Sleeping Dogs [2024] How the mighty have fallen. What a piece of crap movie. I wonder if Crowe asked for Flanagan to be in this movie b/c of Gladiator. Totally skippable movie.
Well that's good cause my daughter loved and I found it entertaining. Thanks for not making me feel bad about it.
Scouting for Christmas - 2024 The weakest supporting characters of the 3 new Hallmark movies so far, especially the "den mother" character. We get multiple Hallmark tropes piled on top of each other. Tamera Mowry, who is still as charismatic and enjoyable as ever, plays a single mom (Angela) whose husband left to do archeological work and rarely checks in. Carlos Marks plays a baker (William) who is running his own business and is gun shy about relationships as his previous fiance essentially left him at the alter. Manufactured drama abounds as William is the "favorite baker" of Angela's daughter Brooklyn and she ropes them into trying to provide the treat table for the scout's winter ball. Just as things begin to progress, dear old dad comes back and more unnecessary miscommunication occurs. Not sure who played the dad, but it might as well have been a cardboard cutout. Of course everything works out in the last 5 minutes Not bad, but the weakest of the 3 this weekend.
Jason X (2024) Dir. Jason Isaac We find Jason Voorhees kept at a high security government facility, in an unnamed year at the start of the 21st century. Government personnel have been trying various ways of successfully executing him for his many crimes, but the killer proves unkillable. Just when Dr. Rowan, the scientist in charge of the facility, has decided they will instead freeze him in a cryo containment chamber, she is overruled and another scientist is allowed to take over and move Jason to another facility, where they will instead try to replicate his extreme hardiness for their soldiers. Unfortunately during the transfer, Jason gets free and wreaks havoc all over the facility, until Dr. Rowan manages to lure him into the cry containment room and freeze him. In her heroic self-sacrifice, she herself is frozen. Four and a half centuries later, a professor and a small group of his students are visiting the derelict facility on what is now known as Earth I. They find both Jason and Dr. Rowan and take the frozen bodies back to their shapeship. There, their nano-technology is able to quickly revive Dr. Rowan well-preserved body. As she warns them about the danger of the second individual they have brought on board their ship, the Grendel, she is disbelieved, until Jason too regains consciousness and starts a murderous rampage on the vessel. An entry in the Friday the 13th/Jason Voorhees verse I had yet to see, mostly because what I read and heard about it was negative. Recently it has gotten a reappraisal of sorts, in a "so bad it's good" or "so bad it's funny" vein. Enough for me to give it a chance. Not that I ended up seeing a particularly memorable chapter in the Jason Voorhees story. Jason in Space is already a ridiculous concept to begin with and they have clearly leaned into that. The franchise had flirted with and crossed over the line to self-parody long before this entry, with for instance Jason Takes Manhattan definitely also guilty of that. This movie is the first one where the tone is fully embraced. Probably closer to Scary Movie tone-wise than to the original Friday the 13th. And whilst the silliness did make me smile two or three times over the course of its runtime, I cannot say that this is what I look for in a Jason Voorhees flick. Kane Hodder is Jason here, as he was in the three movies prior to this one. Cannot say there are that many memorable faces among the cast, other than one surprising cameo from a big name director and a decent turn by Peter Mensah as the leader of the small unit of soldiers on board the Grendel.
Woman of the Hour (2023) Dir. Anna Kendrick In late 1970s Los Angeles, Sheryl Bradshaw is a struggling actress who cannot seem to get booked for anything. Her agent arranged for some sort of a job in the form of a turn on The Dating Game. Needing the money and the exposure, Sheryl agrees. One of the three male contestants is Rodney Alcala, a superficially charming individual who carries with him a very dark secret. Anna Kendrick's directorial debut uses the Dating Game format as a framing device to tell the story of real-life serial killer Rodney Alcala, better known as the Dating Game Killer. The gold standard for this type of period setting true crime is David Fincher's Zodiac. Kendrick's movie is decent enough but never reaches that level. Kendrick is enjoyable as the female lead too, but it's Daniel Zovatto who is most impressive, especially in those scenes where he reveals his true self to his female victims. Possibly it's the fact that the true crime genre has inundated us with movies and TV shows on top of the countless podcasts but I have reached a point where few of these dramatized stories leave a very lasting impression.
