3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Relay

2024, David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) -- download

I created this draft mid-November before I was taken by the all-consuming Xmas Advent Calendar.

Generic thriller and exactly what I wanted, what I needed. And by the director of Hell or High Water!

The elevator pitch is this: a fixer works to assist whistle blowers in their actions against the corporations they wish to unmask. He works in the shadows communicating primarily by "Tri-State Relay Service", a network that allows the deaf, or other such disabled, to communicate to non-disabled by way of operators and TDDs (telecommunication device for the deaf) -- basically he types, the operators speak, and vice versa. The network itself is completely protected, legally, as they keep no records of any calls whatsoever.

Sarah Grant (Lily James, Cinderella) was a researcher working for a bio-firm that made a genetically modified wheat strain which had horrible long term side effects, and the company covered it up. She really didn't want to whistle-blow, she just wanted out, but the company ruined her life anyway. She tried going to a law firm known for dealing with such matters, but they admit they cannot do anything, and put her on to Ash (Riz Ahmed, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), the fixer. His job will be to facilitate the return of the evidence, but require a payment from the corporation as payment for his services and as a statement of their agreement.

We meet Ash, a rightfully paranoid loner with secure lock-ups for his work and a solitary life, but for his AA meetings. The job should be easy enough, but Sarah has noticed the surveillance team watching her apartment, which Ash confirms pretty quickly. As the hand-over becomes more and more complicated by the duplicitous surveillance team led by Dawson (Sam Worthington, Avatar), Ash breaks his own rules by getting to know Sarah better. He's been living a lonely life for so long, when she attempts to get past his rules & barriers with her vulnerability, he gives in.

The fun in the movie is the spy-craft and pacing. This was an excellently paced movie with only a few players, giving us ample time to flip back & forth between the complicated actions and the emotional weight behind it all. Ash is a careful creature of enforced habits and once he starts breaking down his own barriers, I could not help but wonder if he was being played.

Beyond lie spoilers! Read with caution thrown to the wind!

He was being played, but not exactly how I was thinking it was.  I had thought Sarah an independent player, perhaps an actual whistle-blower who was manipulated into working with Ash to unmask his operations. But no, she was actually the leader of a counter-fixer-team hired by a previously completed job's corporate overlords. They seek to dismantle Ash's operations and recover their evidence of malfeasance. It takes great effort from Ash to recover from this and turn the tables on them, and return to his lonely but needed work.

This movie looked good, felt good, colour scheme and lighting with the grim colourations and set design chosen often for spy-thrillers. It was tightly paced and characterization was minimal and only the essential used.

T&K Go Loopty Loo: One More Shot

2025, Nicholas Clifford (feature debut) -- download

PreAmble
[Toasty] I went into this movie expecting a comedy. Most Loopties, when not focused on the scifi elements are comedies. This has all the possible situations of a comedy, but comes off... sad? Unlike the seminal Groundhog Day (are we ever going to write-up that one?) where Phil is a laughable asshole, Minnie comes off as a proper asshole.

[Kent] I had no idea what this was. You just told me it would be our next loopty-loo so I just put it on an watched it.

[Toasty] So, plot. Minnie (Emily Browning, American Gods) is a doctor (anaesthesiologist) in Australia. Yes, this is a proper Australian movie, not Australia pretending to be America, nor structuring it in a way that American film audiences can absorb. Its just an Australian movie for Australian audiences. Anywayz, its New Year's Eve 1999 and Minnie has lots of regrets, which are lit on fire when she finds here ex-fiancée is having a baby with his new wife, in her hospital, with her assigned. She's upset, its only been six months! Except its been over two years, and her sleeping with her buddy Joe the night before the wedding is what ended things. And in that mindset, she ends up at friend Rodney's NYE party, hearing that Joe (Sean Keenan, The Power of the Dog) has come back from the US. Everyone assumes they will end up in bed. 

Minnie is not the best person.

The night begins with Max (Contessa Treffone, Totally Completely Fine) & Flick (Anna McGahan, Picnic at Hanging Rock), her friends with whom she is crashing, giving her a 10 year old bottle of tequila, something from the friend-trip to Mexico that Minnie missed.

[Kent] Basically Minnie's life's a mess. She's 36 and it seems like everything is falling apart (along with her ex having a baby, Max and Flick telling her she needs to move out... I mean are we to assume that Minnie has been living at their place for two years? And she's a doctor! Surely she can afford her own place?). When she hears Joe, her former best friend who she slept with, has returned from America, she basically fixates on him setting her life straight by them finally getting together.

How did the Loop Begin?
[Toasty] Minnie has a swig from the tequila bottle on the doorstep of Rodney's (Ashley Zuckerman, Succession) palatial house. We see a quick trigger between uncapping the fancy bottle's devil cap, and a dropping of a lipstick tube, in that she picks it up but its almost instantly back on the ground. Technically this only triggers the loop, but the first loop is after a LOT of subsequent drama.

Said drama includes Minnie spinning out, slamming headlong into a glass door & breaking her nose, almost kissing Joe in the bathroom, having a tête-à-tête with a cocaine snorting doctor friend of Rodney's, discovering Joe has appeared with his new American girlfriend whom he is proposing to, and Rodney faking out the Y2K effect on his ex-tech-specialist wife Pia (Pallavi Sharda, Black Site), who is more than a wee bit paranoid about Y2K. Minnie runs through all this drama and finally responds by swigging on the tequila.

Bink, back at the doorstep where she uncapped it.

[Kent] Normally in a time loop there's a whole precursor sequence of things that happen, of unique little events for the audience to pick up on that will be the benchmarks of the the loop. It's curious that the precursor sequence spans only about 12 seconds with no unique signifiers, and that all the "moments' happen in the first full loop.

[Toasty] I swore the convenience store was going to end up being part of said "precursor sequence" and was weirded out it was just part of the later plot, i.e. she finally gets the ice.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Toasty] The usual. Unsure of herself. Major sense of déjà vu. But more than in most of these movies, she is convinced that she is not back doing it again, but that people are fucking with her. Until its too apparent she is living it again.

[Kent] She even starts thinking the time loop was caused by Y2K, so she goes to Pia to see if she can help figure out what's happening, but it turns out Pia's post-partum depression has manifested into extreme paranoia about Y2K. She's crying for help, but Minnie's too self-involved and Joe-focussed to hear it.

[Toasty] Oh yeah, I think that was supposed to be a much larger part of the movie, especially considering when it was taking place.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Toasty] The bottle. Its a magic bottle of tequila - Orina del Diablo (the devil's piss) with a magical overly large glowy tequila worm inside. And while someone cannot be brought into the loop, there is more than one bottle of tequila.

[Kent] Well, it's got a worm, so it's mezcal... as Max keeps reminding us... but yes, someone can be brought in the loop as we learn in the penultimate time loop where Minnie shares one of her last two shots and they both blip in time and reset to the same point when Minnie arrived at the door and took the first swig. It's actually a neat little effect I'm not sure I've seen before. 

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Toasty] Technically the loop lasts until the next swig of tequila. We don't test death as a reset. The movie is dark (emotionally) but its not that dark.

[Kent] As we see a time loop can last 12 seconds or forever. The big secret is that Rodney has his own bottle of time travel tequila, which he got a decade earlier and has used to improve his life, but he's had one last shot which he hasn't taken because he doesn't want to blip his daughter out of existence.  Rodney, frankly, used his bottle to try and improve his life (by going through his medical finals five times over and erasing probably some sizeable mistakes). Frankly it seems like Rodney put some calculated thought into his uses, while Minnie has just impulsively been slamming the bottle down in one night. Rodney's kind of appalled by Minnie's narrow-mindedness.  Of course, Minnie raises ethical issues for what Rodney's done, but it's not very thoroughly explored.

But I have to wonder... if, say, Minnie died, and then someone drank a swig from her bottle, would it reset to her arriving at that door? if Minnie drank Rodney's last drink, would everything go back 10 years in time?  I'm really curious how this works.

[Toasty] Well, considering how it is named, I think the movie is implying some Faustian-test connection and death would be death. But given we have two characters here with their own loops, and a new one once C-Word swigs the last drop, there is no "sacred timeline" -- they all happen in parallel? Yes, this is a fun one to wrap your head around and postulate but I thoroughly believe we are thinking more about than the screenwriters did.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Toasty] About a dozen loops? As many loops as it takes to empty a bottle of tequila. This is one of the rare movies where we see all the loops, consequences and actions taken. There are no "speed run" loops just for the fun of it; all are designed specifically for Minnie to get what she wants -- get Joe in front of her again, in the bathroom, so she can finish that kiss.

