Christmas Next Door

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Eric (Jesse Metcalfe) is the worst kind of man, a dude bro who makes a living being a misogynist. He calls it “being a committed bachelor” and he writes and sells various propaganda endorsing his female-free lifestyle and teaching other men how and why to stay single too. His lavish home is open to weekly poker parties and football games, events none of his married friends’ wives would let them host on the regular. Nevertheless, his next book isn’t writing itself, and Eric isn’t exactly writing it either, and with the deadline looming (just after Christmas, of course) he’s got to come up with the next chapter of bachelorhood, and quick. His mom has other ideas. She’s been babysitting Eric’s niece and nephews but fakes sick in order to impel him to take over. With a couple of young kids running around his bachelor pad, he turns to the literal girl next door for help.

April (Fiona Gubelmann) is a kid-loving, Christmas-loving godsend, keeping the kids out of his hair, decorating with them, shopping and caroling and all of that holiday nonsense that bachelors can’t be bothered with and Eric in particular avoids because he believes himself to be Christmas-cursed.

April is almost a little too good at keeping the kids immersed in the holiday spirit; soon, even Eric is joining in. I’m not sure if his Christmas outlook is softening or his procrastination is just kicking into over-drive, but suddenly these disparate parties are acting like a very cozy family of four. It’s almost awkward when the kids’ parents actually return and grandma confesses her deception.

What do you think, guys? Do you think Eric will trade money for love? Eschew his cash cow brand and succumb to love and marriage and the end of bachelorhood forever? And do you think we, the audience, will forgive him even if he does? He’s not exactly your typical Hallmark love interest, he’s a skeevier sort that isn’t a trend in the right direction.

Christmas On My Mind

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Lucy (Ashley Greene) is doing some last-minute rushing around when she suffers a little bump to the head and wakes up frantic that she’s late to her own wedding. A Salvation Army Santa expresses concern, but the wedding dress in her hand seems to corroborate a certain urgency. However, when she finally tracks down fiancé Zach (Andrew Walker), she learns that she’s got a gap where 2 years worth of memories should be. In those 2 years, she and Zach have broken up, and Lucy’s actually engaged to another man now. Awkward.

Especially because her doctor (Jackée Harry) suggests she stay in town in an attempt to recover her memory. She’s leaning on Zach quite heavily because he’s the last thing she remembers, and she has no memory at all of the new guy, who makes it easy for her to avoid him. Lucy and Zach fall back into old patterns easily; it’s clear they had a close relationship at one time, and Lucy is both crushed and mystified as to why things ended. Zach’s new girlfriend isn’t thrilled by this intrusion, but Zach’s family, who always liked Lucy, pretty much welcomes her back with open arms. There was a spot there waiting for her, and she just kind of steps right into it, a perfect fit.

What’s next for Zach and Lucy? Will our girl ever get her memory back? What kind of weird amnesia has she got, anyway? There’s only one way to find out. Oh, and whether you watch or not, do mind your footing when doing your own rushing around this year.

Let It Snow

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Stephanie (Candace Cameron Bure) is a businesswoman devoted to her father’s empire with no time and no chill for Christmas sentiment. This year, however, her resolve will be tested as she’s sent to Snow Valley Lodge, a rustic retreat known for its elaborate Christmas traditions that her father will soon be buying up and overhauling into their next hot spot destination.

Brady (Jesse Hutch) is late to pick her up at the airport and she pretty much writes him off based on that. Brady is the son of the lodge’s current owners. He once thought he’d be the one taking over the lodge, but his father has always been adamant that things stay exactly as they have been for generations, which hasn’t exactly been all that sustainable of late. And while Stephanie’s dad (Alan Thicke) may have made some vague promises about keeping things as they are, he has absolutely no intention on honouring that at all. Stephanie’s there to start making recommendations, but she’s finding herself no longer immune to Christmas festivities. The lodge is winning her over – and so is Brady, who is more than just a tardy chauffeur, as it turns out.

What will she do? Embrace tradition and fight to keep the lodge as she found it? Recognize that her lack of Christmas spirit goes hand in hand with her absentee father? Earn his love by doing his bidding? Or throw in the towel and run an inn with her new husband Brady? And by golly, could the Leap Pad Ultra product placement get any bolder? If you watch, you will let me know, won’t you? 😉

A Kiss On Candy Cane Lane

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This one you can rule out before learning anything more about it. It’s forgettable even among a lineup of nearly identical Lifetime and Hallmark and Harlequin holiday romances.

