The Regime [2024] to Again, thanks to flying (KLM this time), I watched the entire series on the way back from Amsterdam. I am still not sure what I think about the actual show and which specific regime/country it's supposed to mimic, but I do know one thing - Kate Winslet was terrific. She was so so good.
Reindeer in Here - 2022 (CBS) I didn't catch this either of the last two years, but with CBS losing Rudolph, Frosty, etc. I decided to finally check it out. It's great. It's a notch below the old standards, but it's the best new Christmas animation I can think of outside of Klaus on Netflix. Just enjoyable and fun the whole way through and doesn't overstay its welcome. Got a snort out of me in the first 5 minutes when Henry Winkler's character, Smiley Gumdrops, was referred to as the Head Of Holiday Operations and was wearing a badge that said H.O.H.O. I really hope they release a physical copy at some point.
Good, zog, @TheJoeGreene , I hope you test your blood regularly. The amount of sugar you must consume, just by osmosis, with these sickening sweet Christmas movies could give you diabetes if you are not careful. That said, keep the reviews coming. They are more entertaining than most of the actual movies.
I found it disappointing. Great cast though. Still waiting for that truly great Matthias Schoenaerts English language performance, best one so far is still his supporting turn in The Drop.
I could not get through The Regime. Made it through 2 1/2 episodes and just could not get interested. And this is despite my almost 30 year infatuation with Kate Winslet. Maybe I will give it another shot.
Our Little Secret - 2024 (Netflix) Lindsay Lohan would be a much better actress if her face actually moved at all when speaking, laughing, or just generally attempting to convey an emotion. She's the weak point of a decent, but not great, Christmas movie. Logan proposes to Avery on the night of her going away party. Avery says no and 10 years later they happen to be dating siblings but decide not to tell anyone. The siblings mother, Erica, is a domineering and overbearing tiny little woman who makes everyone uncomfortable. The siblings, along with their younger brother, are all alcoholics/drug addicts, and honestly everything with the family is overdone tropes. Logan and Avery reconnect over those days and end up together. There is one solidly fun awkward reveal with the grandma with dementia realizing that Avery and Logan were together before and describing it to a confused gathering of everyone else in the family. Ian Harding is good as Logan. Kristin Chenoweth is great as the monster mom. Jake Brennan plays the other sibling (that's not part of the weird dating group) quite well. Everyone else is fine at what they do, but this could really have used a different lead actress playing Avery.
A 90s Christmas (2024) Dir. Marni Banack Lucy is a successful Chicago divorce lawyer who has just made partner, but her professional life is the only area where things are going great. She is estranged from her sister and mother, has no real friends apart from her assistant, no love life to speak of and a chance meeting with Matt, a girlhood crush, leaves her somewhat overwhelmed with holiday feelings of nostalgia and regret. When a strange waitress with whom she had a bizarre encounter also turns out to be her Uber driver home, she does not question the coincidence. Until she wakes up having been dropped off in her home town of Milwaukee, at her mother's house, instead of her Chicago apartment. Deciding to sort out the mess the next morning, she wakes up in her childhood bedroom, only to find out that she has traveled back from 2024 to 1999. Her Uber driver explains that she has brought Lucy back there in the hope she can learn from some of the mistakes of her past, but she cannot change anything major, unless she wants to risk completely altering not only her own future, but the future of the people she interacts with. This proves more complicated than Lucy expects it to be, as there are many things about her relationships to her mother, younger sister Alexa, best friend Nadine and boy next door crush Matt she would like to change for the better. Caught anew in the maelstrom of Joe Greene's Christmas Hallmark binge, I gave this a chance. Borrowing ideas from A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future, this is a time travel flick about second chances, where the primary tension revolves around the main character's courage, or lack thereof, to take them. Eva Bourne plays both 1999 and 2024 Lucy, which makes a certain amount of sense, and we could interpret her appearance not changing apart from the older Lucy wearing spectacles and the younger Lucy having bangs as only the audience seeing her in her 'older' guise throughout both timelines. A weirder choice is having her friends and family from both eras also played by the same actors, with minor changes in appearance to denote the passage of time, though I am guessing that is largely a budgetary necessity. It did mean that it takes quite a bit of suspension of disbelief to buy several actors who are well into their thirties as teenagers. For Wynonna Earp fans, the supernatural character who allows for the time travel to occur is played by Katherine Barrell.
My wife is saying that Tik Tok is defending Lohan because she had botox before shooting and that is why her facial expressions suck. Btw, my daughter is into love stories now because of the wierd anime cartoons called Gatcha. So my wife is gonna try these movies to show her more wholesome love stories all though these are all lies. We just watched "The Knight before Christmas" with some dude as a night and Vanessa Hudgens. Did you check that one out?
Mary and the Witch's Flower ~ H. Yonebayashi (Studio Ponoc) Beautiful Ghibli-esque animation, but the story is a little too basic and straightforward to really compare with the Miyazaki films that clearly inspire it.
