Our reviews and thoughts on the latest releases, classics, and nostalgic favourites. Things we loved, things we hated, and worst of all, things we were ambivalent about.
Grace (Jodie Sweetin) runs a year-round Christmas store and is now the third generation of her family to run the town’s Christmas parade, now in its 50th year. It’s become so well-known that this year it’ll be featured on national (morning) television! Grace really has her hands full. She wasn’t counting on Tom (Jay Brazeau), aka The Best Santa Ever (per the New York Times?), pulling a slip and fall ahead of the big day and breaking his arm in two places. Oh the brittle bones of the elderly, fudging up Christmas. The network is threatening to pull their coverage without him (and strangely, they came before they knew he existed), so Grace is under a lot of pressure to cast a new, perfect Santa. The good news: Tom actually runs a Santa school in the off season. The bad news: this late in the game, they’re all booked up. Curse their in-demand professionalism!
You may have seen this coming, but there is one man who would be a fitting replacement, Tom’s son, Ben (Eric Winter), who is a fully trained but non-practicing Santa. Having been raised to one day take over the fat man’s suit, Ben came to resent Christmas and all things Santa, so stays away for the holidays, and has no problem flat-out refusing their request, even in the face of some pretty pathetic pleading. Determined not to fail, Grace pursues him all the way to Boston, but while she fails to secure him, they do experience some inclement weather and get snowed in in a place that just happens to rediscover his dormant Christmas spirit.
Will the roads reopen in time to save the parade? Will the mayor’s son relinquish his spot on Santa’s sleigh? Will Ben revive his Christmas spirit or will Grace lose hers? My friends, the Hallmark channel has it all, and it is truly yours to discover. Happy holidays!
Holly (Ashley Greene) works in a vintage shop with her best friend, Megan. While stocking shelves with new thrift store finds, they come across a charm bracelet in a coat pocket – surely not meant to have been donated away, it must have snagged on something and fallen off. Holly suspects that the bracelet’s owner is missing it keenly as the charms all seem to meaningful in one way or another – two mark the birth of a child, so the rest must be life milestones as well. Vowing to track down the owner and return the bracelet by Christmas, Holly hits the streets of New York City, because how hard could it be to find a braceletless woman in such a small town?
First stop, her father’s jewelry store, where he uses a loupe to unearth the first clue. There she also runs into Greg (Brendan Penny), whom she’d “met cute” the night before when he spilled her cake, but who turns out to be a crack reporter who’s looking for some “soft news” to report on – something exactly like a missing bracelet and the search to return it to its rightful owner. Reluctantly, Holly agrees to work with Greg, and soon the two of them are chasing down clues all over the city, even dressing up in 1930s gear to board a steam engine for absolutely no reason a phone call wouldn’t have done in a fraction of the time and effort. This poor time management eventually catches up to them. Greg is, after all, working toward a Christmas deadline. Meanwhile, the two are enjoying spending time together. She meets his mom, he admires the jewelry she makes in her spare time, intimacies are exchanged (though no kisses, obvi).
Will Holly find the bracelet owner before the holidays? Has the owner just been going around with a naked wrist this whole time? How does Greg not know what a trilby is? How many scammers will pretend the bracelet is theirs? And will Holly’s pregnant friend that I’ve yet to mention possibly hold in her baby until the mystery is solved? All this AND MORE on the Hallmark channel.
We meet scientist Augustine (George Clooney) on a very bad day for humanity. The inevitability that climate change has been predicting for years is finally here, and in the end, it goes so much more quickly than we ever imagined. Augustine works at an Arctic station that is being frantically evacuated on this particular day, people rushing home to be with loved ones as they wait to die, and in a matter of just days, they do. The toxic air will take a few days more to reach the Arctic, so Augustine stays behind, alone. At least he thinks he is until he discovers a little girl (Caoilinn Springall) who’s been left behind, but by the time she’s found, Augustine can no longer reach anyone else. These two may be the last humans alive on Earth.
BUT. There are 5 more humans still alive in space, astronauts that have been on a 2 year mission to assess a newly discovered planet for viability. And indeed it does appear to be the promised land, able to sustain human life. Except for everyone on Earth, it’s too late.
