Christmas 2024 Wrap-Up

And now it is time to wrap up the 2024 Christmas season. It felt both hectic and laid back at the same time. I’m not sure how that happened!

This year I watched 74 Christmas movies. That is probably why this season felt more laid back. This was the the lowest number of movies I have watched since I moved from my advent calendar format. 2023 was 92 movies, 2022 was 127, 2021 was 78, and 2020 was 86. I think this is because Hallmark moved some of their new releases to their Hallmark+ streaming service, which I did not subscribe to this year. That cut at least seven movies from the schedule. It was also frustratingly difficult to find new movies this time around. Great American Family continues to change their movies after they have released their schedule. Movies they have announced to air on one date will be replaced by a different movie and air on a different date. It was so frustrating.

Speaking of Great American Family, I am going to cut them from the list of movies next year. While I wanted to continue to watch Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica McKellar, almost all of the movies on the channel are so boring and difficult to sit through. I hope that their 2025 movies don’t turn political but it feels like that is the way the channel is heading.

Since I am going to cut out GAF, I am going to spend more energy trying to find movies on other streaming channels. I didn’t watch anything on Roku, Disney+ (though I did watch one Hulu movie), or Peacock. There was also a locally-made movie released in theaters that I was hoping to go see but I couldn’t make it in time. And, who knows, maybe I will sign up for Hallmark+ this year. We’ll have to wait and see what their streaming-only releases are.

As always, please feel free to let me know if there is a streaming channel that you’d like me to cover. I know there are a million of them out there now. There has to be a channel with some great Christmas movies that I don’t know about.

Nutcrackers | 2024 Christmas Movies

I am not sure how I completely missed a Ben Stiller Christmas movie. Nutcrackers premiered on Hulu on November 29. And somehow I just found out about it. Either the marketing is bad or I really do live under a rock.

Mike Maxwell’s (Stiller) sister and her husband recently passed away. Now he has to travel to her farm to sign the paperwork for her four boys to go to foster care. Unfortunately, the social worker, Gretchen (Linda Cardellini), is having trouble finding a home for the boys because it is so close to Christmas. As Mike tries to find someone to adopt the unruly kids, he finds that one of the boys has rewritten a version of the Nutcracker ballet. In addition, the boys are lovely ballet dancers since their mother was a prima ballerina at one point in her life and owned a dance studio before her death. The family decides to put on the show in order to find a new family. Little does Mike know that they have found their family.

Nutcrackers is one of those movies where you are supposed to dislike characters. Mike is very selfish. To the point that he doesn’t actually seem to mourn his sister’s death. He just wants to get rid of the kids and move on with his life. The kids themselves are, in the beginning, awful. They break into a closed carnival and destroy some of the attractions. They run around unsupervised causing all sorts of havoc. But they are also grieving children that no one pays attention to. All they need is a good adult figure to care about them and listen to them and not simply bark rules at them.

Interestingly, this movie felt a lot like movies from the 80s or 90s. Something like Overboard or Problem Child. I’m not sure if the throwback feeling of Nutcrackers will be a turn off for people but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, myself. There were even a few tears shed at the end.

Rating: Yes, The Nutcracker does need some updating.

Operation Mistletoe | 2024 Christmas Movies

Heading over to Hulu, I thought Operation Mistletoe looked a lot like a Hallmark Christmas movie. It even features Jen Lilley, who has done her fair share of Hallmark (and Great American Family) movies. How does it compare to the OG Christmas movie channel?

Grace (Lilley) is an interior designer who works with her best friend, Olivia (Melanie Leishman), and her brother/Olivia’s husband, Jack (Steve Belford). When her former classmate, Ryan (Nick Bateman), comes home to sell his grandmother’s house, Mayor Sami (Lisa Michelle Cornelius) convinces him to hold the Ribbon and Bows charity ball one more time before he lets the house go. Grace agrees to decorate the house for the ball with a little help from Ryan. Olivia, meanwhile, tries to get Grace and Ryan together by hiding mistletoe all over town for them to kiss under.

