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alechowe
Reviews
A Christmas... Present (2022)
"They're heeeeeeere!"
For a few years, there have been rumblings about GAC starting to go ultra-conservative on us. Then Candace Cameron Bure announced on social media that she hoped to "put the Christ back into Christmas" at her new home. Well, up till now, there has been little difference between GAC and Hallmark product (except Mike Lindell's My Pillow commercials, which run uncomfortably rampant on GAC), but this film will likely be remembered as the one that started the gears turning. Secular audiences will recognize an essentially Christian thread running through the plot, which is chiefly about a brother helping his sister return to God, and a discomfiting sense that everyone in the film's world shares the same faith. There are deep discussions of individuals' relationships with God, belief that we will all be reunited with our loved ones in the afterlife, dialogue like "It's not just sermons and bibles in there; we have fun!" and "Seeing God's light is one of God's greatest gifts." If this is merely one movie about devout Christians during the holiday season, that's valid enough; there's a place at the table for all faiths and belief systems. But if this is the shape of things to come at GAC, you can bet the channel will be as polarizing as the country it serves. The most telling shift is Bure herself. She was the good-time girl of Hallmark, but her singular glow is unmistakably dimmed here. Marc Blucas, another Hallmark mainstay, emerges charmingly unscathed, but Bure is definitely compromised. "Thank you for making Great American Family the fastest growing network," says the channel during its commercial breaks. "We love Christmas just like you, and our Christmas movies are made just for you." There was just enough inference in the voiceover artist that I instinctively understood that she was not talking about me.
Younger (2015)
Fine down the line, until...
No secret that COVID put a sizable crimp in any and all forms of entertainment, and many of us waited patiently for our favorite series to catch their breath and regain their momentum. The first six seasons of "Younger" fell into a fine, if not groundbreaking, rhythm, but the final season did not air on TVLand, so unless viewers had a premium streaming service, they were left hanging. I finally caught the final season on DVD and was floored by what I saw.
Apparently the writers had to work with whatever cast members they had at their disposal, and when Miriam Shor decided not to return for the final season, the decision was made to unofficially - and literally - put Molly Bernard in her place. For six years, Bernard was, footage-wise, a smallish contributor to the total sum, a mosquito you could endure to get to the true picnic that was the show. But in season seven, she is everywhere, in almost every scene, for some reason no one can explain, acting as an executive in the publishing house. It was a toxic decision. If you're not a Bernard fan - and I am decidedly not - the final season of "Younger" is pure, unadulterated murder.
Emily in Paris (2020)
Two episodes and out
I spent most of my time watching this with one thought in mind: how much of a risk it is to hang an entire show on one actor's shoulders. The budget, the jobs of the cast and crew - all of it hinges on whether the leading actor makes you want to keep watching. Lily Collins did not make me want to keep watching. I was amazed that, of all the actors available, this was the one Star chose, especially given his track record of forging shows around the right actress (think Sutton Foster and Sarah Jessica Parker). I also found myself wishing a man might take the lead in one of his shows. The market is glutted with shows about empowered women. Men are much less assured in the wake of #MeToo, more vulnerable and, frankly, more interesting to watch flounder. Watching a male - straight or gay - assimilate to Parisian norms would be much less predictable and far more entertaining. In any case, this heroine - both character and actress - is geared to pull in the millennial audience, but there the line is drawn. Such a waste of resources.