With his communications down, Augustine makes the difficult decision to try to reach another station. On foot. In the quickly melting, deteriorating Arctic landscape. Racing against toxic air. With a little girl in tow. Easy journey, you say? It is not. But Augustine’s got an urgent message for those aboard the starship: don’t come home. Turn back.
The five people aboard that starship are Sully (Felicity Jones), who is pregnant in space, her baby daddy and boss Adewole (David Oyelowo), plus Sanchez (Demián Bichir), Maya (Tiffany Boone), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), none of whom knew they were signing up to be the last earthlings/the ones who would need to repopulate humanity. What an awful burden to put on anyone, but it’s either that, or death. Which would you choose?
Sean didn’t love this movie because he found it cold, and I don’t think that’s just a temperature thing (although poor George had to limit takes to 1 minute, and use a hair dryer to thaw his eyelashes between takes). There’s no room in the movie for recriminations but thanks to a subtle and clever script by Mark L. Smith (based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s book, Good Morning, Midnight), we know that Augustine is disgusted by humanity, by the fate we chose for ourselves. The movie very quickly divorces itself from Earth, which is over, and I can understand feeling untethered by that. I myself found it a fascinating corner of the human psyche to explore and discover.
Who are we at the end of the world? Augustine’s life’s work revolved around solving this problem, and now he’s watching it all come to naught. Were his sacrifices worth it? It is a powerful accounting of one’s life that takes place when it can be so starkly measured, and through flashbacks we sense that he’s feeling some regret. The astronauts too are facing a similar hardship. Imagine having come so close, having landed on a planet that could save humanity only to learn that they’re just a little too late. Oh, and that everything and everyone that they knew and loved are dead. And that they can never go home again, in every sense of the expression, that their fates now lie on a strange and unpopulated planet where, best case scenario, their kids will be committing incest for generations.
I love a movie like this that has me trying on so many different shoes to see how they feel. How it feels to fail on such a devastating scope. How it feels to actually face the extinction of the Earth, which seems like such a theoretical concept until the reality is burning in your lungs. And yet to also be in a place where guilt and regret no longer matter. Where not even grief and tears matter because we can only mourn what we have lost, or what we are leaving behind, and neither of those things apply when everything is blinking out at the same time. There are no legacies, no one to carry forward your story, everything will be forgotten, so none of it mattered.
Okay, I can sort of see why you might find this bleak. Yet I am choked with awe reconsidering it all again. George Clooney directs, and he correctly identifies that the end of the world will be markedly emotionless. We humans have no concept of an extinction level event. In 2049, when this movie takes place, we’ll have had – what, 70, 80 years? – of warning, and yet we still won’t see it coming, we still won’t be prepared, and we still won’t believe it until it’s too damn late. I can’t help but admire a movie that is willing to punch you in the gut like that.
When her family’s beloved eatery, The Starlight Café, is slated for demolition, Annie (Kimberley Sustad) vows to put a stop to it before Christmas. She storms the offices of Holt Enterprises to get their eviction notice rescinded and the demolition cancelled, but gets mistaken for someone else. William Holt (Paul Campbell), you see, is the heir apparent, but like a typical rich kid has spent most of his life just coasting by on his charm and his family name, relegating the hard work to his long-suffering assistant, Lyle. Daddy Holt is understandably worried about leaving him the company, so he decides to hire a lawyer to follow Will around, solving any legal messes as he makes them. Yes, it’s the most ridiculous plan ever hatched, and that’s saying something on the Hallmark channel.
Anyway, Annie is mistaken for that lawyer. But she is a lawyer, coincidentally, so Will proposes to hire her, fulfilling his father’s obligation without actually having someone meddlesome breathing over his shoulder, and in return, he promises to shut down the demolition plans. Even more preposterously, in her fake position as his guardian lawyer, one of his legal messes somehow involves her organizing an elaborate Christmas fundraiser…and then Will gets roped in too. Does it make sense? No! But they’re doing it and they’re falling in love while doing it. Which, technically speaking should probably be its own “legal mess,” but let’s go along with the spirit of the film and pretend that logic is overrated.
But wait: what if Will can’t hold up his end of the bargain? What if The Starlight Café gets plowed out of existence and this whole thing was for nothing? That’s not super romantic, is it? Total boner killer. Well, lady boner. What a conundrum! What will happen to our star crossed lovers? Can a lawyer get disbarred for posing as a different lawyer? Are all relationships based on business deals doomed to fail? Find out next on the Hallmark channel.
