Christmas 2023 Wrap-Up | 2023 Christmas Movies

I know you have been looking forward to my 2023 Wrap-Up post. Well, wait no longer. Here are the details!

In 2023, I watched 92 Christmas movies. While this is still more than the 78 movies I watched in 2021, it is a LOT less than the 127 movies I watched last year.

I did banish the terrible UPtv movies from the lineup but I ended up keeping Great American Family. I still don’t feel great watching the channel. It just feels wrong to not include the Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar movies. And if I have the channel for those two, I might as well watch the other 18 movies they aired, right? Thankfully, the MyPillow and Gilmore Girls commercials were absent this year. I’d like to drop the channel next year but that probably won’t happen. Maybe I can find a way to watch it without actually contributing financially to the channel.

Besides GAF, I also covered movies aired on Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime/Video/Freevee, Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock. Sadly, I didn’t even check Discovery to see what they offered. I forgot all about it. Maybe their Christmas offerings will still be around in July and I can revisit them.

Plans for 2024? I like the number of movies I covered this year. I will try my best to keep the number of movies around 92. However, I would like to figure out how to get a better list of all of the Christmas movies airing each year. GAF really likes to change their schedule mid-season so that is unavoidable but I didn’t find out about some of the Amazon movies until the middle of December. Having a full schedule would make it easier to get a good handle on my review schedule.

Is there anything you would like me to add or subtract for next year? Is there a channel that you think I should watch? Do you think I should continue watching Great American Family? Leave me a comment and let me know. I need as much help as I can get!

Silent Night, Fatal Night | 2023 Christmas Movies

Lifetime Movie Network, different from the Lifetime channel itself, is running a series of thriller movies and series they are calling Slay Bells. The new movie in this series is Silent Night, Fatal Night. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

Mallory (Alex Camacho) is the writer of a popular mystery series featuring female detective Gideon. After her most recent release, Mallory has decided to retire Gideon to focus on a new project. However, her literary author, Michael (Matthew Pohlkamp), has already accepted an advance from her publisher for a new Gideon book. In order to get the new book, Michael fakes Mallory’s death and kidnaps her to his mountain house so she can write a new Gideon book.

I’m not going to lie. There are a lot of plot holes in this movie. Mallory’s reported death was extremely fast. Supposedly, Michael “found” the body but there weren’t any police reports or anything since there was no actual body. Also, Michael had told Mallory to go to his mountain house to relax. We see Michael on his phone in his office while Mallory is on the landline at the house. Then immediately Mallory is chloroformed and knocked out. Yet, when she wakes up, we see that Michael is the bad guy. He must travel at lightspeed.

And those are only some of the plot holes. If you can overlook those and you are into super cheesy thrillers, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, it’s just another dumb movie on the list.

Rating: More Carrie, less Michael

Christmas On The Menu | 2020 Christmas Movies

I always thought that chefs and bakers were separate, at least professionally. Do a lot of chefs also do the baking for their restaurant? I thought they hired someone to do that for them.

Josie (Kim Shaw) is a chef in Los Angeles. She heads home for the holidays to help her mother, Shannon (Cynthia Gibb), open a bistro at the family bed & breakfast. Tanner (Clayton James) is a food critic who Josie blames for the failure of her bakery. He decides to spend the holidays at the Shannon’s B&B, which causes Josie a lot of stress.

While Christmas on the Menu isn’t completely confusing, I spent a lot of time wondering why characters did certain things. There is the chef vs baker issue. Josie talks about how one reviewer said her chicken skins were delicious…meaning she’s a chef…but then she talks about how she owned a bakery that failed and she’s in charge of the desserts at her mother’s bistro…means she’s a baker. Granted, I don’t know a whole lot about the world of bakeries and restaurants but I didn’t think that the restaurant’s chef was also doing the baking. That seems like a lot of work for one person.

