Toying With The Holidays | 2021 Christmas Movies

Sometimes I don’t understand how writers, or whoever is it that comes up with these titles, comes up with these titles! This one is called Toying With The Holidays but it has nothing to do with toys. It’s about trains! It should have been called On Track For The Holidays or something like that. Well, let’s get into it.

Danielle (Cindy Busby) brings her son, Paul (Callum Shoniker), back to her hometown for the holidays. When she gets there, she finds that the holiday train her recently deceased father kept was taken out of commission because it was too costly to repair. With the help of her high school classmate, Kevin (Chad Michael Murray), Danielle is determined to get the train running again for this holiday season.

Who read this script and thought it was a good idea to make? Absolutely nothing happens for the entire movie. Even in the last 15-30 minutes, when we get the big surprise reveal (is it really a surprise though?), still nothing happens! A bunch of people get on a miniature train then the leads kiss. We don’t get to see them take a grand train ride through a Christmas display or even a montage of anyone having fun. They’re just like “Yep, the train works now. Smoochy Smoochy.”

I seriously hate the boring movies more than the bad ones. At least with the bad ones, they make me feel something. I’ll hate a character or I’ll hate the way an actor reads his lines or I’ll hate the set design or something. The boring ones just make me want to turn my TV off and go do something else. Toying With The Holidays is completely forgettable and not worth a minute of your time.

Crashing Through The Snow | 2021 Christmas Movies

I swore that I was going to finish the 2021 Christmas movies. So I’m starting with Hallmark’s Crashing Through The Snow. Yes, it is a dumb title. But is the movie just as dumb?

Maggie (Amy Acker) and Jeff (Kristian Bruun) are divorced parents to two daughters. Jeff and his girlfriend, Kate (Brooke Nevin), are planning to take the girls to Kate’s family home in Colorado for Christmas. When Kate finds out that Maggie has never been away from the girls at Christmas, she invites Kate to come along with them. At the estate, Maggie’s brother, Sam (Warren Christie), makes a surprise visit. Kate begins to feel left out of her kids’ Christmas, thanks to all of Maggie’s Christmas plans, so Sam teams up with her to help her push her way back into the family dynamic.

Most of the time, the conflict in these family Christmas movies can be resolved with a simple conversation. That isn’t the problem in Crashing Through The Snow. Sure, they could talk a bit more but it can be extremely difficult to welcome a step parent into a kid’s life. And it can be even more difficult to watch your former partner replace you as the love in their life. The conversations that Maggie and Sam need to have are difficult and uncomfortable. Their lives would have been better if they were more open with each other in the beginning but it’s easy to understand why they weren’t. Everyone just wanted to make everyone else’s trip easier and less dramatic.

As with a lot of these types of movies, the problem is that none of the couples have any sort of chemistry. Like I have no idea what Jeff sees in Kate. It looks A LOT like he loves her because her family is mega rich. At the same time, I have no idea what Sam sees in Maggie. (Spoiler: they also fall in love.) Maggie’s big personality trait is that she is clumsy. (I think I might hate that part of the movie the most.) Sure, they spend some time together but it’s not a ton of time and they kinda butt heads a lot. Just because someone teaches you how to ice skate, that doesn’t mean you love them.

Overall, I didn’t find the movie too terrible. It is still on the boring side but I think, as my first step back into Christmas movies, this wasn’t the worst movie I could have picked.

OK But For Reals This Time

It has been quite a while since my last blog post. Almost six months. I’m sorry about that. Like always, I have every intention to write more but then I get into my head and overthink things then…well, I think everyone knows what happens. It’s our good friend Anxiety. Anyway, I’m going to try to put him back in the closet and get writing again.

Guess where I’m going to start? That’s right - all those Christmas movies I wasn’t able to finish last season. (This would have made a great Christmas in July thing….) The first review will be posted on Monday, August 8. I’m not sure exactly how many Christmas movies I have to get through - or how many are still on my DVR. Either way I’m going to watch everything I have and hopefully I can sprinkle some non-Christmas reviews in there so none of us get overwhelmed with Christmas in August. (Ugh.)

