Confessions Of A Christmas Letter | 2024 Christmas Movies

Confessions Of A Christmas Letter is a bit of a departure from the usual Hallmark Christmas romance offerings. This one doesn’t actually focus on the romance! Instead, it hides in the background.

Settie (Angela Kinsey), the matriarch of the Rose family, loses the Best Christmas Letter contest every year. This year she has decided to hire Juan (Alec Santos), a Puerto Rican novelist, to write the letter for her. In order to make that happen, he’ll have to move in with the family so he can get to know them. At the same time, Settie’s daughter, Lily (Lillian Doucet-Roche), has come home from Italy for Christmas. Evil neighbor Sue (Colleen Wheeler), who happens to win the letter contest every year, assumes that Juan and Lily are engaged, meaning they now have to pretend to be engaged at every event in town.

I’ll admit that this is a weird premise for a movie. You would think that family Christmas newsletters would be a thing of the past. But the people who are into Christmas newsletters are INTO Christmas newsletters. The only part of this that seems really odd is the fact that they turned this into a contest. It’s begging for people to lie about what they (or their family) has done over the past year. The goal of the Christmas letter is simply to update people you don’t speak with frequently. Sending these letters to your friends and neighbors that we see you hanging out with is weird. It probably would have been better if this was a short story contest instead of a letter contest.

While a lot of people will complain that the acting in Confessions is over the top, it’s supposed to be over the top. The plot verges on ridiculous and it’s only the acting that keeps it from being Too Much. Crazy plot plus cheesy acting is a bit of a win in my book.

I do like that the romance isn’t front and center here. Since the plot revolves around Settie and the family dynamic, that is where the focus belongs. I would have loved to have seen a little more of the family and a little less of Settie vs Sue. Mostly because I think the central conflict of the movie is Settie going overboard to try to win the contest, not Sue being the Grinch of town. If they wanted to make Settie vs Sue the main conflict, they should have shown more of that. What is Sue’s motivation to be so mean to everyone? She already wins the contest every year. There isn’t a reason for her to try to tear the family apart. We shouldn’t have characters be mean just to be mean. There should be something more behind them.

So, should you watch Confessions? Sure. You may not love it but there are definitely worse movies out there this year.

Rating: “Once upon a time” is a terrible way to begin a letter

The Cases Of Mystery Lane: Death Is Listening (2024)

I can’t get away from Hallmark. As I was scrolling through Peacock to find something interesting to watch, I came across The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death is Listening. I liked Aimee Garcia in Lucifer so I turned it on. Immediately, I was met with a Hallmark Media production logo. Goddammit.

Birdie (Garcia) and Alden Case (Paul Campbell) are a married couple who love true crime. They have just completed classes in order to become private investigators. When their favorite true crime writer/podcaster, Laurel St. James (Samantha Ferris), gets murdered, officer Ted Newton (Matt Hamilton) brings them in to help find the culprit.

Yeah, this is definitely a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel movie. Unfortunately, when I turned it on, I didn’t realize that this is the second movie in a series. As a result, I was a little confused about some things. Birdie is a lawyer that works for her mom…but she doesn’t seem to actually do any lawyering work. I have no idea what Alden does for a job. We only see him work on robots, which I think they called a hobby? They also seem to talk about relationship problems a lot but we never actually see any relationship problems. It makes no sense.

As for the story…it’s fine. Like a lot of Hallmark movies, things magically fall into place and there are no consequences when they accuse the wrong person of the murder. But it’s kitschy and cute, right? Eh, sorta. The acting is fine but the characters are weird. Alden finds a mouse in the house, which freaks him out A LOT. But instead of letting the exterminator that Birdie hired in to take care of the problem, he elects to try to build robots to take care of it? Birdie goes into her lawyer office and talks to her lawyer mother but then spends all of her time learning how to pick locks? I really don’t understand what world these two live in.

