Mistletoe & Matrimony | 2024 Christmas Movies

For those of you that don’t know, Oprah Winfrey has her own television network called OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). I’ve been wanting to watch their movies for awhile but I didn’t have a way to access it. This year they have released at least one of their Christmas movies - Mistletoe & Matrimony - on HBO Max. Let’s check it out.

Olivia (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) is an amazing wedding planner. When her sister, Rosemary (Asha James), announces not only her engagement to her girlfriend, Gwen (Krista Nazaire), but also that they want to get married on Christmas Eve in two weeks, Olivia tries her best to step up to the plate and plan her sister’s dream wedding. To add to the stress, Gwen has asked her best friend, Isaiah (Etienne Maurice), Olivia’s ex-boyfriend, to be the wedding photographer. Can Olivia give her sister everything she wants?

This is one of those movies where the family dynamic is crazy. The older sister gave up her dreams of traveling to take care of their mother after she had a bad fall. Then she’s trying to fulfill all of her sister’s insane requests, while everyone is else responds with “You know how your sister is.” (Who wants a horse-drawn carriage in Chicago in DECEMBER? You will die of frostbite.) To be honest, having to hang around her ex-boyfriend is the least of Olivia’s problems. Of course, everything resolves itself at the end but it is very stressful and annoying during the rest of the movie.

While I found Rosemary entitled and ungrateful, that doesn’t make the movie unwatchable. Just maybe stay away if you have a bit of a toxic family life. It may keep you from enjoying Mistletoe as much as you should.

Rating: I’m not sure the writer has ever seen winter.

Chimp Crazy (2024)

Like most people in 2020, I watched the Tiger King documentary on Netflix. In 2024, we got another animal-related documentary from Eric Goode called Chimp Crazy. This one was release on HBO and is another wild ride.

Braun’s Barn was an exotic pet store in Missouri started by Connie Braun Casey in the 1960s. In 1972, Connie bought her first chimpanzee. This began her career in breeding chimps for sale as well as renting chimps out for birthday parties and TV/film productions. When her husband’s nose was bitten off by a chimp in 1992, Connie started the nonprofit Missouri Primate Foundation. She continued selling baby chimps, such as Travis who infamously mauled a woman in Connecticut in 2009, until 2016 when an employee reported Connie to PETA. Embroiled in legal battles, Connie gave the Missouri Primate Foundation to Tonia Haddix, a former nurse who came to Connie to buy a chimp, in 2018. Tonia continued to run the facility until PETA won a lawsuit in 2021 to remove the chimps. However, Tonia hid Tonka, one of the foundation’s most famous chimps, from the authorities by telling them that he passed away. It took over a year for Tonka to be found and moved to a sanctuary away from Tonia.

This really was a crazy show. Not only do they cover the absolutely insane things that Connie Casey and Tonia Haddix did, they also cover tragedies that occurred thanks to baby chimps they had sold to random people. OK, I need to take a step back first.

While this show is directed and and produced by Eric Goode, he knew that, thanks to the popularity of Tiger King, Connie would not talk to him. So he hired a former circus clown and animal trainer, Dwayne Cunningham, to pose as a filmmaker to gain access to the facility. And it worked wonderfully for him. Tonia did admit that she wouldn’t have done the documentary if she knew Eric was involved.

Over the years, I had heard about people owning chimpanzees and the almost inevitable attacks that occur as a result of wild animals living in a domestic situation. I did not know that most of these animals came from the same breeder. It amazes me that people…mostly white women…don’t consider their own safety or the safety of people around them when they bring these animals into their house. I, honestly, can’t comprehend what goes through their minds.

If you enjoyed Tiger King, you will probably like this one. It doesn’t have an insane “Did Carol Baskin kill her husband” kind of drama but it does have a lot of “Why did you think this was a good idea” scenes. And, yes, that includes owning chimps, letting chimps sleep in their beds, and just talking to a documentary crew…even if she didn’t know who the true director was. I highly recommend watching Chimp Crazy. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you everything that happens in the four episode series. These are things you need to see with your own eyes.

