Jingle Bell Heist Review

Billed a romantic comedy, there is far more drama than expected with "Jingle Bell Heist," debuting on Netflix. Subplots about cancer and divorce seldom setup good punchlines, unless the humor takes a dark turn, which isn't what happens here. But buoyed by a good cast with good chemistry, this breezy fable about robbing a rich store owner on Christmas Eve is an easily digestible time on your couch, your very own Christmas lights twinkling just out of sight.

The plot is this: Sophie (Olivia Holt) is a struggling employee of Sterlings department stores in London, who also works shifts at the local tavern to support mom suffering from cancer. The doctor recommends a new treatment, but the wait-list is too long for her mother to survive, so she'd need to take care of expenses herself. See, even in the UK, heath insurance is a pain.

She's a petty thief too- early on we see her steal the wallet of a grumpy man on the sidewalk, who kicks off peddlers from the block. She gives the money she swiped to them, so we're hardly ten minutes in and we already know she's got a "heart of gold." One day she sneaks a peak at diamond jewelry in the basement of the store (while stealing some quids, I might add), and the next day she is approached by Nick (Connor Swindells), a man who's hacked the security cameras, her mild burglary on record. He fixes phones at a repair shop, fresh out of prison from the alleged heist of the very same store she now works at. He's looking to rob them again to pay for a better apartment for his daughter, his ex-wife suspicious of him, rightly worried he'll slip into his old habits. Some great protagonists, I know.

The two decided to pool their resources and talents to pull off the caper, her on the inside with the knowledge that only staff members have, him on the outside controlling cameras and such. Only nothing goes as planned. We see far-fetched activities like crashing a gala for him to try and seduce Cynthia (Lucy Punch), the wife of the place's owner Maxwell (Peter Serafinowicz) to a security guard distraction ploy involving Run-D.M.C's classic "Christmas In Hollis." It's all very silly, but there is a sense of fun here as our modern-day Robin Hood's find themselves in increasingly ridiculous situations that are far above their skill level.

Olivia and Connor are good here together, and Peter makes for a terrific villain even with his limited screen time. Director Michael Fimognari moves things along I suppose, but it's Abby McDonald's script that wisely keeps the action grounded, even if the climax wraps this up a bit too cleanly and is filled with one too many moments of sudden conveniences to truly buy the whole thing. (Such as Sophie being able to pick locks, because her grandfather was a magician, or the safe company completely divulging the details on the exact same model Maxwell has. And don't get me started on the big "reveal" at the end. Grumble grumble.)

"Jingle Bell Heist" isn't good, but it's not bad either, occupying this watchable middle-ground where only the most familiar and conventional of movies reside in. It's "ho ho humdrum."

Sisu: Road to Revenge Review

Writer/director Jalmari Helander's "Sisu: Road to Revenge" doesn't shy away from gory mayhem, but there's an odd emptiness to it. Star Jorma Tommila returns as Aatami from the first "Sisu," and he dispenses henchmen like a hot knife through warm butter, but there isn't much purpose or creativity behind the many, many kills.

This time around, Aatami is bent on retrieving the remains of his former home, now no longer part of Finland, where his wife and two sons were brutally murdered offscreen by Soviet Union soldiers during World War II. Their slaying was done by the hands of Igor, played by Stephen Lang, who we first meet jailed for what I assume were war crimes. Aatami crosses Soviet territory with his cainine friend, but the notoriety of his actions in the first movie prompts KGB officer (Richard Brake) to offer Igor a deal: kill Aatami and you'll get your freedom back. 

And that's it, that's the plot. Aside from a brief opening burb of text, characters only speak in short, terse terms like "time to unleash hell" or something else that probably sounds good in the trailers. This allows the visuals to tell most of the story, and the first hour of Mika Orasmaa's cinematography is often striking, if not haunting, showing dusty roads from high above or rainy prison cells. So it is a shame that the back half of the picture takes place almost entirely on a cramp, creaky locomotive; once you've seen one train car, you've seen them all.

Igor first pursues the legendary Finish hero by car, Aatami trying desperately to cross the boarder with a house's worth of lumber. But that doesn't work, so he calls in a few planes to try and take him out; that doesn't work either. Even when they cause his truck to tumble into the ocean, he always somehow squeaks by. Did I buy the notion that a single man could collect all those planks of wood in the water and makeshift a boat? I could have, had it not been directly followed by him stumbling upon a working tank. A tank that still works somehow, and that he jerry-rigged to carry that same wood.

