Guys! The Hallmark channel has FINALLY taken American’s temperature and figured out what’s been missing in your pathetic little lives: year-round Christmas movies!
Like every holiday movie worth its eggnog, October Kiss has a workaholic widowed 
father, Ryan (Sam Jaeger), who is so overwhelmed by his kids and his work and his not having a wife he hires a nanny, Poppy (Ashley Williams – who you will recognize from VARIOUS Christmas movies), whose only qualification is tin foil improvisation (Sean notes she’s clearly never bought tin foil before, doesn’t know the value of it, especially post-tariff).
Anyway, Poppy’s mission is two-fold: win over Ryan’s kids, who think nannies are bummers, and make Ryan fall in love with his kids again. And she’ll do it all using autumnal events: pumpkin patches, harvest festivals, Halloween decorations, leaf piles, even baking cookies, which is a bit of a stretch, but how else to work in the adorable detail that she “doesn’t believe in measuring” AND have him wipe the flour that has inexplicably, though quite adorably, ended up in her hair.
Anyway, in holiday movies, workplace sexual harassment policies must always be pushed aside in favour of the employee and employer falling dutifully and predictably in love. And that’s not the only rule in the employee handbook they’ll break. Poor Poppy is working 20 hour days (it’s always hard to compete against the perfect memory of a dead wife’s ghost) – I’d almost feel sorry for her, except she sticks around even when Ryan is home, in order to be the third wheel on his date. Tis the season!
Will a boy overcome his arachnophobia through the magic of ingeniously on-the-nose Halloween costumes? Could the inventor of the Food With Friends app ever be happy with a nanny who equates kids with Japanese CEOs? And doesn’t an app that matches single diners with other single diners to save them the embarrassment of eating alone sound a lot like Awkward Dinners With Strangers? If you’re needing a little more pumpkin spice in your life, and just a little less dignity, why not October Kiss – streaming now on Netflix.
docile woman who is pushed to do violence when she finds her man in bed with another woman. This unlikely pair bonds over their mutual sentence, and agree to do each other a solid: she’ll attend his niece’s wedding with him – he owes money to his brother (Danny DeVito) and his sister-in-law (Patti LuPone) never quits breaking his balls – and he’ll attend a birthday dinner for her disapproving father (Harvey Keitel).
Maudie (Sally Hawkins) and Everett (Ethan Hawke) are a couple of odd socks – the world has discarded them and they do not belong together but for lack of anything better have somehow become a pair. Their relationship doesn’t exactly blossom into romance but their mutual tolerance and sometime thoughtfulness or generosity does translate into a partnership of sorts, and marriage. And while Maudie may neglect her household chores, she blossoms in Everett’s house as a painter. Her arthritis makes it increasingly hard to even hold a brush but her joyful spirit paints their modest, one-room home in bright, colourful designs. Soon the community around her will embrace her for it. Maud Lewis (1903-1970) is one of Canada’s best known folk artists.
out over the weekend. Brad is surprised his son is so high-achieving, proud of course – but maybe also a little jealous. And he’s reminded of his own youth, when life was still before him and anything was possible. His best mates in college have all gone on to stunning success – Craig (Michael Sheen) is a best-selling politico, Billy (Jemaine Clement) is enjoying early retirement in paradise after selling his company, Jason (Luke Wilson) is a hedge fund guy with his own private jet, and Nick (Mike White) is a Hollywood director with a palatial home. Brad gets unforgivably mopey about the fact that his sweet wife (Jenna Fisher) didn’t encourage him to sell out, and his job helping people connect with charitable giving is peanuts compared to just being a rich guy with money to give.
Director Cho Jong-Duck sets his adventure story amid the backdrop of the rapidly changing South Korea of 1983. It’s developing economically but Jaeyoung’s father still works in the fishing industry of a small village. There are lots of such conflicts crossing Jaeyoung’s path. Western influences are crowding in but the traditional Confucian Korean culture still has a stronghold on its people. All of these things put strains on a family already in transition.
psychological projections, so even though the movie is without dialogue, we still feel what Clyde is feeling. When in the car with his mother, we don’t hear them argue, but when a speech bubble features a bear biting off the head of a rabbit, we get the gist. Clyde’s mother is schizophrenic, and what she sees as a fun-filled family road trip from San Diego up to New York, the rest of the world views more as kidnapping. It’s a trip that will change Clyde and his family forever.
Cambodian population died from malnutrition, forced labour, and mass murder in the time period between 1975-1979. Almost all Cambodian artists, actors, and film makers were killed during this regime, so getting the story out has been a difficulty. Cambodia’s film community had all but expired and is only now starting to recover. With Netflix fronting $24 million for this film, First They Killed My Father is the biggest movie shot entirely in Cambodia, and director Jolie was careful to use as many Cambodian cast and crew as she could (she herself is a Cambodian citizen since 2005). Some of them are genocide survivors themselves (such as producer Rithy Panh), so therapists were on standby on the set to avoid re-traumatizing the people who’d already lived through events depicted in the film. Jolie’s son Maddox worked on the film as well.
adsorb all that is happening around her, like she herself must have been at that young age. The film also engages our inner protectors: watching this little girl plant land mines and fire guns is just too much to process.
Smith is so named because it was the most American name his father could bestow. But as much as he and his teenage sister embrace their new lifestyle, their parents are more tepid. They’re chasing the American Dream but wish to protect their Indian culture as well. Furthermore, even as hard as they may try, they’re never getting things quite right. This is a real moment in time from an immigrant’s perspective, written by someone who knows the process, Anjul Nigam, Indian-born, who also plays Smith’s father.
was never asked. Her family didn’t know either. And when they found out, decades later, they were mortified. Without the education to understand what those cells really meant, they wondered if part of their mother was indeed still alive, being kept alive cruelly in labs, being shot into space, or injected with disease. And why had so many profited from the sale of HeLa cells while Henrietta’s family languished in poverty?
