A bunch of people having a miserable Christmas Eve find their lives intertwined – and possibly redirected – thanks to either serendipity or divine intervention. You decide. How you decide will probably determine whether you enjoy “Noel” (2004) or not. If you’re religious, or if you see a roomful of horse manure and feel certain someone gave you a pony, your faith will probably lead you to a thumbs-up. If you’re the type who’ll scratch their head as Susan Sarandon copes with workplace sexual harassment, party crashing, a dying mom and the prospect of pulling a George Bailey, pass on this one.
Archives for posts with tag: Penelope Cruz
Spy movies. They’re all different, yet all the same, because that’s how most of the audience wants it. “The 355” (2022) goes out on a limb simply by having all the main spies be women. Subtract the eye candy, however, and there remains a boilerplate, globetrotting espionage flick. Bad guys steal a superweapon. But who exactly are the bad guys? Our protagonists form a rainbow coalition to save themselves – and also the world (of course). Jessica Chastain does Jessica Chastain things. Nobody runs out of bullets – or hits anything – except when they absolutely need to. Eye candy is comfort food.
Finally, toward the end of “Zoolander 2” (2016), I laughed out loud. I don’t know whether it was that particular gag or just the absurdity of the whole thing that finally got to me. This movie is stupid. It knows it’s stupid. It knows that you know it’s stupid. It wasn’t trying not to be stupid. In fact, because it knows that you know it’s stupid, it doubled down on stupid until stupid became absurd and I laughed out loud. Just like the original, there’s dopey male models and world-saving hijinks. Thank god Penelope Cruz has a sense of humor.
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