Again, sure, I can subscribe still, but then he attaches some explosives which somehow causes the military vehicle to flip upwards over a barricaded boarder, and it at this exact moment where I stopped viewing "Sisu: Road to Revenge" as anything other than just another silly action thriller.

The threadbare narrative continues to grow more ridiculous until it buckles under the weight of its own preposterousness and just sorta lies there. A simple tale of revenge like this doesn't need to grow less personal, less intimate to be entertaining. I sat in my reclining leather chair crestfallen that the plot was lost to cinematic excess.

Though Jorma Tommila possesses a great physicality, where he looks to almost come out from the screen and charge at you with an ax, he hasn't much to do here. Though filled with action, he spends almost every frame either walking slowly, blowing away necessary thugs with machine guns or looking concerned while sitting behind the wheel, swerving occasionally to avoid Lang's goons.

While I did appreciate overall lack of dialogue (containing practically as few spoken words as a Charles Bronson flick), anytime someone does speak it was jarring; why English, if the main characters are Finish and Soviets? Why not just cut all the discourse and make this a silent film?

By the way, the dog survives, in case anyone was worried. Why the hell the pup is so loyal after a journey like this is something only mother nature could explain.

Champagne Problems Review

Netflix's "Champagne Problems" takes every cliche from its familiar mix of Christmas and rom-com genres and somehow turns them into critical parts of its whole appeal. I can't champion its direction or especially its script, both by Hollywood veteran Mark Steven Johnson, but the idea of spending time in France, surrounded by the bubbles of sparkling wine and the glistening lights of holidays, with a group of misfit friends, had my body surrender to the film's irresistible charm.

Minka Kelly stars as Sydney, a businesswoman employed by The Roth Group, or TRG, a firm that she sees as helping small businesses but others see as acquiring them and selling them piece by piece. She gives a spirited pitch on pursuing the purchase of the Chateau Cassel vineyard company and her boss (Mitchell Mullen) decides to fly her to Paris to pitch it directly to the owner Hugo (Thibault de Montalembert).

After a brief bit of encouragement by her younger sister, Sydney spends her first night, not preparing for the meeting but instead out exploring the city. Inside a little bookstore recommended by the hotel's concierge (Thierry René), a case of mistaken identity has Henri, a regular guest, showing her around like he's a store employee. After he tells her he's just another customer and some mild flirting, he asks to show her Paris, things only the locals know. And because this is a romantic comedy, she of course says yes. 

He's played by Tom Wozniczka, and the two certainly have chemistry. His dialogue switches between French and English often, not only sometimes in the same scene but also the same sentence, but there's a believable anxiousness as he stumbles over both languages as she looks on with a lover's glaze.

He spends the night in her hotel room, like only the lucky experience, but- oh no, it's past ten AM, she's late for her big meeting. She hustles her way to the winery where she meets Hugo. Hugo's company is millions of dollars in debt, and has fancied several potential buyers to compete with one another; there's the flamboyant gay son of a billionaire Roberto (Sean Amsing), the stoic and socially awkward German Otto (Flula Borg) and the stony woman of business Brigitte (Astrid Whettnall), who's known Hugo for decades. The group is made up entirely of cliches, but these actors are professionals and handle the well-worn material with honest charisma.

The meeting is well underway but then the door swings open and in walks Henri, and it's at this moment that the characters all learn something we the audience could have guessed simply by reading the title: Henri is Hugo's son. Scandalous.

Hugo decides to suspend the sale until Monday, asking that this motley assortment of stereotypes join him at this residence for the weekend. He says this is to get a better idea of which seller to sell to, but my romance-radar suspects he is hoping for Sydney and Henri to fall madly in love like they do in the movies.

Look, "Champagne Romance" is not very original, having all the obligatory scenes one expects from these sorts of ingredients, like when our heroine successfully suggests to Hugo the exact car part that'll make his lemon of a vehicle run again, or how Sydney is able to find Henri's childhood book he hid somewhere in the estate decades ago. It's all so routine, but there's an undeniable warmth on display, from the locations like the fields of snow-covered grapes, down to the fabric everyone is draped in. This is a cozy little time-waster that is about as good as they come when the filmmakers settle on sensual whimsy.

