Ed's Review Dot Com

Craig Anderson Productions, Beth Grossbard Productions,

Bethany Joy Lenz, John Reardon, Susan Hogan, Michael Hogan, Venus Terzo, Nicola Cavendish, Karin Konoval, William Ainscough, Greyston Holt

Christine Eisley (Bethany Joy Lenz) is a single Mom doing her best to get by, but when she stops to administer CPR to a lady who has had an accident, and is late for work, she loses her job. Her only hope is a family heirloom that she looks to for good fortune. But when the heirloom is lost, everything starts to go wrong. But the small town she’s decided to move into is the hometown of her late husband, and she has many more friends than she could ever know. Lots of problems and lots of misunderstandings later, she learns the value of trusting in mankind.

This Hallmark premier film for 2014 is another fine Christmas romantic comedy just right for the season. Bethany is really good in her role as single mom with a lot of heart. There are a lot of sub plots going on that all tie up neatly in the end, and the rest of the cast is just as enjoyable. The story is quite sensible and very well put together. It’s interesting throughout and the characters are all very well played. The setting is really pretty, and it’s full of Christmas spirit. I enjoyed watching this, and it’s as good as any of the new films this year for the genre. It’s on Hallmark this season.

Note: There is another Hallmark movie called The Christmas Secret which is a story starring Richard Thomas where he plays a scientist who once saw a reindeer at Christmas when he was a little boy and who is obsessed with proving reindeer can fly. This a whole new film, so make sure you find the 2014 film.

[Click here for the Hallmark home page for this film]

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Synthetic Cinema International, Flavorlab,

Chevy Chase, Molly Ringwald, Annabella Sciorra, Cheri Oteri, Conchata Ferrell, Meat Loaf, Danny Nucci, Sosie Bacon, Jesse James, Quinn McColgan, Rosalie Twerski, Blanche Baker, Krysta Rodriguez, Wyatt Ralff

Based on the New York Times best-selling novel by award winning author Wally Lamb, Felix Funicello is a young Catholic school boy from Connecticut whose only claim to fame is that his cousin is Mouseketeer and actress Annette Funicello (Krysta Rodriguez). Otherwise things are tough as the nuns are strict and the other kids are on his case all the time. But just before Christmas and pretty new exotic substitute teacher Madame Frechette (Molly Ringwald) shows up from Quebec, and a new student Zhenya (Siobhan Cohen) show up and turn everything on it’s ear. This humorous Christmas tale is reminiscent of “The Wonder Years” and “A Christmas Story” where the narrator (Chevy Chase) is the adult Felix telling us about his trials and tribulations of 5th grade in a parochial school.

This is actually a new film, but it really captures the look and feel of 1964 in which it is set. It really appears to be an old film. Lifetime has brought this out, and obviously it copies a lot on A Christmas Story, but the connection to Annette really makes it unusual. In fact, she even pops in near the end of the movie to visit Felix and his classmates. There is a good deal of humor, but it’s not over the top slapstick humor. Instead it’s much more a subtle humor that is quite refreshing. The characters are fun, and Molly Ringwald’s fake French accent, and her insistence (in character) of constantly reminding people that she’s French. Felix’s family is fun, and the classmates are really a crack-up, but the new girl, Zhenya is a real hoot. I found this to be a really unique Christmas story and I enjoyed every minute of it.

[Click here for the Lifetime home page for this film.]

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Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions,

Anne Heche, Brian Tee, Juan Carlos Velis, Carlos Gómez

Nell (Anne Heche) is a recently divorced Mom and trying to make the best Christmas possible without their Father. But it seems everything that could possibly go wrong, does go wrong as the list of bad things that happen go on and on and on.

This is a really funny new Premier Hallmark Christmas movie for 2014. Like “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” before it, a series of disasters occur one after the other making this the unluckiest Christmas ever for this small family. But the harder things get, the more they have to work together to get through it. They spread their bad luck with other characters who they encounter over the long Christmas Eve, and though they make new friends along the way, they pull them all into the vortex of bad luck along the way. I found this to be a very enjoyable humorous look at the Holidays. It’s different, is really funny, but has a lot of heart and Christmas spirit like it should. This is also one of the new Hallmark films that they put out on DVD this year, the same time as it was shown on TV, so that if you really like it, you can buy it. This one, along with “Northpole” are among those new TV movies that would be nice to own. I have even seen copies for sale in places like Costco this year. That’s nice that they do that, as usually you have to wait at least a year for it to be released, and sometimes it never is. I think this is one of the more enjoyable new films this year and one you should try to catch if, like me, you’re a fan of Christmas fare on the TV.

[Click here for the Hallmark home page for this Christmas film.]

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New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), WingNut Films,

Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Evangeline Lilly, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans

The final chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings series comes to a fine conclusion. As we left off, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has awakened Smaug, the mighty dragon that is guarding the castle filled with gold belonging to the rightful Dwarf King Thorin (Richard Armitage), and is on the way to burn the already suffering town of Lake-town. But even after Smaug is dealt with, it won’t be easy to take back this fortress as it is highly desired by everyone, from the Dwarves, to the Elf’s to the Orc’s to the Goblins. All amass outside the gates of the city to fight the mightiest war of all times in the Battle of the Five Armies.