Rating: A

Christmas 2022 Wrap-Up | 2022 Christmas Movies

It is finally time to officially wrap up the 2022 Christmas Movie season. I watched 127 movies this year. A giant change from the 78 I watched in 2021. Even adding in the 13 movies I watched this past August to finish the 2021 season, that is still 36 more movies for 2022. While I didn’t have a difficult time fitting all of those movies into my schedule (Don’t ask me how I did it. I don’t know.), I am going to need to make some changes for the 2023 Christmas season.

In 2022, I added two new channels to my lineup. Great American Family and UPtv. I am going to drop UPtv from the 2023 lineup completely. I don’t think there was a single good movie on the channel this year. All of their movies were so boring that it was difficult for me to finish watching a lot of them. Also, I’m tired of seeing commercials for Gilmore Girls.

As for Great American Family, my current plans are to drop the channel with the possibility of watching the Candace Cameron Bure movie and the Danica McKellar movie. I firmly disagree with the politics of the channel and I can’t, in good conscience, keep watching it. There were a few good movies but I was also bombarded by commercials from Mike Lindell, aka the My Pillow guy. This tells me that GAF supports the stolen election lie. In addition, Bure has straight up said that they will not be airing any LGBTQ+ movies. She can spin it all she wants but I will not support a channel that is so intolerant.

Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, and Roku Channel will all be staying. If HBO Max survives the merger with Discovery, I will also keep them on my list. I would love to add Discovery+ and Oprah Winfrey Network (which is streamed on Discovery+) to the lineup but, again, we will need to see what 2023 brings for the app before I can make that call.

My goal for 2023 is to get back to the 90ish movies that I watched in 2021. I want to make sure that I have a good selection of movies to talk about but not so many that it makes my mental health spiral out of control. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can leave a comment below or shoot me an email. Thank you for sticking with me through this crazy Christmas season. I have so many plans for the rest of this year and I hope that you will come along with me.

A Hollywood Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

HBO has taken the Christmas movie trope and turned it into it’s very own Christmas movie - A Hollywood Christmas. I’m not sure about making a movie about a movie trope is any good though…

Jessica (Jessika Van) is a successful movie director who specializes in Christmas movies. When the network decides to get rid of their Christmas movie department altogether, they bring in Christopher (Josh Swickard) to look over the finances of the movie Jessica is currently filming. Jessica’s assistant, Reena (Anissa Borrego), relies on good old Christmas movie tropes to help Jessica get through these troubling times.

There isn’t a lot for me to say about A Hollywood Christmas. While the acting is decent, the rest of the movie is…well, expected. We all know what the Christmas movie tropes are. There is no need for us to be walked through them. Yet that is exactly what this movie does. Reena literally explains each and every trope either right before or right after it happens, which kinda ruins the humor of a Christmas movie having Christmas movie tropes during filming. This movie should be funny. It’s not.

To be honest, A Hollywood Christmas isn’t worth sitting through. I kept waiting for something new to happen or for something funny to happen. Then the movie ended. You might as well watch any Christmas movie and get the same result. Except that there are some good Christmas movies out there! Though it’s getting more and more difficult to find them.

Holiday Harmony | 2022 Christmas Movies

With Holiday Harmony, we are now up to six Christmas movies about singers. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, we have had less movies featuring random businesspeople or marketing executives (which are usually the big careers in Christmas movies) than we have had singers. Fa la la la la, I guess.

Gail (Annelise Cepero) is an up-and-coming singer who gets an opportunity to open for the I Heart Radio Christmas Eve concert. As she is driving her trusty VW van across the country, she crashes the van after almost running over an alpaca in rural Oklahoma. Stuck in Harmony Springs for two weeks, she stays with repair shop owner, Van (Brooke Shields), and her son, Jeremy (Jeremy Sumpter). Despite living in the middle of nowhere, the two help Gail figure out where she truly belongs.

I have to admit that Holiday Harmony was a sweet little movie. Sure, some of the accents are a little cringy. And there are a few moments that are a little too schmaltzy. But, as a whole, I thought it was sweet. I think my favorite character out of all them was Rosemary played by Jordyn Curet. Curet was able to give Rosemary the appropriate amount of shyness and uncertainty before belting out that final song. We’ll have to keep an eye out for that kid.

