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Reviews
'Twas the Fight Before Christmas (2021)
What a jerk
I wanted to use stronger language than "jerk", but I don't use that kind of language.
It was obvious the HOA just wanted to keep down the disturbance associated with his Christmas "show", but this guy is a bully and has used the bogus "religious freedom" excuse to try to get his way (or the highway).
This is the kind of "Christian" that gives real Christians a bad name.
That said, the documentary was well done and I didn't down vote it for content - just be aware the content may make decent people furious.
Christmas Cookies (2016)
Tasty treat
This is, of course, "only" a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie - one among many.
But it's also one of the most charming ones I've seen. Jill Wagner is a revelation, and completely engaging as Hannah Harper, a New York executive sent to the town of Cookie Jar to close the sale of Aunt Sally's Christmas Cookie company to her large conglomerate. She must negotiate with the handsome nephew of the original owner, and sparks fly - it's a Hallmark movie, duh.
It will take oodles of cookies, lots of love, and a little bit of last-minute Christmas magic, but everything will be all right in the end.
A very sweet, tasty treat for Christmas 2016.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)
Loved it!
When Alexander's bad day spreads to the rest of his family, they will have to pull together to pull through. How they make it through this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is comedy gold.
I particularly enjoyed Anthony's driving test. Dylan Minnette is very good as the oldest child Anthony, and the way he handles the slapstick in this scene is just perfect.
Steve Carrell is always good, and Jennifer Garner is thoroughly believable as the young mother just trying to keep up.
This was a great family movie, and I laughed through most of it. Thoroughly recommended.
Into the Woods (2014)
A delightful adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical
I was grinning ear to ear from the first "I wish" to the last.
The show is full of beautiful music and great lyrics, and all of the actors actually could sing - unfortunately, not a "given" for musicals these days. I was particularly enchanted by Anna Kendricks' Cinderella and Chris Pine's Prince. Emily Blunt was also very good in the pivotal role of the Baker's Wife, as was Meryl Streep as the Witch (of course).
The musical numbers were beautifully staged and performed, too, from the sparkling "Into the Woods", "Agony", "Giants in the Sky", and "On the Steps of the Palace" right through to the end.
Faithful to the original material (both the historical fairy tales and the stage show), there are dark moments in the woods, as well. Besides the (largely off-screen) killings of a couple key characters, there are the Stepmother's Procrustean solution for fitting the Stepsisters' big feet to the slipper (not gory, but certainly true to the original fairy tale) and the Baker's Wife's indiscretion with Cinderella's Prince - but, come on, it's Chris Pine . . .
Side note: I definitely thought the film deserved its PG rating, and I was surprised to see parents bringing pre-teens (some pre-school!) to the show. When I was a kid, "PG" meant I would see the movie over my parents' dead bodies (!), not "fun for the whole family, let's take the kiddies" :/
All in all, "Into the Woods" is a delightful adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, and I can't wait to add it to my Blu-Ray collection :)
Ghost Asylum (2014)
Hysterically (but unintentionally) funny
Each week, these backwoods bumblers build some wacky device designed to "capture" a ghost.
Their accents so thick it's almost impossible to understand them without subtitles, they exposit some ridiculous theory about how you can catch a ghost with bubble gum and paper clips (or some such) and proceed to mount an "investigation" at some purportedly haunted location (e.g., hospital / asylum).
Sometimes, they claim to have "caught something" and spend the last 15 minutes of the show trying to communicate with whatever it is they "caught" - in one recent episode, they thought the ghost might have been captured in a quartz stone and spent several minutes literally talking to a rock!
I would have given this one star, but the fact it's so ludicrous has a bit of entertainment value in and of itself - it's *almost* worth watching just for the eye-rolling exercise.