I’ve written about this film before for GQ so I won’t belabor the point too much. What I will say is all the brilliant history and context the film lays under its subject matter wasn’t what I was focused on as a high school student. It was Will’s raw charisma, Jamie leaving it all on screen, the pure emotional high you get as Ali runs through the streets of Kinshasa. It’s a big, bold, transcendent and yes, fun sports movie—the pinnacle of Christmas prestige.

2. Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

An over-hated film that probably doesn’t objectively deserve this spot, so I need to point out a few notable contextual issues at play here. Tarantino has been an intermittent Christmas release guy. Jackie Brown was his first, Django was his second, Hateful Eight his third. So it’s a mixed bag—but this one was Tarantino coming off Inglorious Basterds, it’s a spaghetti Western with Jamie Foxx taking a role originally written for Will Smith, it’s DiCaprio as a big bad in his first movie with Tarantino, and there was an incredible amount of anticipation around it. And here’s the thing: It’s not a profound film, but it’s a big, bloody, messy, crazy swing, running back the historical-revenge genre recipe that made Basterds so groundbreaking. Recall the many (absolutely awful) Sam Jack laugh lines, the Rick Ross needle drop, the “Did I just see what I think I saw?” when DiCaprio slices his hand open in the middle of that showstopper monologue. In the moment, it was electric.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013)

Paramount/Everett Collection

Nothing can beat the pure adrenaline rush, the sheer joy, of your first time watching a movie that you know within the first minutes is going to be in your life forever. The improv, the sloppy editing, the drugs, the sex, the hedonism, the shit-talking. What I remember about this screening: Explosive laughter. People getting up and cheering at the speeches. People rolling around on the floor. It was an out-of-body experience, getting a masterpiece on Christmas. It’s the type of religious experience you spend a lifetime in search of, then never forget.