Wicked: For Good Review

"Wicked: For Good" is a talky slog of a musical where everyone waltzes around garish set designs, singing lyrics that failed to resonate as I left the busy theater. Instead, I lumbered out from the dark cinema and into the brightness of outside confused, trying to come up with answers I'm not sure the film ever considered, or at least thought the flashy production values would distract everyone from. It is all build-up and no payoff, characters serenade about doing this or that, but they never do anything. At a chunky two hours and seventeen minutes, it feels simultaneously overstuffed and hollow, the end credits taking far too long to show up with at least two other fake endings that serve no point other than annoying those who didn't immediately buy into its tawdry excess.

For example, a bit into the runtime, the Wicked Witch of the West (Cynthia Erivo) shouts out that she won't be doing any more "good deeds," her flying monkeys growling as they show their vicious teeth atop her doomy castle. You get all pumped up, thinking something will actually happen now, only for her to renege on her newfound badness but- oh sorry, boy am I getting ahead of myself here. There is so much more plot that I might end up making you wait for "Wicked: For Good," the review part two.

There is just too much plot, to be honest, too many characters and little tangents that are stretched so awkwardly into the narrative, though what else do you expect from a sequel to a movie from 2024 that adapts the 2003 play, which itself is based on a book from 1995 that reimagined a novel from 1900 (which itself was adapted to film in 1939)?

The film opens with Elphaba, who becomes with time the more famous "Wicked Witch of the West," living in exile after she refuses to do the bidding for Oz (the inspiredly cast Jeff Goldblum) at the end of last year's "Wicked." The famous "yellow brick road" is in the process of being built (with painted yellow bricks, a poor method of coloring considering- you know what, it doesn't matter) when she returns, freeing the animals used to pull the paving machine because she's an animal lover. And as a zoophilist she has her work cut out for her, because Oz hates animals, forcing them to leave the land to a dusty desert beneath the freshly constructed golden path. Why he persecutes them is never dealt with in any level of detail, but there I go trying to find logic in a fantasy film.

Glinda (Ariana Grande) is back as well, taking up the position as cheerleader of hope for the people of Oz while he and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) continue to vilify Elphaba. She isn't happy that they treat her friend like this, but her addiction to the spotlight keeps her from being a good person (I know, what a great protagonist). Glinda can't do real magic, which I suppose is why she buys into the whole fantasy, but the film seems to imply that she just needs to "keep trying" and she'll learn it. Huh, I wonder if Oz ever thought of trying that.

But I digress. Glinda soon is to wed her old friend Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), now made the leader of Oz's army. She loves him but he, well, let's just say he never really kisses her any more than a little peck on the lips. He finds out during her speech to the denizens of Oz and is just as surprised as we are. The scene of course turns to song, the crowd joining in with the caroling. If I were at a town rally and my city spokesperson started singing, I'd probably no longer vote for them.

More romance is brewing with Elphaba's sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), the governor of Munchkinland, who is not green, and her trusted employee Boq (Ethan Slater), a Munchkin. She pines for him, but the feelings are not mutual, and so she vindictively outlaws Munchkins from leaving the land without permission. This leads to a whole new set of events that involve a man without a heart that's made of tin, but the "how" and "why" only becomes so because crucial characters speak so carefully that they don't reveal their true motivation, forcing a string of circumstances that could all have been resolved, or perhaps far more interesting, had everyone just stopped singing for one moment and just talked like human beings.

There are more problem areas: why is Elphaba, who has green skin, so feared when everyone lives in the Emerald City? I get that disinformation is largely behind this, but come on!

But they don't stop there: why exactly are the animals villainized? And, let's say for a second there is a reason, does that mean everyone just up and bans their beloved pets from their homes? What about diet, is everyone a vegan now? (This is to say nothing of the especially unconvincing CGI used to create them.)

Want me to keep going? I'd love to: throughout it's said that Elphaba is vulnerable to water because her soul is "so unclean" or something, but because we're now two movies into her life, we know she is not bad. So then why continue to spread that specific piece of propaganda? If Oz and Morrible really want her dead, why promote an ineffective method of attack? What good is just making things wet?

Don't stop me now: at one point, Elphaba sneaks into the city and threatens to expose Oz for all his lies. Oz, seemingly unable to slither his way out of trouble or call the guards, or do, you know, anything a normal person would do, so him and Glinda decide that a musical number is the answer. And Elphaba accepts- she joins them! Why in Oz's name would she do that?!

One more I promise: later on, someone tries to save Elphaba from capture by the royal guards, holding Glinda at gunpoint. The Wicked Witch of the West escapes on her broomstick, yet this person just stays behind- you're telling me there's no room on that broom? What, is there a weight limit or something?

