Film Critics United

Christmas Next Door (2017) - Hallmark We're not going to say were 'excited' to see Hallmark's Christmas Next Door, per se, but it was that rare holiday Christmas TV movie that had a male lead.  The handful of these movies I've seen that have had male leads tend to be a little more nuanced than the traditional path of these films which normally consists of a Holiday Averse successful heroine, for whatever randomly generated reason, is forced to deal with her Holiday Averse problem, and learn the magic of Christmas, or more accurately get a man.  Or get a better man because her current man is ass, At Christmas.  The male led movies, be it Andy Garcia attempting to provide a final wish for his dying wife in Christmas in Conway or Jason Gedrick helping the homeless with The Christmas Choir or Donte Whitfield trying to fix his relationship with estranged brother in The Christmas Swap... the male leads, for whatever reason, get do a little bit more.  But if that's...

A Shoe Addict's Christmas (2018) - Hallmark Today we have a movie from the proclaimed Queen of the Christmas movie, one Candace Cameron-Bure.  Observation No. 1... While Ms. Bure might very well be Christmas movie royalty, I would personally give the queen crown to Lacey Chabert, followed by the title of princess being handed to Winnie Cooper.  Candace would be like a duchess or something.  No shame in that.  Observation No. 2... How comfortable is Valeri Bure with his wife making out with all these random Canadian actors in all of these random Canadian filmed movies that Candace has made over the years?  I mean Candace has kissed more Canadian dudes than... well... anybody... legally.  Her brother Kirk on the other hand, in that movie Fireproof, wouldn't even kiss his co-star as his wife had to slip in there for the filming of the final kissing scene.  I'm sure The Russian Rocket ( ed. note:  Pavel Bure is the hockey star the Russian Rocket, ...

Christmas With a View (2018) - Netflix So Netflix got into this Christmas movie game in a big way in 2017 with the viral sensation that was A Christmas Prince, and some other movie I didn't watch, then stepped up production significantly with even more Christmas movies in 2018, such as this one, A Christmas With A View.  At some point in this movie one of our characters looks over a balcony and mentions something about what a nice view it was.  I guess that's how they settled with this title.  Note that most of this movie was spent watching people prepare gourmet meals so I'm thinking the powers that be probably should've integrated that in the title as opposed to the one time somebody looked out a window.  Yet another example how Netflix needs to tighten up their game for 2019 if they hope to compete with the big boys in this arena. Our film opens with Vivica A. Fox decorating a gingerbread house.  I wanted to make sure I squeezed Vivica's name in this be...

Once Upon a Christmas Miracle (2018) - Hallmark Heather (Aimee Teegarden) is an angel.  Not a literal one with wings and stuff, but this hard working nursing student is pretty much perfect.  Her parents are perfect, her sister is perfect, her town looks perfect, even though it's Chicago and we know it's the opposite of that, but it sure looks perfect from here.  Heather has been feeling run down lately, and in movie land if you're not feeling perfect you are probably deathly ill.  At least she didn't cough.  If you cough in movie land you are going to die. Heather, sadly enough, needs a liver.  Generally somebody needs to die for one of these to become available, but there's this newfangled thing called a 'living donor' where somebody who is a match can donate half their liver to you, without the other person having the misfortune of actually dying.  This introduces us to Chris (Agent Grant Ward), the recently retired marine, working at a buddy's...