VetteRanger

While I haven't played any of the MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Onlin Role Playing Games) of the type this film is based on, I did play World of Warcraft for many years. There is a lot of bleed over in terms of quests and interaction with NPCs (Non Player Characters).

I think Ryan Reynolds, as the eventually self-aware NPC, maybe overplays the "aw shucks golly" factor a bit here, or I might have given the film ten stars. The story is entrancing and has that multi-level factor ... as the action takes place both in the game and in reality. The idea of an NPC leveling up was great, from the viewpoint of an MMO player. It wouldn't surprise me to see some game designers decide to throw that in somewhere. LOL

Highly recommended.

It's hard to believe this movie disappointed at the box office. It has scenery that only two Western style movies can boast ... the other one being The Man from Snowy River.

Tom Berenger plays his role expertly, and had to send many a female heart to flutter ... both in the theater and watching it at home. Now, of course, you have to watch it at home, and you'll do yourself and injustice if you don't see it in all its Hi-Def Blu ray glory. It's worth watching just for the beautifully filmed scenery.

But the story is also compelling and fascinating ... and at times scary and infuriating. Louis Gates and the Dog Soldiers don't always get along, and the look Berenger puts on Gates face at that time makes the character.

Highly recommended.

A favorite Christmas classic of ours every year is "It Happened on 5th Avenue", which has quite a few parallels with this film ... even the "rich man in disguise" living in a mansion on 5th Avenue! :-)

Possibly it's the inspiration for the Undercover Boss TV series. LOL

In both, a wealthy man, through outrageous circumstances, winds up living incognito with regular people he's in competition with. In this one, he's trying to find the organizers seeking to unionize one of his department stores.

In both films, the rich man comes to appreciate the people he's been forced to fool. Both films have the final payoff when the rich man's identity is revealed ... and even has one of his new friends passed out on the floor at the news!

This movie is fun, though it does drag at times. It's funny, though some of the comedy isn't well timed. And it could have used an extra scene in between the last two scenes as a better transition from the reveal to the payoff. But it's a good film and well worth the watch.

There is some real nostalgic support for this movie, but I think it's misplaced. On the positive side, from time to time you come across some very nice looking sets. The palace exterior and interiors are truly impressive. It's too bad they weren't used in a movie that makes any sense. It's pretty clear that even in the original language, the actors chewed the scenery without mercy.

But I didn't see it in the original language. The dubs are hideously bad. It doesn't help that the dialogue is as wretched as it gets. Real Junior High School level writing, if that good.

Okay, so we have bad acting, bad dubbing, bad dialogue, what else? The story itself is just stupid, despite Samson's mad spear-throwing skills, where the same two soldiers on horses fall down with every double spear throw. LOL.

Let's talk about Kate Chastain. We saw her last year on The Traitors and I was interested to see where she came from, which led me to Lower Deck. So we tried it out, and it's a surprisingly entertaining show about what happens among the crew of an elite motor yacht.

I see comments from people calling Kate "mean" or a "bully". That's nonsense. The producers hire a LOT of questionable employees ... Captain Lee doesn't get to make that call, though hopefully he gets to weigh in. At least he gets to fire the worst of the worst.

However, every season has some employees who think they're the tail that wags the dog, rather than EMPLOYEES who should shut up and do their jobs. If you've never managed employees, maybe you can take the side of these infantile idiots. If you've ever been a manager, then you'll see that Kate's reactions to the goof-ups and goof-offs is often remarkably restrained.

It's a high-end business, not a kindergarden. When the boss says jump, don't question if you should jump, say "How high?" Some of these nitwits don't even understand the word 'jump' in the first place.

You get to see some great scenery, and some of the bits with guests are a pleasure to watch. Some of the guests are people I'd NEVER hang around with or invite to my house ... especially the drunks. No excuse for that, vacation or not.

I've taken to trying out a few of the things the chefs on the show do. It's fun and tasty.

And the editors are clever enough to make the end of each episode demand starting the next. It's a terrible temptation to binge old seaons for that reason. LOL.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is intentionally campy and silly, and introduces the cheapest robot costume in the history of film LOL ... probably.

However, the movie has a good heart, evident in Santa's continuing conclusions that the "bad Martian" means no harm. Luckily the two Earth kids the Martians also kidnap are not as naive.