This Time Each Year - 2024 (Hallmark Mystery) After years of being the "fun" Christmas family, Lauren (Alison Sweeney) and Kevin (Niall Matter - looks like a porn version of Fox Mulder in this) split up. They tell Kevin's family, but Lauren keeps it from her overbearing mother who, of course, is actually supportive when she's finally told. Quirky Hallmark brother dates Hallmark Token POC love interest, Eccentric Hallmark Dad (who looks a bit like a fat Graham Norton) falls off a ladder putting Christmas lights up, Pensive Hallmark Token POC marriage counselor speaks in riddles with no actual advice but somehow is helpful, and ultimately Plot Device Hallmark kid gets his secret wish to Santa that his parents get back together. This was a Quadruple Bingo Hallmark Trope film and apparently Hallmark Mystery is for the folks not good enough to act on the regular Hallmark channel.
The Marvels (2023) Kamala Khan, quirky fangirl of the superhero Captain Marvel, actually has superhero powers herself, although she tries to keep it on the down-low to her parents. Which gets difficult when Captain Marvel and super-powered (Air Force rank) Captain Monica Rambeau touch either end of a cosmic gate. This connects the two with each other and with Khan, whose power comes from a magical bangle which was used to create the cosmic gates in the first place. Now whenever two of them use their powers at the same time, they swap places even across the galaxy. This would be mildly amusing if the leader of the Kree wasn't on a universe-threatening spree of planetary theft to restore her devastated homeworld at this very moment. I did like the main characters, both individually and how they interacted, and especially enjoyed Khan's hilarious family. But I just couldn't get into the plot. From the start I felt like I was thrown into the middle of something I didn't understand. And that was true, as it seems this was a continuation of the Ms. Marvel miniseries I had no way of seeing. But things didn't get better as I picked things up in context - The Marvels continually introduced histories and events without broader explanations or proper introductions and I just got further into the weeds. Even things that were supposed to be a little mysterious or purposefully confusing (like the brains in the space station (space station!?) or the singing planet) only made me feel more out of my depth. The final fight was one of the better Marvel fights with the imaginative use of switching.
The Beekeeper (2024) Adam Clay (there's a name deep with symbolism) is a mild mannered beekeeper who rents a barn from a retired teacher. A phishing scam tricks the teacher into handing over her passwords to a large-scale scam organization and her retirement funds and the charity she was operating are cleaned out. Distraught, the retired teacher kills herself. Unfortunately for the scammers, the beekeeper happens to be a Beekeeper, a member of a highly secret, semi-governmental organization of self-regulating super agents who keep Truth, Justice, and the American Way going by killing as they see fit. Adam sees fit to burn down the call center that scammed his friend. But Adam finds out this is just the tip of the iceberg - multiple call centers all over America are connected to companies with access to highest-level intelligence software. Adam has to follow the path to the top. And when I say the top, I mean the top. A entertaining action revenge picture, the kind Statham has done a hundred times because his demeanor and abilities are such a good fit. Two things slightly irked me. First, this was a little too dependent on Clay being a invincible super soldier. It's unimaginative and at times absurd. At one point he walks up to a squad of FBI SWAT and introduces himself before he lays them to waste. A better (if rather gristly) moment was when he ambushed a troop of mercenaries in a booby-trapped elevator. There should have been more of these clever scenes rather than the repeated announcement making. I also didn't like how high up this went. It muddied the message about phishing, which was the main thing for the first 2/3rds of the movie but then dropped. They should have gone up against a Palantir-type company which would have been a warning about power serving evil and would have played better with the justice agent vs. law agents conflict. But still I liked this more than most of Statham's broadly similar movies like Transporter, Crank, or Parker.