As always, if you have any suggestions for movies or television shows you would like me to talk about, drop me a comment or shoot me an email.

The King's Daughter | Movie Review

A movie made in 2014 but not released until 2022. Supposedly, it was delayed to work on the special effects. This means that I absolutely had to watch it. Even if it was only released in movie theaters during a pandemic. But I was confident that there wouldn’t be a lot of people in the audience. And I was right. We were the ONLY people in the audience.

The King’s Daughter is very loosely based on the 1997 book, The Moon and The Sun. King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan), the Sun King of France, wants to be immortal. He sends Captain Yves De La Croix (Benjamin Walker) to the high seas to bring back a mermaid. Dr. Labarthe (Pablo Schreiber) believe that if the king consumes the mermaid’s heart, he will be granted immortality. Meanwhile, the king has sent his priest and advisor, Père La Chaise (William Hurt), to retrieve his daughter, Marie-Josèphe (Kaya Scodelario), from the convent where she has lived her entire life under the guise that the king needs a new composer. Marie-Josèphe befriends the captured mermaid and tries to free the creature when she learns of her father’s plan.

Let me start off with : This is not a good movie. The best thing about this movie is Julie Andrew’s narration in the very beginning. Unfortunately, she does not narrate the entire movie. Only about the first half hour. I’m pretty sure her narration is one of the reasons the movie got delayed. Without her telling me what the hell was going on, I would have been completely lost.

I went into this movie knowing it was going to be bad. The question was “how bad?” Before word is even spoken, you can tell you are in for a ride based on how awful the characters look. Pierce Brosnan was given a Party City wig for his role as King Louis XIV. At no point in this movie does he ever look good. He looks like someone else was cast in the role, filmed the whole movie, then someone decided to CGI his face onto that actor’s body.

In addition, all of the costume decisions were strange. The movie is supposed to take place sometime in the 17th-century. Yet all of the women are literally wearing prom dresses from 2014. There isn’t a single dress that is historically accurate. The men’s clothes are only slightly better. Most of the men’s clothes that I saw were tailored in a way to make them look slightly accurate. Like, if you only saw them in silhouette, you might think “Yeah, that looks about right.”

And, of course, there are giant plot holes everywhere. I haven’t read the book itself but the synopsis on Wikipedia doesn’t say anything about the king having a daughter. Marie-Josèphe is supposed to be a lady-in-waiting to the king’s niece. Making this drastic change gives the movie a very weird vibe. In the movie, the king knows he has a daughter and knows where she is but doesn’t care anything about her until…the music at his palace begins to suck? I honestly have no idea why he really brings her to the palace. He claims it’s because he needs a composer and she loves music but that makes no sense. And when she is at the palace, he mostly ignores her except in very specific situations where it looks like he wants to have sex with her? Oh, and one of the movie’s conflicts where he tries to marry her off to a lord in his kingdom because he spent all of his money trying to find the mermaid.

I figured that this was going to be a movie that I wouldn’t be able to recommend. However, if you like terrible movies, this would be perfect. As a matter of fact, if you are going to watch this, please come back here and explain it to me. Why did anyone think that this was a good movie to make? Why did anyone actually agree to work on it? But, if you are a normal person with normal interests, stay far away. Even Julie Andrews couldn’t save this one.

Afterparty | Video Game Review

I am not much of a gamer. If it’s an open-world platformy shooter game, it’s not for me. Afterparty is a single-player point and click adventure game from Night School Studio. This is what I excel at.

In Afterparty, you play as Milo and Lola, two best friends about to graduate from college. Unfortunately, they both die instead. The pair gets sent to hell. Before they get their assigned eternal torture, they get a chance to win their freedom back to Earth. They only have to outdrink Satan in order to return to the mortal realm. Easy, right?