But look, I get it: this is a big holiday Hollywood blockbuster that is all but certain to break all sorts of box office records, and at that level, there is nothing especially bad here. There are a lot of songs, even for its genre, so those who are a pushover for this sort of material will no doubt get their money's worth. The rest of us just wonder how a movie ticket now costs fourteen bucks.

A Merry Little Ex-Mas Review

Netflix's "A Merry Little Ex-Mas" has a Hollywood cast (including Alicia Silverstone) and director (veteran Steve Carr), but the heart of a disposable Hallmark Christmas rom-com. Its script by Holly Hester, who's credits include writing two other similar pictures, is unable to comfortably balance honest sentimentality with genre obviousness, leaves you shouting at the screen "just kiss already" as it strings you along with scene after scene of awkward nothingness before reaching its conventional conclusion.

Silverstone stars as Kate, the local handyperson in the idyllic little town of, get this, Winterlight, who gave up her career ambitions as in green architecture or, something, once she met Everett (Oliver Hudson), a doctor. She followed him to this totally-believably named town and began a family. But as the movie starts, they two are in the middle of getting a divorce. Or as the film calls "conscious uncoupling," har he har har. The two, however, are remarkably amicable to one another, even planning to celebrate the Christmas traditions they practiced when together. What could possibly go wrong?

See, Everett has a girlfriend Kate doesn't know about (the younger Tess, played by Jameela Jamil), but Kate has her own secret: she's going to sell the house, move out and return to work. Seriously, she got her old job back- in this economy?

But while she somehow keeps this secret for much of the runtime, Everett's little secret slips out once she meets her daughter Sienna's (Emily Hall) new boyfriend Nigel. He's annoyingly played by Timothy Innes, the character obsessed with Harry Potter only because, I think, because the movie thinks they look alike.

Anyway, Kate is surprised and hurt by the revelation, but instead of dealing with her feelings like a responsible adult, she strings alone Chet, played with all the brains of a chestnut roasting by an open fire by Pierson Fodé. They meet at a tree farm (like, five days before Christmas), but since he's "Chet, a man of many hats," he's also a nanny, snowplow driver and male exotic dancer. He's not exactly funny, but what he'll say or do next was the only unexpected thing about the whole production.

Melissa Joan Hart is here too, playing Kate's friend and godmother to her two kids, but she's given nothing to do except a producers credit and to gawk at Chet's arm muscles.

To the film's credit, Silverstone and Hudson do have chemistry; so does Silverstone and Fodé. As does Hart and Fodé. Really the casting is spot on and they all do seem to be having genuine fun, and in its own strange way, is kinda nice to see it all unfold. Except for Nigel, what even is that character?

"A Merry Little Ex-Mas" isn't the worst holiday movie I've ever seen, that would probably be last year's large lump of coal "Dear Santa," but considering the relative talent involved, it is a frustratingly lazy one.

Oh, and I should mention the sexy gingerbread house making, which is a sentence as uncomfortable to type as it was to watch.

A House of Dynamite Review

Director Kathryn Bigelow gathered quite the impressive cast for her latest film, the Netflix original "A House of Dynamite;" everyone from Idris Elba to Rebecca Ferguson to Anthony Ramos is here, a tale of what happens inside the United States government when a nuclear strike is made on US soil. We don't see the reason for the attack, the explosion or the fallout, just the immediate events to personnel leading up to the discovery, attempted de-escalation and reality of a potentially nuclear war.

Strangely structured into a handful of chapters, we first meet Olivia Walker (Ferguson) as she goes through security and sits down at her desk, ready for another day as senior officer in the US Situation Room. Thousands of miles away sits Dan Gonzalez (Ramos), commander of the military base that quickly spots what everyone thinks is another routine test from another country. Yeah sure, like we'd have a whole movie if it was just that. 

Back in DC, director (Jason Clarke) tells Olivia that he's got some reports to fill out and to only get him if the world falls apart. Those reports are definitely not getting filled out today. Of course a video conference is called, with as the Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris), the Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso), the Combatant Commander (Tracy Letts), among others, to prep a briefing for the president (Idris Elba, possibly the only celebrity I'd vote for). But it's quickly determined that this is no missile test, but instead an actual nuclear invasion, country of origin and reasoning still unknown. It's predicted to hit Chicago in approximately sixteen minutes and cost something like ten million lives.

