Reviews

This show is miles above the usual campy teen vampire show. Not that it's not got huge camp. It does. And it suffers a bit from cheesy effects & abrupt scene cuts. The first ep was so lame I bailed partway through and didn't come back to it for 6 weeks.

But when I did, I was soon hooked.

This show is entertaining as hell. Clothes to die for. Family drama worthy of the old Dynasty, or whatever your generation's benchmark for OTT intergenerational backstabbing is. Almost worthy of a telenovela. Tropes flipped upside down and back to front.

Some complain it's 'too woke' but I saw a number of well-handled scenarios that are very much in keeping with modern high-school dynamics and yet reinforced respecting others' boundaries, gaining consent, learning to become fully yourself and defining your course in life apart from your family's. All genuine adolescent dilemmas well disguised as a fun, campy vampire show.

With some deeply touching moments.

..and maybe a bit of Hitchcock at his most puckish.

A bit the over the top in places, and fairly predictable.

But then we all know when we see an isolated manor (or castle) filled where leeching relatives and friends form a sycophant whirlpool around a rich and controlling patriarch (or matriarch), somebody is going to die. This is no more improbable than any similar movies made entirely in English any time these past 80 years.

If the acting's a bit stilted, well, given the floating between two languages and the challenge of delivering over-the-top dialogue without the tongue firmly in one's cheek - which all actors find challenging in these kind of roles - it's hardly surprising the whole thing is not as smooth as it would optimally be be. It's better, I think, if you understand enough of the main language to catch the subtleties and cultural nods that don't make it into the English-language captioning.

The production values are decent, the setting is gorgeous, the costuming occasionally inspired. Watch it if you like Bollywood movies and Golden Age mysteries.

Nobody does toffee-nosed dysfunctional family snark like the Brits. This one, made for Netflix, is a doozy of an ensemble piece, as if Gosford Park was remade by the Fawlty Towers lot for 2021 audiences. The musical cues are freaking brilliant. The casting is nuts. The settings are such fun, especially the gorgeous old manor house that suffers all the frailties of any home that's been haphazardly updated over 300 years.

Kris Marshall plays the owner of the venerable pile (and the ruins outside it where even older buildings died) and despite a not-deep scripted character is not outclassed in deadpan one-liner delivery by John Cleese & Kelsey Grammar as the aging Brothers Christmas: one a stiff old shootin' squire and the other a tanned Florida playboy with a girlfriend half his age.

The setup:

Caroline Christmas Hope (Nathalie Cox) is obsessed with getting Christmas perfect for her sisters' visit. The sisters take every opportunity to spite and sabotage each other while their mother alternately suggests peace and pours more wine. Family laundry is not so much aired as hurled at each other with daggers attached. Then Daddy comes back, just in time for family dinner.

You can see the first gag being set up a British country mile away, but it doesn't land for ages, while the rest of the plot - and characters - spin wildly off in unexpected directions. There are frisky moments & risque jokes, bewildered children, nosy neighbours, and a vicar who doggedly smiles through a chaotic parish Christmas market.

There's a lot of family history missing that could have been sneaked in as flashbacks instead of leaving the viewer to fill it in from 3 snappy lines of dialogue and a sight gag. I'm not sure why Nathalie Cox was cast for Caroline, who carries a lot of the scenes, when other actors in lesser roles had the chops to do more with the part. And the denouement unfolds as slowly as senior citizens wobbling into line for holiday dinner.

Despite the flaws, this is overall as watchable a bit of holiday snark as you could wish for, with plenty to chuckle about and a few lightly played tender moments as well.

I didn't have high hopes for yet another going home to save the family inn movie. But this one surprised me. Pleasantly.

The two leads,Rachel Boston and Wes Brown, are both Christmas rom-com veterans. In this outing they played warm and genuine people. One had been home for a while while the other is a lawyer in New York, returning home reluctantly.

Predictable holiday rom-com trope number whatever: there's a promotion on the table back in New York.

Predictable holiday rom-com trope whatever+1: there's a feud between their two families.

This is a hundred-year-old non-violent scrap renewed with each generation. Its current form is the two dads competing over whose inn is better decorated, whose family can win the bigger-and-better snowball toss, the Xmas trivia contest, and so on in an absolute whirlwind of perfect Christmas town competitions. Pretty town, at least the 2 shots we see of it (repeatedly)

One significant anti-trope: the two leads are never in serious conflict. The movie completely avoids the trope where they compete, get bitter, stab each other in the back and have to make up for it somehow. The conflict in this movie is all outside their obvious attraction to one another.