Does it change her personality? For most of the loops she ... gets worse? Minnie is quite the asshole, only concerned with what she wants, almost to the very end. But slowly, she does notice the things happening to the others, for example Pia and Rodney not dealing well with becoming parents, having to exchange their partying lifestyles for responsibility. She sympathizes, sets Rodney straight but then... let's fuck Joe over again with his new fiancée.

[Kent] Toasty is very unkind to Minnie who is having a bit of a crisis and the power of the time loop is only exacerbating it, not helping. At times she's very close to having a psychotic break, methinks. I agree it's very hard to watch as Minnie lashes out because she's put her hopes in correcting all of her life's disappointments on the promise of reconnecting with Joe, only to eventually learn that he's just a back-up plan, that they're kind of toxic for each other. 

I think the negative effect a loop has on someone is exemplified when Rodney joins her in a loop and he proceeds to get wasted and acting on his worst behaviour when he's supposed to be fixing his relationship. There's sort of an intoxicating effect to drinking the tequila (imagine that) that maybe lowers inhibitions and doesn't leave them thinking clearly. 

[Toasty] You know that I believe that no matter what shit is going on in your life, or inside your own head, your decisions are your decisions, bad or good. And maybe its the alcohol to blame, but Minnie consistently makes bad and worse choices.  Her "crisis" has been going on for over two years and that doesn't excuse from how she behaves. Maybe I could be more sympathetic, but she's a fictional character, in my timeline, so I am less forgiving.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Toasty] Well..... one other person becomes aware, not while in the loops, but once he spies the bottle. He also has a bottle, one with a single swig left, one he is afraid to take because he uncapped his bottle all the way back in Mexico, ten long years ago. If he resets, then he takes back his child. But, he was never aware of things while in Minnie's loop.

[Kent] So a number of times Minnie tries to convince people that something hinky is going on, and it's only when Rodney becomes aware of her bottle that she seems less alone. But the power of the loop is a highly tempting draw and Rodney wants that power. And then there's Seiwart/C-Word, the gross OBGYN that Minnie keeps meeting in the bathroom each loop... in the final loop, he wants to believe.....

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Toasty] Yes, they are real, but Minnie is never beyond manipulating, using and abusing her friends in real life, outside the loop, so while doing her utmost to have the evening turn out in her favour, she doesn't care who she hurts. So, in a lot of ways, no they do not matter. But that's not time loop metaphysics, that's just an asshole.

[Kent] I get the sense you don't like Minnie very much Toasty, lol.

I think going back to the question of her personality and how it changes in the loop, it goes hand in hand with how she treats other people. She knows the power of the loop means there are no consequences so she doesn't even consider other people, only her own narrow-minded interest. 

It's really not until like, the second-last loop that she starts to see that there's more going on around her, that her friends have been or are in trouble and that maybe the solution to her own problems don't lay in Joe, and that maybe she's in a position to help others rather than herself.

[Toasty] Again, I compare her to Phil. Phil was an utter jerk, but positioned as the comical element, we chuckled at him and his time-looped misfortune. Phil spends a loooooong time becoming a better person, so I guess I should soften on Minnie considering it took her less than a dozen drunken loops to sober up to her situation?

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Toasty] To be honest, the most surprising thing is when she fucks the cocaine doctor dude -- like, just outright walks up to him in the bathroom and let's him use her. Except, she's using him. During this loop she has realized she's not getting Joe, that all of her friends have lives they like, partners they love, except her. So, why not have a baby with a random stranger in the bathroom. Minnie's the worst.

[Kent] So uncharitable, Toasty. But I would agree that was shocking, and gross. But I think the most memorable was when she's trying to recreate the "walk into glass door" moment, only to bask through the glass door and cut herself up so horribly.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Toasty] Grim-ly. It was packaged as a comedy, but it most definitely is not. Sure, many comedies focus around assholes being assholes but nothing presented in the movie is ever funny. Its not meant to be. Its meant to show that even the worst can grow, once they care more for others than themselves. And surprisingly, she does. There is no science to the movie, and only a bit of unexplained magic, but as an example of the genre itself, its not really interested in the genre, only using it as ... character exploration?

[Kent] Since I had no expectations, not knowing what I was stepping into, I wasn't expecting "comedy" like Toasty was, but I think when a time loop is not outright sci-fi (or horror) the default expectation is comedy, and this is a time loop drama, for sure with a little bit of dark humor. 

It's certainly not even near the top of my favourite loopties, but conceptually I was very intrigued by how it all worked, and I certainly was excited to learn that there was a second bottle... and then the ending had me asking even more questions (does each loop create a parallel reality, or does eating the worm just blip you out of existence?). 

It's always hard to watch a character who is self-destructing like Minnie is, and she goes through, like, nine loops just making things worse and worse and worse with no self-awareness, until she finally gets that, maybe, it's not all about her.

Toast and Kent sometimes disagree....

So This Is Christmas (2025) - part 2

A Carpenter Christmas Romance - 2024, d. Jake Helgrin - Crave
Bach et Bottine (aka Bach and Broccoli) - 1986, d. André Melançon - Crave
Jingle Bell Heist - 2025, d. Michael Fimognari - Netflix

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Carpenter Christmas Romance

The Draw: It was on.

HERstory: Andrea Metcalf is a famous romantacy writer who returns to her perfect small town (which is no longer perfect because it burned down after a lightning strike five years ago sparked a rampant blaze) to work on the latest in her successful novel series. Shortly after arriving she runs into Seth, her old high school crush who she has complicated feelings about. Does he run the local hotel with his dad, maybe? I dunno, I missed the first 45 minutes. 

She used to tutor him and when she became his place of solace when his mother was dying of cancer, they started going out, but he would only take her out in public in neighbouring towns. He was the popular funny sports guy and she...was not...and he had a reputation he felt he needed to uphold.

Him and Andie have a lovely afternoon together one day, and his neighbours kids show up at the diner and start jumping up and down on him, and then his pretty neighbour turns up and says to them to leave Seth and Andie alone, as it looks like they're on a date. He downplays it and says they're just old friend and Andie goes cold on him. Old patterns are returning, and she was hoping to have outgrown those insecure feelings.

Their romance rekindles when Seth accidentally electrocutes himself in his garage. Andie comes running when she hears his scream and then sees that he works with electricity to do wood burning. He's working on burning a tree into a door to honour his mom, among other projects for the city.

They have a walk, connect again. They make out, and they do it (off screen). Afterwards they do the talking-under-the-covers thing, and Seth tells Andie he like-likes her.

In the years since Seth joined the military, served his duty, and returned home to do carpentry work. He's been a central figure in the community, giving free room and board to neighbours struggling after the fire and feeding the town and doing free repair work.

When Seth's attractive tenant calls and then comes knocking at 2am (bootie call), Andie is upset again, and storms out. He chases after her and explains that he served with her husband in the military and that he was KIA. He's been helping them out since the fire and things got...complicated.

But the big reveal is it turns out the fire that took out the city started because of an old generator with faulty wiring that maybe blew up when the lighting strike hit? I dunno. He's feeling guilty, and not the town hero that Andrea accuses him of being.

But everyone knows it wasn't Seth's fault and Andie and attractive tenant decide to host the town in a celebration of lights that doubles as a celebration of Seth and his efforts as the community's backbone. Andrea says she's going to stay, at least for a while...she can write anywhere, and she gives him the final page to her new book where the male protagonist of her series no longer dies.

The Formulae:Most of the formulaic beats of a holiday romance are around Christmas-themed things. I guess because the town burned down, it's not very Christmassy? Andie is regularly outside without a coat on so I'm guessing they're in like SoCal somewhere? I dunno.

Unformulae: Well, they do it, like two hot adults should. It's not just a chaste kiss, these hotties are gettin' it on.

True Calling? Not a single Carpenters song, never mind a Christmas one, is played.

The Rewind: Post-sex one night, Andie and Seth are each eating out of their own pint of ice cream. I mean, shouldn't they be sharing a pint, sexily feeding each other?

The Regulars: Hot brunette Sarah Pieterse (Pretty Little Liars) stars in her first Hallmarkie, as does hot hunk Mitchell Slaggert...and also Kaley McCormack who plays Andie's sister...as well as attractive neighbour actor Asia King. It's an all-new-to-holiday-romance ensemble... except that it was written by Sarah Drew, star of Hallmark's Mistletoe Murders.

How does it Hallmark? It's sexier than 98% of most Hallmarkies (this one's a Lifetime production...I didn't look into Lifetime's slate at all this year, but this one's from last year anyway, so whatevs) because the leads are soooo hot and you just want to see hot people do what hot people should do. But outside of that it's not very festive and kind of dull and the melodrama is revealed in big clunky ways. The big "festival of Seth" I really wanted to roll my eyes at, but it did get me a little bit in the feels (the actual tree burned into door, though, was not as impressive as I'd hoped).

