Christmas Movie Reviews # 2

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - A CAROL CHRISTMAS (2003)

An enjoyable and humorous reworking of Charles Dickens well spun yarn of redemption.
This retelling of the story is of an ego-maniacal driven and heartless TV talk show host, Carol Cartman (Tori Spelling) who is determined to destroy the festive fun in the studio.
However on Christmas Eve she is visited by the ghost of her Aunt Marla (Dinah Manoff).
The story unfolds much as you might expect from then on but the late Gary Coleman is a quite excellent Ghost of Christmas Past and William Shatner steals the show as the Ghost of Christmas Present.
The use of the Star Trek tele-porter effect when he "moved" Carol from one location to another was quite inspired.
There are also very credible performances from Nina Siemaszko as ill-used assistant Roberta and Michael Landes as Roberta’s love interest Jimmy.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS EVE

This is a “Groundhog Day” style Christmas Tale.
Calvin Carter (Steven Weber), is a very successful business executive who has it all, but he blatantly neglects all those closest to him.
But on Christmas Eve, all that changes when a large sign on his office building falls on him. He awakes in what appears to be a hospital bed, attended to by Angie (Molly Shannon), a nurse who soon lets him know he has 12 days (12 chances) to get his act together and achieve the "perfect" Christmas Eve.
As each subsequent Christmas Eve slips by he succeeds only in making perfect Christmas Eve’s for himself.
Finally he is told in no uncertain terms that if he doesn’t figure out what he is doing wrong there will be dire consequences.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - THE CHRISTMAS GIFT

George Billings (John Denver) is a successful New York City architect and his boss Thomas A. Renfield (Edward Winter) sends him on a business trip to look over a small Colorado town that he has earmarked for a possible real estate development.
One year earlier, at Christmastime, George’s beloved wife had died so what was meant to be a joyous season is a time of painful memories for George and his seven year old daughter Alexandra (Gennie James).
George decided he would take his daughter with him on the trip for a Christmas vacation and when he and Alex arrived in the small charming hamlet of Georgetown, they discovered that it was a place where everyone, from the very oldest inhabitant to the very youngest child, believed in Santa Clause.
It doesn’t take long for George and Alex to fall under the towns spell, or for George to do the same with the hamlets lovely postmistress Susan McMillan (Jane Kaczmarek).
Unfortunately, on the strength of George's glowing reports, his boss Renfield proceeds with plans to transform the town into a modern ski resort.
Soon everyone, Susan and Alex included turns against George, despite the fact he had already lost his job for protesting against it.
However he wins the inhabitants of the mystical Colorado town back with his daring plan to thwart Renfield and preserve Georgetown's old fashioned charm.
And just to make the whole tale even more special Santa pitches in with a few "miracles" of his own.
But Pat Corley as Taxi Driver Bud Sawyer and the ever reliable Mary Wickes as Henrietta are the icing on the very festive Christmas cake

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - MR ST NICK

King Nicholas XX (Charles Durning) is ready to retire and pass the throne to his son, Nick St Nicholas (Kelsey Grammer).
But Nick fails to turn up for the rehearsal of his coronation, preferring instead his lavish Florida seaside lifestyle and his sexy girlfriend.
So he falls out with his father and is enticed into portraying a fictitious Santa Claus for a charity (Mr.SaintNick.com) by Heidi (Elaine Hendrix) and Hector (Luis Garcia).
His only remaining link to the North Pole is his butler Jasper (Brian Bedford) who then hires a new cook, Lorena (Ana Ortiz) who will prove to be Nick’s salvation.
While Nick begins to fall in love with Heidi and asks her to marry him, he is totally unaware that Hector and Heidi are transferring the charity's money into their own account in the Cayman Islands and leaving Nick as the patsy.
Only a miracle can save Christmas with the help of Queen Carlotta (Katherine Helmond).

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - ANNIE CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN

Santa's daughter Annie (Maria Thayer) is to take her first trip away from the North Pole during the Christmas season.
The hope is she will find adventure and love in sunny California.
Annie arrives in Los Angeles and becomes friends with Lucy (Vivica A. Fox), the owner of the Candy Cane Inn and her daughter, Mia (Nay Nay Kirby).
Very soon she finds a job at Wonderland Toys and is persuaded to direct the Christmas Pageant at Mia’s School.
Wonderland Toy’s is an old fashioned Toy store selling old-fashioned toys in a digital world and the owner, Ted (Sam Page) is struggling to stay in business
All the while this is going on a plot hatched at the North Pole to have her fall in love with an unemployed actor named Dean so that her Uncle Chester can take over the business.
But Annie soon realizes that she wants Ted's business to thrive because she has feelings for this Christmas traditionalist.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - THE GATHERING (1977 TV MOVIE)

When Adam Thornton (Ed Asner) learns that he only has a little time left to live, he decides that he wants to make peace with his family.
However that was easier said than done, due mainly to his stubborn nature, but walking out on his wife didn’t help nor did his estrangement with his youngest son after an argument.
When his doctor told him it wasn’t good for him to travel it wss suggested that he invite the whole family to spend Christmas with him.
Although most of them accept, Adam's attempts at reconciliation prove far from easy.

