INSPIRED BY A TRUE FRIENDSHIP. In the early 1960s, New York City bouncer Tony ”Lip” (Viggo Mortensen) is hired by an African-American concert pianist (Mahershala Ali) for a tour through the Deep South; he’ll serve as a driver and security. This reality-based dramedy tackles 1960s race relations along the lines of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) … Continue reading Green Book
Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) of Aldovia is set to marry his bride, Amber (Rose McIver), but the country is rocked by protests against the royal family. This sequel is a slight improvement on the original, partly because we’re familiar with the characters now, but also because the film tries to deal with political intrigue and … Continue reading A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding
Photographer Abby Sutton (Kat Graham) receives an old advent calendar as a gift and begins to believe it has the ability to predict what’s going to happen to her each day in December. Another romantic Christmas tale from Netflix in their continuing struggle to compete with Hallmark, making an unhappy photographer choose between two attractive … Continue reading The Holiday Calendar
SANTA’S IN TOWN EARLY THIS YEAR. On Christmas Eve, two warring siblings (Judah Lewis, Darby Camp) happen to catch Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) on tape – and are whisked off on an adventure with him. You can tell Russell is having fun as Santa here, always sensitive about his weight, always cracking one-liners; he even … Continue reading The Christmas Chronicles
After arriving in the kingdom of Belgravia to take part in a pastry competition, Stacy De Novo (Vanessa Hudgens) discovers that the duchess who’s about to marry the prince (Sam Palladio) looks exactly like her… Another one of Netflix’s ridiculous Yuletide productions, set in yet another sugary fairytale country where everyone has a British accent … Continue reading The Princess Switch
SAVE A PLACE IN YOUR HEART FOR THE UNFORGETTABLE STORY OF THESE LITTLE WOMEN. Gillian Armstrong’s most successful Hollywood project is one of the best adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, portraying a Massachusetts family of four sisters during and after the Civil War, primarily focusing on Jo (Winona Ryder) who wants to be a … Continue reading Little Women
LET THE MYSTERY UNFOLD. After the death of her mother, Clara (Mackenzie Foy) ends up in a magical world where she learns that not everything is what it seems… This 3D reimagining and combination of the 1816 story and the 1892 Petipa/Tchaikovsky ballet looks gorgeous, but the stunning technical details can’t conceal the fact that … Continue reading The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
The wealthy owner of a gift business sends his spoilt daughter (Eliza Taylor) to a small town called Snow Falls where she must deliver a special Christmas card to her dad’s former partner. Just like A Christmas Prince, another unambitious Yuletide release on Netflix the same year, this romantic story has its heroine assuming a … Continue reading Christmas Inheritance
SHE’S LOOKING FOR A STORY. HE’S LOOKING FOR A QUEEN. Young journalist Amber Moore (Rose McIver) finally gets a chance to cover something real – a press conference in the country of Aldovia where Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) is set to take the throne. A romantic movie that looks like a machine spat it out … Continue reading A Christmas Prince
We’re one week away from Christmas and everybody’s making lists of their favorite movies. As always, some are debating whether or not Die Hard belongs on the list. Don’t be silly, of course it does. What says Christmas more than “Now I have a machine gun, ho, ho ho”…? Here are my 12 favorites, a mix … Continue reading My 12 Favorite Christmas Movies
Ingmar Bergman would have been 100 years old next year, so in his honor Stockholm’s leading department store dedicated their annual Christmas window display to Fanny and Alexander. I can certainly see why; the opulent portrait of turn-of-the-century bourgeois Christmas festivities has captured the imagination of anyone who’s ever seen the film. In Sweden, ”a … Continue reading Fanny and Alexander: Dark Christmas
Christmas is coming, and the three Chicago moms (Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell) face an additional challenge – a visit from their mothers. A quickly assembled sequel likely to satisfy fans of the first movie, even though there’s no real story, just scenes illustrating the many problems between three sets of mothers and two … Continue reading A Bad Moms Christmas
EXPERIENCE THE MIRACLE. A remake of the 1947 Christmas classic where a department store event director (Elizabeth Perkins) hires a friendly, helpful old man (Richard Attenborough) to be Santa… but then he turns out to actually believe in the myth. The film tries to update the story a little bit, but still goes for an … Continue reading Miracle on 34th Street