How does it movie? Lord, no.

How Does It Snow? Not a flake.

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The third of producer Rock Demers' "Tales for All" series is a real stunner, mainly because Bach etc Bottine  (aka Bach and Broccoli in the Anglo world) doesn't seem at all like the kind of kids movie a kid would want to watch. Where La guerre des toques/The Dog Who Stopped the War was like a kids version of  a war movie, and The Peanut Butter Solution was the young viewer's version of a horror movie, Bach et Bottine is just a dramatic film, and a pretty melancholy one at that.

The film opens with a dream sequence. Fannie is in the desolate tundra, wind howling, snow blowing furiously. Along the way comes, I believe, her parents on horseback in pristine white snowsuits. The horse drops to its knees and falls over, and just when you think Fannie's mom's going to pull out a lightsabre and cut it open to put Fannie inside to keep her warm, she lifts up the saddle and there's a keyboard in the side of the horse. She starts playing and Fannie's father starts dancing and spinning her around. In voiceover, Fannie tells us her parents died in a car crash a few years earlier.  Fannie wakes up. She does not seem all that bothered by this very strange dream, and she finds comfort in her pet hamster.

Fannie's been living with her Grandmother, but Grandma is now sick and needs to go in a home, so she needs Fannie's uncle Jean-Claude (Jonathan in the subtitles and dub) to take care of her. It's coming on Christmastime and Jean-Claude has just started a year's sabbatical from work and he's focused on practising his organ playing for a big audition he has coming up. If he is selected he could go on tour in Europe for six months. Taking care of a 12-year-old is not part of his plan. So immediately upon Fannie's arrival he tells her it's only temporary and he consults with a fostering system.

Jean-Claude is a loner. He doesn't talk much to his neighbours and the cute woman at work who is clearly sweet on him doesn't get much out of him in return besides awkward smiles. Fannie both helps to bring him out of his shell and tests his patience, especially with her penchant for rescuing strays. Fannie and the neighbour boy set up a hostel for the plentiful strays in the storage shed outside Jean-Claude's apartment.

Fannie wants nothing more than to be loved by Jean-Claude, to be his family, but Jean-Claude is too self-involved to see past his own narrow band of interest, and he keeps putting up walls between himself and this traumatized child. It's quite painful viewing. It's clear Jean-Claude has the desire to love and be loved, but he has no ability to make it happen. 

The ending of this film is a real mind fuck. Much like the previous two "Tales for All", Bach et Broccoli is borderline traumatizing. Fannie leaves for a school trip, leaving Jean-Claude home alone, where he learns he dearly misses the poor girl. When she returns from the trip, though, they learn she has been placed with a new family and has one week left with Jean-Claude. Feckless as he is, he doesn't intervene. Fannie runs away from his audition performance, gives all her strays away to neighbourhood kids, and runs to her new foster family days earlier. Jean-Claude turns up at their door. He doesn't know what to say to the girl. In English he tells her he loves her. In French he says "Bonne chance" which is not the same thing.

There's an abrupt cut to the next scene which Fannie narrates, which finds Jean-Claude, his crush from work, and Fannie altogether in his apartment, redecorating, painting the walls stark white, making it a home. But the allusions to the opening, the narration, the blanket of white, does this tell us that it's only a dream? That there's no happy ending for Jean-Claude and Fannie?  I have to wonder if the subtitles/dub try to change the melancholy ending for the English market to a happy one... because even with these edits, it's evident that this is not the happy ending we're hoping for. The credits roll over Fannie holding her pet skunk Bottine/Broccoli and smiling for the camera. I'm trying to recall a film that I saw in the past few years that ends with the credits rolling over a character trying to hold a smile, and how unsettling that is (was it Pearl?).

Bach et Bottine is a complex emotional drama that happens to feature a child as one of the lead roles, but it doesn't make it a children's film. I can't imagine being a 10-year-old in the 1980's and finding this that interesting (not compared to the previous two films in the series), yet as an adult I found this guttingly emotional. The film has exceptional compassion for Fannie, and her yearning for Jean-Claude's acceptance, and it does an exceptional job of exemplifying Jean-Claude's fecklessness while still giving us enough understanding of him to root for him to come around (we don't ever dislike Jean-Claude so much as we are constantly frustrated by the slow pace of his evolution).

It's a slow burn film that will punch you in the gut. 

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Before even seeing the movie I had read the Toastypost as well as listened to the Deck the Hallmark podcast break down the film, so I already knew all the beats of the movie before I went into it. This is a film that twists and twists, recontextualizing the characters and their motivations as the film progresses, and if you know all the twists in advance, well... it's still kind of a cute, fun movie. Kind of.

Former Disney teen star Olivia Holt is Sophia, a shopgirl in a British department store called Sterlings, like it's 1954 all over again (see also The Crowded Day). She has her mind set on stealing some stuff, but so too does Nick (Connor Swindells) who apparently robbed the place once before after being hired by Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz) to set up security in the place, and he still has eyes into the store. He spies Sophia getting into the basement storeroom and stealing a bit of cash, and tries to blackmail her into helping him rob the storeroom of its most valuable jewels, but she pickpockets his wallet and turns things around on him.

Partners they agree. Sophia learns that Nick is a dad, divorced, and struggling after his incarceration. Nick learns Sophia moved to America with her mom when she was small after her biological father told them to piss off. Now they're back for the free health care, only her mom is so sick and needs to fast track her stem cell injections, which can only happen in the private sector. Sophia needs money.

They plan their heist and make it into the vault only to discover the jewels are missing. Plan B, steal the 500K Sterling keeps in his vault in his office, which is a lot more work, including an embarrassing attempt by Nick to seduce Sterling's bitter wife (Lucy Punch).

Directed by Mike Flanagan's DP, it actually looks pretty good, and moves along without really any lulls. It has its luminous moments, particularly around the seduction gambit and I enjoyed how the story effectively told us time and again that these two were never really ever going to pull this off successfully with their limited experience and skill set. The only reason they succeed is because they get help from more than one place (primarily because Sterling is such a douche, everyone's happy to take him down a peg). 

Even knowing all the beats I still had fun, but I imagine it was more fun not knowing. But the romantic angle was probably the least successful part of the film. Sophia and Seth seem more like buddies than lovers throughout the runtime. As much as this isn't a Hallmarkie, their "romance" feels very by the book Hallmarkie. Perfunctory. It's not that the leads don't have chemistry, there's just not a lot of romantic chemistry there, and much of it has to do with Swindells being too low key and reserved in that very British fashion. This needed much more spice to liven it up, especially if it wanted any rewatch factor.

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So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2025) - part 1?

 

AD/BC: A Rock Opera - 2004, d Richard Ayoade - Tubi
La guerre des toques (aka The Dog Who Won The War) - 1984, d. André Melançon - Crave
Cup of Cheer - 2020, d. Jake Horowitz - Tubi
A Make or Break Christmas - 2025, d . Martin Wood  - Hallmark/W

Preamble:
Between Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV, GAF, and all the Canadian (and non-Canadian) independent production company's, I would conservatively estimate there have been over 500 original Hallmarkies produced and released in the past decade. Together Toasty and I cover, conservatively, 25 of them in any given season on this here blog and we only started in earnest in 2019. So we're at about 25% coverage rate at best, which means...well, we have a mental illness. 

To be fair (tooooo BEEEE faaaIIIIIRRRRrrr!) we're not even trying to cover them all, it was never the objective. We would have to devote pretty much all of our watching and TV viewing time for the next two or three years to catch up. Even the Deck the Hallmark crew who do year-round Hallmarkie viewing and reviewing multiple times a week are still probably only at about 70-80% completion rate.

The point I think I'm trying to make here is, there's a lot of damn Christmas movies, and more every year. Even outside of Hallmarkies there are upwards of a dozen actual non-romance-based non-TV Christmas movies released every year in all different genres. It's impossible to watch them all, and if you find some favourites, it's hard to rewatch them when you're writing a blog and dedicating yourself to watching at least a dozen new ones every year.

Each holiday season I see new movies that I would like to rewatch in subsequent year and rarely do (Holidate excluded). But the same goes for regular movie watching where I find films I absolutely love and would like to rewatch but rarely do because there's so much new stuff to consume.

