It's A Wonderful Knife | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re ending this year with a slasher film. It’s A Wonderful Knife on Shudder. Will I regret this?

One year after a masked slasher kills a bunch of people on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) wishes on the aurora borealis that she was never born. She is immediately transported to another dimension where she was, in fact, never born. In this dimension, Winnie did not kill the slasher so the slasher kept on murdering townspeople. Now it is up to Winnie to right these wrongs.

This was an interesting take on It’s A Wonderful Life. Pretty much everyone in Winnie’s life who survived the original “Angel Attacks” were awful people. The only exceptions were her aunt Gale (Katharine Isabelle), Gale’s girlfriend Karen (Cassandra Naud), and Winnie’s classmate Bernie (Jess McLeod) who everyone called “weirdo.” So it’s a little understandable why Winnie wouldn’t want to be around them any more. However, wishing that SHE didn’t exist was a little much and it seemed a little out of character for Winnie. If they had made her more despondent that she had killed someone, maybe it would make some sense. As it is, it sounded a little more “emo teen” than George Bailey.

There were some good points. Justin Long is good at playing a terrible person, even though his fake teeth were a little distracting. Widdop and McLeod did a decent job at bringing their characters to life. They did a lot of dumb things that teenagers would probably do in that situation. (Instead of other slasher movies where they act like teenagers would make all of the right moves to keep from getting murdered.) In the end, it wasn’t the best slasher movie but it was a pretty good Christmas slasher homage.

Rating: Stay for the end credit song. It’s a banger.

The Picture of Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

We are a little over halfway through November and The Picture Of Christmas is the 34th Christmas movie I have watched this season. At this point last year, I had only watched 17 movies. No wonder this year feels insane!

Ember (Chelsea Hobbs) is a graphic designer in New York. She returns to Willow Hill in order to sell her late grandmother’s Christmas tree farm. While there, she finds her old storybook illustrations, rekindling her love for illustrating instead of just graphic design.

There seem to be a lot of inherited farms in this year’s Christmas movies. I would love to know why the ladies are always so surprised to find out their grandparents hired people to help them on the farm. Since these grandparents all die, I assume they are older people. Do they really think one or two elderly people can run an entire farm by themselves? Even if a grandparent didn’t tell me about their hired help, I would assume there was some sort of hired help. Especially if the farm is an actual working farm with an actual working business like a Christmas tree farm!

The Picture Of Christmas is a fine movie. There is nothing particularly stand-out about it. Ember’s drawing are nice. Emily (Mila Jones), the daughter of love-interest Brandon (Giles Panton), is adorable. She’s probably the best part of the entire movie. Otherwise, everything is bland. Ember tells Brandon that she’s selling the farm and potential buys come to see the place. Brandon wants to buy the farm but doesn’t want to tell Ember. It’s the same stupid conflict that could be solved if everyone was just honest with each other.

If you have nothing else to watch on television, The Picture Of Christmas would be all right to turn on and tune out to. If you are looking for something engaging, you won’t find it here. I would say to watch it for Emily and ignore all of the adults. They are boring anyway.

Cranberry Christmas | 2020 Christmas Movies

When I first read the title Cranberry Christmas, I thought it was going to be yet another movie about a baker. But this time she loves cranberry cookies! Well, I was wrong.

Dawn (Nikki DeLoach) and Gabe (Benjamin Ayres) own a lifestyle company called Cranberry Lane. While the company has always been run as a “husband and wife” company, their marriage is on the rocks. In order to keep their business and the town’s Christmas festival running, Dawn lies on national television about the state of their marriage. But when TV host Pamela (Marci T. House) brings the show to their small Maine town, the couple is forced to cancel their time apart and focus on their relationship.

I admit that I usually go into these movies expecting them to be boring at best. Cranberry Christmas, however, was a cute movie about problems that marriages can have when a couple is trying to grow a business. Dawn kept secrets from Gabe and Gabe kept secrets from Dawn, all in an attempt to not hurt the other or let the other have their dream. At the same time, Pamela is trying to pressure Dawn (even though she claims she’s not pressuring her) into making a major decision extremely quickly. These are things that felt real. More real than any holiday movie I have watched.

Should you watch it? Yes. Yes, you should. It probably won’t be an annual favorite but it is a 2020 Hallmark movie favorite. What more could we ask for this year?