Near the beginning, a Martian elder outlines the problem with the latest generation of Martian children and suggests they need a Santa Claus. So the Martians decide to bring Santa to Mars. Once they reach Earth, cover your ears lest the stupid sounding technical dialogue leave you nauseated, but watch for the robot. No other set of cardboard boxes painted gray has ever looked so good.

Santa doesn't get alarmed until a Martian tells him they plan to keep him on Mars. This leads to a toy battle reminiscent of Babes in Toyland. :-)

It's silly and certainly not for everyone ... and you'll have to be in the mood ... but there are some real laughs in this thing.

Two elves convince (an unconventional) Santa Claus to let them rekindle Christmas spirit by giving someone three wishes ... as long as the wishes aren't outrageous ... like wishing for a million dollars.

The only issue with the movie is that it takes far too long to get to the crux of the story, which is when our female lead wishes away Christmas. This is a bit too similar to another 2023 film where the female lead ALSO wishes away Christmas. In both movies, they have to start convincing people to take the holiday back on ... albeit in slightly different ways.

But ... no outrageous wish ... yet wishing away Christmas is allowed. LOL

This movie doesn't really hit its stride until the third wish which cancels out Christmas and she has to try to recreate the holiday using whatever they can find, since dedicated Christmas decorations don't exist. That gets a bit humorous.

Dialogue is also good. Definitely worth the watch.

I don't know if this one rises to the level of a Hallmark Christmas movie we like so much that we'll watch it again in coming years, but I was impressed with the job the writers did on making a Gorian knot out of the problems the male and female leads faced. They made it believable all the way and with only one of the common "romance tropes".

We do have a bit of a coincidence. Two single people have adopted sons who happen to be brothers. The woman lives in San Fran and is in the hotel business. Her father owns a ski resort in Park City, Utah, and she and her son find out the brother lives there. By coincidence they meet the brother's widowed adoptive father.

The son from San Fran knows he's adopted and the son in Utah does not. The leads both like each other and their afinity grows, but there is the problem of the two boys becoming immediate fast friend without knowing they are brothers and without the one knowing he's adopted.

That puts pressure on the man to disclose his son's adoption and the woman to reject her father's offer of a job to stay in Utah as his resort's General Manager. She and the man can't get together unless he admits the adoption, and that's a problem for him, and it's understandable it might be.

So the truth about the adoption upsets the romance and the job and the boys knowing they are brothers ... all the while the man may lose his ski shop ... when the woman could save it by becoming the GM and accepting a business proposal her father put on hold.

The tendrils of the story reach in every direction and they don't make you roll your eyes at the samey plot tropes which so infest most of these romances.

Recommended.

This wasn't one of the cookie cutter Hallmark scripts, although in a romance there are only so many tropes.

Here we start off with an antithetical romance when a capable young woman is overlooked for promotion to put the boss's lazy son in charge of her QA department. She suffers through doing his job while he gets the credit for almost an entire year.

Then when he screws up and almost loses an important account, she decides she's had enough and takes the blame, and also takes up a list of resolutions she neglected for that (almost) entire year.

Oddly the young woman and the son wind up making a pact to each help the other one attain goals they could not face alone. Thus the antithetical relationship begins to break down and this script does something so few accomplish ... provide a steady and believable set of scenes for solid relationship building.

There is no "sudden turn", no "mistaken sighting" or "half hidden conversation", just the gradual realization that something more is happening than either had planned ... and on to an entirely believable and satisfying ending.

Well done.

We almost bagged this movie during their first party scene. In fact, we did a couple of weeks ago and I forgot we had and played it again from Fubo streaming again last night. We decided to give it a second chance and wound up glad we did, because after a somewhat slow start which did little to sell the characters, the script kicked into gear and creates a likable group of people we began to care about.

It doesn't hurt that Susan Abromeit is a gorgeous woman. She plays the daughter of a rich woman who runs a successful fragrance company. She meets a young ad exec and doesn't let him know who she is, since she has enough experience with men who treat her differently once they find out who her mother is ... as demonstrated at the opening party.

Complications ensue when the ad exec's company pitches her mother for a new product ... and the young man finds out the daughter misled him.