If you are looking for those sugary sweet romance movies that we all expect from channels like Hallmark, this would be a good upgrade for the genre. We don’t get the “Big city woman comes home for Christmas” trope that is way too tired and the romance isn’t shoved down our throats like they have to convince us that these people actually like each other. What we do get is a couple of young people who have emotional baggage and aren’t sure where they fit in the world. And it’s only when everyone comes together that a family is truly created.

A Christmas Mystery | 2022 Christmas Movies

It’s time to dip our toes into something a little more family friendly. HBO Max has given us A Christmas Mystery. But what could be so mysterious about Christmas?

In the town of Pleasant Grove, OR, a boy found a string of sleigh bells on the night of Christmas Eve. The magical sleigh bells helped the town prosper and grow over the next 100 years. Three days before the 100th anniversary of the Ringing Of The Bells, the sleigh bells were stolen from their display at the local museum. The police believe that George Bottoms (Drew Powell) is the culprit. But Violet (Violet McGraw), the sheriff’s daughter, thinks it was someone else. Now Violet has to search for proof that someone else stole the bells.

This was an adorable mystery movie. It had the same vibe as a Nancy Drew book except Violet was helped by her best friend, Kenny Bottoms (Santino Barnard); his brother, Harrison (Leonardo Cecchi); and her sister, Maddie (Lauren Lindsey Donzis). I liked that Violet didn’t guess the villain correctly the first time. Especially since the clues led her to the incorrect choice to begin with. The true villain did need a little legwork to get to the end result but that is OK. It’s better when it’s not super easy to guess the bad guy.

I don’t know how interesting this movie would be for most adults. It is definitely geared toward tweens or young teens. But if you grew up reading Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown, you might find a bit of fun nostalgia here. Either way, it is a cute way to spend an evening.

A Christmas Story Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

I’ve never been a big fan of A Christmas Story. Maybe it’s because the movie takes place in 1940 and I couldn’t relate it with. Maybe it’s because the movie was released in 1983 when I was seven years old and it seemed boring. Or maybe because it’s definitely overplayed. No matter the reason, I’m familiar with the movie but I haven’t watched it in years. I wasn’t sure if that would make the sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas, more or less enjoyable.

It is December 1973 and Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is an adult living in Chicago with his wife and two kids. Despite being almost Christmas, their house hasn’t been decorated. They are waiting for his parents to arrive in order to start the festivities. That is when Ralphie gets the call that his father has passed away. The family heads back to Ralphie’s childhood home in Hammond, Indiana to celebrate Christmas and help his mother with the final plans for his dad.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit. I was very prepared to hate it. Even though both of my parents are still alive, I related to Ralphie in a way that I wasn’t able to as a child. The attempt to make a holiday special for your children is something that most parents can probably understand. But, of course, every attempt has to be thwarted in some way. That is what makes A Christmas Story the most relatable. It’s not picture perfect. It’s messy, just like real life.

I do think that most people would enjoy this movie. Obviously, I don’t think you need to enjoy the original to get satisfaction out of this one. However, you probably need to at least be familiar with it since there are a lot of references and we do see the original friend group. I’m not sure you would get the same enjoyment out of the movie if you aren’t familiar with those things. If you haven’t watched the original and liked the sequel, leave a comment down below. I’d love to know your thoughts on the movie.

Barbarian | Halloween 2022

Since there were so many movies that came out this year, I couldn’t pick the next scary movie to watch. My husband picked Barbarian for me. I didn’t know a lot about the movie so I agreed to watch it.

Tess (Georgina Campbell) has booked an AirBNB in a small neighborhood in Detroit. When she arrives at the house, she finds a man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård) already staying there. After finding out there is nowhere else nearby to stay, they decide to share the house for the night. The next day, after her job interview and while Keith is out of the house, Tess finds a secret door in the basement that leads to an underground maze of tunnels. Two weeks later, sitcom actor AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) has lost his job due to a rape allegation. He comes back to his house in Detroit to get ready to sell it. Even though he finds luggage and toiletries in the house, the property manager insists that no one has rented the house in a few weeks. Shrugging it off, he goes into the basement where he also finds the secret door. Excited that he could list that as more space in the house, he explores further.

Barbarian is a little all over the place. There are three separate storylines that all come together. Tess and Keith’s story takes place two weeks before AJ’s storyline starts and then there’s a man named Frank (Richard Brake) has a story that starts in the 1980s and ends when AJ finds him. It is a little jarring when they switch to another storyline. The transition between the three isn’t done very well so it takes some time before you realize what is going on.

