years after Brian Grazer (who co-produced it with Mick Jagger) first tried to get the project off the ground.   Early reviews champion star Chadwick Boseman’s kinetic performance as "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business." Congrats, Chadwick: those are very big (and very active) shoes to fill. This is just the latest addition to a treasure trove of music biopics that have made some serious box office noise over the decades. Below are ten that deserve a debut or encore performance on your home screen. Pick one, and give your eyes and ears a treat.  

Summer is vacation season. This year, let’s presume you’ve set your sights on going abroad. First you take a deep breath and buy the plane tickets. Ouch — they’re pretty steep, an unpleasant fact explained by two little words: “peak season.”

I am a professional plot hole detective. It can be a tedious job, but I guess I was born for it. Movies, after all, are all about suspension of disbelief. The stories they tell in sight, sound, and motion are like delicate threads that can be cut anytime something happens that’s not credible or even explainable. Then the spell is broken, and you’re no longer transported by the narrative. Instead, you’re looking at a movie with a stupid plot and wondering what the offending studio was thinking when they released it.    Sometimes, plot holes even happen in top-notch movies, but they are usually minor and easily overlooked or forgiven. They never break the spell, and most can be explained with a close re-watching of the film. So don’t let a supposed gap in logic taint your enjoyment of an otherwise classic movie. Below, I take some of the most well-known plot holes and lovingly fill them in for you.

In 1989: the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Mikhail Gorbachev was named Soviet leader, and George H.W. Bush assumed the Presidency. Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown and Debbie Gibson were burning up the music charts, and folks at home were tuning to “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons” and “Baywatch” when they weren’t reading “The Joy Luck Club,” “A Time to Kill” or “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” At the movie theater, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “it was a very good year.”  Here are ten 1989 movies that I think have aged particularly well. See if you agree.   

What happens after an actor or actress wins an Academy Award?   The assumption is that the performer’s career skyrockets. Offers come pouring in. The thespian’s price tag certainly rises. What had been the usual “on-and-off” career of the struggling working actor suddenly gets a lot more hectic; members of the paparazzi who may not have known him or her from Adam (or Eve) are suddenly camped out on their doorstep.  This is what often occurs when one of these statuettes ends up in your hands. But not always.