A Royal Christmas - 2014 Leo (Hagan) hides his true identity while being a college student in Philadelphia. He takes his clothes to a tailor to be adjusted where he meets the tailor's daughter, Emily (Chabert) who is a seamstress trying to design her own clothes and catch on with a major designer. They plan to spend Christmas together before Leo is called home for Christmas. He's really Prince Leopold of Cordinia (a country supposedly in the south of France but every reference once they're their is about England). Emily goes with him and his mother, Queen Isabella (Seymour) is a royal pain for the next 70 minutes. The queen conspires to ruin the American's trip while also trying to get her son to marry a predetermined princess (played by Seymour's real life daughter). Emily is the perfect female, Leo really likes her, and everyone except for one Baroness is pure evil while all the help at the castle are saints. Eventually Emily flees back to Philly where Leo, with mother in tow, asks her to marry him and she says yes. Obvious from beginning to end, this one from a decade ago is on most lists of "best" Hallmark Christmas movie simply due to the caliber of acting as Chabert and Seymour are legitimately talented actors while Hagan more than holds up his end of the bargain. Simon Dutton is also quite good as the head of the castle staff. This movie is old enough that Chabert's character makes a joke about finding her way around the castle and asks if they have Mapquest for the inside of the building.
Operation Nutcracker - 2024 Two people have a series of meet cutes at the airport and nearly get their identical luggage confused twice. When they arrive at their destinations in Boston, both arrive at their homes where they rarely get to spend time with their parents. Lottie (Ashley Newbrough) suddenly realizes that her event planning career lies in impressing the mother of Tristan (Christopher Russell). Tristan realizes that the rare nutcracker doll that he's brought home to be the centerpiece of the auction for a hospital for sick kids at said event that Lottie is planning is missing, and there were actually three idiots with identical checked luggage with nothing to distinguish them. That begins a hunt for the nutcracker while the third person, Dave, realizes he has a random nutcracker instead of the also extremely rare and valuable doll that he bought for his sick daughter for Christmas to make up for the fact that he is also away from family too often. Lottie starts working with Pam to get the event set up and wouldn't you know who won the pony, right at the last second she realizes that one of the kids on the poster for the auction to raise money for sick kids is Joey, the daughter of Pam who just happens to be married to Dave which somehow nobody realized yet. It all works out, because Hallmark. Russell was the best of the male leads so far in the 2024 films. Newbrough comes across as a prettier, more talented Denise Richards. At the very beginning and end of the film one of Lottie's coworkers says a few lines to her. For a second I thought Hallmark had built a factory to churn out identical light skinned black women for their movies, but I checked the credits and Patrice Goodman has already appeared in this film and Twas the Date Before Christmas that was on last Friday.
The Seventh Victim (1943) Dir. Mark Robson Mary Gibson has to leave her boarding school, because her guardian and older sister Jacqueline Gibson has not paid her tuition for six months and all of the letters sent by the headmistress have gone unanswered. Mary travels to NYC in the hope of finding her older sibling. Finding only more questions instead of answers after her arrival in the Big Apple. Why did Jacqueline sell her successful cosmetics business to one of her senior employees? Why did she never tell her younger sister in any of her letters that she was engaged to lawyer Gregory Ward? And does the shadowy organization she had ties to have something to do with her disappearance? A noirish mystery with some horror elements, this never fully convinced me. Decent enough first half hour, but a lot about the central mystery felt too contrived and the ending was pretty anti-climactic. Tom Conway is good as a shrink with unclear loyalties, the Tom Judd character appearing in another noirish horror story, Cat People. Though Conway himself is probably most remembered for his appearances in the Falcon series of films (ten films released in the 1942-146 period).