I always start into Christmas movie season in November, and by December Christmas movies are pretty much all I want to watch. I'm glad Toasty and I switch off days on the Advent Calendar because while I could probably write up 24 days on my own, where would I find the energy? (I'm not sure how Toasty does 31 horror movies in October every year). And so... here's some more Xmassy things:

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Under the pretense of being a forgotten televisual special (tele-viss-you-Al spess-eee-Al) from 1978, the cleverly titled AD/BC: A Rock Opera tells the story of the nativity, but from the innkeeper's perspective...you know the one guy whose sole part is "There's no room at the inn!"

In this funk and psychedelia infused parody of hippie rock operas like Godspell and Hair, Matt Berry plays the writer and star of the rock opera (op-ear-aaahhh) Tim Wynde who introduces the special, as well as performs the lead role of "Inkeeper" (no first name).

Inkeeper is in competition with big hotel across the street run by Tony (Julian Barratt) but is also leasing the property for his in from Tony. Innkeeper is paid a visit from God (Matt Lucas) who tells him that he should expect a divine occurrence, a divine guest at his meagre in. So he cancels all reservations and kicks all the guests out (his mother-in-law included) in anticipation. His wife, Ruth (Julia Davis) is upset and decides to leave him but he throws her out an she turns to Tony for solace, which Tony is all in for.

Eventually Joseph (Richard Ayoade) turns up with (unseen, unnamed) pregnant wife, and Inkeeper tells him that he's expecting a special guest but offers up his meagre stables. A child is born, a bright star shines upon all, and they all feel the joy and rapture of the event. Tony encourages Inkeeper and Ruth to rekindle their love, offers his hand in friendship to Inkeeper, and the pair declare they will offer reasonable rates and exceptional service, not as competitors but as collaborators.

AD/BC is tremendously silly, and is completely keyed into the style of British comedy that Berry and Ayoade (co-writers of the piece) were really into at the time, which heavily, heavily relied upon pastiche and lampooning without going full parody (pair-oh-daaayy).

It is indeed a singing-and-dancing rock opera throughout, most of the dialogue is sung. Berry, whose comedic performance  I've been a fan of for a long time, always likes to infuse music into his projects (see also Snuff Box and Toast of London for example) and in his non-acting time he's a prolific (pro-liff-yick) songsmith. The only problem is I've never really attuned to his style of music, and I find it can get exceptionally same-y (he will often have the same or similar chord progressions or keep returning to specific sequences of notes) and his vocal range is quite limited. Here he once again taps into familiar tones of his own use, but also dipping into 70's era music like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival or... others (memory already failing).

But in a comedy special like this, it's less about whether I'm humming tunes afterwards than if I was laughing or chuckling throughout, and it's a sold half hour of gleefully silly, anachronistic comedy.

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Kids sometimes become obsessed or enamoured with the things that scare them or traumatize them (emphasis on the "sometimes", don't go seeking to scare or traumatize your kids) and one such scary thing for me as a youth in the 1980s was a Canadian oddity called The Peanut Butter Solution.  It's the story of a young boy who gets so scared upon entering an abandoned house that all his hair falls out. He finds the solution in a gross mixture of peanut butter, eggs and, I want to say frogs? This solution then causes his hair to grow rapidly and he's kidnapped by a weird artist who harvests his hair to make unique fine art brushes.  It's gonzo, and I've always loved it (I acquired it on blu-ray in 2017 and only wrote about it briefly in the year-end post).

What I didn't know until recently was that The Peanut Butter Solution was a part of a series of films produced by legendary Quebec producer Rock Demers under the banner "Tales for All". The series lasted some 30 years (up to 2014 before being acquired by another company which has since continued the series) Some of the titles in this are familiar to me in name only but were in as frequent rotation on the CBC as The Peanut Butter Solution, but none of them have had the same staying power... for me.

But arguably the most famous of all of these "Tales for All" is La guerre des toques (in English "The War of Toques" but popularly know as The Dog Who Stopped the War), the story of a gang of pre-teen friends and neighbours who decide on their winter break from school to pick sides and wage a snow war against one another.

On one side is take-it-too-far Luc, who calls himself the General because he has his grandfather's bugle. On the other side is the much meeker Marc (actually it's Pierre, but for some reason they changed it to Marc in the dub and even the English subtitles). Only three lads choose Marc/Pierre's side, and so they are greatly outnumbered. Luc gives his enemies a day to build their snow fort, and it turns into a thing of glory. But they are so outmanned they have no choice but to accept the assistance of the new girl in town, Sophie, and her younger sister Lucie.  

Turns out Sophie is tough as nails and also a bit of a tactical genius (well, for a 12-year-old). Luc sets his sights on her, and, she, in turn, sets her sights on him. It's clear they dig each other in that very confused pre-teen, don't know what to do kind of way. And they're so French about it.

La guerre des toques is an incredibly low-key film. We're reminded frequently that these kids are supposed to be friends and that there are rules they have to follow, but that sometimes kids can't help but get carried away in their actions. Things can get pretty rough, like when one kid drops an ice block on another kid's head, or Luc sets his troop on kidnapping Sophie in the dark, a clear violation of the rules. She runs like her life depends on it, and it's a pretty intense sequence for what is just supposed to be child's play.

If you haven't seen the film before, there's a big honking ***SPOILER*** I'm about to drop, so skip on down to the next post if you don't want to know....

There are about a dozen or so kids participating in the war (and little brothers or sisters who want in but aren't allowed) so there's a lot of little white French kids to keep track of, mainly distinguished by their unique winter garb).  But one of the major secondary characters, and sub plots, is around Marc/Pierre's dog, Cleo, a big loveable old Saint Bernard.

Cleo has been feeling depressed ever since Marc/Pierre's younger sibling came along. Cleo keeps getting scuttled outside and is lonely being away from her family so much. Eventually, because of shenanigans during the war, Cleo is forced to stay outside. Marc/Pierre builds her a dog house, but she stops eating and is just so sad. Marc/Pierre also stops taking her out with him to his wartime events.

So on the last day of winter break, the kids plan a big final battle at the castle, and Cleo breaks free of her restraints and finds her way into the mix of the battle... the tower to the castle collapses in the heat of war and ...well, it crushes Cleo, like, to death! Seriously, the kids playtime killed the dog. And then they do the admirable thing and bury it in their secret storage spot in the abandoned shed they play in. Like, what are Marc/Pierre's parents going to say (well, Marc/Pierre's dad, always off screen, probably doesn't care that much, he's the one who wanted it out of the house).

But yeah, brutal and even as an almost 50-year-old man, traumatic!  I noticed Crave had a newer version of "The Dog Who Stopped The War", a modern 2015 animated remake that uses the style of massive heads on wee bodies that seems to dominate cartoons these days. It's a decent overall production, but I didn't watch the whole thing, I scrubbed through to the end just to see if they would chicken out or not...and to my surprise they did not. It's clear they changed the nature of Luc's character in this remake, losing some of the subtler touches of the original, but still pretty brave.

I liked this movie tremendously, and I'm going to be diving heavily into "Tales For All" in 2026.

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I'm not sure what the first holiday romance parody was (probably a Saturday Night Live sketch or something) but by 2018, the year after I really started watching Hallmarkies in earnest, the "ironic watch" and drinking games had already started to crop up. It wouldn't be long after that actual movies were being made making fun of the formulae and tropes of Hallmarkies.

I've seen many of these, including A Christmas Movie Christmas, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, A Hollywood Christmas, and Christmas With The Campbells (I watched the first half hour of The Christmas Classic starring Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen and Amy Smart - three very recognizable faces from TV and movies - thinking it would be a gentle parody like Christmas with the Campbells, and it's not...it's just a very bad Hallmarkie probably directed by a guy whose dad had money to burn...but I digress). I had not even heard of Cup of Cheer.

It popped up in Tubi's list of recommended viewing after watching AD/BC (see above), and the preview that started autoplaying showed a scene where the film's heroine arrives in her childhood perfect small town, to be greeted by a friendly santa-like hobo who offers her cookies from his pocket, only for her to run into her future love interest who is carrying what can only be described as a vat of hot chocolate which he then spills on her.

It's not really that funny a sequence, but I'm always curious about Hallmarkie spoofs and parodies.  This one coming from 2020 was an early adopter, a beautiful animated "Indiecan Entertainment Inc." title card declares this is very much a Canadian production which usually would make me say "uh oh" but the sheer quality of the title card had me feeling ...pride? Weird.

Cup of Cheer is a parody and a spoof, leaning hard into the maximum jokes per minute (jpm) with very little in the way of ground rules. Unlike Clüsterfünke or Christmas Movie Christmas which still tried to retain the chaste and puritanical nature of olde style Hallmarkies, this falls somewhere in between the great Zucker-Abrams-Zucker style of parody and the horrible "Not Another X Movie" non-series.  The jokes are a mix of leaning hard into Hallmarkie tropes and pushing them even further, some dexterous wordplay, some real bawdy humour, surprise cursing, and even a (*ahem*) splash of gross-out humour. 