Another significant anti-trope: the other woman competing for the same promotion... but to say more would be a spoiler.

The movie works as a good fun story where both parties to the romance are respectful and respect worthy, and you believe the attraction is real. It works, that is, if you can ignore some magickal financial thinking and a complete lack of building-permit concern in future planning.

Holly Everton has watched her great aunt make perfect matches for people all her life. But never for her. Small town, works at a fishing shop, dreams of travel and finding her perfect match. Her brother is home for his Christmas wedding, and he brings his college roommate along to be best man. He dislikes romance, she dreams of the perfect wedding, he can't stand Christmas, she loves it, in short, they don't like each other. He's rude & she's a people pleaser; it's not a good look. But it's what you expect in romance, right?

I like that the people look like real people and the houses look like real family houses, and the shop (the fishing part, not the Christmas side) looks like a real shop. The widowed mom looks like a good age for a widowed mom. The great aunt is suitably aged. The decorations are a bit over the top everywhere but that's just par for the Christmas movie scene.

The second-half turns into a much deeper movie in the first half was setting up (though not well), which may be partly responsible for all the bad reviews. The romance is hard won & the characters both have some growing up to do. Hers is all on screen while his is just a brief grumpy montage with no particular motivation except enough time passes that he's not mad any more.

This film ends up asking some real questions about helping versus taking over, what you owe to your family and your friendships, and living your life for and through other people instead of for yourself.

For boring budgetary reasons the city is going to close down the skating oval in the downtown core after the holidays.

Coincidentally the mayor's widowed son-in-law, a retired pro hockey player played by soap opera hunk and former Mr. Eye-Candy, Ryan Cooper, has just developed a huge new sports complex at the edge of town. It's good for the suburbs but not so much for kids who live in the city core & take their lessons as well as leisure at the oval.

You can see where this is going, right?

Enter the spunky skating instructor and skate shack worker, Courtney, (Abigail Klein) who quickly makes friends with Mr. Hockey's daughter and convinces her to take up skating classes at the oval. With help from the mayor's secretary, Courtney also starts a PR campaign to win over the mayor & save the oval even though she's falling for Mr. Hockey aka 'the competition'.

The acting's not great, the script is only okay, and the settings - unless you live close enough to recognize downtown Worchester - are Anytown, Northeast USA. It's definitely lacking the visual appeal & polish of our other recent skating movie (Niall Matter. Mmm...). But the movie has some cute scenes of skating kids. Relationships feel believable. And you're left wondering if parts of it were in fact based on a real story.

Beautifully decorated in every scene, as fitting setting for this highly photogenic actress. Candace/Noelle plays a shoe-addicted department store employee who gets herself locked into the store overnight & must be rescued by a hot fireman who happens to be the new neighbour she literally tripped over just a few hours earlier.

The surprise secondary star of the shoe story is the ever-entertaining Jean Smart who kicks it as the clutzy but well-meaning Ghost of Christmas Past (also Present & Future) wielding magical sassy shoes for any occasion to trick Noelle into being zapped to alternate points in her life.

The flick's Big Conflict is Predictable Holiday Rom-Com Trope #3: the woman who has no life outside of work until she's charmed into it by a hot guy. Not much more to say about it, really.

More morality play than holiday romance, with the moral of the story being clearly stated more than once:

Love Deeply. Trust Your Heart. Be Brave.

This quiet film takes a predictable movie trope - the angel offering a do-over - and unfolds one woman's complex journey to peace with her past and her developing understanding of love. While not a deep examination of the shifting cultural landscape, it offers an overview of the Catholic Church's fraught relationship to LGBTQ+ individuals and same-sex marriage.

The acting is uneven with sublime moments, somewhat like the settings. The music is pretty fine. The writing was decent although not brilliant.

The title and cover should be different since chirpy happy rom-coms have a lock 'Christmas Wedding' tropes and the reviews no doubt suffer from not delivering what the Netflix viewer expected from the title & the smiling faces on the advertising.

For me this is a solid 6/10 but then I'm not challenged by any of the tropes, being not Catholic nor bothered by any consenting adult's sexual identity or expression.

TBH 2 of those stars are due more to my nostalgia for the city's market & the giant ferris wheel than to any quality of the movie. Plus I'm a longtime devotee of the waltz, and nobody does that like the Viennese

The cute American girl, the rich & handsome Viennese boy, the cute meet on a Christmas-bedecked cobblestone street...the script pretty much writes itself.

Actually it's a different male character she meets on the (beautifully decorated, cobblestoned) street, and only after she's been the traditional gauche New-Worlder and the rich Old-Austrian boy has been rude to her. Of course there is also a snooty scheming other woman.