Jennifer (Jillian Murray) goes home for Christmas because her sister has cancer and could use the support. But while she’s there, she bumps into her old college sweetheart Mark (George Stults), who’s just as handsome as ever. But Mark hasn’t been waiting around for her – he moved on, got married, even had a baby. But once the baby came, the wife left, and now Mark’s raising his newborn daughter on his own, and the whole town can’t quit gossiping about it. A saint, they dub him, for merely doing the bare minimum. Anyway, between the cancer and the baby, this Christmas, shit gets real for Jennifer. It’s not what she was looking for – especially because she left behind a boyfriend – but will she succumb?

Honestly, this one’s worse than most. You can do better. In fact, you could close your eyes and reach about with a mere candy cane and probably accidentally poke something better than this. Watch that. Even if it’s your cat. Even if it’s your microwave. Watch anything else.

Switched For Christmas

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In my next life, I’m going to set up some sort of lamaze-type class where we all hold hands and prepare our bodies for the amazing suspension of disbelief we need to accomplish to get through a Hallmark Christmas romance. For now just do your best, limber up, breathe deeply, and try to keep in mind that we can stop at any time if all gets to be too much.

Kate Lockheart is a very successful big city real estate developer who doesn’t take a lot of time out of work to celebrate Christmas, or celebrate anything, really, especially not since her mother died, but this year she’s in charge of a big corporate Christmas party, and a lot’s riding on it.

Chris Dixon is a small town school teacher, divorced with two kids. School’s about to let out for Christmas break but that doesn’t mean Chris gets time off; she’s in charge of the school’s Christmas festival, and there are a lot of moving parts to be organized, especially since this year they have a handsome benefactor with some ideas of his own.

Surprise! Kate and Chris are estranged identical twin sisters (both played by Candace Cameron Bure, of course). At a rare pre-Christmas lunch, they complain about their various burdens until they agree there’s only one real solution: a good old fashioned switcheroo. Kate will go home and throw Chris’s school festival, while Chris will stay in the city, planning the firm’s holiday shindig. They’ll both benefit from a change of pace, and maybe they’re also just a teeny bit envious of each other’s lives. Of course, things are never as simple as they seem, and since they’re grown women one would hope they would have foreseen some of the complications in Parent-Trapping themselves. And yet.

Thank god there’s a cute guy in both of these situations to sort of help gloss over the stickier spots. Of course, it’s not best practice to start out a relationship whilst pretending to be someone else, but who’s counting, right? It’s just a bit of fun?

Will this blow up in Kate and Chris’s identical twin faces? What would their dead mother think of this? Or their living father for that matter? And for the love of mistletoe, which twin will consume the most cocoa? You know what you have to do to find out.

The Christmas Note

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Gretchen (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and son Ethan (Dylan Kingwell) have moved homes to be closer to her family, especially as they approach the holidays. Their small family is tinged with sadness, but Ethan especially is a gung-ho kid, determined to make the best of things, eagerly introducing himself to new next door neighbour, Melissa (Leah Gibson). Melissa is a bit shy, perhaps not as keen to return his enthusiasm, but it seems Melissa is destined to be tied to Gretchen and Ethan anyway.

While Melissa’s at work, her mother’s landlord rings Gretchen’s doorbell instead, asking her to deliver the news: Melissa’s mother is dead, and Gretchen needs to clean out her apartment post haste. Gretchen is reluctant to break this kind of news to a virtual stranger, but the again, she doesn’t have a lot of choice. Blame the goodness of her heart for volunteering to help with the clearing out; Gretchen’s really getting entangled, especially when they find a note from Melissa’s mom confessing a secret baby given up for adoption in the hears before Melissa was born.

Since Gretchen needs a distraction, she and Melissa go on a bit of a caper, combing their small town for bread crumbs that may lead them to this mystery sibling.

A bit of a departure for Hallmark, this Christmas movie isn’t a romance at all, it’s love in the form of family. And what could be warmer than finding Melissa a family just as she’s lost the only relative she had left. It’s going to be difficult, but young Ethan has an ace in his back pocket: he’s using his letter to Santa this year to call in a favour. 😉

As I Lay Dying

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William Faulkner published this novel in 1930; he described it as a “tour de force”, critics consistently rank it among the top 20 novels of the 20th Century, readers describe it as “difficult” and movie producers have largely considered it unadaptable, in part because of its stream of consciousness style, and the fact that it uses 15 different narrators.

