A nostalgified panacea of pine, tinsel, and tintinnabulation? Or a black hole of loneliness, bitterness and melancholy? Films about Christmas, wholly or partially, have straddled both polarities over the years, producing a surprising number of classics. In compiling this list, I hummed and hahed over Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (2003), starring Billy Bob Thornton as a hard-drinking (if redeemable) misanthrope who poses in the red suit and white beard to get at a department store’s Christmas takings.

Welcome to the stinking, sprawling Bayou Mansions – the thorn in a prosperous city’s side, the “short-and-curly hair in the mouthful of sponge cake”. So cramped there isn’t even room to swing a rat (and there are plenty), so corrosive that everything here starts life as a bad smell. Forget the enchanted worlds of fable and fairy tale, this is a dystopian childhood fantasy masterminded by the select team of Kurt Weill, Kafka and the Wicked Witch from Snow White. As delicious as it is delicately malevolent, The Animals and Children Took to the Streets is a strychnine-laced gumdrop of a show, and slips down all too sweetly.

Lovers of the beautiful game may already be familiar with the name Philippe Parreno, or at least with his best-known work. In 2006 he collaborated with artist Douglas Gordon (24-hour Psycho) on Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait, a film that trained 17 cameras on the footballing genius for the duration of a game. Following Zidane’s every move, the 90-minute feature proved an especially intimate portrait: the cameras stayed close, never straying, never hinting at the 80,000 strong crowd nor bringing the other players into view. Zidane, who was also miked up, appeared oblivious to the intense scrutiny of the multiple lenses; it was a portrayal of a man utterly, unselfconsciously focused on what he was doing.

On-screen kissing rarely works; even the sexiest, most practised Hollywood couples usually can’t manage it. But when the eponymous Chico and Rita turn to each other against smoochy strains of “Besame Mucho” and their lips touch for the first time, it looks - and feels - like the real thing. Even though the couple were conceived with pencil on paper and born into a digital world, their kiss actually feels erotic.

There were times during this show when there was so much happening, I didn’t know where to look: at Damon Albarn, driven by musical demons, roaming the stage, singing his heart out, or just grinning, his gold tooth glinting? At the two former members of The Clash who are currently part of the Gorillaz line-up, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, the latter in particular the absolute epitome of cool in his sailor’s cap and his leather jacket with the collar turned up and his low-slung bass? At the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the Chicago band whose swaying horns were such a vital part of the evening? At the silhouetted string section, also in sailors’ caps, lined up across the back of the stage? At Bobby Womack, soul legend and man of infinite dignity, singing “Stylo” (from this year’s Plastic Beach album)?

There were times during this show when there was so much happening, I didn’t know where to look: at Damon Albarn, driven by musical demons, roaming the stage, singing his heart out, or just grinning, his gold tooth glinting? At the two former members of The Clash who are currently part of the Gorillaz line-up, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, the latter in particular the absolute epitome of cool in his sailor’s cap and his leather jacket with the collar turned up and his low-slung bass? At the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the Chicago band whose swaying horns were such a vital part of the evening? At the silhouetted string section, also in sailors’ caps, lined up across the back of the stage? At Bobby Womack, soul legend and man of infinite dignity, singing “Stylo” (from this year’s Plastic Beach album)?

A Town Called Panic is a charming, giddily funny dose of anarchy from a pair of benign Belgian punks, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar. The first stop-motion animation to be selected at Cannes, it stars Horse, Cowboy and Indian, dysfunctional plastic toy housemates in a papier-mâché world. UK viewers will recognise the style from the Cravendale milk TV ads. Those mad cows only hint at the bizarre pleasures here.

This is the second part of a series that has passed a little too quietly for comfort. The V&A’s grand Diaghilev show has received all the noise in the press – “fabulous”, “sumptuous”, “exotic” – in fact, all the words that were used at the time to describe Diaghilev’s company. The only word that isn’t being used is “dancer” – we get relatively little chance to think about movement in South Kensington. However, Jane Pritchard, curator of that show, has now redressed the balance on the South Bank with a remarkable collection of films.

The 15 years since Disney released the original Toy Story have seen a seismic boom in the computer animation field that has prompted every major movie studio to get in on the act. Relatively cheap to make, accessible to both adults and children and easily converted to 3D, these digital cash cows have become as much a part of a Hollywood balance sheet as the action-packed thriller, low-brow comedy or all-star contemporary reboot.