A Perfect Christmas (2016)
Incredible quality... at quite a cost
This is without a doubt one of the top ten Hallmark Christmas movies of all time. What mystifies is that, with the repetitious, revolving door of talent that Hallmark insists upon year after year - the mousy, not-quite-pretty heroines drowning in their own insecurities, the mannequin males who don't think and speak remotely like men, the face-lifted women of a certain age who keep cropping up as shopkeepers and mother figures - the network has turned its back on the entire cast of this delightful entry. Everything about A PERFECT CHRISTMAS rises above the fray of the ordinary, cookie-cut Hallmark offering: a plot that thankfully abandons the cloying opposites-attract-but-can't-commit romantic boiler plate for a touching, original tale of financially strapped newlyweds trying to host their first Christmas in a starter house hopelessly unequal to the task, climaxed by a heart-rending O. Henry-inspired twist... a musical score that thankfully diverts from the charmless, paint-by-numbers Hallmark norm... a modest set that is tastefully and realistically decorated as opposed to the standard overdressed Hallmark chalet that looks as though Balsam Hill has thrown up on it... and, best of all, a cast of characters that actually appear to be familial, led by two leads who, for all of their charm and acting ability, were never heard from again on the network. Dillon Casey and Susie Abromeit generate true chemistry as opposed to the exhaustive repairings of the Hallmark stalwarts - think Kellie Martin, Lacey Chabert or any of the nameless, faceless ringleted blondes - who say their dialogue as directed and move on dutifully to their next assignment. With her confidence, winning manner and classic features, Abromeit in particular crashes through the Hallmark heroine prototype, which is typically an offbeat looking almost-attractive type-A misfit with poor self-esteem who treads in indecision until a man points the way to what she really wants. That Casey and Abromeit were never rehired says volumes about where this network lives: in a small one-hour and twenty-four minute box that repeats itself, its plots, its music and its casts to the point where the resulting films are indecipherable from one another. Add to this the blatant way that Hallmark keeps its nose clean by answering to the recent industry demand for equal-opportunity casting by populating people of color in positions of power - bosses, judges, school principals, store owners, real estate magnates - who make their appearance, exert their power over the white people in five lines of dialogue and then disappear into the background. It's jarring, uncomfortable and patently obvious. None of this exists in A PERFECT CHRISTMAS. The kicker here is that, of course, this is one of very few films Hallmark has not released on home video, which means you have to catch it each year when it airs on the channel. If you haven't seen it, check it out, and you'll see where Hallmark has gone wrong ever since. Meantime, where on earth is Susie Abromeit?
Write Before Christmas (2019)
Affecting but cluttered!
This is a well-intentioned break from the Hallmark tradition in that it sprawls beyond the network's predictable and cloying formula to focus on several couples - and, if you can believe it, a further subplot that doesn't involve romance at all. That said, any one of these storylines could have fueled an entire film, and if you know how sketchily drawn the average Hallmark movie's characters are, imagine how little you'd get to know about them if you multiplied by four. Obviously, this entry is overplotted and bursting at the seams, even more so because the screen time between plots is uneven, so some characters are allotted only a small handful of scenes with which to register. Some actors look alike (is it Jax or is it Luke?), which often makes it challenging to register which subplot we're in. The seasonal charm is there, and the performances are true, but the end result is a hodgepodge embarrassment of riches. That said, it's encouraging to see Hallmark finally starting to expand its horizons in terms of scope and formula.
Dunkirk (2017)
Tell the STORY, for God's sake!
A grating example of how modern filmmaking has utterly lost the ability to tell a story. They've got the budget. The actors. The locations. The camerawork. The sound. And after nearly two hours, there is no coherent sense of storytelling in any direction, emphasized all the more by that relentless, anachronistic musical score... We can only pray the 'slice of life' era of filmmaking will end soon. I'm exhausted from so-called auteurs forcing audiences to do the work they themselves haven't done.
Titanic (1997)
Definitely not A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
The most egregious aspect of this overblown cinematic vessel is not the cloying Dick and Jane script, the vulgar modern-day prologue, the primitive CGI effects (painfully obvious on the big screen even in 1997), the fact that DiCaprio looks like a thirteen year old who hasn't yet reached puberty, or the unfathomable eleven Oscars it snared.
No. The true crime here is that the perfect movie about the sinking of the Titanic had been fashioned four decades earlier in A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, which managed to break your heart with the genuine passenger list in its genuine predicament. The tragedy of the sinking, and the core of the 1958 film, is the arrogance of the masters of industry who propelled the Industrial Revolution. This was history. There was no need for a fictional plot, no blue diamond, no Celine Dion, no cartoon villains with twirling mustaches, no Frances Fisher spinning the same holier-than-thou act she's still doing on the Hallmark Channel, and no $250 million budget.
