Category: Holiday Movies
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Christmas Indie Movie Review – Cup Of Cheer
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Cup Of Cheer is, allegedly, a comedy. There are moments of incongruity, surprise, repetition, inversion, exaggeration, and slapstick. There’s only one thing missing and that, sadly, is anything remotely funny. It is supposed to be a parody of the archetypal, traditional Christmas film. Cup Of Cheer starts with a big city journalist, Mary (Storm Steenson) being sent to…
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A US Classic From A UK Perspective – A Christmas Story
A little background… At the start of the decade a change in circumstances meant I had a lot of spare time during the run up to Christmas. So what was I going to do? What I did was got hold of a load of Christmas films and thoroughly got into the spirit of the season.…
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All About A Christmas Carol
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So Many Retellings Of A Short Story Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner… let’s make a Christmas favourite of him! I’m going to luxuriate in the knowledge that I’ll be talking about a story that is nearly two centuries old and, therefore, will be paying no heed to the usual dread…
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Miracle On 34th Street – 1947 vs 1994
A good story bears repeating. At least that’s the impression you get if you look into your average film studio’s output. Who knows… maybe there’s a future article in that? Anyhow, as it’s rapidly approaching Christmas, I thought I’d take a look at one of my favourite Christmas stories — and two films — I’m…
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Rewatch Review – The Long Kiss Goodnight
The Long Kiss Goodnight is a great film. It has action, thrills, humour, intrigue, suspense… everything! Geena Davis is gorgeous and believable as both the mumsy Samantha Caine and the deadly Charlie Baltimore. Confused? How about if I say that Sam Caine is an anagram of ‘amnesiac? Samuel L Jackson is brilliant as Mitch Hennessey, the…
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Rewatch Review – Love Actually (A Brit Perspective)
Back in October we were talking about articles for the run up to Christmas (yes, this stuff is all actually planned!) and the idea of a rewatch review of Love Actually was mentioned, especially a British take on the film. This took me a little by surprise, as I can’t help thinking that anything written by…
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Die Hard and Beyond: Are They Really Christmas Films?
There are films that are obviously Christmas films; they only make sense because they’re set at Christmas; it only feels right to watch them at Christmas; they belong to Christmas. And then there are films that are associated with Christmas and they are the ones there are arguments about. So… a Christmas film… or or…
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Indie Movie Review – Derelicts
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Films like Derelicts do make me worry for the friends that I’ve made over in the USA. More so than just the chance of them being shot by someone claiming to be defending his right to walk around bristling with weaponry, or catching something relatively treatable and being bankrupted. I worry that, over in the States,…
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There’s an E.T. sequel and it’s awesome
I just finished watching E.T. for basically the first time. I only saw it one time in 1982, and 38 years later didn’t remember anything beyond the “Phone Home” shtick. I wrote this grand review about the symbolism in E.T. with a lot of thoughts tending towards the introspective. I had to rewatch E.T. to…
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Movie Review – Carol of the Bells
Carol of the Bells is a lot like a Hallmark Christmas movie, and I don’t mean this in a good way. You could see the seams in the acting and directing transitions, and it didn’t come across as a polished story. That said, Andrea F. Friedman, the actress with Down’s Syndrome, stole the show…
