Everybody has a favorite Christmas movie. What's flashing in your mind right now — Jimmy Stewart? A leg-shaped lamp? Will Ferrell in tights? See Scrooge, the granddaddy of them all on the big screen at the North Coast Repertory Theatre on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ($5). The 1934 adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol with Seymour Hicks set the standard for the scores of updated Ebenezers that followed (Bill Murray, McDuck, Susan Lucci — the list goes on). It's perennially satisfying to watch a stingy old curmudgeon shake off his holiday issues over the course of a single night's supernatural therapy.

• Jack is back.

For those who like their holiday a little creepier, the Arcata Theatre Lounge is running Tim Burton's stop motion musical classic The Nightmare Before Christmas on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 6 p.m. ($5). All the stop motion you loved in childhood TV specials with Burton's tentacled Goth styling. The lanky, skeletal hero in this one doesn't quite get Christmas either, and he and his freaky henchmen scare the plum pudding out of the kiddies when he takes over for St. Nick. It's the ideal Halloween/Christmas cocktail to cut the sweetness of the season with a little bite.