Watch A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. Then curse James Cameron for rightly assuming that modern-day audiences have no memory of their own cinematic heritage.
Get Out (2017)
Best ORIGINAL Screenplay????
In this era of disposable entertainment where we have no cultural memory (and, I fear, no cultural future), and people are living only for the next best thing, is there no one who recognizes that this movie is almost a head-on remake of Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (1975)? Substitute racism for sexism and mix liberally, no credit given to the original author. The fact that not even the Academy could recognize the wholly derivative plot shows how far we have fallen as a moviegoing public. In all likelihood, even Jordan Peale probably believes he wrote an original script. He didn't. And that's what's terrifying about Get Out.
The ABC Murders (2018)
Separate from Sarah
Writer Sarah Phelps cannot adapt Christie without shrouding the characters in a dismal darkness. All three of her attempts, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION and this latest venture, are all hopelessly dour. The direction of all these BBC efforts is dour. The musical scores are dour. Agatha Christie's gift was blending grisly murder with levity. Make no mistake - levity has left the building... These BBC versions are dull and plodding. Dame Agatha would certainly not have approved.
The 10 Year Plan (2014)
Just Watch It
I stumbled upon this film after seeing MY SUMMER PRINCE, a formulaic Hallmark Channel movie that starred Jack Turner. Impressed by his work, I was surprised to find that his highest profile role aside from PRINCE was in this film -- it is indeed a sign of the times when Hallmark Channel casts an actor associated with gay cinema in one of its treacly, heterocentric romance dramas.
The surprises kept coming: While the British-born Turner is Anglo to his heels in the Hallmark feature, he is American to the core in this film. Blessed with infectious charm, singular speech patterns and genuine depth and connection in his approach to a role, he is able to ingest JC Calciano's idiosyncratic writing of Myles, whose use of English is Webster-ready, and make it wholly believable and compelling. Even his movement in the character speaks to Myles' ever-purposeful nature; just watch the slow, deliberate way he takes off and stowes his apron in a closet as he prepares for his latest, sure-to-be ill-fated dinner for two.
THE 10 YEAR PLAN does not inspire a viewer's confidence from outward appearances. The title itself, the weathered hook involving two friends who contract to be each other's back-up plan if both are single at midlife, and the semi-nude promo art all threaten a superficial excursion into the lowest bowels of gay cinema (if Myles saw the poster art, he would say, "The shirt stays on, non-negotiable"). But the film itself stretches happily beyond these perimeters. It begins with a mouth-watering main title sequence, wherein Christopher Farrell's jaunty score is a rhythmic, seductive appetizer for the dance to come, seamlessly merging with a gorgeously photographed montage of the culinary preparation for a first date (you have never seen a more artful capture of scotch being poured into a glass of ice). This sense of style permeates the film; it is beautifully considered and executed from start to finish.
There are regrettable gaps and misfires in the plotting, as has been pointed out with vitriol elsewhere on these pages, as well as standard flip and/or painfully reminiscent 'movie' dialogue, supporting characters that are either superficial (Diane), stereotypical (Richard) or gratuitous (Myles' neighbor), but Calciano is essentially immune to attack based solely on his central writing and casting of Myles and Brody. These men are honestly drawn. We have known them -- or been them -- two people doing their best to survive in a world where gay men are often led to live in extremes, finding themselves far from where they meant to go. It is inevitable, given the film's premise, that Myles and Brody will end up together, but their path to arrival is unpredictable. This is achieved largely through the live- wire chemistry between Turner and Michael Adam Hamilton. Both possessed of faces that speak myriad thoughts and emotions minus any need for dialogue, they are natural unto themselves, and as a unit even more so. At every stage of the characters' development, Turner and Hamilton are present and accounted for, endearing, electric and wholly committed to the relationship they're forging. Their final moment of truth, and, especially, Calciano's inspired coda-with-a-twist before the final fade, are flawlessly executed.