In addition, there’s the choice of food reviewers. Shannon invites a couple of food reviewers to sample the new menu. One of the people she invites is kosher but then she proceeds to serve a bunch of non-kosher food. They did end up making a special kosher meal for that reviewer. It is just a little weird to invite someone for a particular meal and a particular reason then offer them food they don’t eat. Maybe it was supposed to highlight that the bistro is willing to offer specialized meals for people but literally no one else was there besides the reviewers.

Once again, Lifetime gave us a movie that is simply OK. This movie does have an actual villain, which makes it slightly more interesting. Josie and Tanner do have a bit of banter that makes their relationship a little more believable. You can go ahead and watch Christmas on the Menu. You’ll at least learn not to take whatever food you want out of a B&B’s refrigerator. You should ask permission first.

It Has Been A Long Time....

As we can all see, I failed miserably at the writing part of my goals for 2019. I didn’t cover up that tattoo like I wanted. (I suppose there is still a month left of the year. Maybe it’ll still happen?) And I don’t think I upped my massage time this year. I did unsubscribe from most of my true crime podcasts and I think I’ve watched fewer true crime documentaries…so that was a success.

I don’t mind that I didn’t accomplish everything that I wanted. Things were very busy this year. My daughter is a high school senior, meaning I have spent a lot of time looking at and visiting colleges. (Yes, it is a little scary.) I’ve been trying to spend more time with my daughter before she graduates and leaves the nest.

But, Cassandra, you say, whoever will watch the terrible Christmas movies and tell us about them? Well, dear reader, I will, once again, bear the mantle of Christmas Movie Reviewer. Yes, you read that correctly. Starting on December 1st, I will post my thoughts on a variety of Christmas movies from the likes of Hallmark, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ (are there Christmas movies on Disney+? I haven’t even checked.) ….and wherever else I find movies that seem vaguely interesting.

On top of that, I also bought this weird marshmallow advent calendar so I’ll talk about that too….if anyone is interested.

Are there any Christmas movies that you would like me to talk about? Leave me a comment down below and I’ll add it to the list.

Advent Day #19: Hometown Christmas

As a pagan, I have been fairly comfortable with the amount of Christianity in these Christmas romance movies. While they’ve all revolved around the holiday season, none of them have actually gone into the religion around it. I guess there is a first time for everything.

Hometown Christmas is about Noelle (Beverley Mitchell) moving home to Louisiana from Chicago. She decides to bring back her late mother’s tradition of a live nativity on Christmas. Add in a former boyfriend from high school and that is the entire plot of the movie.

I don’t want to rag on the religious aspect of the movie, even though it is very heavy handed. Unfortunately, that is all there is here. The ‘conflict’ between Noelle and her ex-boyfriend, Nick (Stephen Colletti), feels forced. He’s not mad at her but she is mad at him for no real reason. And her anger doesn’t feel real. It all feels fake, which is terrible for a movie that is desperately trying to push the Christian story. The conflict is fake, the whole purpose of the nativity feels empty, even Noelle’s brother’s relationship doesn’t feel real. It literally feels like this is a group of people reading a script that was just handed to them. It would probably be more believable if they were standing around reading scripts!

Sadly, there isn’t anything good here. The nativity scene ends with Noelle singing “O Holy Night,” but Mitchell is a TERRIBLE singer. Please, stay far away from Hometown. You’ll thank me for saving you two hours.

Advent Day #6: A Star For Christmas

Is this a record? It’s only Day Six of this project and I have already watched the worst “Christmas” movie on my list. It’s so bad that I actually may need to add another rule so that I don’t have to watch anything like this again.

A Star For Christmas is another 2012 movie made by Mar Vista Entertainment. (Actually, I’m not sure if it’s Mar Vista or Marvista or MarVista as I have seen it written all three ways.) Love For Christmas was the first of their movies that I watched. As you will recall, also terrible. I think I may need to ban Mar Vista movies from the project, lest I go insane before Christmas Day.

