Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Beau Is Afraid is a three-hour monster of a movie. I wanted to see it when it came out in April 2023 but I was still having eye issues and there was no way I was going to make it through a three hour movie. Well, now that my eye is doing better, let’s see if this is worth it.

Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) is an anxiety-riddled man who lives in a rather dangerous part of town. As he gets ready to take a trip to visit his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), both his suitcase and the keys to his apartment are stolen. He calls his mother to both cancel his trip and figure out what steps he should take. Mona resigns to the fact that he is not coming to visit and hangs up on him. Beau calls back, only to have a random UPS guy pick up the phone. The UPS man tells Beau that his mother is dead. Now Beau has to figure out how to get to his mother’s house for the funeral.

This description barely scratches the surface of what happens in Beau Is Afraid. So much weird stuff happens that I kept waiting for the big twist that explains everything. But that twist never comes. I still don’t know how to interpret this movie. It feels like they were trying to make a movie like Big Fish, where we are supposed to assume the main character’s tales are unreliable only to find out they aren’t. However, we don’t get that sort of sense here. Fantastical stories are told that we are supposed to believe are true. But, seriously, there is a giant penis-monster locked in an attic. Am I supposed to believe that the monster is real or that it’s a allegory for an actual person? There isn’t anything that happened previously in the movie to tell me which way to go.

So, I don’t know. I didn’t hate it but it is way, way, way too long and parts of it were way too boring. I do know that I can’t recommend this movie to anyone. That feels like torture.

Rating: D+

Mean Girls (2024)

Mean Girls started off as a movie in 2004 with Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. In 2018, Mean Girls hit Broadway as a musical with Erika Henningsen and Taylor Louderman. On January 12, 2024, the musical version was released as a movie with Angourie Rice and Reneé Rapp. I have seen all three versions so let’s talk about the newest one.

Homeschooled Cady Heron (Rice) and her mother (Jenna Fischer) have moved from Kenya to Illinois so Cady can attend high school. At North Shore High school, Cady realizes that she does not have the necessary social skills to survive. She meets Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) who introduce her to the various cliques, including The Plastics: Karen (Avantika), Gretchen (Bebe Wood), and Regina (Rapp). Regina decides to take the new girl under her wing, making Cady understand just how mean girls can be to each other. Janis convinces Cady to get revenge on Regina, which causes all sorts of chaos in the halls of the school.

I was already in my late 20s with a 2-year old daughter when the original Mean Girls movie came out. So while I was never the intended audience for the movie, I did enjoy it. Then in 2019, we saw the Broadway musical with most of the original cast. Let’s just say I’m very familiar with all of the various versions of the story. The 2024 movie made a lot of changes to the musical. Unfortunately, not all of the changes were very good.

First, they cut a LOT of songs. Including reprises, fourteen songs were cut for the movie. I would say fifteen were cut since “Meet The Plastics” only includes Regina’s part of the song and cuts both Karen and Gretchen’s parts. They also added a new song for Cady “What Ifs.” This completely replaces “It Roars,” which I think is the better song. (The second new song, “Not My Fault” by Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion, is only used during the credits so I’m not counting it.) I get that these songs were cut for time (the musical is 2 1/2 hours long, the movie version is just under 2 hours) but some of these songs would have made the movie so much better.

Second, a lot of the songs that they had were very flat. The movie felt like it was entirely focused on Rapp’s singing until about halfway through when they realized that Cravalho is also a powerful singer. All of Rice’s songs had zero emotion or personality. Songs that should have been filled with emotion were just flat.

Finally…I’m not sure how to explain this. The movie just felt off. Some of the costuming was weird, the usage of real life influencers in the social media montages took me out of the movie, and of all of the possible makeup/beauty brands they could have partnered with, they chose e.l.f. cosmetics? Regina literally references Louboutin shoes but she uses makeup you can buy at Target? I don’t buy it.

There were good things about the movie - even three years later, Rapp is still amazing as Regina; Spivey’s Damian made me laugh out loud; Cravalho’s version of “I’d Rather Be Me” put the biggest smile on my face; and all of the dancers absolutely ate every scene they were in. (Shout out to Kyle Hanagami’s choreography!) I just wish that they didn’t scrimp on the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, this was the first feature length movie for the directors, Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., and it shows. I would love to say that this is a good replacement for the Broadway musical but it’s not. If you get a chance to see a live performance of the musical, please go see it. It deserved so much better than this.

Rating: C

Decompressing with the Taskmaster

I’m not completely back to watching “real” television yet. It often takes me awhile to get over the Christmas Crush. Since this is the last weekend before my daughter goes back to college, we have spent quite a bit of time watching Taskmaster on YouTube. Never heard of it? Let me try to explain.