Have no fear – there is one courageous writer\director in Hollywood known for attempts feats others consider impossible, and that man is none other than James Franco.
(Wha?)
_1380174966James Franco co-wrote the script with fellow Yale graduate student Matt Rager. His first act as director was to cast himself in one of the lead roles, and then attempt to synthesize the many narrators with voice over and split screen techniques. Was I a fan of either? No I was not.

It’s an interesting story though. Addie is the mother who lays dying – well, for the first 5 minutes or so. And then she’s dead, while staring out the window at her eldest hand-crafting her coffin. She’s got 4 sons (coffin making Cash, played by True Blood’s Jim Parrack, James Franco as Darl, and Logan Marshall-Greene as favourite Jewel), a daughter, and a no-good son of a gun husband, Anse (Tim Blake Nelson). Her last wish was to be buried in her hometown so they load her unembalmed body into the old wagon and set off against all reason, and for mostly selfish reasons, it turns out. The trip does not go well. Even Danny McBride pops up to try to talk sense into them, and the minute McBride becomes the voice of aildstills314reason in your movie, you know
shit’s about to go down.

Franco’s techniques are repetitive and amateurish, but damn if he isn’t ambitious.I don’t always understand Franco’s career choices, nor do I believe there’s necessarily a lot of forethought put into some of them, but I do admire his desire to try his hand at as much as possible. It just didn’t translate here. I was confused a lot of the time (despite the fact that I’ve read the book numerous times) and had to pause and rewind a couple of times just to be sure I had things straight (thanks, Netflix!). Maybe this one should have remained unadapted (and maybe 207dade5661c77bbfd100a86319e03deNelson’s teeth could have remained unrotted, while I’m wishing out loud). It’s messy and a bit cold and feels more like an art installation that accessible story-telling (an academic experiment? his thesis, maybe?). Yes, Faulkner’s words are weighty, but they’re also deeply affecting, and I think Franco’s biggest fail is that he hasn’t engaged me into a story that I know is all about the feels.

Boo.

Escape From Tomorrow

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The great thing about Netflix is that you get to watch free movies online. Okay, maybe not exactly free, but once you’ve paid your negligible monthly fee, there’s a whole buffet of movies just waiting for your fat ass to partake – and it’s all you can eat! Some movies are more salad bar, and some are more sundae bar, but if you take a little of each, you’ll end up with a nicely rounded meal.

Escape-From-Tomorrow-PosterI happen to have a soft spot for independent film, but those are like the shrimps of an all you can eat buffet in Vegas. Tempting, but dicey. You never know if you’re going to score with cheap and delicious seafood, or win a free trip to the nearest toilet, where you’ll stay for the rest of your vacation. But since I like to live on the edge, I gave Escape From Tomorrow a go.

A debut for writer and director Randy Moore, it’s a black and white fantasy horror that recounts the last day of a family vacation where the father has just learned that he’s lost his job. It was shot guerrilla-style in the Disney World park without Disney’s knowledge or consent. They kept scripts eft2hidden on iPhones and used only handheld cameras that other tourists might use. They were never discovered.

The family vacation is not like a trip to Disney that I’ve ever been on. The rides and animatronics are familiar, they seem the same parades of characters, but poor unemployed dad starts to have some really disturbing visions. Like, super disturbing.

The film makers plotted the sun’s positioning weeks in advance since they knew they couldn’t bring it lighting, but chose to render it in black and white to help ease the issue. To avoid detection, Moore escape-from-tomorrowfelt he could risk 3 or 4 takes of any given scene at most, and he had his actors wear digital recorders taped to their bodies rather than have visible mics. The cast and crew bought season passes to both Disney World and Disney Land, and despite the fact that they rode It’s a Small World over and over wearing the exact same clothes, they never attracted attention from park staff.

Moore was so paranoid about Disney finding out, he took the film to South Korea for editing. It debuted at Sundance under shrouds of secrecy – and you can understand that a film that shot illegally in its parks and depicted the princess characters who pose endlessly for photos with your maxresdefaultkids as high-priced hookers for Asian businessmen might be frowned upon by the house of mouse. Reviewers encouraged people to “see it while they could” but a Disney lawsuit never materialized. They have widely ignored the film, choosing not to add to the hype machine that was quickly gaining steam.