After that, the script takes some pleasant detours on the way to the inevitable happy ending, among them that some extras had a point to their presence that was not all 'spoil the budding romance'. They seem like real people going about their own lives, with only occasional lapses into propping up the pretty heroine.

It's rare in holiday fare to allow secondary characters anything of a plot but the brother who brought Our Heroine to Vienna had his own minor storyline that eventually meshed with our heroine's, and a few bit players got callback moments in the final scene as well. Nice extra touches in a fairly nice and definitely pretty movie.

Settle in with your hot chocolate and your best dancing slippers, and prepare to be swept off your feet.

So if you're looking for that, look elsewhere. If you're open to a different kind of movie that happens to be set at Christmas, carry on. And be aware that if you have no context for the expectations many Indian families have for their children, you're going to miss some of the deeper nuances.

That said, this isn't a brilliant movie. The script is only so-so. The male lead is clearly not cut out for tragic roles, and just looks sulky in the early scenes. Once he is allowed to smile his performance improves. The women are only there to revolve around him and I'd have liked to see more of their personalities/lives.

The film does give a look at the holiday through the eyes of characters for whom neither the religious nor the commercial meanings of the season are 'traditional' and that, while not beating us about the head & shoulders with the alternate perspectives, is a good feature.

And New York City, as ever, is shown in all its magical holiday garb, which can never be a bad thing.

I'm being generous at 4 stars. It's like an Asylum film without the trademark Asylum ugly sets. Lame script, limp acting, and omg the dialogue, especially between the two sappy sisters! They're simply so unbelievably saccharine with each other.

Worse, the inciting incident that's supposed to be the promise the film makes to the reader - a singing single-parent widower oblivious to the neighbor who's had an unrequited yen for him for a decade, and his cute little boy who starts off the movie with him but simply vanishes after the inciting incident, taking with him any hint of humor or spontaneity - are virtually ignored in favor of this boring pair of would-be lovers who lack even a modicum of chemistry.

But it's visually appealing, from the female cast's identical hairstyles (and noses), to the sophisticated layering of textiles, floral arrangements, and other decorative touches around the various sets. There's even some decent camera angles.

If you just want some country wallpaper in the background while wrapping presents or baking, this should fit the bill.

If you're looking for a happily ever after Hallmark type flick, don't look here. If you're looking for a funny, sweet movie about trying to fit in, finding yourself, finding a boyfriend, and how appearances can be so shallow a rock wouldn't skip across them, you could invest 90 minutes here enjoyably.

Jennifer Stone looks like a normal girl but is the only daughter of Santa Clause, both the mythic figure and the corporation. Slumping under heavy expectations on both counts, she cuts a deal for a semester at a real human college before she picks up her family obligations for eternity. Of course nothing goes as planned.

Strong points: Jennifer looks like a normal-sized girl with slightly frumpy clothes and sweet, klutzy naivete; she doesn't blossom into a glamour queen through finding love. That elf, Pep, is a sugar high all by herself, the sidekick to end all sidekicks. The nice boyfriend option has a bit of serious back story & a great grin. The villain looks & talks like a real nasty. The face-plant into the... but that would be a spoiler.

Weak points: nobody gets much depth & a lot of the plot's potential either never got written into the script or was left on the cutting room floor. It feels like another 12-15 minutes spent in judicious character development would have had a big payoff.

As a way to spend 90 minutes during the holidays, with some popcorn and teens or tweens to laugh along with, this is fun.

This starts off as absurd as Bridget Jones, as trashy as closing time in any hookup joint, and it creeps toward a real, serious, deeply loving and human film that hits holiday notes far deeper and stronger than the usual Christmas fare.

Emma Thompson did a great job on the co-writing but surely she could have resisted the urge to appear in it as well. There must have been other actors capable of that role, perhaps actually from the former Yugoslavia. Not that there was anything wrong with her performance - it was as usual spot-on - but in this age of actual representation it seemed like a mis-cue every time she appeared. A needless distraction from an otherwise very entertaining and heartfelt film.

Overall I loved this movie.

Dunno what's with all the hate. Except that this is an international production not necessarily designed to appeal to US audiences even with a couple of recognizable fight stars having a most entertaining battle early on.

It's like Pirates of the Caribbean only for Asian audiences: not intended to make complete sense.

The production values are uniformly good, the stunt fighting is cute and often funny, with many tropes common to Asian cinema, and there are some very entertaining sendups of both aristocracy and bureaucracy in all the countries where action takes place.