Just decided to watch all the new ones this year, and yes I'm going to get a Hallmark+ subscription for the ones exclusive to it, and I decided to supplement that with a short list of the "best" ones that I've compiled from other lists. I'll knock out the Netflix ones as well and maybe Hulu. I'm even considering getting a Frndly TV subscription for a month to catch the new ones on GAF and UPtv.
The Christmas Charade - 2024 Whitney is an elementary school librarian, and daughter of two people who own an home security installation company, who is set up on a blind date by one of her coworkers. When she goes to meet him, the guy in the green sweater, she sits at the wrong table and meets Josh, an FBI agent waiting for a female colleague and two suspected art thieves. She plays along for the meal, they work together a bit, and Hallmark shenanigans ensue. They try to steal a necklace that's being targeted, to replace it with a replica that has a tracker in it. Josh gets roped into pretending to be Whitney's boyfriend, including a game of charades with her parents before Christmas. Eventually it's not who the characters think it is as the thief and Whitney's parents get involved reveal they had been FBI agents themselves before she was born, which inexplicably makes her angry. It's okay, but this one feels like someone who had never seen a James Bond film had been given a 10 minute description and then was required to make the film without any access to the source material.
The 5-Year Christmas Party - 2024 Two students go through the same theater program in college. They grow closer each year at Christmas while each trying to pursue their dreams in different places. Needless angst abounds as each one makes the right/wrong decision and they tease the relationship finally happening while each succeeds in their careers. From a writing, direction, and production standpoint, this is leaps and bounds above the other films so far this year. It's not the best, but it looks like a real movie instead of a 3 week Hallmark production.
Might actually check this out. Rachel Skarsten was the best thing about the CW's Batwoman series and about the only reason I was still watching by the end of its run.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Two decades ago Evelyn and Waymond eloped and left China for the United States. Now they have a daughter, Joy, and a laundromat. But the laundromat is in trouble with the IRS, the depressive Joy wants as little to do with the family as possible, and Waymond has drawn up divorce papers. The IRS audit is going poorly when out of the blue Waymond starts acting very un-Waymond-like and tells the overwhelmed and frazzled Evelyn that he is actually a Waymond from an alternate universe and that he had been seeking a unique version of Evelyn that might be her. That all sounds like crazy talk... until she visits an alternate version of her for herself. Now she has to use every skill every version of her knows to fight a force threatening the multiverse. This is a brilliant and funny and touching movie. It depends on surprise for lots of its charm so I don't want to say too much, but it deals with reason-for-living type stuff and both how it can be such a little thing and everything at the same time. Maybe a little too cute on occasion. If you haven't seen it I really do recommend it because it really sucks you in and is non-stop enthralling once it gets going.
Acceleration (2019) The very strong and well armed criminal Rhona is forced to visit multiple crime lords during one night and eliminate all of them to fulfill the wishes of crime lord Dolph Lundgren who is holding her young child hostage. Crime lord Sean Patrick Flanery is also involved I guess. A bunch of other criminals show up randomly to try to steal something Rhona might be carrying, or be tortured by Sean Patrick Flanery for no reason, or to have a random shootout if things start getting slow. Things pick up at the 80 minute mark when the end credits roll and the viewer can go back to their lives. I saw a meme recently. In it a film student needs to do a project and is forced to chose one item from a table that represents either good sound, solid script, or accomplished acting. They chose the item that represents "expensive camera". That's Acceleration. It definitely looks nice, with interesting angles and colors and proficient cutting and establishing shots. The fight choreography is good too. But the script is a mess, and it's impossible to understand what is going on most of the time. Without that base, the actors couldn't develop characters and were just fumbling out there. Only Danny Trejo and Quinton Jackson were interesting in their 5 minute parts. I used to say I'd see Sean Patrick Flanery in anything (and I just did), but the good will he deposited in the spejic bank from Young Indiana Jones is rapidly running out.