Very nice story, well presented, and we'll watch it again.

Last night I watched the original Miracle on 34th Street, then the 1973 made for TV version with Sebastian Cabot. The 1973 version was a mess, with some truly head-shaking script and production decisions that simply made no sense, and I suspect were the result of cost-cutting by the producers. Cabot did fine and David Hartman, too, other than his final courtroom scene, which was atrociously bad, but the rest of the cast were either miscast or never found their roles ... possibly rushing into filming the scenes or maybe just terrible direction.

This film was a MAJOR slide down the slope from even that disaster. No Macy's? The "Cole" Thanksgiving Day Parade? Bad start to begin with. There's no such thing and people know that. Macy's wouldn't participate in this film and I suspect it's because they saw this anathema of a script.

Once again, the Santa is fine and the lawyer is okay, but EVERYONE else is a disaster, from the evil rival store owner to the cold, heartless Mrs. Walker, whose first name was AGAIN changed. Why??

And yes, they changed the lawyer's name, too. Why??

In the original, Maureen O'Hara plays Walker as a sensible "modern woman", but with warmth. Elizabeth Perkins' version of Walker is a post-NOW "modern woman" who is not only cold, but mean spirited. When the lawyer proposes marriage and she tells him, with ice in her voice, that he's "a fool", I was done with this travesty.

The addition of the "evil rival chain" does nothing for this story. In the original, Macy's and Gimbal's are at least friendly rivals, and let's remember this is a SANTA STORY which should be aimed predominantly at kids. The 1973 version lost that thread with vodka in the morning, and this one loses it with a complicated business plot which makes little sense and gives us too many "bad guys".

James Remar and his female sidekick offer nothing to the story. They don't even bring a real sense of foreboding.

Billed as a comedy, in watching the first half of this film, there was NOTHING even remotely close to giving me a smile, much less a laugh.

This is what happens when lesser talents try to leech the brilliance of original writers and creators. They have no chance to improve on the original, and each misstep does nothing but corrupt what made the original a multi-generational success. Shame on Siskel and Ebert for originally approving this disaster. They got it very, very wrong ... which happened more often than you'd think.

Yes, I saw this the night it aired in 1973, and not again until I found it you YouTube tonight. We'd just watched the 1947 original with Edmund Gwinn, and recalled Sebastian Cabot's shot at the role.

Cabot did a very fine job here, but the revised script suffered greatly by comparison with the original ... plus ... Jane Alexander brings NOTHING of the fire or acting ability to the role that Maureen O'Hara did. Where the lines are the same, Alexander comes off as very flat.

Early on, when Bill (the lawyer) meets Karen, the parade coordinator (and why did they find a need to rename these characters??), this script introduces a lady friend doctor of Bill's who acts in a very proprietary manner. One sees a personality conflict coming, but the doctor never appears again and is never mentioned again! LOL One can only suppose that later in production, that storyline was dropped but they were too cheap to film the "after parade in Bill's apartment again".

Next, we have alcohol in what is surely a kid's movie, and Karen asking for a vodka cocktail in the morning hours? Another mistake.

Roddy McDowall was a fine actor, but he just wasn't the right choice for Dr. Sawyer.

Finally, they made the decision to hold the hearing in a closed courtroom? No Gallery? How does Macy's decision about testifying that Kringle is Santa Clause play in an empty courtroom? It doesn't. It made no sense at all.

Again, Cabot did a nice job. David Hartman did a nice job. David Doyle overplayed Macy in a ridiculous fashion. Jane Alexander was flat throughout. Susan (the little girl) doesn't hold a candle to Natalie Wood. Jim Backus does a nice job as Shellhammer, but the byplay between the judge and his political advisor contains NONE of the humor of that element of the original. The final speech when delivering the 'letters to Santa' was repetitive and overplayed, especially when being delivered to an empty courtroom. One can only surmise the producers were too cheap to pony up for extras.

Skip this and watch Edmund Gwinn again. You won't be sorry.

This is an older Christmas film that was in the forerunners of the current glut of Christmas films on a list of cable networks, currently led by the Hallmark networks and Great American Family. I tend to think that some of these earlier films, in a time where they didn't have to come up with so many different plots each year, had an easier time coming up with more serious and moving stories.