At the end of the day though, I think this movie is more fun to discuss than to watch. Yes, it’s audacious and ballsy and possibly the future of film-making. But it’s only sometimes successful in its execution, and the surreal stuff pushes the boundaries a little too far. There’s an intermission an hour in (I could have sworn it was more like 3) – and I was ready to be done. Turns out, the worst was still to come. So did this little Netflix experiment turn out to be bad shrimp? It may have made me a little queasy, but I’m glad I gave it a chance.

The Place Beyond The Pines

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This movie was primarily filmed on location in Schenectady, New York. Schenectady literally means “beyond the pine plains” in Mohawk, so now you know where writer-MV5BMTcyODUxMjIzOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjE3MzM0OQ@@._V1_SX1500_CR0,0,1500,999_AL_director Derek Cianfrance got the name (it’s where his wife grew up). As for what it’s about, well, that’s another story.

It’s about a motorcycle stunt driver played by Ryan Gosling who finds out he impregnated a carnival groupie the last time he was in town, so he drops out of the circus in order to be a Baby Daddy, except the groupie (Eva Mendes) already has someone to help raise her child (Mahershala Ali), so there’s not a lot of extra room for a bum. In order to show what a good provider he can be, he and his buddy (Ben Mendelsohn) start robbing banks. And you know what? It actually works. For a little while, they’re almost a happy family. But robbing banks is a risky business that eventually catches up with him. Enter trigger happy cop guy (Bradley Cooper). Later MV5BYTczY2U4ODctMGU3Ni00MmYwLTlmMDktOGUzZDcyMTM5OGEwL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjcyNzA2MjE@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1500,1000_AL_Cooper will be remembered as a hero but we’ll all know he’s dirty. And what do dirty cops do? They run for public office!

It’s an interesting movie because it’s about that place where two lives intersect, and how quickly they can change the course of each other’s lives. And it’s also about legacy, and the burden that the little carnie baby is going to carry with him for the rest of his life. The Place Beyond the Pines is a search for truth; it displays the emotional intensity that the Gosling-Cianfrance combination brought in Blue Valentine (which I love but can’t stand to watch). And it reminds us about the shades of grey in everyone: how the “bad guy” bank robber can rock his baby gently to sleep, and the “good guy” cop can be corrupt as hell.

 

Ginger Snaps

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Some horror movies take place in dark alleys, or abandoned houses, or deep woods. But others, like this one, know that real terror lives and hides in the suburbs – perhaps in your own backyard.

Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins), two twisted teenage sisters, social outcasts by default, are totally and completely obsessed with death. Their parents have come home to so many gruesome death scenes, no amount of blood, nor dismembered body parts, nor daughter’s corpses can faze them. The teachers at school, however, are not so desensitized. Trips to the guidance counsellor remain ineffective.

One night, at a park just like the one where you pushed your toddler on the swings, the sisters are attacked, and Ginger is mauled by a large and aggressive creature. Bigger than a dog, uglier than a bear, Brigitte just barely wrests her sister away from the blood thirsty animal, its pursuit interrupted by its encounter with a van. Creature eviscerated all over the quiet neighbourhood cul-de-sac, the sisters flee, leaving driver Sam (Kris Lemche) to guess at the impossible. Ginger’s been bitten by a werewolf, and her life (and her body!) are about to change in unexpected ways.

The film puts a twist on the classic werewolf tale by equating it in some way to womanhood. Ginger is bitten on the full moon, also the day of her belated first menstruation. “The curse,” my grandmother used to call it, though she never suggested it might accompany fur on my knuckles or a tail on my heinie. Ginger is transforming in more ways than one. With wolf blood in her veins, she is confident, more alive. She withdraws from her sister as she enjoys this new feeling of self-determination. Though she confuses her new need to hunt as a new need for sex, she manages to satisfy both, sometimes in one go. Her wolf side is like her newly discovered sexuality, both grant a marginalized young woman a certain power over men, and that’s an intoxicating feeling no matter how tragic the consequences.

John Fawcett’s film is clearly low-budget; even for 2000, the effects are unimpressive. Yet it forces him to explore the theme in creative ways, defining womanhood and femininity in new terms. There is a subversive, feminist filament running through this film, with generous deposits of coal-black humour and diamond-sharp wit.

There is a beast inside each woman, and she’s hungry like the wolf.

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