Lindsay Anderson and Terence Davies employ contrasting aesthetic sensibilities to portray British Christmas stories full of turmoil and longing. A vividly raw benchmark of kitchen-sink realism, THIS SPORTING LIFE features a bruising performance from Richard Harris as a volatile rugby player whose rage can’t be tempered even by the holidays. Anderson’s hard-hitting naturalism stands in sharp relief to the sensitive, richly textured impressionism of Terence Davies’s sublime period rhapsody THE LONG DAY CLOSES, which features an at once nostalgic and piercing evocation of a Christmas celebration as seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up gay in 1950s Liverpool.