The Holiday Calendar (2018)

 

The Holiday Calendar

The Holiday Calendar (2018)

NETFLIX

Director:

Bradley Walsh

Starring:

Kat Graham

Quincy Brown

Ron Cephas Jones

Ethan Peck

Plot:

A struggling but talented photographer inherits an antique holiday advent calendar, the contents of which seem to predict the future. Will this magical calendar lead her to love this holiday season?

Review:

Abby, Kat Graham, lives in a nice loft apartment in an unknown small town. She is an artist, her chosen medium, photography. Which means that she works at a small photography studio owned by someone that seems to know nothing about taking pictures, and she never shows anyone her true passion.

Josh, Quincy Brown, is Abby’s best friend who has spent the last eighteen months traveling the world and becoming a name in the travel blog world. She is a little jealous of him, but it’s truly unknown why since she could have done the same thing.

A few weeks before Christmas Abby is given an Advent Calendar from her Gramps, Ron Cephas Jones, as a gift from her recently departed grandmother. Is the Calendar magic? Who knows? Just don’t point out that it’s like astrology to Abby or she will flip.

Abby’s world isn’t really turned upside down, and there is very little in the way of sweep you off your feet romance, but she does eventually realize that her best friend makes a great partner, in more ways than one.

Josh was the highlight of the movie. He loved his best friend, but he didn’t act like a total dick when she started dating someone else. He was actually mostly supportive on that angle. I appreciated that, even though there were comments about the friendzone that had me rolling my eyes.

The Holiday Calendar was a cute festive movie that was only halfway boring to watch.

3.5/5

A Legendary Christmas With John and Chrissy

A Legendary Christmas With John and Chrissy

A Legendary Christmas With John and Chrissy

Network:

NBC

Starring:

Chrissy Teigen

John Legend

Plot:

John Legend and Chrissy Teigen get into the holiday spirit with family and friends, including Darren Criss, Jane Lynch, Raphael Saadiq, Meghan Trainor, Awkwafina, Neal Brennan, Kim Kardashian West, Zach Galifianakis and many, many more.

Review:

Chrissy Teigen is smart, funny, and beautiful; and I’ve recently started spending more time on Twitter where she is queen. Since I don’t have cable I wasn’t sure if I would be able to watch her holiday special with her husband, John Legend, but I was excited to see it uploaded to Hulu.

So much fun! Of course, there was amazing holiday music, but it was also super funny. The mac and cheese focus group had me screaming with laughter. Loved it!

Christmas music, laughter, family, and celebrity cameos, what more could you want from a holiday special? Highly recommend and I hope, maybe, it becomes a yearly tradition for them and all of us.

5/5

Christmas with a View (2018)

Christmas with a View

Christmas with a View (2018)

Director:

Justin G. Dyck

Starring:

Kaitlyn Leeb

Scott Cavalheiro

Plot:

Secret aspirations between a failed restaurateur and a celebrity chef threaten their blossoming Christmas romance.

Review:

Christmas with a View was like watching a softcore porno, only there was no sex. The actors had very little chemistry and the only reason I knew the female lead was interested in the male lead was because they told me. They tried to show her giving him longing glances, but it did not come off that way. I honestly felt blindsided when they started kissing because I didn’t think either of them really felt in to each other.

Also, two of the three young men in the movie showed off their abs. While I appreciate that, it does play into my softcore porn angle. Plus, it was just really weird and random.

Christmas with a View is about a woman who had a failed restaurant in Chicago and is licking her wounds at home by managing a successful restaurant with poise and competence. In comes a bad boy chef, who isn’t actually a bad boy in any way, searching for a place where his parents had a good Christmas, before he was born.

They date, the woman reacts weirdly to a revelation by the chef, they makeup, and it ends happily.

Even with my addition of an extra star for Christmas movies this one was bad. It hit tropes, but not in a satisfying way.

3/5

Christmas Chronicles (2018)

Christmas Chronicles

Christmas Chronicles (2018)

NETFLIX

Director:

Clay Kaytis

Starring:

Kurt Russell

Darby Camp

Judah Lewis

Plot:

The story of sister and brother, Kate and Teddy Pierce, whose Christmas Eve plan to catch Santa Claus on camera turns into an unexpected journey that most kids could only dream about.

Review:

The first movie of my holiday season and I don’t think I could have chosen better. From the minute I saw the trailer I was excited to watch and it was an effort to wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday was over. Things ended up being perfect when I was able to watch with both of my kids and my husband; it was a definite Hallmark moment.

Anyway, Kate, Darby Camp, and Teddy, Judah Lewis, have recently lost their father and are having a rough Christmas. Their mom is having to work a lot and isn’t there as much. It’s hard and very emotional, the intro borrowed from Up. One thing leads to another and the kids decide to stay up and catch Santa in the act, low and behold, it works!

Kurt Russell as Santa is inspired and he was so freaking perfect! Ugh! It was awesome!

Christmas Chronicles hit a lot of the best Christmas movie tropes. There was a musical number, there were lots of lore explanation, there was a cynical child that needed to be shown that the world doesn’t completely suck. Even the elves were cool. There was a car chase! Seriously, what more do you need from a Christmas movie?

Fair warning, I cried at the end.

Christmas Chronicles has definitely been added to my list of yearly Christmas movies. It was everything I could have possibly asked for.

5/5

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

NETFLIX

Director:

Ethan Coen

Joel Coen

Starring:

Tim Blake Nelson

James Franco

Liam Neeson

Harry Melling

Tom Waits

Bill Heck

Zoe Kazan

Grainger Hines

Jonjo O’Neill

Brendan Gleeson

Saul Rubinek

Tyne Daly

Chelcie Ross

Plot:

An anthology film comprised of six stories, each dealing with a different aspect of life in the Old West.

Review:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a Western anthology in which at least one person dies in every story. The first story is amusing and fun to watch, while each story after that is various levels of depressing. It was not what I expected and while I enjoyed some parts of it and the stories will probably stick with me a while, I didn’t really like it.

The first story is Buster Scruggs, it’s filled with music and seeming magic, it’s fun. The next story is Near Algodones and it is also fairly amusing and fun, with a tragic, though, deserved ending. Things take a dark and depressing turn with Meal Ticket and it made me really sad. All Gold Canyon was depressing in a different way, though, it had beautiful scenery. I ended up talking to the TV a fair amount during The Girl Who Got Rattled and was seriously hoping it would take a different turn than it did. Sadly, by the time we got to the final story, The Mortal Remains, I had checked out and did not pay as much attention to it. So if it was a fitting ending, I’m not sure.

I wasn’t a fan of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, but then it’s not really the type of movie I like to watch. I will say, after watching something so depressing, I’m really looking forward to some Christmas movies.

2/5