The Gathering is a wonderful holiday treat with just the right balance of sentimentality and saccharin.
Ed Asner is perfect as the estranged husband and father but Maureen Stapleton is simply brilliant as Kate and is by far the best of a very strong cast.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - DEAR SECRET SANTA

Beverly Hills workaholic banker Jennifer (Tatyana Ali) returns home to her small Northern California home town just before Christmas, after her dad, Ted (Bill Cobbs), falls badly while putting up Christmas decorations.
Much to her father’s annoyance Jenny moves into her old room to look after him.
And while she’s at home, Jenny begins getting romantic Christmas cards from an unknown admirer, who turns out to be her old next door neighbour and the unrealized love of her life, Jack (Lamorne Morris).
Which would be perfect but for one small problem, Jack died in a car accident three years earlier.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - HOLIDAY INN

On Christmas Eve Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby), prepares to give his last performance as part of a musical act popular in the New York City nightlife scene with Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire), and Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale).
After the show he and Lila were going to marry and then retire to a farm in Connecticut.
At the last minute, Lila decides she is not ready to stop performing, and says that she has fallen in love with Ted and plans to stay on as Ted's dancing partner.
Heartbroken Jim follows through with his plan and bids the act and the treacherous pair goodbye.
On Christmas Eve one year later, Jim is back in New York City, farm life had proven more difficult than he expected and he was planning to turn his farm into an entertainment venue instead which will only be open on holidays called "Holiday Inn.
Ted and his agent Danny Reed (Walter Abel) scoff at the plan, but wish him luck.

While ordering flowers for Lila, at the airport flower shop, Danny is accosted by employee Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds) who recognizes him as a talent agent.
Danny brushes her off and refers her to Holiday Inn and gives her a pass to Ted's club.
That night, Linda sits with Jim and they spin each other a yarn, he says he owns a big club and she says she’s a celebrity friend of Ted Hanover.

Linda arrives at Holiday Inn on Christmas morning where she meets Jim and they both realised they had been fooling each other the previous evening.
They take to one another immediately as Jim is preparing the place for New Year's Eve, and he sings her his new song, "White Christmas".
In New York City Meanwhile, Ted learns that Lila is leaving him for a Texas millionaire.
He gets completely drunk and turns up at Holiday Inn to talk with Jim but ends up performing a dazzling dance with Linda to great acclaim.
Over the following months Jim and Linda fall in love while Ted tries desperately to find his mystery dance partner.
Jim is determined that he should not and as one Holiday follows another he becomes more and more desperate in his attempt to keep Linda for himself that he ends up pushing her into Ted’s grasp.

He spent a lonely Thanksgiving with the Inn closed and was deeply depressed, Linda was in California with Ted making a movie based on Holiday Inn, unable to eat the turkey dinner prepared for him by his housekeeper Mamie (Louise Beavers).
In the end Mamie begged him to travel to Hollywood to win Linda back by telling her exactly how he felt about her.

Jim arrived at the studio on Christmas Eve, there was just one scene left to film and then Ted was taking Linda away to get married.
Jim confronted Ted in his dressing room the pair of them locked him in a closet but he managed to turn the tables on them and locked Ted and Danny in.

The final scene for the movie featured a faithful recreation of Holiday Inn,
Jim is shown around the set by the director when he is left alone Jim leaves his pipe on the set's piano and hides nearby.
When Linda entered the room she sat at the piano, and performed "White Christmas" but when she noticed the pipe on the piano, her voice faltered, and when she continued Jim's voice joined hers.
Jim appeared from his hiding place and Linda ran to him.
As the director yelled "cut" Ted and Danny burst onto the set, but they are too late.