Taskmaster is a British game show that has expanded to other countries around the world. The basic premise is the Taskmaster (Greg Davies in the original British version) sends his Assistant (Alex Horne) to give a panel of five comedians tasks to complete. The comedians are then given points based on how well they completed said tasks: 5 for the best, 1 for the worst. At the end of the season, the comedian with the most points wins a golden trophy in the shape of the Taskmaster’s head.

If you haven’t watched the show before, I highly recommend it. I, personally, enjoy the original British version. My daughter likes the Australian version. And we both laughed very hard at the New Zealand version. There are versions from other countries. Take some time to go through the playlist on the official Taskmaster YouTube channel and find your favorite version. Comment below what your favorite one is!

Christmas 2023 Wrap-Up | 2023 Christmas Movies

I know you have been looking forward to my 2023 Wrap-Up post. Well, wait no longer. Here are the details!

In 2023, I watched 92 Christmas movies. While this is still more than the 78 movies I watched in 2021, it is a LOT less than the 127 movies I watched last year.

I did banish the terrible UPtv movies from the lineup but I ended up keeping Great American Family. I still don’t feel great watching the channel. It just feels wrong to not include the Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar movies. And if I have the channel for those two, I might as well watch the other 18 movies they aired, right? Thankfully, the MyPillow and Gilmore Girls commercials were absent this year. I’d like to drop the channel next year but that probably won’t happen. Maybe I can find a way to watch it without actually contributing financially to the channel.

Besides GAF, I also covered movies aired on Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime/Video/Freevee, Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock. Sadly, I didn’t even check Discovery to see what they offered. I forgot all about it. Maybe their Christmas offerings will still be around in July and I can revisit them.

Plans for 2024? I like the number of movies I covered this year. I will try my best to keep the number of movies around 92. However, I would like to figure out how to get a better list of all of the Christmas movies airing each year. GAF really likes to change their schedule mid-season so that is unavoidable but I didn’t find out about some of the Amazon movies until the middle of December. Having a full schedule would make it easier to get a good handle on my review schedule.

Is there anything you would like me to add or subtract for next year? Is there a channel that you think I should watch? Do you think I should continue watching Great American Family? Leave me a comment and let me know. I need as much help as I can get!

Top 10 Best Christmas Movies of 2023 | 2023 Christmas Movies

At first, I didn’t think there were that many great movies. Then I went back through all of my reviews and I actually had a difficult time ranking 10 best movies. I’m glad that there were more good movies than I originally thought. I was worried that 2023 was going to end up a trash fire movie-wise. So let’s get the list going!

10. A Heidelberg Holiday
9. Friends & Family Christmas
8. Sealed With A List
7. Where Are You, Christmas?
6. The Claus Family 3
5. Round And Round
4. The Santa Summit
3. Christmas On Cherry Lane
2. The Naughty Nine
1. Family Switch

Honorable Mentions: A Cowboy Christmas Romance, Christmas Island, Candy Cane Lane, My Norwegian Holiday, Joyeux Noel, Haul Out The Holly: Lit Up

There actually may be a few movies that I enjoyed that I missed for this list. I think the end of the year movies jaded me a little because there were so many bad ones. They made me forget about movies that I truly enjoyed. But I think I’m pretty satisfied with this list. Let me know in the comments what were your favorite movies this year.

Top 10 Worst Christmas Movies of 2023 | 2023 Christmas Movies

This year, I watched 92 Christmas movies. It was enough that made me think I watching “too many” movies but not so much that I thought I was going insane. It also seemed that the movies I was watching weren’t as awful as they were in the past. Here is my list of the top 10 worst movies I watched this year.

10. Christmas Keepsake
9. A Perfect Christmas Pairing
8. Designing Christmas With You
7. The Holiday Proposal Plan
6. To All A Good Night
5. Our Christmas Wedding
4. Santa, Maybe
3. 12 Games of Christmas
2. Ladies of the 80s: A Divas Christmas
1. Silent Night

Dishonorable mentions: Genie, Navigating Christmas, Reporting For Christmas, Merry Magic Christmas, A Dash Of Christmas

There we go. Silent Night is the only movie that truly upset me this year. Most of the rest had good intentions but did not implement the plan properly. I’m thankful that I didn’t have too many awful movies this year. Check back tomorrow for my 10 best movies!

Welcome 2024!

2024 has finally arrived! I managed to get through the Christmas movie season without losing my mind. It actually might be the first year that there weren’t too many completely awful movies. I guess we’ll find out in my wrap-up posts this week.

Now that Christmas movie season is over, daily posts are also be ending soon. Once I finish the big Christmas wrap-up posts, my plan is to do three posts each week - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Reviews will be a little more relaxed in January as we all recover from the holidays and the busiest season of them all.

