If “Happy Christmas” (2014) is a Christmas movie then all y’all need to shut the hell up about saying “Die Hard” isn’t a Christmas movie. “Happy Christmas” happens to take place at Christmas, but it’s really just a character study about a ne’er-do-well layabout sibling that brings joy to a mundane home when not almost burning it down. Anna Kendrick is the ne’er-do-well and Melanie Lynskey (priceless in “Two and a Half Men”) is the sister-in-law who could use something/someone to rouse her from a post-partum funk. Every generation has these types of middling dramedies. This one’s for the millennials.
Archives for posts with tag: Anna Kendrick
I got to the end of “Table 19” (2017) with Anna Kendrick and was wondering if anybody felt the “Breakfast Club at a wedding reception” vibe (it wasn’t subtle), so I Googled some reviews (even though, to avoid confirmation bias, I usually don’t read reviews) and, like, EVERYBODY got the “BC” references – but not in a good way. Ahem. Buzzkill. So, anyway, all I know is that I always stop at some point during a movie to fetch dessert from the kitchen. Tonight, I had a brownie and ice cream sitting in the fridge. The ice cream ended up melting.
Can’t anybody give a speech in a movie? Not a monologue. A speech. Room full of people, notecards, PowerPoint, whatever. Make your point and step away. No! There’s the Speech 180, where Actor stops in the middle and instead speechifies about the moral epiphany which caused them to reject whatever they were originally speechifying about. Or the Raincheck, where Actor stops, silently epiphanizes and rushes off to their sweetie. I was really liking “Up in the Air” (2009) until George Clooney pulls a Raincheck. But sweetie shoots him down! Ha! It made me start liking the movie all over again.
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