On New Year's Eve, at Holiday Inn, Ted is reunited with Lila and they reprise their partnership.
While Jim and Linda prepare to stay together and run the Inn.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - THE CHRISTMAS SHOES

This is the perfect merging of two separate stories that together make a third.
In the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews (Kimberly Williams), discovers she is dying of a heart condition.
When it becomes obvious there is no hope, her son Nathan (Max Morrow) decides he wants to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies.
In the second one, ambitious workaholic lawyer Robert Layton (Rob Lowe) and his wife Kate (Maria del Mar) find they are slowly drifting apart.
During the run up to Christmas she baulks at his constant nagging for her to return to work and she decides to take over from Maggie with the school choir and declines a job in Robert's firm.
Things come to a head when Robert's mother passes away, which forces him to reconsider things and his and Nathan's paths cross on Christmas Eve as Robert tries to get a present for his daughter and Nathan finds he doesn’t have enough money for his mum’s Christmas shoes.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - HITCHED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Rob Marino (Joey Lawrence) is a commitment-phobe so when he breaks up with his girlfriend before Thanksgiving, his big Italian family criticized him for his inability to keep a relationship through the holidays.
Desperate to prove them all wrong and also to fulfil his grandmother's (Paula Shaw) dying wish to see him happy and in love, Rob goes online and finds Julie (Emily Hampshire).
She is another single New Yorker who's meddling Jewish mom (Marilu Henner), who constantly tries to entangle her with unsuitable partners, drove her to seek a temporary boyfriend.
Rob and Julie agree to pose as a couple through the holidays to get their families off their backs.
Things get complicated when Rob's Catholic clan and Julie's Jewish family get too involved.
But as Christmas comes ever closer they discover their fake feelings may be a little too real.

Christmas Movie Reviews # 1

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE HOLIDAY

If you like schmaltzy sentimentality wrapped up in Christmas paper and packaged as a romantic comedy then this is the film for you.
It is the tale of two beautiful women, Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) and Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet),
In London, Iris Simpkins writes a wedding column in a newspaper and nurtures an unrequited love for her colleague Jasper Bloom (Rufus Sewell) who is about to marry another woman.
Across the globe in Los Angeles, Amanda realizes the man that she lives with has been unfaithful with the receptionist.
So both of them find themselves at the end of failed relationships just before Christmas.
Amanda decides to take a two week vacation and surfs the internet where she meets Iris, online through a house exchange website, and Amanda impulsively swaps her L.A. mansion for Iris' country cottage in Surrey for the holidays.
Shortly after arriving at their destinations, both women find the last thing either of them wants or expects: a new romance. Amanda is charmed by Iris' handsome brother Graham (Jude Law) and Iris, with inspiration provided by legendary screenwriter Arthur (Eli Wallach), mends her heart when she meets film score composer Miles (Jack Black).

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – LOVE ACTUALLY

The huge cast of stars (too many to mention by name) pull out all the stops in this uplifting Christmas movie, as characters fall in love, fall out of love, make you laugh, make you cry and thoroughly entertain you.
The multi-threaded storytelling is very engaging and added to it's a lighthearted holiday flavour makes it a film you can watch again and again.
The final scene at Heathrow airport ends the film on a very uplifting note.
I see Love Actually as a new holiday classic.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – HOLIDAY AFFAIR

Holiday Affair is the Christmas season romance of a young widow and a sales clerk who (thanks to her) is unemployed.
I love this film and I am so pleased to have unearthed a previously undiscovered gem.
Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh and Wendall Corey are the stars of this delightful little film which all centres around an expensive train set.
Janet Leigh has been left a single mum after her husband was killed in the war and works as a comparison shopper when she inadvertently gets Robert Mitchum fired from his job in a department store.
The story then unfolds in a classic love triangle after Mitchum is invited to Christmas dinner with her son and fiancé (Corey).
The eventual outcome is rather predictable but is managed in such an engaging way that you don't feel disappointed.
This movie is a charming example of an un-clichéd Hollywood holiday movie.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – DEAR SANTA

This is certainly cheesy and clichéd yet still manages to be a wonderful movie.
Amy Acker steals your heart as the poor little rich girl, told to do something useful with her life or lose her financial support.
Which she does after inadvertently intercepting a child’s letter to Santa, which brings her into contact with Haydn-Jones and his daughter Olivia Gowan.
She instantly falls in love with him and forms a close bond with her.
Gina Holden is excellent as the evil queen character as Haydn-Jones girlfriend who is at her worst/best when Acker comes between the two of them.
It’s a really sweet Christmas film not to be taken too seriously but is to be enjoyed.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – FOUR CHRISTMASES

Brad (Vince Vaughan) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) have been together for three years. They are very much in love and spend their time having fun and doing a great deal of things together purely for their own enjoyment.
They have no intention to marry or have children and do their level best not to spend the holidays with their families.
However on Christmas morning, they are on their way to Fiji, having told their two sets of divorced parents that they're off to do charity work.
But the flight is cancelled and when, they are caught on camera by a TV news crew at the airport, they are forced to visit each of their four idiosyncratic parents.
As the day wears on, Brad and Kate remember their respective childhoods and each learns more about the other.
As a result Kate realizes that her life isn’t as good as it could be and finds she wants more from the relationship.
But does she want more than Brad can give?