The jpm is so high in this thing, and, frankly, the hit rate is at best 40%, which is not necessarily a passing grade, but when you're still getting a good laugh or chuckle 40% of the time, that's not actually too bad. When it comes to comedy, so much of it has to do with performance, and the relatively novice cast here are all surprisingly adept. The average Canadian Hallmarkie often only has one strong lead (occasionally two) the the supporting players a steep step down and the bit players even further down the quality slope. Here, I really couldn't find fault with any of the players throughout. 

Storm Steenson plays Mary, the big city girl who gets assigned to cover a big cover story for the big city magazine from the big city, but her assignment is in the perfect small town of Snowy Heights(ville Fallstown) which just happens to be the perfect small town she grew up in and left for the big city. Oh and she has to file the story by Christmas Eve. There she meets cute with Chris Mass (Alexander Oliver) in the aforementioned hot chocolate collision. Turns out he runs a failing hot chocolate shoppe with his brother Keith (Liam Marshall) which was bequeathed to him from his Grandmother. It's failing primarily because Chris doesn't feel right about charging his customers.  And then the big citiot with sever gastrointestinal troubles and a toxic personality, Mai Ex (Shawn Vincent), who happens to be Mary's ex, arrives and announces that he's opening a big hot chocolate chain cafe in the very spot Chris' hot chocolate shop is in... on Christmas, unless Chris can raise enough money to save the shop... but he's not willing to take charity or even work for it.

The movie is so joke dense and so joke focussed that the story and the characters get lost. I never felt too invested in the characters or their journeys and their relationships with one another were really hard to really grasp hold of. I think Chris being such a negative Nancy and such an utterly terrible businessman deserving to fail was probably a bad choice. Oliver performs him well enough that he's still somewhat likeable, but it's hard to see what Mary might be falling for (the fact that the falling in love is sort of perfunctory is probably just another joke, it's just a barrier to liking these characters though).

Brother Keith works part-time at the mall as an elf, it's set up and reiterated a couple of times before the big payoff is finding out that Keith is actually a stripper, which is news to Chris who needs his brother's advice while he's working. This results in some hilarious wordplay and really entertaining physical comedy from Marshall and Oliver as one brother is forced to lap dance the other brother in order to have their conversation. If you're looking for a gentle spoof in the same tone as an actual Hallmarkie, this isn't it, but it leans much more towards playful than mean spirited.

It's a cartoon world so the film's best running joke, about Chris and Keith's niece who gets kidnapped and nobody notices, comes across as toothless fun rather than dangerous or dark.

I had a good time with Cup of Cheer, and I didn't even mention the side-plot of Authuh (Jacob Hogan) the time-traveling prince from centuries past who very much takes a romantic shining to Chris but is primarily focused on trying to find a way back to his own time. As noted, it's definitely not perfect and it's throwing so much at the wall to see what sticks, it could prove as exhausting (or off-putting) to some as it is entertaining to others.

Also, so much actual Canadian snow for the win!

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Make or Break Holiday

The Draw: I find Hunter King sooo cute, but she's been almost only in terrible Hallmarkies and after last year's godawful football/KC Chiefs-themed Holiday Touchdown I was ready to swear off her for good. But then I found out that this season's Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig was going to have a part in A Make or Break Holiday that made it mandatory follow-up viewing, for better or worse.

HERstory: Liv (King) and Daniel (Evan Roderick) meet at a Christmas Party held by a mutual friend (never to be seen again). They start talking about cookies and never stop talking about cookies (too much cookie talk to the point of annoyance). 

Montage for the next year showing photos of their first date and other events (who took those photos!?!). By the next Christmas they have bought a house together (seriously how the ffff* did they afford *that* house...their professions are never indicated). But all is not as perfect as the perfectly made up house of Christmas. To put it bluntly Liv has OCD and the need to appease while Daniel has ADHD and can't seem to get started on some tasks or finish other tasks (I wish this were a more literal OCD meets ADHD-coded relationship...the analogy is such Hallmarkie accidental). Daniel hasn't even gotten rid of his apartment in the city yet and they've had the house for 3 months (red flag, Liv, red flag!)  They get into a fight and the Ross-and-Rachael idea of "a break" comes up, and they're both too escalated to be rational, and they both agree to "the break" (of course Daniel still has that apartment so he's already ready for "a break" I'm sure). 

They try to call off their Christmas festivities with their respective families but Liv's afraid of disappointing her type-A parents and Daniel is guilt-tripped by his mom before he can even say anything. So they agree to put up a charade for the holidays. The whole family comes, their hotels are overbooked, so they're all staying in the house, including Daniel's grandma and sister, Kim, and Liv's parents and brother, Reid (Craig Mr. Christmas).  

Immediately Kim sniffs out that there's trouble in paradise, while Liv confesses to Reid who wants to hear none of it because he's bad at secrets. And then it's all shenanigans as the family all needles and annoy one another while Kim and Reid conspire, poorly to reunite the lovers who have clearly just made a mistake.

Oh and Daniel keeps trying to hide a gift box that is so obviously a box-within-a-box-within-a-box engagement ring. It's a literal Chechov's Box-Within-A-Box-Within-A-Box Engagement Ring...it's only a matter of when, not if it will go off. And when it does, well, that's the third-act complication I guess (even though this film starts with the complication).

The Formulae: The film opens with a Christmas baking montage as Liv makes a Nutella roll (we only see "Nutella" prominently displayed, like, a million times in that first 120 seconds. There are ugly Christmas sweaters. The house is decorated to the nines with no less than 3 Christmas trees, one of which is the catalyst to Liv and Daniel's arguement. There's a hot chocolate toast, and festive games leading to conflict (there's a bullshit Christmas obstacle course that no family ever has set up every year). Grams watches a Christmas baking show (intently). There's no less than three trips to the Christmas market. There's an outdoor christmas dinner(!?) which is interrupted by everyone getting up to dance (!?) before getting kicked out because they start taking the microphone and making speeches and Reid grabs the snow-maker-blower thing and cranks it to 10. Oh yeah, and so much goddamn cookie talk.

Unformulae: What no Christmas/Eve deadline? No caroling? No ice skating? No perfect small town? I mean they hit so many other tropes, can't fault them for the ones they missed. Oh and no red dress, just fetching silk blouses.

True Calling? "Make or break" is defined as "be the factor which decides whether (something) will succeed or fail" so yes, I guess this is a true calling. This Christmas will be the deciding factor in whether Liv and Daniel succeed or fail.

The Rewind: When Liv and Daniel split off to call their parents and tell them Christmas is off, the edit goes into a series of split screens cutting between the couple and their families in a surprisingly complicated fashion. It gets recalled later in the film as well. It's a surprising DiPalma-esque touch I really, really wasn't expecting and it's very well executed.

The Regulars: Hunter King is part of Hallmark's next wave of superstars, while Evan Roderick seems to be a desperate "we need a new, younger Andrew Walker-type". He acquits himself just fine (he's also been in a fair share of Hallmark stuff...as well as an Arrow veteran). Craig (Geoghan apparently is his last name) was obviously on Finding Mr. Christmas, and I have to say this role of the sort of put-upon younger brother who is a grown-up but still a bit immature was pretty much the perfect starter role for him. He was surprisingly enjoyable. I still can't imagine him as leading man, but he can work his way up to it I think (now). Sister Kim is played by Brittney Wilson was pretty great in this role as the pushy sister character (I was worried they were going to try and pair Maya off with Reid, but thankfully that didn't happen) and used to be in a lot more of these pre-pandemic. Daniel's flighty mom Maya is played by Jennifer Juniper-Angeli who has been in XMas Hallmarkies the past two seasons. Liv's dad is played by Days of Our Lives legend Roark Critchlow (see also this year's The Christmas Cup)...he seems to have been more of a Lifetime murder movie staple than holiday romance guy. Liv's mom, played by Marlee Walchuk is a regular on Hallmark's Chicken Sisters but otherwise doesn't have much history in Hallmarkies. And Grams, played by Linda Darlow has a few under her belt, like Hanukkah on Rye from 2022.

Oh and Jonathan Bennett makes a cameo as the restaurateur angry at Reid for grabbing the snow-maker-blower thing. He says "how'd you get that" to which Reid says "I won a contest". Zing!