This is one of those. This is a classic love triangle, with the new guy coming in against the old boyfriend who happens to be rich, less sympathetic ... and in the manner of shooting fish in a barrel ... the established boyfriend isn't nearly as good looking. LOL

I liked the family aspect of this movie, but I thought the love triangle story element was a little too forced. Still, the movie is certainly worth a watch.

This sounded like a great idea. A Christmas Jumanji. LOL

Six people are swept into a magical game after opening a game box and they have to pass through 12 games to exit. The blurb says they must play through the game's levels to "survive". Yet at the beginning some guy who hosts the game gives them snow globes and all they have to do is shake the globe to exit?

The games aren't games at all, but a series of banal and boring activities ... like making hot chocolate and building a gingerbread house. No clever funny dialogue, really nothing interesting at all here.

Some nice set decoration is all you get here, and even at that I've seen better. Another GAC failure from our point of view.

Remember the Night should be remembered as a classic, but it's one you're only likely to see during the season on TCM if you're playing close attention. However, it's a wonderful movie starring two of the giants of the industry at that time and for years to come.

I've always been a fan of Fred MacMurray, starting with watching him on My Three Sons and in several Disney films, primarily Follow Me Boys.

My first exposure to Barbra Stanwyck was in The Big Valley, but she also stars in another of my favorite Christmas movies, Christmas in Connecticut.

In this movie she plays a thief and grifter caught and put on trial two days before Christmas. Fred MacMurray is the DA charged with convicting her when it's difficult to convict a woman at Christmastime. He winds up arranging for her bail and through a series of odd circumstances, taking her home for Christmas to his mother's farm in Indianna (from New York City).

It's a story of love, growth, and redemption that has smart dialogue, funny scenes, and great warmth. Don't miss it.

This is one you don't see on people's "favorite Christmas movie lists", which only goes to prove how hard it is to find. I think I stumbled upon it on TCM years ago, and I watched it for the third time last night. My wife had never seen it. I work at home and used to see a LOT of stuff on TCM she never got to. Now she's retired but we haven't had TCM on Fubo. LOL

Janet Leigh has never looked more beautiful than she does in this film, and Robert Mitchum comes across as unbelievably observant and wise. Wendall Corey gets a bad break in this story. He's simply an incredibly decent guy and when you have a romantic triangle between him and Mitchum, it's not a spoiler to guess who loses out.

However, the story has moving moments and amusing moments, and is well worth a watch for Christmas movie fans.

Six years after Toy Story turned the animation world upside down, this movie fails to live up to that standard, even though the animation isn't terrible. You have to be looking for faults to notice them, and some critics simply made up complaints ... such as a critic who claimed the characters had no shadows. Completely untrue.

The look of these animated characters is very, VERY like the look of the models in the 1964 original, and that's a positive touch all in itself. They also sound very similar, and a few sound identical.

The musical numbers don't match up to the original, but the story is okay, if it drags a bit. It probably would have been better slotted for a one hour time slot, which would have tightened this up considerably.

It's worth a forgiving look by fans of the original, and it's certainly okay for kids anyway. We won't be watching it a second time, but I'm not sorry I saw it.

Matthew Morrison has a long history on the stage in musicals, and it shows here, particularly in his "Singin' in the Snow" number. He really does a nice job of both dancing and singing. So does Jen Lilley, but she's on a bit of a lower level than Matthew.

Interestingly, Morrison is often asked if he's John Wayne's grandson. He's not, but the question doesn't disturb him. LOL

The movie has the normal number of Hallmark romance ups and downs between the couple, who both start out dedicated to "just be friends". Cracks start to appear in the promise early on, but they're forestalled, of course, by the previous girlfriend/dancing partner.

Overall, this is an enjoyable and quite different Hallmark Christmas romance, and one we're very likely to watch again.

We like Danica McKellar ... a lot. Unfortunately she isn't getting the better scripts in these Christmas movies, and this is a prime example. The story is unusually drab, and the only real relationship tension is close to the end and makes the "Duke" look cold-hearted , particularly because he's just "kissed the girl".