Random thoughts I had while watching Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You an essay by Jay Taylor
Calling this a documentary seems generous if not downright false. It’s 90% concert footage, 5% rehearsal, and 5% nonsense. You won’t get to know the girl behind the music, you’ll just get a better than average view of her Sweetener World Tour for a fraction of the price.
First song: God Is A Woman, or, if the staging is to be believed, Ariana is the woman who is God, or at the very least Christ, seeing how she’s got the seat of honour at a table that looks very last suppery. Although if the lyrics are to be believed, Ariana is God because she’s good at sex. Turns out, Ariana isn’t very good at songwriting – and she had 4 other grown ups help her with such gems as “We can make it last, take it slow, hmm.”
Confession that’s probably already obvious: I’m not a fan. I’m not not a fan. I’m not a hater. I’m just not a fan. I recognized a couple of the songs because I’m a human of Earth, but I never thought any of them great and now I’m convinced they’re pretty bad.
Also pretty bad: Scooter Braun. You know, the evil man who tried to shit all over Taylor Swift? Him. He’s still Ariana’s manager, and she’s so unashamed of this he features in this “documentary” more than once. Sean and I both booed him at the exact same time. We may not know much about Ms. Grande but we do know that there is only one right stance to have about Scooter Braun and that’s against. I’m disappointed in Ariana; it’s a total violation of girl code, of good person code, and though I don’t expect much of her, this is still a pretty shitty thing.
This never occurred to me before, but are there no atheists in pop music? Literally every film of concert footage has a prayer circle before each performance with hand holding and out-loud prayers for a good show. Most work places are super duper not allowed to force their employees to pray for show, but pop star world tours seem to be some sort of exception because that shit does not look voluntary at all.
Sean commented about how 88% of people in the doc are billed as Ariana’s “best friend” but that’s literally the only thing about the “movie” that didn’t bother me. Like Mindy Lahiri once said, “A best friend isn’t a person, it’s a tier.” Although, I will say there are a suspicious amount of “best friends” on the payroll; how “best” is this “friend” if you have to pay them?
Speaking of which: mom Joan is a chronic hanger-on herself. Ariana Grande is 27 years old. I’m not sure at which age exactly that becomes creepy, but it was before 27, even if you’re not gyrating in PVC while singing about your sex being god-like. NOT CREEPY AT ALL.
Anyway: is there any personality underneath that high pony? Unknown. There’s nothing new or illuminating or interesting here, just definitely-seen-before pieces of her already dated world tour. It’s a 1 hour, 37 minute commercial for Ariana Grande who must be, if nothing else, pretty savvy about marketing herself – especially since the day this doc hit Netflix just happens to also be the day she announced her most recent engagement.
Phylis (Sharon Lawrence) has finally joined husband Bill (Treat Williams) in retirement, and she’s finding it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. With time on their hands, though, they decide to call their grown sons home and throw one last Christmas House, just like they used to do.
What is a Christmas House, you ask? Fair question. They literally empty the house of all useful contents and stage every nook and every cranny with Christmas decor, inside and out, and then invite the whole neighbourhood over to enjoy, along with cookies and cocoa of course, and even some live entertainment.
Youngest son Brandon (Jonathan Bennett) and husband Jake (Brad Harder) are able to come because their bakery is under renovation but it’s not great timing since they’re waiting to hear whether their adoption will go through – it’s been a long journey and they’ve been disappointed before. Oldest son Mike (Robert Buckley), an actor in LA, is also able to get away because his show Handsome Justice has just wrapped its first season. If the brothers are surprised to learn the Christmas House will return after a two decade hiatus, they’re even more surprised to learn that their parents plan to sell the house after Christmas – and take some time apart.
Much has been made of Hallmark finally including some LGBTQ storylines in its holiday lineup, but this isn’t much of a bone to throw the gay community, to be honest. As you can tell, Brandon and Jake are not going to be the focal point of the story; their love’s already a done deal. This is really about single (and handsome) Mike, who grew up with his eye on the girl next door, Andi (Ana Ayora), who is also convenient back next door for the holidays. Will their spark rekindle? Of course it will. But some painful memories from the past will threaten to put those flames out. Plus, mom and dad’s divorce and Brandon and Jake’s baby worries are kind of romantic bummers. But the Christmas House! That’s what’s important now, even if it’s also the only thing actually catching fire.