I think I am going to try to track down the first movie in the series to see if it explains anything. It was only released last year so I’m not sure how successful I will be in finding it. Sometimes Hallmark likes to hide their older movies. Until then, I can only recommend this movie as a decent turn-your-brain-off movie. Garcia is cute as Birdie and Campbell is…well…slightly annoying as Alden. But together they somehow manage to get the job done.

Rating: C

Paging Mr. Darcy (2024)

The first movie in Hallmark Channel’s Jane Austen series is titled Paging Mr. Darcy. Yes, most of these movies are “Pride and Prejudice” themed. Hopefully this won’t be too bad.

Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is a literary professor who specializes in Jane Austen. She is the keynote speaker at this year’s Jane Austen League of America conference. While at the conference, she plans on visiting her sister, Mia (Lillian Doucet-Roche), and meet Dr. Victoria Jennings (Carolyn Scott), a member of the hiring committee at Princeton. After her plane lands, she meets Sam (Will Kemp) dressed as Mr. Darcy. Much to Eloise’s dismay, he is to be her guest liaison for the entire conference. She would rather not partake in the romanticism of Austen’s works. But she does need to impress Dr. Jennings…

I will admit that I’m not a big Jane Austen fan. It’s possible that most of these movies will go right over my head. With that noted, Paging Mr. Darcy is rather boring. Eloise is against all of the costumes and the ball and the general party vibe of the conference. But from what I saw, all of that barely took place. Sure, Sam was dressed as Mr. Darcy most of the time but that was his job. And even then, he took some pictures with some attendees in the beginning then he was busy crafting bonnets with Dr. Jennings, who happens to be his aunt, or hanging out with Eloise - teaching her how to dance, making desserts for the ball, or just randomly chatting. If I was an attendee, I might think this was the worst conference ever. Especially with a keynote speaker that didn’t even want to be there!

Since this is the first movie in the Loveuary series, I’m really hoping the other movies will be better. Hallmark has this weird tendency to put the worst movies in the beginning of the season and the really good ones either smack dab in the middle or at the very end. Cross your fingers the rest of these are better.

Rating: C-

#Xmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

When I saw that there was going to be a movie this year called #Xmas, I took a deep breath and hoped it wasn’t going to be as stupid as it sounded. It probably could have been titled better.

Jen (Clare Bowen) owns her own interior design business with her sister, Ali (Anna Van Hooft). However, business is not going well. The women enter a contest run by mega-influencers, Zoe (Lillian Doucet-Roche) and Charlie (Sebastian Stewart). They pretend that Jen is married to her friend, Max (Brant Daugherty), and they have a baby, who is really Ali’s baby. When they become finalists and the influencers come to visit them, everything begins to fall apart.

I was slightly relieved as soon as I realized that this movie wasn’t going to be about an app or a software developer. However, that relief was negated as soon as Jen opened her mouth. This seems to be another instance of women writers that hate women. Jen is constantly negative about everything. I get that she’s supposed to lack self-confidence and is constantly doubting herself but why would she open an interior design business? This is the personality of someone who needs a boss. Not someone who can run their own successful business. It’s probably the reason their business was failing in the first place and I don’t understand why anyone would continue to be around her.

In addition to the self-misery, Jen is also mean to a lot of the people around her. While her mother, Liz (Karen Kruper), is fairly self-centered, Jen is absolutely vile to her every chance she gets. Then there is Max. Jen expects him to put his career aside just to live near his friend. She doesn’t want to be romantic with him, she just doesn’t want him to leave her. I think I might hate Jen and, no, she isn’t worth the redemption arc.

There isn’t a lot to make this movie worth watching. I enjoyed Van Hooft’s performance and Max tries his hardest to be the best character in the movie. In the end, I can’t recommend watching #Xmas. Maybe if the big redemption cycle started earlier in the movie so we could see her actually apologizing to everyone. (No, there are no apologies to be had.) But as it stands, it’s a movie about an awful woman being awful to everyone around her. I see enough of that in real life.