With that said, I did like the horror aspect of the movie. The “monster” isn’t a new idea in horror movies. It has been done before. However, there is a bit of a twist that makes it slightly different. I think that twist is just enough to make Barbarian interesting. Take the time to watch it. Even if you hate it, it will give you pause the next time you book an AirBNB.

We're All Going To The World's Fair | Halloween 2022

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is an indie horror film that I found on HBO Max. I never heard about it before (it looks like it was only released in a small handful of theaters back in April) so I decided to check it out.

Casey (Anna Cobb) is a fairly typical teenager. She spends a lot of time in her room watching YouTube videos. One day, she decides to record a video trying the “World’s Fair Challenge.” The challenge involves chanting “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times then wiping a bloody finger across your computer screen. After watching a video with strobing lights, the participants are supposed to start noticing changes in themselves. A few days later, she gets a message from JLB (Michael J Rogers) stating that she is in trouble. The two talk over Skype, where JLB convinced Casey to continue posting videos to document her deteriorating mental state. However, it seems like JLB thinks this is all a game. But it’s not a game to Casey.

Sadly, I didn’t understand the point of The World’s Fair. There are a lot of long, boring, drawn-out scenes that seem to have nothing to do with the plot. Scenes of Casey walking through the woods to a clearing where she talks about nothing. Or a scene of Casey filming local traffic near an AutoZone? From what I can tell, these are absolutely pointless scenes that just take up time. And while we do get a few scenes of Casey acting strangely, we don’t get anything to really connect them to the World’s Fair Challenge, other than this all happens after she did it.

I would have liked to have seen more videos of Challenge participants with a little more consistency in their “symptoms.” Sure, some people have physical changes while others have mental changes but without having all of the participants having some sort of common theme in their changes, it’s difficult to connect all of this to the Challenge. Or, if we’re going to have all of the participants have different results, give us some sort of mystical being behind the changes. Otherwise, all we seem to have are some mentally ill people making videos. It’s more sad than scary.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend watching We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. It had a great premise with no payoff. I would love to see someone with a bigger budget or more resources remake the movie to add more eerie elements to the film. But in it’s current state, it isn’t worth the 86 minutes it takes to watch it.

Beanie Mania | Movie Review

Since I work from home, I tend to turn on documentaries as background noise. Sometimes they are true crime documentaries but usually I pick something where I’m already familiar with the subject. That way I can easily pick the thread back up if I can’t listen too closely. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with the Beanie Baby craze.

Beanie Mania is the story of Beanie Babies as told by collectors and former Ty employees. The bean-filled animals went from another plushie in the store to an absolute frenzy where adults would travel to neighboring states just to get a particular doll. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds.

Like most people in the 1990s, I owned Beanie Babies. I wouldn’t say I was an avid collector but I did have most of the cats before they went out of fashion. Then, toward the end of the craze, I worked at a store that sold them. I never had to deal with adults calling every day looking for certain dolls or people getting too out of hand in the store. So I was definitely interested in seeing what the documentary had to say about how everything went down.

Sadly for me, the movie didn’t reveal any new information. Since the documentarians were unable to get an interview with Ty Warner himself, they had to rely on stories from the more widely known collectors. The people who started websites or wrote books about the dolls. If you lived through that time and were lucky enough to have access to the internet (the internet was still pretty young at the time), you probably knew these people or read all of this material already. That means the target audience must be young adults, right?

Well, my 19-year old daughter watched part of Beanie Mania with me. I think she got bored of it because she left about 2/3 of the way through the movie. She didn’t even stay long enough to see the only person she would know (Colleen Ballinger, also known as Miranda Sings on YouTube). To be honest, my daughter liked the McMillions documentary about the big McDonald Monopoly game scandal. Beanie Mania just didn’t have an oomph to it.

If you are thinking about watching it, do it for the nostalgia factor. Especially if you are already familiar with Beanie Babies. However, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might find it interesting. Just be prepared to turn it off halfway through if get bored. I really wish the documentarians were able to find more interesting people to talk to. Or at least find some more dirt to talk about. The scandals are what makes people stay til the end.