Time Cut (2024) Dir. Hannah MacPherson Around the anniversary of her older sister's death, Lucy joins her parents for their annual tradition of commemorating their lost child and sibling near the place where she died. Lucy actually never knew her older sibling Summer, as her parents only had a second child to try and fill the void left by the bereavement following Summer's violent death, at the hands of a killer who has still not been identified. In a barn nearby the place where it all happened. Lucy finds a strange contraption and when she activates it, she is more or less instantly zapped back to 2003. Exactly two days before her sister's murder. She thus has a unique opportunity to save the sister she never knew. But will intervening also mean she herself will never be born? There has been a collection of these at this point, movies that kind of combine Back to the Future with slasher and horror tropes. It's a Wonderful Knife, Totally Killer, even Happy Death Day 2U (the Happy Death Day sequel) was more Back to the Future II than Groundhog Day (which was the inspiration for Happy Death Day). This entry isn't especially memorable, either in its writing or the casting. I would say I most liked Griffin Gluck (of American Vandal fame) as the geeky friend Lucy makes in the past and sort of fills the Doc Brown role as an ally from the past who believes the time traveller's story.
My Sweet Austrian Holiday - 2024 (Hallmark Mystery) Girl from Cincinnati inherits her grandma's chocolate shop in Vienna. Guy from London takes over his dad's development firm that just bought a smaller firm in Vienna. Girl's shop is being forced out of their storefront by a development firm, and she turns them down while they attack in any way possible including eminent domain. Guy meets girl at a Christmas Market in Vienna and they slowly begin falling in love. Guy realizes company his dad's company just bought is the one kicking girl out. 90 minutes of airtime remain so guy decides to not tell her the truth and with 30 minutes left she finds out. In the last 10 minutes they magically change the building design of the development they wanted to do to incorporate the existing shop. A much better outing in the 2nd of the secondary channel movies. It appears that most, if not all, of the movie was actually filmed in Vienna and nearly every bit part seems to have been played by an Austrian or otherwise central European actor. It helps that Brittany Bristow is a decent enough actress and looks like a mix of Brie Larson and young Elizabeth Shue.
The Christmas Charade (2024) Dir. Corey Sevier Whitney, a primary school librarian with no dating life to speak of, allows her co-worker Rachel to talk her into a blind date with one of Rachel's fiancee's friends over Christmas break. When she shows up at the restaurant where they are having their lunch date, she ends up sitting down at a table with Josh, whom she mistakes for her date. Josh is actually an undercover F.B.I. agent meeting with a couple he suspects of high profile art and jewel theft. When his marks show up with Whitney still at his table, he has no choice but to introduce her to them as his girlfriend. Whitney plays along for the duration of the 'date'. Afterwards, Josh is in favor of pulling the civilian Whitney out of his operation as quickly as possible, but instead his superior orders him to keep on using Whitney, as she has a rapport with the wife of the husband and wife criminal couple. It forces Whitney and Josh to keep up the fake relationship facade, eventually even to Whitney's friends and parents... I took a dip into the Hallmark pool myself, but probably won't go as far as @TheJoeGreene has. Primarily was curious about this one due to Rachel Skarsten's presence. Her work as Alice on the CW's Batwoman was honestly by far the best thing about that show. It was interesting to see her in a role that was pretty far away from the very extroverted and crazy turn she had on Batwoman. Her chemistry with co-lead and director Corey Sevier is good. And there is something endearing about the production values in most of these features.
