Category: Written Reviews

I didn’t really like anything about this one. It felt completely joyless. The acting was fine, but I didn’t like or relate to any of the characters. I’m glad that Idris Elba’s character didn’t have some literal Come To Jesus moment, which I thought they were setting up.

It’s also weird to watch Chris Brown play the hero in something, given how he beat the shit out of Rihanna. This film took place before that incident, there appears to be more nuance to it than is commonly mentioned, I don’t know either of them personally or any of the gritty details, and it appears they are on good terms these days…but still, it just doesn’t sit right.

This movie could have taken place at any time of the year. It’s a “but I’m a singer, mama!” movie. It’s a “you owe those bad men how much?” movie. It’s a “you’re AWOL!?” movie. It’s a “you brought who home for dinner? And she’s pregnant!? movie. It’s another one of those films that is draped in Christmas scenery, but doesn’t have that Christmas cheer I’m always looking for. I don’t know. It just didn’t do a thing for me.

GBU Christmas-Adjusted Rating: 3/10
BAD

I was thinking about the way in which we are funneled by The Algorithm into our own isolated realities when I went to look up the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Happiest Season on Hulu. You see, I was under the impression that the proverbial ‘everybody’ had a problem with this movie because it failed to stick the landing when commenting on lesbian relationships.

The thing is, when I think back now, I only saw that in two or three places. And they were mostly just snarky memes, not detailed arguments. And even if they had been detailed arguments, that’s still all they are: arguments. Opinions. The Algorithm has this way of making us thing the tiny personalized micro-zeitgeists in which it keeps us encapsulated are, in fact, the zeitgeist we are all living in. And it’s a great big lie.

It seems unfair to use the word “insipid” against A Very Brady Christmas, because it implies that that wasn’t always going to be the case. As if there’s anything surprising about the fact.

Not to be confused with An All-American Christmas Carol, this is apparently a fondly-remembered made-for-TV Christmas flick starring small-screen legend Henry Winkler.

This is a weird one. Like Ranma 1/2’s ‘Tendo Family Christmas Scramble’, this is a Christmas episode of an anime. Unlike that, (and if anything, more in-line with another Netflix item of this sort, ‘Sabrina’s Christmas Wish’) this is a canonical entry into a straightforward, chronologically-plotted show that is released as a one-time Christmas gift to the fans, and lives forever-after outside the season arrangement of the series it belongs in.

When it came to my attention that there was an 85 minute Christmas film starring Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, Thomas Lennon, Ron Perlman, Ian McShane and Christina Hendricks, and that it had a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew that I had to see it, and quick. In fact, it is how I opened my 2020 Exploratory Christmas Endeavor. It was not, however, the first movie I wrote about for my Exploratory Christmas Endeavor, because despite its being only 85 minutes long, it was so bad that I managed to watch an entire other, better movie before finishing this one.

Well, this is surprising.

Netflix has something new among this year’s deluge of new Christmas movies: a Christmas sitcom!

Well, this is interesting. Did you know there was a Christmas Prince extended universe? Or that within that universe Netflix exists and has Christmas movies? Which are the same ones you can watch in this real universe? Wow.