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE FAMILY MAN

The Family man is a Capraesque style film in many ways, in which Jack Campbell (Nicholas Cage) a happy singleton with a successful career as a talented businessman wakes up to find his world turned upside down.
He has everything he could ever want, or so he thinks, then one day he wakes up in a completely different life where he is married to his old college girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni).
He now lives in Jersey with Kate and their two kids and instead of being president of an Investment House he sells tires for his father in law Big Ed.
He desperately wants his life back, he wants his Ferrari back and not the temperamental family mini-van.
But after a bad start, day by day he become's more comfortable in his new life and starts to see what he's been missing and it turns out in the best Frank Capra tradition that money isn’t everything and love wins out.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – POLAR EXPRESS

The Polar Express is a beautifully animated magical Christmas feast based on the book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg.
On Christmas Eve, a boy who has come to doubt Christmas boards a magical train that is headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus's home.
The story that unfolds is an engaging adventure aboard the magical train which for the boy and his new friends becomes a journey of self-discovery which shows them that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - TRADING CHRISTMAS

In South Woodbourne, Washington, widowed second grade schoolteacher Emily Spengler (Faith Ford) loves the Christmas holidays, as do all the townsfolk, and she is looking forward to spending the holiday with her grown up daughter, Heather (Emma Lahana), as usual.
However Heather, who is at college in Boston, drops the bombshell a week before Christmas that she is going to be too busy studying to make the long trip home to South Woodbourne.
Emily calls her BFF Faith Kerrigan (Gabrielle Miller) for sympathy after receiving the news and asked her to come for Christmas instead but she is further disappointed when divorcee Faith tells her she is too snowed under with work to make the trip from San Francisco.
Also in Boston lives an unsentimental novelist and English professor Charles Johnson (Tom Cavanagh), who his desperate to break his writer's block and complete his latest novel which is overdue at the publishers.
In addition to his lack of sentimentality, along with his workaholic brother Ray (Gil Bellows), he doesn’t celebrate the season.
Ray, as the owner of his own lucrative business, is trying to decide if he should accept a very generous offer for his company, and advises Charles to do a house swap for the holiday suggesting that a change of scene might well help to unblock him.
And that is where the story really starts.
Emily and Charles meet on a house swapping website and agree to do a one week swap in the lead up to Christmas.
However all does not go well, Emily goes to Boston to surprise daughter Heather only to find on her arrival she has secretly flown to Phoenix with her boyfriend Jason.
Charles meanwhile finds the over decorated house and the over friendly townsfolk of South Woodbourne somewhat over sweet.
But that turns out to be the least of his problems when Emily's best friend, divorced corporate events planner Faith Kerrigan, arrives in South Woodbourne from San Francisco intent on keeping Emily company during the holidays in Heather's absence.
Due to circumstances beyond her control Faith is forced to stay at the house with Charles for the better part of the week.
At the same time Emily sets off the silent burglar alarm in Charles apartment and brother Ray and the Police walk in on her.
Obviously in true Christmas tradition romance blooms in both Boston and South Woodbourne.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - MY SANTA

Jen Robbins (Samaire Armstrong) is a single mother, who works as a writer of human interest stories for the small town newspaper in the town where she has lived all her life.
Alas she lost her Christmas spirit after her ex-husband Paul walked out on her six years earlier when her son Eric (Gabe O'Mara) was only one year old, and to add insult onto injury it was also Christmas Eve.
Despite her disdain for Christmas however, after a number of encounters, Jen finds herself falling under the spell of Chris (Matthew Lawrence), who is the shopping mall Santa Claus.
Eric truly believes that Chris really is Santa although in truth he is Kris Kringle Jr the heir apparent to the magic of Christmas.
He has set his cap at Jen to be the next Mrs. Claus, so that he can continue the Christmas spirit into the next generation.
But that woman has to truly believe in the spirit of Christmas for Chris to be able to take over the reins from his father.
So a cynic like Jen may not be easily persuaded.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER - IT'S CHRISTMAS, CAROL!

An enjoyable and credible reworking of Charles Dickens well spun yarn of redemption.
This retelling of the story is of a driven and heartless publishing executive, Carol Huffman (Emmanuelle Vaugie) who on Christmas Eve is visited by the ghost of her former boss, Eve (Carrie Fisher).
Eve tells Carol that she has lost sight of the things that are truly important in life and that she is there to show her the errors of her ways.
There is a wonderful reference to Dickens in the tale when Eve explains why the normal trinity of ghosts were all represented by her alone, as she was in sole charge of Carol's journey through her past, present and future, and that was because “Chuck” was prone to over embellishments.
It’s very much worth a watch if only for Carrie Fishers mischievous Eve.