Vampire Humaniste cherche Suicidaire Consentant (2023) Dir. Ariane Louis-Seize Sasha is a young vampire who causes her parents concern when long past the age when other vampires have already made their first kill, she is surviving on the blood her parents provide for her. Having her checked out by a vampire doctor, it turns out that Sasha has an unusual psychological response to a human who is in distress or dying: whilst it should stimulate a feeling of hunger in a regular vampire, in Sasha it yields feelings of compassion. Years later, in adolescence, Sasha is still only drinking the blood provided by her mom and dad, until her mom loses patience and sends her to live with her cousin Denise. Denise is the total opposite of Sasha and finds killing humans for sustenance easy, primarily targeting the kind of douchey men a young woman might encounter during nightlife. Denise's influence does not rub off on her, though a potential answer presents itself when Sasha attends a group meeting for people suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. Fellow teenager Paul confesses that he would gladly die if his death had meaning and would help someone else. Sasha gravitates towards him as a potential solution to her problems, but then finds herself befriending the person who was meant to become her future meal... This was fun, a Quebecois vampire coming of age film. Whilst not at all like Tomas Alfredson's modern vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In, I would say this film would not exist without its Swedish forebear. Tonally the films are too different, but the central friendship between a young female vampire and a young human boy is too similar, even if the kids are older in this film. I loved the repeated gimmick of having Sasha drink bloodbags like they are capri suns, especially in the one scene early one where we see the young Sasha doing it. The two leads are great, especially Sara Montpetit as Sasha. I also loved Steve Laplante as Aurélien, Sasha's sweet, compassionate and patient Vampire father. This is another one of those films that also reminded me that French Canadian is very different from the stuff I am used to from the French. Some bits I could understand completely, others I actually needed the subtitles for and barely recognized as French.
A Carol for Two - 2024 Violette (Ginna Claire Mason) heads to New York to join a touring production of ??? (maybe I missed it, maybe there wasn't one). The day she arrives she finds out the funding was pulled and the show cancelled. She doesn't tell her dad, and her Idaho hometown, that was so proud of her. While in New York she goes to the club/restaurant owned by her aunt Hazel (Charlotte d'Amboise). While there she meets Alex (Jordan Litz) and gets a job working there while rooming with another co-worker Rea (Stephanie Sy). Alex's cousin Brad (Gino Anania) is a deadbeat with no real job and debt all over town, but he decides he likes Violette and gets Alex to feed him info because he doesn't like anything that Violette does. Violette and Alex get assigned to sing a duet on Christmas Eve. They clearly fall for each other while Brad continues to be a moron. Some unnecessary drama happens as characters act in ridiculous ways for about 5 minutes, but eventually it all turns around and the two leads knock it out of the park after Violette gets a pep talk from her dad who shows up once he realizes her touring production was cancelled. Mason and Litz carry this thing. They're both legitimately talented Broadway actors/singers, Mason has played Glinda in Wicked while Linz currently is Fiyero in Wicked, and they've got tremendous chemistry on screen. Both are also good actors. d'Aboise is quite good as well and Sy works very well in the co-worker/roommate role. The only real miss is Anania as Brad as his character comes off like an 80s or 90s sitcom goofball (reminded me of Boner from Growing Pains) and that doesn't fit anything else going on in the film at all, and his screen time could have been used for almost anything else. Other than that, though, it's pretty good. If you're a fan of musicals then this might work for you. It's not fully a musical but it's a good little movie and the leads all have excellent voices.
The Christmas Train - 2017 It's a heck of a cast. Max Powers (Glover) is a movie producer and director. Eleanor Carter (Williams-Paisley) is his "script cleaner" who fixes up the mistakes before films go into production. Tom Langdon (Mulroney) is a former investigative journalist who now writes fluff pieces to get by. Langdon decides to take a train from DC to LA to break up with his girlfriend. Powers and Carter are on the train and it's revealed that Tom and Eleanor have a past working together as war reporters in the field, and that she left him one day without notice. On the train Glover tries to convince them to work together to write a script for him. As the days go by, they each interact with an intriguing cast of characters including the mysterious Agnes (Joan Cusack), former conductor Higgins (Terence Kelly), clairvoyant Misty (Karen Holness), and young eloping couple Steve (Anthony Konechny) and Julie (Kirsten Zien). Shenanigans ensue, including a thief taking small items from everyone and the train getting stuck in the mountains on the last leg of the trip with no way to contact anyone. Our main couple fall for each other again, the thief is found out, and there's a legitimately surprising ending.