It's movie review time!

The Christmas holidays are always a good time to do some movie watching. This year provided no shortage of options. I believe I've lost count of the number of movies I watched in the month of December. The highlight of the movie watching month? I found a new holiday classic to add to the list of must see Christmas movies.

Of course the list of holiday classics alone takes up a lot of time during the Christmas season. You always have to make time to watch the Dali Lama of Christmas movies- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- at least 3 times. Then there's good ol' Ralphie Parker and his quest for the Red Rider B-B gun in The Christmas Story. Once you've knocked those two off there is still a number of good choices to take in. I tend to move on to Jimmy Stewart and "Zu Zu's pedals" in It's A Wonderful Life. I'm also a big fan of Tim Allen's Santa Clause movies (I prefer part 2 to the original believe it or not).

This year though I added a new holiday classic to my list that may very well give Clark W. Griswold and his family a run for their money as far as air time is concerned. If you haven't seen Will Ferrell in Elf yet, it's never too late to run out and pick this movie up. Will Ferrell's facial expressions alone are worth the $25 it costs to buy the DVD. The guy is just plain hilarious. The movie is filled with holiday goofiness. It had me laughing from start to finish. The scene where Buddy the Elf (played by Ferrell) confronts the department store Santa (for not being the "real" St. Nick) is hilarious.

My holiday movie watching wasn't just devoted to movies with a Christmas theme. I took in a number of new releases as well.

Spiderman 2
The Manchurian Candidate
Anchorman
The Bourne Supremacy
Dodgeball
Meet The Fockers (saw it in Theatres)

If you haven't guessed by the titles of the movies, I'm basically an action and comedy kind of guy.

Being a big Ben Stiller fan I found that I loved Meet the Fockers but really did not like Dodgeball at all. Dodgeball seemed like a movie that was perhaps written overnight, or maybe even over an afternoon. A lot of the jokes went way over the line and after watching it I felt like I had just watched something that I really didn't need to see. The concept behind the movie had lots of potential, but they just seemed to be satisfied with getting the cheap laughs from dirty humor.

Meet The Fockers on the other hand continued the hilarity that started in Meet The Parents. I think Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand were perfect fits as Gaylord Fockers parents. I don't think you'll find a more perfect pair of movie parents. They were hilarious.

Of course everyone's favorite male nurse finds himself getting into the same predicaments that caused him so much trouble in the first movie. With his ultra-suspicious father-in-law watching his every move, Greg finds himself working hard to keep his ultra-liberal parents from embarrassing him. There are many great spots in this movie.

As for the other movies I watched over the holidays I'd give thumbs up to all of them all though I was a little disappointed in the way that The Manchurian Candidate ended.

Overall, I'd say it was a very enjoyable movie watching month in my household.