Oh Hallmark, how do I love thee? You’re pumping out these holiday cheese balls with such enthusiastic precision. And yet, with an impressive slate of about 40 new Christmas movies a year, this is still the first first movie produced by Hallmark to feature a same-sex married couple and a male gay couple. It’s been a long time coming and yet still manages to disappoint – give the gays their romance!
Charles Whitley, gentleman of the early 20th century, lord of his manor, returns from his travels, greets his housekeeper warmly, replaces his leather-bound journal in its hiding spot, and takes a gander at a new piece he’s recently acquired at auction. It’s a time piece, a clock, and would be beautiful on his mantle if he could get it working again. It claims to find your true love when wound on a Christmas moon and will make a fine gift for his fiancée Eliza, of whom he is fond but likely doesn’t love, which is a moot point since he is of marrying age and she is the lady he’s been courting. However, when Charles (Ryan Paevey) wakes up the next morning, the clock and his tepid love life are no longer concerns because…he’s traveled through time, from 1903 to 2020, and though he doesn’t immediately grasp the time travel, he does recognize that an awful lot of strangers are in his home.
That’s because in 2020, his home has been restored and preserved as a historical landmark. The modern tour guides inside are dressed as and claim to be people he knows – his faithful housekeeper Rosie, his butler Fredricks, his fiancee Eliza. Which, if that happened to you, would be pretty mind-imploding. Charles handles it surprisingly well, though it takes some time to convince the museum’s curator Megan (Erin Cahill) of the truth (frankly, it’s incredible that he’s able to). He does look an awfully lot like the portrait of Charles Whitley hanging in the mansion’s front hall though…
As Charles and Megan search for a way to get him back home, they hide him in plain sight – posing as the actor portraying himself. But you know how it is in a Hallmark movie, boys and girls who spend time together fall in love, and rather quickly! What if Charles doesn’t want to go back? Is it rude to say Megan is an upgrade on Eliza? But will it anger the space-time continuum if he stays? And what about the people he’s left behind in the past – what will they think of his disappearance? There’s only one way to find out, folks, and you’ll find it on the Hallmark Channel.
Sam’s life is falling exactly into place. She’s finally landed her dream job where she’ll be given the freedom to invest with innovative start-ups. Except her very first day goes so badly she not only quits her job on the spot, she’s also rethinking her relationship with Will, the guy who was on the bring of proposing her. So Sam returns home to small town, New York, where her widowed mother Tammy will be thrilled to have her, and spend their first Christmas together in 8 years.
One of the big reasons Sam (Vanessa Lengies) avoids her hometown is ex-boyfriend Noah (Corey Sevier, who directs himself, Hallmark power move!). Things didn’t exactly end happily (when do they ever?) but in this small town, it’s impossible not to run into the guy who owns the coffee shop/bakery/hot spot/hub, and that’s without factoring in all the town’s busy bodies who are pushing them together. Only a good old fashioned giving spirit can reunite these two, strained as it is. but they’re determined to show the town how “grown up” and “over it” they are by joining forces for humanitarian aid.
Of course that strain is due to the secret feelings they’re still harbouring for each other, and their intimate food bank work will only fan the flames. Plus, all this communal spirit is making Sam see a different side of the town she was so eager to flee all those years ago. And the more she does, the more she remembers the reason she left in the first place: to make the world a better place. Except the big city bustle really got in the way and the next thing she knew it was all about making money. Maybe small town life isn’t so bad after all? And maybe a hunky bakery owner is worth a second chance? And maybe the town’s busybodies will finally give it a rest if they just get it over with and kiss already??? You know what I’m going to say: if you’re the least bit interested, Hallmark is the place to be.
Nyles (Andy Samberg) is in Palm Springs (I assume – the title might have you believe this is of even the slightest importance, but it’s really not, could be anywhere) for a wedding. His girlfriend is a bridesmaid and he’s her plus one, which doesn’t quite account for just how uninvested he is in the proceedings. Even if you’re not close to the couple, you generally want to be respectful of their big day. Nyles shows up in a bad Hawaiian shirt, pops beers all ceremony long, and then hijacks the maid of honour’s speech to the bride. You can’t quite pinpoint how or why Nyles seems just a little bit off, but he is, considerably, and yet when he directs his charm toward the bride’s sister and maid of honour, Sarah (Cristin Milioti), even she seems unable to resist, and she doesn’t appear to be having a great day herself.