How does it Hallmark? It's enjoyable enough and certainly watchable. The complication of Daniel and Liv being broken up seems almost completely unnecessary when the plot simply could have been trying to navigate dealing with each other's parents...or it could have been more poignant had they leaned into each character's neuro-atypical nature. A sharper comedic mind could have really made this just a full on "Meet The Parents"-style comedy but instead it just sits as a pretty average Hallmark movie.

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow? Rolls upon rolls of cotton batting topped off with shaved ice or soap flakes.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar: Day 24 - Gingerbread Miracle

2021, Michael M Scott (It's Christmas, Carol) -- download

Why do so many of these movies take place in locations where snow covered mountains can be seen in the background?

And that's all she wrote folks. I might have to admit defeat this year. Beyond Ted Cooper's entry, I didn't find much in the way of Xmas Spirit this year. I will persevere and finish off a few in my hopper, as well as Netflix, as Xmas Leftovers, but... overall, a big meh year.

I think I killed that desire to even watch the few left in my hopper. Need a violent full of guns movie as a chaser.

The Draw: I needed at least one gingerbread / baking related movie, so this was it. 

HERstory: We begin with some montage-y gingerbread cookie dough massaging - flour everything, roll them out thin, gently cut them out -- baking with love. We also begin with some pretty impressive stock footage of blowing snow, wind-swept winter streets and winter at its best/worst. Then we follow it up with HER jogging past mounds of fake snow & cotton batting towards our requisite large family house on probably what is a July day.

Interestingly enough she states its Dec 3, as if someone writing the script pointed out to the writing room that Hallmarkies never give enough time for people plan & execute their Xmas Event plans and/or growing affections.

She is Maya (Merritt Patterson, Chateau Christmas), an LA lawyer returned home to her parents garage (but seriously, its a converted detached apartment) after a divorce and work collapse. In the kitchen, we get some family recap: Mom has started an event planning business and one of her early events will be the Gingerbread Challenge, which no is not a Gingerbread House Baking Contest but basically an obstacle course involving already baked gingerbread houses and is raising money for something or other. This year's sponsor is Casillas Panadería, local Mexican bakery and home of the famous gingerbread cookies that grant wishes. Luis (Jorge Montesi, Chupacabra vs the Alamo), the owner, is selling the place because his wife recently passed and his heart isn't in it any longer. Luis doesn't have any children to hand the long running family business down to, so sale it is. Maya runs her freelance law work out of his office; basically sits at a laptop in a crowded storeroom, but really, she could do that anywhere.

His nephew Alejandro (Jon-Michael Ecker, Fearless Heart), or Alex, is a Big City Lawyer in NYC who doesn't really like his job and has bad luck keeping girlfriends because he's never available. Luis and his wife raised Alex after some unmentioned Dead Parents situation. We also get introduced to his love of cooking when he dumps the bland takeout his ex gives him and makes, from scratch, shrimp tacos instead. His latest work assignment is being ignored by the Boss, so he might as well go home for Xmas.

Of note, everyone pronounces the Mexican names with strong proper enunciation, including the white folks of this very Rockies adjacent, near Denver PST. I doubt this movie would get greenlit in current American society, as it definitely highlights its Mexican immigrants in a positive light. Inclusivity is a naughty word these days down south.

Baiting the border guards with social media content that could get you banned?

First up, getting the Xmas Tree, where the two bump into each other  - literally. Its a cheerful bump involving chasing the family dog. Hers not his. His old high school feelings are still strong and he wants in on helping sell the bakery, a little peeved at himself that he wasn't asked.

Next up, Decorating the Tree. Luis and Alex talk about Maya and Aunt Julia. And that's when its decided that Alejandro will take over baking at the panadería for the holiday season, since he is home and so Luis can focus on the sale and the Xmas Event he is sponsoring. You'd think Luis would want to actually do the baking for his event.

Are we sure they are related? The only thing said is that Luis and Julia, "Took Alex in...."

I am realizing a lot of Hallmarkies are based on expositional scenes, instead of story telling. From the tree trimming we go to Maya and her bestie and her sister talking about how she screwed up Alex & her getting together when they were kids. She faked a French Boyfriend and he thought she wasn't interested. That is followed by Alex and the kid working for Luis talking about being poor and wanting a hockey scholarship with the foreshadowing of Alex Baked a Magic (Hockey) Cookie. You see, the tradition is that the cookies must represent something important to the people they are given too. And the we stick in a side-story so Maya's BFF can have someone to crush on too. Except it feels tacked on, like pretty much all the side-elements of the movie do.

Montage Scene. Sis is taking photos of the bakery for the sales website. To be honest, the bakery really looks good, well decorated and the set designers obviously had some fav bakeries they based it on. It just looks authentic and cozy. That is followed by another Montage Scene where Alex nixes every single potential buyer. And it happens over a week! Not just a day! Dec 4th starting date is moving along quite well. Buuuut the potential buyer shows up -- Jacque Hubert (IMDB calls him Jake, Patch May, Home and Away), a well known baker from Denver where he has a patisserie. He's handsome and has ideas and Alex doesn't like him. And cuz Maya thinks he's pretty. Jacque flirts with Maya.

Fuck; if they say Jacques properly, why do they pronounce Hubert as "H-Yoo Bert" instead of "Hoo-bear" ?

Ugh; losing steam on recapping this as its just a long long series of barely connected expositional pieces. The coming Holiday Games, Bestie and her Potential BF, Alex is better at cooking & baking than lawyer-ing. Add in some complication / jealousy as Maya smiles brightly at Hyu-Bert and he legitimately flirts and asks her out, while Alex just pouts in the background, and I was just bored.

They have the Reindeer Holiday Games but never quite explained how this was raising money for charity considering there were THREE contestants and they were our main characters plus Hyu-Bert -- its not like their "entry fees" would have contributed much. Besides, its just running an obstacle course while holding a pre-baked gingerbread house one-handed; given the high chance of EVERYONE dropping theirs, not sure of the "laugh oh well all fell down" fun to be had.

Eventually Alex has a sour encounter with his boss so he decides to stay and run the bakery, which should have been the primary plot focus but was done in a sort of background off-camera manner. And Maya realizes her potential new job is going to be worse than the LA job she quit, so decides to stay and work out a house she will buy. And at the last second, when we think Hyu-Bert will be an issue because he wants the bakery, his heart grows three sizes and he drops the need for a new bakery. Everyone is making a good choice for everyone else! Alex and Maya realize they are both staying in the PST and getting the jobs they wanted all along and also realize that despite a decade of miscommunication (and failed marriages) they still like each other. Kiss kiss.

Yeah, I was bored, and late in publishing. Fully lost steam.

The Formulae: There was a PST and a Main Coming Home from the Big City. There was Crush History and Dead Parents (we don't even get the story behind Alex's lack of parents) and a Holiday Event. Of course, there was Holiday Baking. There was a very minor complication which was resolved far too amicably for Hallmarkies. There was a Side-story Romance and lots of Xmas Traditions.

Unformulae: So, nobody has to dash their dreams in order to stay in the PST to find love; everyone decided to stay on their own to all follow their own dreams. There were no Dick BF/Ex's. Both of the mains are of the Big City Type Job, neither doing something low-key or hokey... even the bakery is well-established and doing well. That said, there is no Last Minute Desperation to Save the Bakery. There was not any Emotional Turmoil at all in this movie, which is why it may have been so... boring.

True Calling? A key plot point are the Magic Gingerbread Cookies and they go very far to explain how Alex had the magic as well: Maya's red briefcase cookie is connected to Alex, the hockey cookie gets the kid his needed scholarship. So, yes.

The Rewind: Nuttin, but I did re-watch the opening stock footage to see if it was real or CGI.

The Regulars: Merritt Patterson is really the only Hallmarkie staple.

How does it Hallmark? For the ideals of family traditions and supporting the community, it worked well. The magic between the two was basically nil; Maya smiled more brightly at Jacques than ever at Alex.

How does it movie? Yawn.

How Does It Snow? Lots of digital snow imposed on shots of structures that had a bit of cotton battling, and other than that opening stock footage, no snow... at all. Not even a mention of it.

I Saw This!! What I have been watching - 2025 edition (Part B)

(Part A here)

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our [retired?] feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me (usually Toast, but Kent this time) spending too much time in front of the TV and not writing about it. Bad Kent! Bad! But it's in part because Kent is tired and busy can't review everything.

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Slow Horses Season 5 - 6/6 episodes
created by Will Smith (no, not *that* one)
Season 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

I've written a fair bit about Slow Horses over the past few years, and although I have not went back and reread what I wrote, I imagine my statements about the show are pretty repetitive at this point. It's probably my favourite show on TV right now and each season is just as gorge-inducing as the last.