A fun adventure film in the tradition of the old Saturday afternoon cinema classics, with deft touches of satirical social commentary.

For a very low budget film this was surprisingly worth watching. It's definitely aimed at an audience that likes to think and question, and is at least as much about individual psychology as it is about either space aliens or world domination. You have to pay attention but it's honestly no hardship.

Opening sequences are stylish and set the viewer up for later contrasts as well as providing clues to future events.

The acting is more than adequate in that understated Brit way.

All in all, a worthy use of my Saturday evening.

Cheesy graphics but some decent twists in the plot.

Shaky on the science as usual but you forgive that if you like disaster movies. No annoying teenagers making things worse - a trope I can always do without.

Dean Cain's range is still limited but adequate to the role. Some familiar faces and some new... but since this was released in 2004 that only means their future careers weren't world-shaking.

... in a lean, mean dystopian atmosphere.

This movie breaks little new ground but it's a solid entry in the human-robot interface with one or two neat tweaks on the Asimovian protocols. It's not a high-action flick although there's a not-shabby body count.

The robots are simple but surprisingly alive.

It's a 1-man show carried by Banderas, who does a creditable job as the Everyman caught up in forces beyond his ken. The script is solid in that sense although other characters seem more set-dressing than human.

Don't bother with the Bechdel Test. The few women are useful to the hero & then, typically, discarded one way or another once their plot purpose is served.

A very interesting way to pass a Saturday night, with some ponderings to last you through Sunday morning.

This is an almost-ensemble holiday rom-com with one main heroine, her groom, her ex, and her sister rounding out the leads. Sara Mitich is luminous although her hair is almost frighteningly red in this role. There's gentle comedy and authentic emotion from the 4 leads as they grow through their individual arcs although Colt doesn't get much range as he's supposed to represent stable, unchanging love.

Mimi Kuzyk is a gem as the girls' grandmother. The bride's parents are transparently OTT - the kind that's entertaining on-screen but you'd have to murder IRL. The bit players are a nice collection of eccentrics and bewildered bystanders.

There's been some criticism that the lead actress isn't suited for the role but I think that's a deliberate choice by the director to play up the character's unsuitability for the city life and the marriage/family she is running away from (not a spoiler, as it's in the title). The character dresses more naturally and loses the artificial hairstyle once she's out of the city, and even moves differently as she becomes more true to her own desires.

(One caveat as a writer: if anyone dragged me out of an in-the-zone writing session after a period of blockage, I'd be flinging my coffee mug at them, not going meekly back to the kitchen to help with the baking or whatever.)

The plot omitted a few of the usual set-pieces like sleigh rides and ice-skating although they did fit in Christmas tree hunting, and still managed to become a nicely watchable story. I'll keep my eye out for the actresses playing both sisters, to see what they make of more demanding roles.

I've enjoyed Erin Karpluk and Robin Dunne in other things so took a chance on this despite the poor reviews. Not sorry I did. This isn't great television by any stretch but it was a pleasant way to pass 1.5 hours on a holiday evening.

The fatal flaws were mostly in the beginning, with uninspired dialogue, one-note secondary characters, and especially a serious lack of deeper motivations for the main characters. If either of them early expressed a dissatisfaction with their career paths, the first half would have had more heart and the shift of direction at the 2/3 mark wouldn't have come as such a surprise.

It's a light, easy tv movie with some food for thought and a cute twist at the end that doesn't have to do with the happy couple.

This movie charmed me from the first by how thoroughly the lead actors threw themselves into their ditzy roles. It's not always easy to 'play shallow' with total conviction but they nailed it. Even the slimy agent was note-perfect in this one.

As a look into the appearance-is-everything world of social media influencers - people who are famous for the image they manufacture online - the plot is only too credible.

The personal emotional & psychological costs associated with the superficial glam are very much visible here: obsession with appearance, alienation from self & loved ones, inability to trust in love that sees beyond the surface.

To manage all that while still being screamingly funny is a feat indeed. So, not a brilliant movie but a hilarious cut above many holiday comedies.

...especially those whose first adult dreams have failed them.

Returning home as an adult is never easy. When you're a dedicated puppeteer whose last job has dried up, leaving you broke and alone, where else do you go? Then you find out your parents have left town for the holidays, making you responsible for your crazy grandma. The catastrophes pile on from there, abetted by a nutty best friend with a paintball fixation and a childhood sweetheart determined to save you from yourself.

There's a mystery, touches of personal history, some broad physical humour, and the usual triumph of seasonal joy to round off this surprisingly twisty script. The puppet sequences add a surreal quality.

Enjoy with a beverage.