Another element that propels this film beyond traditional gay-themed fare is Calciano's ability to glean subtle insight from the parade of men moving in and out of his protagonists' lives. Witness Kodi's barely-masked self-hatred at his inability to embrace Myles' many kindnesses, intimating that he feels unworthy of someone caring about him to such an extent. Or a basic Nebraskan like Steven Adams losing his sense of self, becoming all things to all men in order to achieve the sexual click with whomever crosses his threshold. See the fear and vulnerability in the eyes of Myles or David, nervously "meeting a strange man in the middle of the night" for the first time. With the advent of the internet, the film emphasizes, one-night stands have become fifteen-minute handshakes. Following one of these, a man is candidly told that most likely there won't be a next time. He offers his departing guest a shower nonetheless, which the guest declines, citing that he "didn't break a sweat." The host holds his composure until he is alone, at which point Calciano's camera lingers on him as he exhales a quiet, soul-crushing sigh of disposability. Even through the lens of romantic comedy, these themes are achingly real, and, when totaled, go far in illustrating the myriad challenges gay men face in their search for connection in a culture that promotes the opposite. You can feel these characters' expectations -- and hopes -- being dashed inch by inch, and their numbness rising proportionately. Most pointedly, there's a reason it takes the leading men in this story a decade to find themselves and each other; there are too many items on the menu, and it becomes challenging -- and confusing -- to determine where strangers become bedmates, bedmates become friends, and friends become partners.
Ironically, viewing THE 10 YEAR PLAN on the heels of a Hallmark Channel movie makes one realize how far gay cinema has come toward the mainstream, warts and all. In effect, Calciano's film is cut from the same cloth -- the scoring (the soundtrack album is worth owning), the set-up, the stock characters, the inevitable conclusion, even the 90-minute running time are all reminiscent of the formula that allows Hallmark movies to hit the same target month after month, year after year. But with two men at the axis of that formula, it is quite a different proposition for an audience weary of the mousy heroines in the hetero counterparts.
Calciano has created a film to watch, and watch again. Gay people will identify with most, if not all, points of the spectrum. Straight people will learn a lot about gay people's lives. And, perhaps, gay cinema takes a memorable step forward.
State Fair (1962)
State Fair as a barometer for the times
The three film versions of State Fair serve as authentic mirrors of the times in which each was made. The 1933 version springs from the dust and grime of the Great Depression, portraying the struggles of farm folk to survive a sparse, hand-to-mouth existence; for this family, the annual fair is one of precious few things to look forward to. A mere twelve years later, the 1945 version is saturated in post-WWII optimism, with the Technicolor camera capturing a world bathing in its devil-may-care prosperity; indeed, there are no farm hands and the Frake children do not appear called upon to contribute in any capacity. In keeping with the times, screenwriter Richard Breen weaves the 1962 remake with subtle storm warnings of a world gradually yielding to corporate dominance. In the pavilions, shown largely through the eyes of correspondent Jerry Dundee (Bobby Darin), horses are being outmoded by machinery, computers are already threatening to render human beings useless ("Pretty soon they'll be able to run a whole fair with just a couple of switches"), and even Melissa's mincemeat has raised stakes, her chief competitor for the blue ribbon no longer a wealthier housewife but Belco and Fremont, a conglomerate using the fair to advertise its mass-produced wares. Dundee even uses this foreboding sense of doom to lure Margie (Pamela Tiffin) into lovemaking, admonishing her to make her move "before those IBM machines turn us all into erector sets." Additionally, there is a sense of immediacy in the media coverage of the fair that quells its once-provincial local flavor: Television monitors are ubiquitous, and Dundee's character is no longer a newspaper reporter but a burgeoning TV personality. The WWII-influenced bandstand of the 1945 version is now a massive Vegas-inspired revue. And Wayne, previously determined to master a side-show ring toss, now seeks vengeance via victory on the speedway. There's most definitely a non-stop adrenaline rush in the film, which has led the 1962 version to be disparaged for diluting the so-called "charm of the original." On closer inspection, however, the creative team was simply responding to a changing world, which they accurately reflected. This might explain why the film has gained prestige and an ever-growing fan base in the years since its release, as the subtle storm warnings of Breen's concept have by now flourished like weeds in a garden.