What gives? Turns out, it’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about. You know, like Groundhog Day? And a dozen other copycats, none of worth mentioning? Yeah, like that. Nyles has been reliving the same day over and over for goodness knows how long (you know who does know? The screenwriter. Excellent source. His answer: about 40 years. Forty fucking years!). Anyway, after a particularly nice day spent with Sarah, she follows him into the time loop cave of doom despite him cautioning her not to. The rest isn’t so much history as an infinite present. Nyles has 40 years of this under his belt, so he’s given himself over completely to nihilism (hence the Hawaiian shirt), but Sarah is new enough to the game to be fed by her anger, resentment, and frustration. She wants out, and she’s so determined to solve or win the time loop, she’ll try anything, including but not limited to: exploding an innocent goat, getting hit by a truck, making the ultimate sacrifice, and learning quantum physics.
Time loop movies are a dime a dozen and I haven’t liked a single one since Bill Murray, but now, suddenly, there are two. Like Groundhog Day, Palm Springs is a rom-com of sorts, or perhaps an anti-rom-com – there is no worse romance killer, not even death, than too much time together. But one man’s existential crisis is another man’s pure entertainment. Samberg and Milioti not only have a viable chemistry, she brings a darkness that balances Samberg’s goofball energy perfectly so that, despite the extreme challenge to mental health in this film, we don’t fly off the deep end of either side of the continuum, but we do enjoy a sliding scale of extremes and a lot of laughs because of it. Writer Andy Siara keeps us intrigued with a script that is unpredictable and unexpected, but most of all coated in well-earned giggles that are executed perfectly by the cast, including JK Simmons as Roy, someone else caught in the infinite loop thanks to Nyles, and not super gracious about it either. Siara and director Max Barbakow work well together to subvert our expectations and challenge what we think we know about rom-coms.
Palm Springs was bought by Hulu at Sundance for a record-setting sum: 17.5 million dollars and 69 cents. The 69 cents set the record; Birth of a Nation held it before this, and that turned out to be a bit of a debacle, didn’t it? But Palm Springs was a great investment for Hulu, becoming the most-streamed in its first weekend Hulu had ever seen. Since Canada doesn’t have Hulu, it is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, and that’s a good thing, because Palm Springs is one of the brightest spots in an otherwise dull year.
Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz) and the rest of her siblings are surprised to arrive home for the holidays and find that dad Walter (Robert Wisden) has turned their family home into a bed and breakfast. It’s newly opened and floundering a bit, so when they hear a renowned travel writer is in town, they know a review from her could make or break dad’s business. When she checks in under pseudonym Beth (Laura Soltis), Lucy’s siblings pitch in to either pose as staff or as guests to make the bed and breakfast seem more successful than it is. The only legitimate guest is a guy named Jake (Victor Webster). Sparks fly between Lucy and Jake (well, this being Hallmark, sparks is probably pushing it – picture something a little more akin to a 10 second burst in the microwave, warm but definitely not hot – but the trouble is, her whole family has had to keep up the ruse of being unrelated staff and guests, so their relationship, fledgling as it may be, has started out with a lie, and a pretty big one.
This movie is a little zanier than most Hallmark romances, mostly because the family members are all in character, and apparently some of them have a flair for the dramatic. Except grandpa Walter (Jay Brazeau) who has a flair for the dementia, and there’s no telling what’ll pop out of his mouth at any given moment.
Can a relationship survive a lie about one’s identity? Can a bed and breakfast review survive a brush with grandpa Walt? Do bed and breakfast guests really want to spend as much time together as owners think they do? And how would you feel if your parents secretly turned your childhood bedroom into a rental unit?
Hallmark has one formula for finding love and happiness at Christmas, but there are many variations on the theme of how to get there, and this one has be wanting to pose as my own wacky hotel guest. If you do your own Five Star Christmas cosplay, may I suggest you stay away from accents – those are always harder than you think.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 