I’m going to give you a little synopsis but, keep in mind, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Cassie (Briana Evigan) is a baker in a small town. Because her cupcakes are SO AMAZING, she gets hired as the exclusive craft services treat supplier? The star of the movie, Alex Gray (Corey Sevier), stops by Cassie’s cupcake shop and falls in love with her? They start dating but Alex’s ex-girlfriend, Skylar Saint Jean (Brooke Burns), tries to break them up? Then, um, love?

I wish I was lying when I said this movie didn’t make any sense. Cassie is a TERRIBLE businesswoman. In the first ten minutes of the movie, she literally sells a dozen cupcakes for $6.95 then throws in an extra Santa cupcake because she knew the customer would want it. I want to know where she lives that she can afford to sell her cupcakes for that cheap and still make money. Later in the movie, she claims that she makes all of her money for the year at Christmastime. Girl, you have an actual store with rent and electricity and all that. Don’t ask me to believe that you sell so many cupcakes in December that it can pay for the store plus pay Tricia (Karissa Vacker), your best friend/employee, for an entire YEAR. Also, your store is called Cassie’s Cupcakery. Who let you do that?

Then there is this movie thing. Cassie doesn’t own a television, therefore she knows nothing about the outside world! She has never heard of this super famous actor, who is apparently all over the tabloids. Apparently, she doesn’t read newspapers either. But she does use the internet! Once they start dating, she is all over the paparazzi sites reading dirt on him and getting jealous over it. Even if I suspend some disbelief, allowing her to not know who Alex is, she goes batshit crazy throughout the movie. She’ll be making out with them, then suddenly ask him why he’s doing things for her (BECAUSE YOU MAKE OUT WITH HIM), then she’s running away because he can’t possibly like her, then she sleeping with him. It feels like they filmed all of these scenes then put them together out of order. Like the script was written so she didn’t act like a lunatic but the editor or director messed up the order of the scenes so she looks insane.

Two more things that I hate about this movie: 1. Craft Service Dessert Tables aren’t a thing. Especially not on an ‘action Christmas movie.’ Craft services is a table with snacks (like vegetable trays or muffin trays or something) where the cast/crew can grab a quick bite in between scenes. Cupcakes don’t really fall into that category. 2. There is a running joke that the friends (Cassie, Tricia, and Cassie’s brother Zack) don’t know how to pronounce Skylar’s last name. Is it John? Is it French like Ghawn? But no one ASKS her. And I think they actually pronounce her name different ways TO HER FACE. Then, at the end of the movie, there is a voiceover promo for the in-movie-movie and the announcer says her name is Gee-Ann. Get out of here.

I wanted to like this movie. It had a baker (though I was hoping she was Melissa Joan Hart…she’s another one of my Christmas bucket list actors) and…well, it was really just the baker part that made me want to like it. Instead, it almost made me throw my remote at the screen. So, I’m officially changing the rules now. No more Mar Vista (or Marvista or MarVista) movies. Especially if they are from 2012. That was a terrible year for them. I may need to do a little more research before I watch a movie but I think it will save my sanity in the end.

Coming Soon - My Own Advent Calendar

It is that time of year again. Time for the schlocky holiday romance movies to come out. To really kick off the rebirth of my blog, I will be doing my own sort of advent calendar. Every day from December 1 through December 25, I will post a review of a new holiday movie. Here are the rules:

1. The movie must be new for 2018. No previously released movies.

2. The movies will all be from one of three sources: Hallmark Channel, one of the Lifetime network channels (they will mostly be on Lifetime but some may be on the Lifetime Movie Network), or Netflix.

Yes, there are some holiday movies that have already aired. Apparently the holiday season begins in October, according to Hallmark Channel. Unless those movies are re-aired, they will not be reviewed. The cable channel movies will all be movies aired after December 1st. I’m giving Netflix a little more leeway since they have a weird release schedule.

If you have any movie suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. And make sure you call me out if I break any of my rules. (I mean, I made them…I should be able to follow them, right?) Let’s celebrate the holidays the right way!