This trilogy has been absolutely awesome. Years ago I read all 4 books of Tolkien’s series, the first 3 large books which made up “The Lord of the Rings” with Frodo, grandson of Bilbo Baggins, as the hero. But after writing the books, Tolkien realized there was a lot of things left out of the history and to explain why things the way they were, so he wrote The Hobbit, where Bilbo takes Frodo aside to tell him the whole truth of what happened decades before when he was young. The Hobbit is a smaller book and much easier to read, and I have always enjoyed it much better than the other three that I found so complicated and hard to follow that it was really difficult to understand. The movies helped a lot, but it was a breeze going through The Hobbit, and I enjoyed it by far the most of all. But each of the 3 Lord of the Rings Trilogy of films was a much bigger book, and and entire book in one film. In the Hobbit a much smaller book was turned and stretched into 3 movies. The most heard complaint was that there was too much filler, the battle scenes were far too drawn out, and it was a mistake to try to stretch this out to 9 hours of film. But I found that I enjoyed the Hobbit films as much, if not even more so that the first Trilogy, and I was glad to have so much to watch.

But with the long delays between each of the films in this trilogy, I found it hard to follow. Director Peter Jackson and the Studios found a solution to that problem as well. Plus the were able to make a small fortune by releasing a MARATHON of ALL THREE FILMS two days early. Not only that, but in IMAX 3D. So we did it. I found out about this months ago, and scheduled Monday December 15th, 2014 as a vacation day. I bought the tickets a month early. My wife and I, and three of my four sons arrived about 12:30PM to the HUGE original full size IMAX screen at the Edwards Theaters in the Irvine Spectrum. This is a HUGE theater, and it’s a few years old, so not the most comfortable theater in the world, but it is the hugest screen we could find, and real IMAX picture and sound. The first film “An Unexpected Journey” kicked off at 1PM, and was done a little around a little after 4:00PM. Then the second film, “The Desolation of Smaug” started about 4:30, and finally we got to see the final film’s premier at 7:45. We finally finished up a little after 10:30, and we had a full day of Hobbit.

A few people showed up in costume, bringing Hobbit style snacks of veggies, milk, cheese, and fruit (How they got that past the usher I don’t know), but the majority were just big fans of the film. Lots of nerds like us were into it. There was a trivia table set up, and really good food from the snack bar. We got to see a couple special features, though very short. Between the first movie and the second, we got to see a short showing the London premier of “Battle of the Five Armies” featuring a great many of the characters in the film giving their thoughts and memories about filming these movies. But between the 2nd and the 3rd Movie Peter Jackson appeared on screen and talked about his feelings (He says he likes the third film the best) about the movies and congratulated us for being the first people on the planet to get to watch all 3 Hobbit films back to back to back. Then he said next time we will have to do all six.

I thought this experience was unique enough to speak a bit about, as I have never spent 9 hours in a movie theater before, although at one time years ago I did see a marathon of all three Star Wars films back to back to back. But the imagery in IMAX 3D was incredible. This is one AMAZING series with unbelievable special effects and CGI. The story is spell binding, and we are so familiar with the characters of the first two movies, that this was an incredible way to refresh everything and end the story while it’s all in mind. Basically, this is nearly a perfect film, perfectly cast, and perfectly filmed. There were several 3D moments that really made me jump with their realism. If you have seen the first two films in this series, RUN, don’t walk to the theater and see it. If you have not seen the first two, they’re on DVD, so watch them, and then get to the theater for Part 3 before it’s too late. This was the ultimate ending to the story, and left me thirsting to go back and watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy once again before too much time passes. I LOVED it. This was a very memorable day!

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Hybrid,

Esmé Bianco, Ryan Bittle, John Ratzenberger, John Colton, Anne Leighton, Kristen Miller, Sarah Hoffmeister, JoJo Wright, Carol Mack, Robert Neary, Eric Etebari, Mark DeCarlo, Gib Gerard, Ron McPherson, Asante Jones

Rebecca Clark (Esmé Bianco) is going through the things in her recently deceased mother’s house when she makes a remarkable discovery. In the attic she finds a carefully preserved box containing 12 Christmas cards from a man she has never heard of. As she looks at them she see’s it from a man some distance away who wrote such loving things that she was shocked that her mother had never spoken of this mysterious secret lover. Rebecca’s father has been dead for many years, yet she never knew her mother had taken a replacement. So Rebecca who is a reporter by trade, is taking some time from the office anyway, and she decides to hire a private detective to help her in searching for the man who wrote the cards. But it’s not an easy search, as the guy is nowhere to be found. But as the mystery deepens, Rebecca seems to be turning over stones that do not want to be overturned, and she may be in a great deal of danger.

This premier UPtv Christmas film is a little bit mystery and a little bit Christmas story. They mystery is not real intriguing. It’s more like a TV show like Hawaii 5-0 or Barnaby Jones. The Christmas part isn’t too heavy as it’s mostly a double dip love story between Mom and her secret admirer, and Rebecca and the detective she’s hired to watch over her. We know there are sparks, but there’s serious disappointment and double crossing ahead. So it’s a mild detective tale, and a not so fulfilling love story that takes place around Christmas time. That’s why I wasn’t blown away, and haven’t gotten real excited over this film. I enjoyed it somewhat, and I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t recommending searching high and low for this one unless there’s literally nothing better to see.

[Click here for the IonTV link to the home page for this movie]

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