Well, this is another bland Christmas movie. There is nothing special about any of the characters or the story or any of the locations they are in. Then there are entire scenes that are completely overpowered by the background music. They might as well not even be talking. Though many of those scenes are just Grace offering to buy people hot chocolate. Girl has an addiction problem.

I would recommend staying away from this one. There are way better movies out there to spend your time on.

Rating: The hot chocolate must be laced with something

Hold Your Breath (2024)

Generally, Hulu’s Halloween releases aren’t great. But I decided to take a look at Hold Your Breath anyway.

Oklahoma, 1933 - Margaret (Sarah Paulson) has been left alone with her children, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), as her husband travels east. However, life is not going well. There hasn’t been rain in months, giant dust storms frequent the area, and Maragret’s mental health is deteriorating. When Margaret begins to believe that a malicious presence in the dust storms is threatening her small family, she does what she must to protect them.

Hold Your Breath is a very slow movie. This works well in psychological thrillers where there is an amazing payoff. Unfortunately, we don’t get that payoff here. Instead of getting a big bad, things just kinda fizzle out at the end. I don’t know about anyone else but I was left wanting more. Preferably for Rose to step up to protect her deaf younger sister. We get a little bit of that but not nearly enough. Though the movie does leave a little bit open for a sequel if Hulu decides one should happen. I hope they don’t.

Rating: C-

Self Reliance (2024)

Written, directed by, and starring Jake Johnson, Self Reliance is a little bit of a mind trip. I went into this movie hoping it wouldn’t be awful. I’m still not sure what to think of it.

Tommy (Johnson) is a man who is stuck in life. When he gets an invitation to participate in a game where he has to avoid being murdered for 30 days, he agrees to play. However, there is a big loophole. The hunters can only attempt to kill him when he is alone.

This is another movie where I kept expecting some sort of twist ending. There are suggestions that maybe Tommy is making this whole thing up for attention or maybe he’s having a mental breakdown. Even at the end, we can’t really be sure that we aren’t inside Tommy’s mind. Does this make it a good movie? Well, yes and no. Yes in that it does keep you watching the movie to see where it’s going to go. But also no because the movie is listed as a Comedy Thriller and it doesn’t really contain either. I literally said “Huh” out loud as the credits rolled. I was hoping that maybe there was a mid-credit or end-credit scene that would help explain what just happened. There isn’t. I honestly don’t know if I can recommend Self Reliance. It’s weird in a way that you kinda have to experience it and hope you haven’t wasted your time.

Rating: C

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!

Reporting For Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

Before diving back into Hallmark and Great American Family and Lifetime, I watched one more movie from Hulu. Reporting For Christmas. Let’s see if it’s a hot story or a dud.

Reporter Mary Romero (Tamara Feldman) wants to make a difference in her community. When she is given a puff piece on a family-owned Christmas toy factory, she tries to tell the story of the family and the Iowa town. Unfortunately, her bosses have a different agenda.

While I understand what they were going for here, I wish there was a little more. The factory is the largest company in this little town but we hear very little from actual townspeople about it. There is a montage of Mary interviewing people but that mostly focuses on the fact that the factory’s head of marketing, Lexi (Maura Kidwell), keeps trying to put the toys in every shot. The only information we really get about the history of the factory and how it has changed the town is from Blake (Matt Trudeau), who is the grandson of the man that created the company. And Blake isn’t exactly telling the right story. It would have been nice to actually hear from the townspeople how the factory changed their lives.

Also, there are a lot of the same “reporter” tropes in the movie. I was easily able to tell what was going to happen and how the movie would end. That isn’t always a bad thing but I shouldn’t be able to tell you “Oh, this is how it’ll end” by the middle of the movie. Change it up a little. People don’t really want cookie cutter movies, even though studios think they do.

Rating: Mistle-groan

A Christmas Frequency | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re going to take a break from Hallmark and Great American Family for a moment and tune into Hulu for A Christmas Frequency. It stars Denise Richards so it can’t be completely awful, right?