Our "Duke", the presumptuously named Damon Runyan, and the other supposedly English characters only suggest one thing ... that Canadian actors are abject failures to affect a British accent. I mean, these accents are painful to listen to. I'd rather have Dick Van Dyke's Cockney travesty. LOL

Oddly, nine years ago Runyan played a rodeo cowboy in A Starry Christmas, a far superior movie and a far superior acting job. He paired with fellow Canadian George Canyon (a country singer) as his brother. The end of that movie didn't make any more sense than the end of this one, either. LOL.

Both Colin and Lori have been in some of our favorite Hallmark vehicles, and we feel Hallmark knee-jerked when they canceled her Garage Sale mystery movie series. I mean, good feeling movies are all about redemption ... a large percentage of their Christmas movies are about people who make a mistake and must seek redemption ... including this one? So they'd have been wiser to go that route with her. No viewers would leave Hallmark because she paid to get her daughter into USC. Trust me. However, we were disgusted on how fast they canceled her.

Back to the movie ... it has a bit of a small-town Christmas mystery, and the High School girl who works at the hotel and takes on a news feed steals the movie. Lori and Colin are okay, but the girl is fantastic. It's not a movie we get the "treasured story" feel out of, but we enjoyed it.

The characters in this movie are likeable enough, but we found it a bit too busy and a bit too understated at the same time, which doesn't seem to go together when you put it that way.

We've got the "successful person returns to home town" trope. And she has an estranged brother who feels abandoned by her.

Then there is ANOTHER "successful person who found a small town", and it turned out he has a natural mother who put him up for adoption. Not really a spoiler.

Then there is the adoptive mother who saved the first successful person's life but later they find their philosophies on the world are at odds. And the two successful persons are a bit at odds for a while. Then we have the one successful person facing the discovery of the mother who put him up for adoption.

So like I said, the movie is far too busy with all these tropes, but even with all that potential conflict, there is no real sustained tension between any of these characters. That makes the story come off a bit flat.

I'd actually mistaken this for a different "castle" in a Christmas movie that we watched a couple of years ago. When this started we realized we hadn't seen this movie, as there was no way we'd have forgotten a movie with Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes.

I think Brooke may have had a face lift, and that's made a few facial expressions a bit forced to get to, but that notwithstanding, she did a nice job in this role with a spunky and emotional performance.

Cary Elwes was equally effective, in particular in one pub scene where he stands alone and motionless in the center of the pub while the dialogue and action around him slowly bring his character to life. Outstanding job of subtle and effective acting.

The antithetical romance was well presented and the relationship warmed at a well-written pace. Several of the supporting roles were interesting and quite amusing.

Recommended, and we'll be watching it again at some time in the future.

The story has been well-covered in other reviews. Kristi Swanson performs well as an abandoned wife who pulls up stakes and starts over with nothing. As things go wrong and she struggles against a broken car and job insecurity and the threat of homelessness, Swanson gives a believable and moving performance.

The tone of the picture reminds me a lot of The Homecoming, with its emphasis on a sense of family and community and faith while struggling against a harsh financial situation.

Her progression as she tries to crawl out of one problem after another is moving. He final sense of desperation might bring tears to your eyes. Well worth watching.

In the first few minutes of this movie, I was ready to bag it. The female lead seemed ridiculous and ill-tempered, and so rudely dismissive of an enthusiastic coworker that the character had just about turned us off.

Luckily, we stuck with it, because it got much better, and it didn't take much time.

And you have to admit, the naughty puppy was charming., and played a big part in the story.

The meat of the story involves the previously mentioned coworker inviting her to his family's farm way up north ... so far up north that they can see the Northern Lights.

One drawback was the use of two ENTIRELY overworked tropes at the end ... the bad boyfriend reappears by surprise and the predatory business deal foiled. They need to wait at least 20 years before they buy a script with either one of those again, and that was as true in 2016 as in 2023.

We start right out with an angel on a mission, and he has to fix a woman's love life. It's the typical story for both romance movies and real life ... bad decision in a man. Some women are simply too needy and cling to whoever comes along and gives them attention. I ran into a few of those before I found the woman I'd marry (and am still married to 44 years later).

But there is a trick to this angel ... a hidden connection to the woman he's assigned to help. This is a very moving movie, with the "angel" in particular bouncing between doing his best and sure he's not going to succeed. If you have a dry eye for the last several minutes, you may not be human.