In February, I’m planning to review a variety of romantic comedies. They won’t necessarily be new movies, just a variety of romcoms that I have never seen before. And there are a lot. I generally don’t choose to watch romcoms in my free time. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and that you are looking forward to 2024. Let’s all try to make this a great year.

It's A Wonderful Knife | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re ending this year with a slasher film. It’s A Wonderful Knife on Shudder. Will I regret this?

One year after a masked slasher kills a bunch of people on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) wishes on the aurora borealis that she was never born. She is immediately transported to another dimension where she was, in fact, never born. In this dimension, Winnie did not kill the slasher so the slasher kept on murdering townspeople. Now it is up to Winnie to right these wrongs.

This was an interesting take on It’s A Wonderful Life. Pretty much everyone in Winnie’s life who survived the original “Angel Attacks” were awful people. The only exceptions were her aunt Gale (Katharine Isabelle), Gale’s girlfriend Karen (Cassandra Naud), and Winnie’s classmate Bernie (Jess McLeod) who everyone called “weirdo.” So it’s a little understandable why Winnie wouldn’t want to be around them any more. However, wishing that SHE didn’t exist was a little much and it seemed a little out of character for Winnie. If they had made her more despondent that she had killed someone, maybe it would make some sense. As it is, it sounded a little more “emo teen” than George Bailey.

There were some good points. Justin Long is good at playing a terrible person, even though his fake teeth were a little distracting. Widdop and McLeod did a decent job at bringing their characters to life. They did a lot of dumb things that teenagers would probably do in that situation. (Instead of other slasher movies where they act like teenagers would make all of the right moves to keep from getting murdered.) In the end, it wasn’t the best slasher movie but it was a pretty good Christmas slasher homage.

Rating: Stay for the end credit song. It’s a banger.

A Christmas Karen | 2023 Christmas Movies

I woke up this morning with a rather large headache but I knew I only had a few movies left to finish out the 2023 reviews. But I didn’t want to watch something that was going to be awful. After starting and stopping a few movies that were completely unwatchable, I decided to cheat a little and watch 2022’s A Christmas Karen instead.

Karen (Michele Simms) is an entitled middle-aged woman that spends her time demanding special treatment from people. After a particularly argumentative day, she is visited by the ghost of a former boss, Jackie (Meghan Moroney). Jackie tells Karen that she will be visited by three ghosts - Gary the ghost of Christmas past (Rolin Alexis), Joy the ghost of Christmas present (Leyla Lawrence), and Damon the ghost of Christmas future (Lee Karlinsky). Will the ghosts get Karen to change her ways?

Yes, this is a remake of A Christmas Carol. And this is a low budget film. However, A Christmas Karen was very well done. The budget was only noticeable in the special effects and some of the sets. The acting was so well done and the story was a perfect homage to the original. I enjoyed the movie so much despite the fact that my head hurt. It was impossible to not chuckle at some of the scenes.

Rating: You won’t ask for the manager

Christmas Casanova | 2023 Christmas Movies

My second Paramount+ movie is Christmas Casanova. I’m not going to get through all of the Paramount+ Christmas movies before the end of the year. If anyone is interested, maybe I’ll see about doing a Christmas in July or something and revisit the movies I missed. Let me know if you want that!

Elisa (Kalinka Petrie) is a lifestyle story podcaster looking for a story for a Christmas show. Daniyal (Fuad Ahmed) wants to make his childhood friend, Tanya (Samantha Brown), fall in love with him. In exchange for content for her podcast, Elisa agrees to help Daniyal win Tanya from her boyfriend, Cliff (Brendan Morgan).

This is two movies in a row with a lead character wanting to steal someone from their boyfriend. And it’s another childhood friend! These people need to stop being terrible. Be happy that your friend has found someone they enjoy being with and stop trying to be the main character in their life. The movie is fine. Boring but fine. There’s something else I want to talk about: the production company.

Christmas Casanova is produced by Reel One Entertainment. They are not new to the Christmas genre. Just this year they put out Mom’s Christmas Boyfriend, How To Fall In Love By Christmas, Coupled Up For Christmas, Christmas At The Chalet, Merry Magic Christmas, Mistletoe Match, and so many more. While I don’t hate their movies like I do MarVista’s awful films, Reel One’s end up so boring. Either they don’t put nearly enough action into the movie, resulting in the audience wondering why we are watching people do mundane things, or they put too much action into the movies, resulting in the audience losing the point of the plot. Writing a movie isn’t easy. Writing a lot of movies in a rather short period of times is even harder. But it would be nice if production companies would be more thoughtful about what they are putting out. Make it enjoyable. Make us want to watch it again and again.

Rating: The podcast that even the host doesn’t want to be in