Kenzie (Ansley Gordon) is the producer of the Breakfast With Brooke radio show. When the ratings start to fall because Brooke (Denise Richards) is depressed over her failed marriage, Kenzie decides to set Brooke up with blind dates on air. The audience will vote on which date they like best, making him Brooke’s date for the show’s live Christmas show. Things change when Ben (Jonathan Stoddard), a man that Kenzie is interested in dating herself, shows up on the list of potential blind dates. Is there any way to save the show and make everyone happy?

Overall, I thought this was a good movie. There were a few scenes that felt like they dragged but there weren’t many. Ansley Gordon was a delight as Kenzie and Jonathan Stoddard was charming. Sadly, Brooke spent a lot of the movie moping so we didn’t get to see a ton of range from Denise Richards. While this won’t be an annual movie by any means, it was a refreshing break from the usual stuff I watch during the Christmas season.

Rating: Turn the radio up

Crush | Movie Review

Hulu released a teen romcom last year called Crush. To me, that title sounds more like a horror movie than a romcom. Well, let’s see how horrific it is.

Paige (Rowan Blanchard) is a high school student dreaming of attending an elite art school. She needs to submit a piece of art based on the prompt “your happiest moment.” All of the moments she can think of revolve around her crush, Gabby Campos (Isabella Ferreira). When the school principal accuses Paige of being KingPun, a local artist leaving pun-themed graffiti on the walls, she agrees to join the track team as an extracurricular and find out the true identity of KingPun. Gabby’s sister, AJ (Auli’i Cravalho), is assigned to train Paige, who is painfully unathletic. As she spends more time with AJ, Paige finds that she no longer likes Gabby. She now has a crush on AJ. But this only complicates things. Oh, and she still has to figure out who is behind KingPun!

Crush was a pretty cute movie. It seemed a little weird that a majority of the characters were gay but maybe that is just the group of kids Paige hangs around. Or maybe it’s because the whole movie revolves around Paige’s emotions. The writers didn’t want her crushing on a straight girl because there would be no resolution there so they had to put almost everyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

I think my biggest issue with Crush is that there isn’t a lot of substance in the plot. Paige didn’t dig too deeply to try to figure out the identity of KingPun. Either we should have seen Paige trying harder to figure out her submission artwork or they should have spent more time trying to figure out KingPun. As it is, we’re mostly treated to track team antics. Which, by the way, everyone seems to be on the track team too. This is a very small world she lives in.

Since there were a few cute moments in the movie, I’m rating it a 3 out of 5. It could have been a lot worse but it could have been a whole lot better.

How I Caught My Killer | Series Review

The title of Hulu’s How I Caught My Killer intrigued me. A lot. Like, what could that possibly mean? I knew it was a docu-series, meaning these were true stories. Were these stories where victims called their friends or loved ones and told them who killed them before they died? Sadly, no.

How I Caught My Killer is a nine episode series that tells nine separate stories of murder. In most of the stories, the killers were caught thanks to some clues from the victim’s cell phone GPS or diary entries or a conversation they had with someone in the days before their death.

Hulu has a lot of true crime documentaries on their roster. It seems like every time I try to watch one of them, I find myself disappointed. In this case, the series wants you to believe that the victims made a conscious decision to identify their attacker. Alas, that is not the case. While the victim’s cell phone or personal conversations have a hand in catching their killer, it’s nothing that the victim did on purpose. In a lot of these cases, it was the cell phone’s GPS that told the police where the victim’s body was or what their movements were before their death. Unless you are actively turning off your GPS, I wouldn’t count that information as you “finding” your killer.

Not only are the victims not “catching” their killer, in some of the stories, they had nothing to do with the arrest at all. In one of the stories, an ex-boyfriend who was already in jail told the police that the killer confessed to him and that is how she was apprehended. Now, I’ll admit that some of the stories had some awful police work but just as many of the stories relied totally on the police doing their job. Looking into a victim’s text history or Facebook chat history is basic policework. And none of those messages were “Hey, I’m going to murder you tomorrow.”

The only positive thing I can say about this series is that I was not familiar with a lot of the stories. I stopped consuming a lot of true crime media during the pandemic because it was doing bad things to my mental health. But it is still pretty rare for a docu-series like this to be filled with stories that I haven’t heard about. I just wish the series was a little more honest about it’s content.