Of course Gary Oldman's performance as head of these MI-5 rejects at Slough House was, is and will remain the biggest draw of the show, in no small part to how Oldman balances being absolutely rude and disgusting with being exceptionally hyper-competent. You want to hate him but can't help but be impressed and entertained by him. You never want to be stuck in a room with that guy though.

This latest season to a very big step forward in balancing the time and attention the main cast of characters is given. For much of the first for seasons River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) has been central focus with Lamb and Kristen Scott Thomas' MI-5 head Diana Taverner being the backbone of the whole thing, but this season steps back from the three and spotlights the Diana's incompetent boss Claude Whelan (James Callas), a political appointee, as well as Slough House's resident intolerable egotist incel Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) and agent-with-an-addiction Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards).

The House is still reeling from the previous season's very personal attack which claimed the life of Shirley's partner Marcus, and Shirley's either going to fall off the wagon or kill someone, and she seems exceptionally paranoid. But Lamb knows they're in the paranoia business and when it looks like an Agent might have been attacked (such as when Ho was almost run over if not for Shirley's intervention) there's maybe more going on than it appears. That it happens just after a courtyard massacre also seems more than coincidental.

Ho, who improbably finds himself with an incredibly attractive girlfriend, winds up in deep, deep trouble when his blind desperation for female affection maybe compromises the entirety of MI-5. And Whelan faces pressure from a ultra-right wing mayoral candidate who has blackmailing dirt on him. 

These all seem like kind of disparate threads, but the way they are woven together pull tighter and tighter over its six episodes and it's deliciously intense and quite satisfying by the end of it as the Slow Horses board seems to get completely reset.

While the bad guys of the season are virtually paper thin, with only the hint of a meaningful journey presented around them, this winds up being one of the most rollicking and propulsive of the series. And as always I got to the end and just wanted more.

A series rewatch might be called for 2026 (or maybe time to dive into Mick Herron's novels?).

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Man on the Inside Season 2 - 8/8 episodes
created by Michael Schur
season 1

It seems a few months and a few cases have passed with Charles (Ted Danson) working for Julie's (Lilah Rich creek) detective agency. The notoriously stand-offish private investigator seems to have warmed a little bit to Charles' accompaniment, and though it's never ever uttered in the show, it just may be he's kind of the annoying father figure she never had.

But Charles has been kind of bored by the usual cases that pass through a P.I.'s office, so when the opportunity comes for Charles to go back undercover, he excitedly leaps for it. This time he needs to go inside a local, beloved community college as a guest professor (his former vocation) to help the administration suss out who is threatening them as they look to close a spurious deal with a billionaire graduate.

Almost immediately upon entering the campus, Charles meets-cute with Mona, a former pop-rock chanteuse who's now the music teacher at the College. Mona is flighty but also extremely forward and she takes as much of a shine to Charles as he does to her. Mary Steenburgen, to who Danson is married to in real life, plays Mona, and their chemistry is undeniable. It's super charming and even a quite hot, as far as septuagenarian romance goes. 

Where last season had the focus of Charles still coping with the loss of his wife and his retirement from teaching by meeting people of a similar age in a retirement home, and learning how to live and be vital again, this season circles around Charles' troubles with entering and navigating a new relationship, a new personality in his life. It's a little less meaty, but a lot more cute.

Meanwhile Julie's mom, Vanessa (Constance Marie) enters the picture, and we both learn more about why Julie is the no-nonsense woman she is, but also about the very challenging mother-daughter relationship they have. Also Jason Mantzoukas plays Vanessa's lover with that typical manic Mantzoukas energy to hilarious effect.

The cast at the college isn't quite as robust as the seniors home in season 1, although David Strathairn, Sam Huntington, Jill Talley, and Michaela Conlin all are good in their roles, it's super sweet to see that Charles has maintained contact with everyone at the retirement home and so Stephanie Beatrix, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sally Struthers and John Getz all make welcome returns. So too does Charles amusing family of dunderheaded grandsons and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as his daughter Emily and Eugene Cordero as her supportive husband Joel.

It's a comedy with a bit of a P.I./mystery twist, that ultimately becomes about family and found family. Like other Schur projects, it abounds with heart as much as humour and reminds us that constantly reminds us that even when we differ it's still possible to get along.

It's such a lovely and gentle show, teeming with big laughs and great performances. I hope we get more for years to come.

---

Down Cemetery Road Season 1 - 8/8 episodes
created by Morwenna Banks

There have been a lot of good series that have come and gone starring actors I like quite a bit that I haven't watched a second of, so it would be disingenuous of me to tell you that I was immediately drawn to Down Cemetary Road based on the pairing of Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson. I mean, it did seem an alluring idea, but the fact that it was based on a Mick Herron novels, so it may carry some of that Slow Horses juice was all the kick I needed to make it a must watch.

The plot finds Wilson's character, art restorer Sarah Tucker, getting in over her head when she starts investigating an explosion that happened in her friend's neighborhood. A man and woman were killed and a young girl, a friend of her friend's child, was hospitalized. Sarah, for reasons she can hardly explain, is utterly invested in the well being of this suddenly orphaned girl, and she hires a private investigator to look into it. Joe Silverman (Adam Godley) looks into it, and for his efforts he is killed, but made to look like a suicide. His short-tempered, vintage punk-styled wife Zoe (Thompson) can't help how astute she is and she knows somethings up.

Each begins their own investigation that crosses each other's paths more than once, that leads them to instant danger and a government cover-up led by Hamza, a highly incompetent individual (Adeel Akhtar). We spend a fair bit of time inside the government operations, what Hamza is up to, what his superiors are up to and the episodes start to unfurl a bleak tale of weapons testing and the attempts to cover it up.

The show is at its best when Wilson and Thompson are together, which they aren't much for much of the season. The second half, once the background is all pretty much revealed, moves at a pretty cracking pace as the characters start to narrow down their objective to rescuing the little girl, and nothing else matters.

It's a show that stretches credulity at times but never fully breaks it, as these two women take on powerful agencies and face ruthless killers. But the journey is a satisfying one, and the connection between Sarah and Zoe, while not solid as steel, feels weirdly open ended. A quick peek and it seems Zoe Boehm is the center of Herron's novel series but it does look like Sarah is a part of her journey going forward.

Yes, more of Wilson and Thompson together, please.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 23: Window Wonderland

The Draw: Vintage Hallmark. DC Arrowverse star as lead. Paul Campbell. And because I had to get one more Hallmarkie in for Toasty.

HERstory: 

The head window dresser for the big New York department store, McGuire's, has left to a competitor, so they're without decorator. Sloan has been working at the store for 2 years, while Jake, glib Jake, snarky Jake, aggravating Jake has been with the company two months. The open position could be one of theirs if they impress Finch -- their stressed-out, tiny mustachioed boss -- with their pitches, which he's betting they will not. They have 95 years of tradition to live up to.

Sloan is super keen to get the job, but her boyfriend, high powered  Wall Street banking douche (is there any other kind?) Kenneth (Kenny) is pouting because Sloan will not be able to go to Aspen over the holidays if she gets the new job.  But he sees that she wants it, so he tells her he'll talk to old man Maguire's kid at the club and the job is hers. She declines and wants it on her own merit.

Jake poses as a sleepy artists model in the evening so he can paint in the studio after. The next morning, they're to present Tiny Mustache with their pitches for a window display. Sloan gets the south window with her pitch, and Jake gets the North window with his sketch that he just cranked out on a napkin 7 minutes before the pitch was due. They're told that each one getting window is now the competition and the one to bring in the most customers between now and Christmas(!?!? How on earth is that measurable? Are the cashiers taking a survey? What's going on here).Sloan complains that she worked all night on her pitch and Jake just cranked his out, to which Tiny Mustache says he would have got both windows if his second napkin design wasn't all smeared with frosting.

Rita (Naomi Judd) is the bitchy bathroom attendant just keepin' it real with Sloan, but of course she gets along great with smarmy Jake. Turns out she's Sloan's mom. Both Sloan and Jake get along with Mac, the window cleaner who they both chat up in the mornings. 

Sloan's window is a NY skyline with a gold cutout of the Statue of Liberty with a Santa hat on it standing in cotton batting. Jake's is Mr. and Mrs. Claus watching TV in a very green room with some pithy signage. Nobody really likes Sloan, and she's told to work on hers or lose her window to Jake. After work Sloan winds up at the art studio where Jake is once again modelling. Apparently Tiny Mustache told her to go and attend.  As she sketches his eyes, she starts to smile (in small part because Jake keeps mugging at her). After session, he shows her the painting he's been working on, but notes he can't finish it. He also notes his real desire is to be an artist, but he's struggling in NY and everyone back in his Maine small town is taking bets on when he's coming back, tail between his legs.