Juror #2 (2024) Dir. Clint Eastwood Justin Kemp is a reporter and a recovered alcoholic who has been sober for four years. His wife Allison is in the final stages of her pregnancy, a stressful time for the couple as their previous pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Justin gets a jury duty summons at this most inopportune time and to his disappointment he gets selected. The case he is serving on the jury for is a murder in which a man with a sketchy background is accused of having murdered his girlfriend shortly after they both left a bar, following a very public argument the couple had, both inside and outside of the bar. The prosecution's theory is that the boyfriend followed her and killed her on the road a short distance from the bar, then disposed of her body in a ditch. As the other members of the jury are horrified by the violent details of the case, Justin has a very other reason to be upset: it suddenly clicks in his mind that he was at the same bar on the night of the murder and that he hit something he assumed was a deer with his car on the drive home. Giving him reason to doubt the accused man's guilt as well contemplate the possibility that he might be guilty of a hit and run. But how can he help the potentially innocent man without incriminating himself? Legal thriller helmed by Clint Eastwood, in what might be his final project as a director. I saw this being likened to the legal dramas of Sidney Lumet, yet I didn't really think this was that reminiscent of say Twelve Angry Men or The Verdict. It's much closer to legal thrillers of the 90s and early noughties like say The Juror and Runaway Jury. Good lead performance by Nicolas Hoult. Some of the writing is a little bit silly and the suspension of disbelief to buy some of the plot developments isn't always earned. Strong supporting cast led by the duo of Toni Collette and Chris Messina as the prosecutor and defense attorney respectively and familiar faces like J.K. Simmons and Leslie Bibb as other members of the jury.
Station Eleven (2021) I've known about this post pandemic / apocalyptic series before and even read the start of the book, but somehow it didn't hit me and I never picked it up again until now. It's the best series I've seen this year for sure. The broad plot is that a young woman who was 8 when the pandemic hit, is a part of a theatre troop 20 years later. They travel in a circuit in post apocalyptic america putting on shows for the surviving community. As there is no digital world anymore, its now all about performance art. But it's not really about that. The timeline is very circular and jumps backwards and forwards between the before times and after times. The after times are very liberal, but take a dark turn. There are a number of excellent bottle episodes - one set in a half deserted hotel as the pandemic begins to rage, another in an airport. I've only seen half at the time of posting, so i will save analysis for later - but wonder who else has seen this?
Seen and loved the series. Also would recommend the novel of the same name that it is based on, by Emily St. John Mandel. I think its central theme is incorporated in the theater troupe's motto, which Emily St. John Mandel borrowed from Star Trek. 'Survival is insufficient'. In many ways one of the most optimistic and humanitarian pieces of post-Apocalyptic fiction I have ever read/watched.
What's interesting is the backdrop of the pandemic pulls down the whole world of celebrity and fake personas I loved that about the hotel bottle episode with the fake corporate world and Miranda realises the charade. Whereas for Clark it is the opposite - he can finally break out Loved the moodiness of all that stuff.
That Christmas - 2024 (Netflix) This is a story narrated by Santa (Brian Cox) about the circumstances that led to a difficult Christmas in the fictional British town of Wellington-on-Sea (apparently used in some BBC media over the years). It was made by Locksmith Animation, a company that has had only one other film made to date (Ron's Gone Wrong). If this one is any indication of their quality then I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for their future content. Critics don't like this film, so you know it's good. I'm not even going to review it beyond saying it's a wonderful look at children and adults dealing with some very real issues, and some very ridiculous issues, in a heartwarming way that got me to tear up 3 or 4 times. Also, they got me to chuckle less than a minute in when the old man who lives in the lighthouse looked at his cheap digital watch and the brand name was SACIO.
The Sympathizer [2024] Put this show into the category of "I don't really know what to think of it". It was great in parts and stupid and dull in others. RDJr was brilliant, so worht watching for that alone. It was only 7 episodes.
Debbie Macomber's Joyful Mrs. Miracle - 2024 They tried to be ambitious and run a series of complicated storylines together while weaving in a character that seems to have magical powers. All they succeeded in doing was making me consider hiring a hitman to kill Rachel Boston.
Una sull'altra (1969) Dir. Lucio Fulci Dr. George Dumurrier is a San Francisco based physician who is not thriving either professionally or personally. His clinic is deeply in debt and survives only courtesy of the attention his media friendly bravado provides, often times featuring complete nonsense to his brother and business partner Henry's chagrin. Personally he is in an unhappy marriage with his sickly wife Susan, who resents his absence, both physical and emotional. George himself is embroiled in an affair with Jane, a photographer specialized in erotic materials. Jane is coming to the end of her patience with George, tired of sharing a man with another woman. Then unexpected tragic news seems to double as the solution to George's problems: complications with her asthmatic condition lead to Susan's death during a Reno business trip of George's. Giving a chance to his relationship with Jane, as well as solving his financial difficulties, as his wife's life insurance policy is leaving him with 2 million dollars. A few weeks later, a strange phone call suggesting George visit a strip club called the Roaring Twenties leads to a shock revelation: on stage is a young woman who looks very familiar to both George and Jane. The woman in question, Monica, is the spitting image of George's late wife Susan, apart from her hair color and eye color. Whilst Jane is primarily weirded out by the encounter, George feels a strong attraction to Monica. One which leads to all sorts of complications... An early Giallo featuring lots of on-location shots in and around San Francisco (and a few in NYC). Already features the genre's quirky editing style, but not yet its baroque use of color and lighting, at least not to the degree later efforts will achieve. A story about a man's obsession with a potential doppelganger of his deceased wife/lover set in San Francisco should obviously lead to the most obvious association possible, Hitch's Vertigo. Instead I was reminded more of 90s erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct. Of the cast, I thought Marisa Mell left the strongest impression in the double role. Jean Morel is a bit subdued compared to later Giallo performances.
What's everyone's favorite Christmas movie? I will start and say Arthur Christmas. It's British and Brilliant.