As I said, I don’t do well in open-world games. In this one, your choice is to go to the right or go to the left. Since the game pretty much tells you where you need to go next, there is no need to worry about finding the next location. Just keep walking in one direction until you find it (or the stairs to go to the next level of the map) or until you run out of map. Then turn around and go the other way until you find it (or the stairs to go to the next level of the map). It’s pretty difficult to get lost.

Story-wise, I found the game to be a lot of fun. It does take place in hell so there is quite a bit of dark humor. If you don’t like that, Afterparty definitely is not for you. However, if you are OK with chatting it up with some demons and drinking way too much alcohol, Afterparty can be pretty fun. For hardcore gamers, this one is probably a bit tedious. It’s a lot of walking and talking. You do get to choose what your character says, which does change the trajectory of the game. If you say something insulting to a demon, they may not want to help you later in the game.

Speaking of needing help later in the game, there are multiple endings. I haven’t played through all of them but I believe there are three. I think it’s cool that the endings change depending on what you say to demons. Especially since the game mostly revolves around choosing the proper (or improper) thing to say. A lot of games in this genre only give you the one ending and that is kinda boring.

If you are interested in playing Afterparty, it is available on Steam and the Epic Games Store for PC, the Xbox One, the Playstation 4, and the Nintendo Switch. I played the Xbox version so I’m not sure if there are any differences in the other platforms. But, if you do like this sort of dark humor, I think you will enjoy this game. Just be careful trying to outdrink Satan. He is pretty hardcore.

Dogs On The Trail | Book Review

While I’ve always enjoyed reading, I don’t get a lot of time to read books any more. Stupid adulting keeps getting in the way. But I did get some time to sit down and read Dogs on the Trail by Blair Braverman and Quince Mountain.

Blair Braverman and Quince Mountain are a married couple that participates in dog mushing. With their pack of dogs, they have competed in many events, including the infamous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Dogs on the Trail not only tells us what they do in a year (by season) but it gives us a mini-biography on each of the dogs. C’mon, we all know we’re really just here for the dogs.

I do follow Blair on Twitter so I was already familiar with the dogs. However, I wasn’t very familiar with the sport of dog mushing. Twitter isn’t exactly the best place to try to teach someone about a sport as difficult as dog mushing. Thankfully, Blair’s book has a lot of pictures to go along with the text. Even though I understood her explanations, having the pictures there to reference made it a lot easier.

For anyone that doesn’t like reading but is interested in possibly buying this book, it is fairly short. All four seasons are covered in 143 pages. That does include a ton of pictures of the dogs, the gear, and some of the other humans that help Blair and Quince. It is laid out a little like a children’s book (more pictures than text) but it is chock full of information. To be honest, I appreciated that. Whenever I thought I might get a little overwhelmed with what Blair was explaining, there was a dog picture right there to give my brain a little break.

Dogs on the Trail is a perfect book for anyone who loves dogs. I don’t think you have to love mushing or the cold or even Blair and Quince as people. (Though I’m not sure how you couldn’t love them.) It is just really awesome to see a dog about amazing dogs doing amazing things that they obviously love. And the love the Blair and Quince have for their pack radiates through each word and picture. This book makes me think that I might love mushing…if I didn’t absolutely hate the cold so much.

Taco Bell Crispy Chicken Wings | Food Review

I didn’t realize that Taco Bell starting selling chicken wings. Probably because they are only available at stores that are not connected to a KFC, for obvious reasons, and they aren’t listed on their menu online. They are onlt listed on the menu on the app, which I don’t use. But my husband found out about them and picked up a few boxes for us to try.

© Taco Bell

Surprisingly, the wings were quite tasty. As noted in the name, they are crispy. Very crispy. I eat a lot of chicken wings and I am not used to wings THAT crispy. But I think it made them more delicious. The weird thing is that they are covered in some sort of dust. It tasted a bit like the dust on the nacho cheese flavored Doritos. Supposedly it’s a zesty queso seasoning but I don’t believe it. They totally crushed up some Nacho Cheese Doritos Loco taco shells and used that to fry them. You can’t convince me otherwise.