At dinner with her mom and Uncle Jimmy? Bea talks up how nice, funny and handsome Jake is... not like that ugly Kenny.
Their next window displays are Yoga Santa on a surfboard against a red background, while Jake's is a wood panelled "Santa's Man Cave". Their displays are somehow getting a great write-up in the local paper (you know, the local New York City paper) and sales are indeed up, so good work you two. Tiny Moustache says someone is definitely getting the promotion.

And then we learn that Jake actually living in the store. Bea tells Sloan she should invite Kenneth to their family "Christmas Eve Eve" event,but he's busy, and she then suggests Jake. Next morning Jake and Sloan chat up Mac and Jake starts suggesting Mac might want to meet a nice lady... like Bea... to which Sloan immediately tries to downplay and says to Mac, just leave it to me... without telling them Bea is her mom. The next window displays are Surfing Santa and eco-conscious Santa...both, so, so, so basic and not at all impressive.  

After leaving the building for the evening, Jake does his usual sneak-back-in routine to live at the store for another night, and Sloan follows him in. The jig is up. But Sloan promises not to tell Tiny Moustache (even though it's grounds for termination and possibly illegal), but because of the alarm settings they're trapped inside until morning, meaning that Sloan is missing Kenny's office Christmas party, but Jake says he'll show her a fun time in a closed apartment store. And it's bonding time, leading to a brutal honesty exchange. Sloan confesses she is a facade, she is a window display and confesses Bea is her mom, and she's embarrassed that she's embarrassed of her mom, while Jake feels shame that he's broke and his family doesn't believe in him. They both boost each other and inspire each other to a new level of store displaying. Sloan invites him to their Christmas Eve Eve event. Then they dance for some reason and he almost kisses her, but then security comes by (wait, now there's security? Where've they been this whole time? And there's no alarm on the rooftop door) and they hide behind the cosmetics counter until morning.

The Times comes by and takes pictures of them...absolutely terrible pictures. At dinner with Kenny, Sloan apologizes for missing the party, but Kenny said he feels sorry that she had to be trapped in the store with "that guy" and she lets slip that he's been slipping there. Kenny immediately wants to call his dad and tell old man Maguire, to get Jake fired and Sloan the job. The next day Mac lets slip that Jake has the security alarm codes and they didn't spend the night together by force, it was Jake's choice. Complication! She thinks he's trying to sabotage her, and oblivious that he just likes her. That's Kenny thinking, Sloan.

They toil through the night, and the next morning, Jake and Rita and Sloan are all chatting outside the back of the store. Kenneth rolls up in his limo and offers to take Sloan to Aspen one last time, but she declines. Then Kenny calls Rita over and drops some change in her mug of hot coffee. Sloan admonishes him, and then admits that Rita is her mom. Kenneth doesn't understand her confession, and it's hard to tell if Kenny is just being shallow and doesn't like that his girlfiend's mom is a bathroom attendant, or that she was lying to him. Probably the former.  

Jake shows Sloan his final pitch, and she thinks he's deliberately throwing the competition. He admits that he is, that it just means more to Sloan than him. At Christmas Eve Eve, Jake has showed up, surprising Sloan, and even more of a surprise, Jake has brought Mac as his plus one. And Mac and Rita admit they've been sweet on each other for quite a while. It's tur-dunkin' time (a turkey friend in Dunkin Donuts batter) and bun tossin' time. Sloan sees Jake having fun, and it's evident she realizes that Kenneth would never, ever, ever fit in this scene.

The Christmas Eve window unveiling ... Jake's display is just cookies and milk and a Santa hat. Minimalism. "Jake," Tiny Moustache says incredulously, "we're a department store, excess is what we do". Sloan's is a live display, a Christmas dinner scene with actors, that turns into a family food fight, but not the fun and playful display from her family gathering the night before. It gets uncomfortably brutal. People are repulsed. And Tiny Mustache fires them both! Oops. Now not only is Jake jobless, but homeless as well.

Sloan finds Jake at the art studio, apologizes to him, explains that she lost herself somewhere along the way, and asks him if they want to break back into the store and fix the mess. Along the way Kenny pulls up in his limo, with flowers (because Colorado is snowed in) and they have it out. Kenny, "I'm willing to overlook those people," and Sloan sniffs out that Kenny was on a date with the perfume counter girl. Yeah, this bullshit isn't going to work. Yeah, fuck that guy.

They get the display set up, but also set off the alarm trying to leave and they get arrested. But then a limo pulls up, and they think Kenny, first, but then the cuffs are taken off. Turns out, it's Old Man McGuire... Mac! Their friend the window washer is rich, and owns the department store, and loves these crazy kids and digs Sloan's mom. Their new window displays is a "classy" dinner table setup, and a living room display with Sloan and Jake as live models and Jake's painting and they make out.

The Formulae:Well, Sloan's got a dick boyfriend, that's classic holiday romance stuff. There's a sort of Christmas deadline/promotion angle the characters' journey as well. And of course there's the starting off as rivals only to fall for each other. And so many establishing shots of New York City. Honestly, I was expecting for a vintage Hallmark movie that there would be more tropes.

Unformulae: No Christmas tree shopping, no cookie baking, no snowball fights, no skating, no cotton batting as snow, no dead parents/spouse, no child and/or precocious niece/nephew, no hot chocolate or cider, no Christmas market, no perfect small town, no big city girl needing to get back to her roots.... close to nada formulae.

True Calling? All the window displays were fucking atrocious. Have the filmmakers and set decorators never, like, ever seen a Christmas window displays before? These are all...how do you say... tacky as fuck. They're like 2000s era hipster ironic, meaning in 2013 they were out of date already.  They're embarrassing. Sloan should be embarrassed, Jake should be embarrassed, the set designer and director and everyone involved should be embarrassed. There's not a single display they show us that is even on the cusp of being "good".

The Rewind: There were quite a few funny lines, a lot of wee chuckles here (upon receiving a window display, Jake starts into an acceptance speech ending with "...and of course I wouldn't be sitting here today without...this chair"). Paul Campbell's Jake is 100% styled after Jeff Winger on Community, in look and attitude. That's not the only Community riff, composer James Jandrisch (whom we had to rewind to find out right back to the beginning because he's not credited in the end credits) seems to be riffing on Ludwig Goransson's Community soundtrack work with its whistles and keyboard instrumentals.

The Regulars: Paul Campbell is a Hallmark hunk and one of the best of them. One of the three wisest one might even say. Always enjoy him and he's so... youthful here. Chyler Leigh, who played Kara's sister Alex in the Supergirl TV series (and across the Arrow verse), I was certain I had seen in a Hallmarkie before, but could not find anything in her IMDB profile, so this is it. Cameron Matheson was a Hallmark hunk until he jumped ship for Great American Family, the right wing a-hole alternative to Hallmark (I liked him in the Christmas Club fwiw) but he does too good a job being the dick BF here, and I don't like him at all. Naomi Judd isn't really the well known Judd in the acting realm, but she's got this, 1999's "A Christmas Romance" and 2014's "An Evergreen Christmas" (Before you get excited, Toasty, it's unrelated to the Christmas in Evergreen series and, in fact, the main character's name is "Evergreen"...let that sink in). Christie Liang plays the perfume counter girl who flirts with Kenny... she's been a bunch of these, but most before 2020 (she's also an Arrowverse veteran, having played Diggle's sister(?) in Arrow).

How does it Hallmark? Hey, I was kinda charmed. I thought Campbell was fun, Leigh didn't do that whisper talking thing she's prone to doing when she wants to be dramatic much (only once, I think), and the film felt situationally unique. Like I noted, not a lot of tropes in this one. It's not a top tier, but it's certainly upper middle.

How does it movie? It's...no. It's not. Let's not fool ourselves here. For a minute there, Hallmark seemed to flirt with "do we want to try, like...really try" but the reality is, no, they didn't want to try that hard. The only reason this seems like it's got a bigger, better budget is because they got to shoot in a department store in Vancouver at night, and that gave them sets that felt tangible and real.  But then you get to those window displays and, oof ba boof, you can tell there was no budget for anything left and the store didn't let them raid their basement. As well, I really wanted this to be ... sexier. It would have been so much better if it had the danger of sex percolating around it.  Like what if they *had* slept together at the store when they were trapped there, but Jake had lied about them being trapped... oooh, there's a real complication. Even when Kenny is busted for having been with the perfume counter girl, it was "just drinks", but you know it wasn't, but does the movie know that it wasn't?

How Does It Snow?  The only snow is the cotton batting in the window displays. Otherwise it rains, raining that Vancouver, erm, I mean, New York rain.