Take a break from hustle with festive movie favorites

The joy and the madness — the festive spirits and timeless tunes, the mandatory stress over cooking and serving and shopping and wrapping and hiding and peeking — will all be over soon.

Maybe you’re ready for a mental vacation from all that. Or maybe you need a refresher on the reason for the season. Either way, try ducking into Clark County’s independent movie theaters, which are about as overstuffed with goodies (both holiday and non-) as Santa Claus’ magical bag of presents.

Weird, wonderful

There’s no place better to start than with a Christmas story that could be the biggest, weirdest “Twilight Zone” episode of them all. Life may turn out wonderful in the 1946 classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but that’s only after a surprisingly tough tale of frustrated ambition and corrupt capitalism.

Jimmy Stewart stars as the almost-tragic George Bailey, saved from himself both by an intervening angel and by the very town he yearns to flee. “It’s a Wonderful Life” wasn’t a smash upon release, and the FBI even warned that its pointed class consciousness (virtuous poor v. evil banker) seemed like Communist propaganda. But in 1974, the film’s copyright lapsed and it started showing annually on TV, which is how it became such a sentimental favorite.

“The film has a life of its own now, and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it,” Director Frank Capra once told The Wall Street Journal. “I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be president.”

Also starting at the Kiggins Theatre tonight is a holiday classic that’s easier on the nerves and the ears: the musical comedy “White Christmas,” featuring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and, of course, that unforgettably gorgeous song.

West of Who?

If you love Christmas but have fewer decades under your belt than the above, the Kiggins still has you covered. The annual, science-fictional “Doctor Who Christmas Special” screens for free at 9 p.m. Christmas Day.

This latest “Who” will be truly historic as it marks Peter Capaldi’s farewell from the space-and-time traveling title role, and his replacement by Jodie Whittaker as the 13th doctor. She’ll be the first leading woman in the epic series’ 54-year history. It’s about time. (Pun intended.)

In a completely different (non-yule) vein, the film generally considered the greatest movie musical of them all starts a four-day run at Kiggins on Christmas Day: “West Side Story,” with soaring music by Leonard Bernstein, crackling urban choreography by Jerome Robbins and a tragic tale inspired by Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Released in 1961, “West Side Story” won 10 Academy Awards. If you’ve never seen it on the big screen, you’re in for a heart-tugging treat.

Harry holidays

If all those options are just too earnest for you, head over to Camas’ Liberty Theater for the screwball satire “A Christmas Story,” featuring beleaguered nine-year-old Ralphie, his highly excitable Old Man and his lust for the ultimate present, a Red Ryder air rifle. “A Christmas Story” starts a three-day run at the Liberty on Dec. 22.

The Liberty screened the first Harry Potter movie during Camas’ “Hometown Holidays” celebration earlier this month; all the rest will screen in chronological order, one per day at 4:30 p.m., starting Dec. 26 with “… and the Chamber of Secrets” and concluding Jan. 1 with “… and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.”

That means you can watch the Hogwarts crew grow from babyfaced tykes to annoyingly moody adolescents in the course of a single week. (But given what they’re up against — not just killer hormones but also the murderous rampage of a magical Hitler wannabe — can you really blame them?)

Meanwhile, serious fans of holiday magic won’t want to miss “The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker” at the Liberty, a live-on-stage dance performance from England, screening at 12:55 p.m. Christmas Eve. Also in Camas, the public library will show free winter-break movies for kids — classics such as Disney’s “Cinderella” and new arrivals such as “Captain Underpants” — today and next week.