As the ensemble cast scrambles to try and place the "who and why" behind the strike, "A House of Dynamite" name-drops a laundry list of ye olde cliches, chiefly North Korea, China, Iran and Russia, and legitimate or not, it's hard to muster any level of cinematic attachment when the potential villains sound like a decade old Tom Clancy novel, but I digress.

Gonzalez leads a team to intercept the missile, knocking it out of commission before it makes landfall, but with a sixty one percent chance of success, it's like, ahem, hitting a bullet with a bullet, or so the script says. With odds like that, reality sets in, but they don't panic as they would in a lesser movie: sure, Olivia tries frantically to reach her ill son and husband, telling him to get in the car and just drive, before hanging up the phone, but we're fortunately saved the hackneyed sights of nameless groups of people screaming frantically as they make a coordinated route to the exit signs. The minutes of impact keep ticking down until the interpose fails, and its up to the POTUS to make the call on retaliation.

We then time travels back to the same approximate start time and plays out more-or-less the same events, but from the perspective of the Secretary of Defense and his immediate coworkers and then of the president and his meticulously planned activities; it's a bold move that works because of the different personal stakes every group has, elevated by game players who know the power of a pause mid-sentence.

My favorite is Tracy Letts, who handles himself like that one cool teacher everyone had in school, more focused on his coffee and "the game last night" until he needs to actually take things seriously. I suppose it makes up for his character not exactly having much of a backstory.

"A House of Dynamite" doesn't offer an easy answer because there isn't one, but the audience will no doubt feel cheated at its abrupt and anti-climatic climax. And yes, in a way this is just two hours of people sitting, walking and running, looking worried on the phone, but the narrative thread weaving between secretaries, radar stations, the Situation Room and the president himself keeps you thinking. Imagine, a film that asks something of you, instead of just bombarding you with pretty, computer-generated spectacle. This is an unusual thriller in that all the action is hypothetical, and exhausting and stressful in a way your commercial, big-budget blockbuster could never be.

Vicious Review

While Renny Harlin is out bastardizing "The Strangers" franchise by remaking a sub-90 minute long film into a trilogy, its creator, Bryan Bertino, is out writing and directing other things. Unfortunately, his efforts resulted in Paramount+'s "Vicious."

Starring Dakota Fanning, who chainsmokes between screaming and crying, as Polly, a cronic underachiever on a snowy night, living in a house she rents from her far more successful sister Lainie (Rachel Blanchard), when she gets a knock on the door. She opens it to find a decrepit old woman, played by Kathryn Hunter, who says she thought she knew someone who used to live here. Polly lets her in, offering to call her a cab, when the lady pulls out a box and places it on the coffee table, gifting it to her. Polly is a bit perplexed, but that confusion soon turns to fright when the old lady starts saying "you're going to die tonight." Let this be a lesson to you kids to never talk to strangers.

Polly kicks out the old woman and the box, who proceeds to try and figure out what to wear the next day. It's "a big day" we're told, Polly apparently hoping to go back to school (I think, the film never bothers to fuss over small details like character development). But as she sits on her bed, we see a blurry figure shifting behind her. She yells "Polly," who shrieks only to turn around to an empty room. She calls her mom (Mary McCormack) in a panic, who seems to downplay the oddness of her daughter's evening in favor of chastising her cigarette habit. "You said you'd quit," she tells Polly over the phone. My mom would probably be more upset at all the expletives she says, but I digress. 

Now back in the living room but still on the phone, Polly is stunned to see the box is now on her coffee table, inside an hourglass not yet ticking down. But then plot happens, and it turns out her mom is not actually her mom but someone behind this whole thing with the old lady and the box. She says she'll die tonight unless she puts inside something she hates, something she needs and something she loves. Sounds simple enough (I'd wager the smokes would count for all three).

What follows is a confusing mess of scenes that don't really make any sense, from mirror-people, calls from dead people, neighbors who kill themselves and doors that won't open, among many others. But what can and can't happen is never explained, nor the reason why, and it is this lack of logic that isolates any of the action onscreen from resonating with us. 

Without any real purpose, "Vicious" fails as a horror movie, settling on cheap would-be jump scares, loud "bangs" and visions of things that aren't really happening; it's like a ghost movie without the ghost. Oh, and the ending, which I won't spoil, is so lame and so decidedly unscary that it's hard to imagine it coming from the same guy who crafted the depressing and distressing climax of 2008's "The Strangers." 

The film doesn't know what it's trying to say, what its own rules are or the point of any of this, settling instead on an appealing lead, Tristan Nyby's good cinematography, moody lighting and a bunch of cliches.