While the wings are tasty, they are a limited edition item. From what I hear, they are only around until January 12. If you can get your hands on some before they disappear, do it!

Beanie Mania | Movie Review

Since I work from home, I tend to turn on documentaries as background noise. Sometimes they are true crime documentaries but usually I pick something where I’m already familiar with the subject. That way I can easily pick the thread back up if I can’t listen too closely. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with the Beanie Baby craze.

Beanie Mania is the story of Beanie Babies as told by collectors and former Ty employees. The bean-filled animals went from another plushie in the store to an absolute frenzy where adults would travel to neighboring states just to get a particular doll. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds.

Like most people in the 1990s, I owned Beanie Babies. I wouldn’t say I was an avid collector but I did have most of the cats before they went out of fashion. Then, toward the end of the craze, I worked at a store that sold them. I never had to deal with adults calling every day looking for certain dolls or people getting too out of hand in the store. So I was definitely interested in seeing what the documentary had to say about how everything went down.

Sadly for me, the movie didn’t reveal any new information. Since the documentarians were unable to get an interview with Ty Warner himself, they had to rely on stories from the more widely known collectors. The people who started websites or wrote books about the dolls. If you lived through that time and were lucky enough to have access to the internet (the internet was still pretty young at the time), you probably knew these people or read all of this material already. That means the target audience must be young adults, right?

Well, my 19-year old daughter watched part of Beanie Mania with me. I think she got bored of it because she left about 2/3 of the way through the movie. She didn’t even stay long enough to see the only person she would know (Colleen Ballinger, also known as Miranda Sings on YouTube). To be honest, my daughter liked the McMillions documentary about the big McDonald Monopoly game scandal. Beanie Mania just didn’t have an oomph to it.

If you are thinking about watching it, do it for the nostalgia factor. Especially if you are already familiar with Beanie Babies. However, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might find it interesting. Just be prepared to turn it off halfway through if get bored. I really wish the documentarians were able to find more interesting people to talk to. Or at least find some more dirt to talk about. The scandals are what makes people stay til the end.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye | Movie Review

I was about 10 years old when Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, has their televangelist empire fall apart. That’s not old enough to know or understand all of the gritty details but I vividly remember the couple on TV outside the courthouse and doing interviews. So I was very interested when I saw there would be a biographical drama that I could stream on HBO Max.

Tammy Faye LaValley meets Jim Bakker at North Central Bible College. The two get married and travel around the United States preaching. After a few years, they moved their preaching to a television network, where they became very popular. Popular enough that they created their own gospel network. However, in 1987, their empire collapsed due to allegations of fraud and rape.

This version of The Eyes of Tammy Faye is based on a 2000 documentary, also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I haven’t watched the original documentary so I’m not sure how close this movie follows it. But this movie is very pro-Bakker. It paints Tammy Faye as a woman who was treated poorly as a child and, as a result, craves attention and admiration from other people. There is also this weird duality where she is portrayed as both the mastermind that got the couple all of the opportunities that led them to be as popular as they were and also a naive woman who was mistreated and ignored by her husband. I’m not sure that the real Tammy Faye was either of those. I think that both Jim and Tammy Faye manipulated their way into the hearts of Christians and that they were terrible to each other. They were both the same level of horribleness.

To be honest, I don’t think this movie was particularly worth watching. There were some interesting visuals but I feel like it misses out on how awful the Bakkers were to their followers. They conned people into donating more money than they were able to afford. While you can tell that the Bakkers are rich, we never really see whether the money was really theirs or if they were spending church money on their luxuries. It would have been better if we got to see more of the results of their “charitable begging.” Maybe, if you have never heard of Jim or Tammy Faye Bakker, this might be an OK introduction to who they are but you would probably do better with something closer to the truth.

Thursday's Theme Song | "She" Green Day

In order to change things up a bit, I’ve decided that, every Thursday, I am going to post a song that I vibe with. It might be a newer song, it might be an old song. I am going to begin this new weekly feature with my favorite song from Green Day, “She.”