Christmas Movie Reviews # 5

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – A NANNY FOR CHRISTMAS

Smart young career woman Ally (Emmanuelle Vaugier) needs a new job and she thinks she has found one when Samantha (Cynthia Gibb) a busy Beverly Hills advertising executive/mom offers her a position.
Danny Donner (Dean Cain) is the tough-guy owner of a chocolate company who wants a major ad campaign immediately and Samantha’s firm is given the job and it turned out that what she needed was a Nanny to her two well-mannered kids to give her the time to work on it.
Although Ally was disappointed she takes the job and finds that she needs to put some fun in the children’s lives while working on some ideas for the campaign herself in her spare time.
The events that follow lead to the Christmas that changes everyone's worlds forever.
Sierra McCormick and Jared Gilmore play the children, Sarah Thompson plays Ally’s friend and Richard Ruccolo provides the romantic interest in this delightful comedy of little white lies, holiday wishes, and a young woman who finds love in the most unexpected place by becoming A Nanny for Christmas.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE TOWN CHRISTMAS FORGOT

The Benson family are on their way through a blizzard to a luxury resort for the Christmas holiday when their car breaks down.
They are rescued by mechanic Coleman Burkins (Phillip Jarrett) and taken to Nowhere, a sleepy Colorado town, which was more like a Ghost Town since the local mine closed.
Due to weather and the required spare part for the car being in another town the family end up being stuck in the dying town until the weather clears.
Initially they are appalled, no shopping Mall, no latte’s, cell service or cable TV but they do find things to do.
Banker Charles Benson's son Nolan (Azer Greco) befriends the grumpy old toy shop owner and persistently charms him into becoming the Santa in the Christmas pageant which his mother Annie (Lauren Holly) helped to organize with local diner owner Samantha (Stephanie Belding).
Daughter Trish (Torri Webster) discovered a young band and joins in to perform a set at the pageant.
In between everything else Charles got stuck in the mine with the mechanic, whom he befriended, and in the end Charles turns out to be the towns Christmas benefactor.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS

In this uplifting Christmas offering Gideon (Harry Dean Stanton) is a Christmas angel, sent by Santa, to help wife and mother Ginny Grainger (Mary Steenburgen).
He must show her the true meaning of Christmas, not just presents and materialistic things, but the people she cares most about in the world, however it is no easy task as Ginny is a cynic, and furthermore she hates Christmas.
And in addition She and her family, husband Jack (Gary Basaraba) and two kids, Cal (Robbie Magwood) and Abbie (Elisabeth Harnois) have fallen on hard times, making it even harder for her to believe in anything that can't be seen.
But Gideon thinks he can find a way to make Ginny believe again with help from Abbie, and a trip to the North Pole to see the big man himself.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – CHRISTMAS SPIRIT 2011

A cynical youth, Riley (Aaron Jaeger), whose mother Sarah (Maureen McCormick) is about to lose her job right before the holidays, is visited by a magical Christmas spirit called Hope (Vanessa Angel).
She gives him a task to help another family regain their Christmas spirit and by so doing get it back for himself.
Alexandra Paul, Jason Brooks and Mariah Buzolin star as the family in crisis but Janet Carroll steals the show as Grandmother Betty.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – CHRISTMAS MAIL

In this holiday romantic comedy, Kristi North (Ashley Scott) works two months out of the year and always doing the same job, hand writing responses to the children who wrote Santa letters.
Santa Claus, her father, sends her to a different post office depot every year and in the film she’s in Del Vista, California.
However the Del Vista branch is managed by the egotistical Richard Fuller (Lochlyn Munro) who has no Christmas spirit whatsoever and won’t even allow any Christmas adornments.
He also believes Kristi to be a corporate spy so he enlists the unwilling assistance of mail carrier Matt Sanders (A.J. Buckley) as assistant manager, and primarily his job was to spy on Kristi and report back to Fuller.
As a single man taking care of an eight year old child, his orphaned niece Emily (Piper Mackenzie Harris), Matt takes the job solely because he needs the money.
Unbeknown to him Emily writes to Santa about her Christmas wish which is to see her Uncle Matt happy.
Santa's response, via Kristi, who is unaware that Emily's Uncle Matt is the same as the Matt she works with, leads to Emily trying to act as matchmaker which is where the fun begins.
However as a result of reluctantly trying to do his spying job Matt gets closer and closer to Kristi and in the process, Matt and Kristi start to fall for each other.
But all does not go smoothly and Fuller reveals all to Kristi out about Matt's clandestine work which almost drives them apart but everything comes good in the end of a very enjoyable seasonal romantic comedy.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE

The enchanting village of Gladbury lies deep in the heart of the English countryside, however it is no ordinary English village for legend has it that every 25 years an angel visits the village candle maker and touches a single candle in the Chandlers.
Furthermore whoever lights the blessed candle receives a miracle on Christmas Eve.
At the dawn of the electric age however in 1890, the centuries old legend might have run its course and come to an end.
Especially when David Richmond (Hans Matheson), a progressive young minister, arrives in Gladbury.
The villagers discover that he preaches about a different kind of miracles, and his formula consists of good deeds and acts of kindness.
However David's quest to modernize Gladbury sets him at odds with the old world Chandler Edward Haddington (Sylvester McCoy) but he finds an unlikely ally in the lovely sceptic, Emily Barstow (Samantha Barks).
David also tries to replace the candles in the church with electric light but things go amiss while the Chandlers wife Bea Haddington (Lesley Manville) is unable to find the Christmas Candle.
So when the candle maker fights to preserve the legacy of the Christmas Candle and David Richmond tries to embrace modernization, the miraculous and human collide in the most astonishing Christmas the village of Gladbury have ever witnessed.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS

A fun Christmas movie in which Luther Krank (Tim Allen) is fed up with the commerciality of Christmas anyway but when only daughter Blair (Julie Gonzalo) leaves and goes to another country he decides to skip the holiday and go on a vacation cruise with his wife Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) instead.
All they have to do then is resist the pressure from their neighbours to participate in the house decorating contest and survive all the other seasonal nonsense.
But when their daughter calls on Christmas Eve and says she’s coming home for Christmas, it causes an uproar in the Krank household as the family scrambles to create a perfect Christmas from scratch in 12 hours will hilarious effect when the pesky neighbours suddenly become their allies.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

A sweet and amusing holiday romantic comedy in which busy single mom Jennifer Cullen (Brooke Burns) finds that the overwhelming tasks that go along with Christmas have taken the joy out of the holidays for her.
Trying to find the must have gift for her son Brian (Connor Christopher Levins) and trying to provide a traditional Christmas Dinner for her almost fiancé Richard Windom (Woody Jeffreys) and his parents was driving her berserk.
Then her Uncle Ralph (Henry Winkler) arrives at her home with the young, handsome Morgan Derby (Warren Christie).
Morgan's love of Christmas, and life, is contagious and as Jennifer glumly navigates through the holidays, she soon realizes that what she has needed most of all in her life was suddenly right under her nose.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – A GOLDEN CHRISTMAS

Jessica (Andrea Roth) is a federal lawyer who returns to her parent's home for Christmas with her son and hopes to surprise her parents by announcing she is going to buy the house.
However she soon discovers that the house where she grew up had already been sold to a stranger, Michael (Nicholas Brendon).
Jessica looked for ways to buy it back again by hook or by crook but he is as determined to keep the house as she is to steal it from under him.
The answer to the conundrum lies in a long ago summer vacation when a boy called “Han” and a girl called “Leah” spent the summer together and even buried a time capsule in the woods.
Alley Mills and Bruce Davison star as Jessica’s parents in the lovely Christmas story with a happy ending.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – CALL ME CLAUS

Lucy Cullins Whoopi Goldberg, a very successful, but an even crankier producer at a home shopping network, who hires an actor named Nick (Nigel Hawthorne) to play Santa Claus on the network she gets a lot more than she bargained for because Nick really is Santa Claus.
The twist in the tale of this fun Christmas offering is that he faces mandatory retirement after 200 years in the red suit and he must find his replacement by Christmas Eve and Lucy is his number one choice.
She is however very reluctant and if he fails to convince her then the world will face dire consequences.
A really fun film and inspired casting to have a black woman Santa Claus.