Be Excellent To Each Other

Is that music supposed to be playing over it?

I mean I assume it is meant to be, but they've messed the levels up so much it's hard to tell.

We watched the new Home Alone last night and it's actually pretty good. It's helped by having an excellent cast (Rob Delaney, Aisling Bea, the lady from Kimmy Schmidt and the guy who plays Jonah in Veep. Though explaining the concept of Jonad and Guyscraper to my daughter was tricky.)

There are plenty of laughs to be had, some fun call-backs and some genuinely vicious, wince-inducing traps.

Where it falls down is the boy's family. I couldn't work out the family dynamic there at all, it was pretty half cooked, though his mother played by Aisling Bea is convincing.

Occasionally the characters make decisions that are so transparently idiotic and in service of an upcoming set piece, but that kind of thing rarely bothers a child.

And the kid himself is...ok. In a Roland from Grange Hill kind of way.

I don't think it deserves the panning its received, it's a solid 3 at least.

Home Sweet Home Alone (the new one) is a competent movie made by professionals.

But the kid is horrible. He steals and...

Luckily you don't spend that much time with him, although isn't that whom kids are here to watch?

It feels like the "thieves" are meant to be the main characters you sympathise with, but they are the ones getting horribly hurt which gets a bit awkward.

It's rehashing the story beats of the first film while trying to flip who are the good and bad guys. It's trying to be clever. Which leaves the film a bit muddled with who it is aimed at and what kind of story it is trying to tell.

However, it gets a pass because it is a least well made.

We watched the first half of Santa Claus: The Movie yesterday. All was going well until Patch’s toys started malfunctioning and all the wheels falling off tots’ tricycles and Santa getting returns for the first time ever, and that difficult conversation between Santa and his assistant Patch, who resigns before he is fired, and Darwin’s littke bottom lip starts poking out, then trembling, then his eyes started filling with tears.

Was it the crushing despair had Patches not resigned the position would more than likely be secure, despite the incompetence and negligence, due to centuries long unionisation of the work force and the elfen omerta on quality control issues ruining Christmas for everyone forever onwards?

The Union didn’t even have his back when he presented his design for radiators, so how was he going to rely on them for fighting his corner in a dismissal! They’ve all been working in these extreme conditions for years and nobody has raised a grievance. Fine and dandy, dandy and fine.

It wasn't for Management being so quick to abandon centuries (seriously, after 500 years of practice, how good would a woodworker be?) of handmade traditional craftsmanship in pursuit of *spit* efficiency, all would have been fine.

Exponential population growth. There are no young elves, and they have a larger number of children to make for each year. Something had to give at some point.

I still had a little chuckle when they were reading ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas and the exchange between the butthurt Santa and the nervous elf doing the recital

It’s still a great film.

Relocating production is an economic necessity and nobody is losing their jobs, they just have to do them 3,000 miles away

If the elf workforce isn't willing to commute to Bangladesh, with a generous relocation package available and candy cane transport as standard, then we wish them well in their future endeavours.

Have you watched Christmas Chronicles yet?

No, is that the one with Kurt Russell? I’ve seen the pictures on Netflix if so.

This was our first Christmas movie of the year, and we only really watched it because Darwin is playing an elf called Dusty in his school play this year, so Santa Claus: The Movie popped into my head as a film that showed lots of elves in a workshop making toys (as that’s what the play is about).

His year group are 5 and 6 years old, and the play they are doing has a running time of an hour, which seems very long! And that’s before they started adding extra songs in (one of which is Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble, which is brilliant to us as 1] we are ‘that age’ and 2] it’s the first song we taught Darwin to sing when he was a baby). I don’t know about others, but I’m sure at that age the plays we did were usually about 15 minutes long.

Yes that's the one, it's really good, I think you'd like it.

There is a sequel as well, imaginatively titled The Christmas Chronicles 2.

Both are worth a watch if you like that kind of thing.

So is the request here Christmas movies that Mimi would like , or ones that Darwin would ?

For the last few years we've binged on the 'cheesy' hallmark type movies and some of them are not too bad , and I do think Mimi would like some of them but I don't think they would work that well for kids

Kids will watch and enjoy any old mince though, so I pick something the grown ups will like too

Although, putting on a boring film can often lead to sneaky nap times

For the kids or adults ? :-)

Darwin, mostly, but I’m always up for a good movie recommendation! We might have a few extra viewing days as well as we’ve just had that dreaded call from school to say he is unwell and had to pick Darwin up so we could all go for PCR tests…

I fucking love cheesy Hallmark style movies on the down days between Christmas and New Year. So cosy! So positive! So easy to sleep through!

Why are they called Hallmark movies? Are they related to the card shop ‘Halkmark’?

They're literally made by Hallmark for their Cable TV Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_H ... rogramming

Oh my goodness. If you click to expand each year the sheer number of them becomes apparent. There are SO MANY. That must be the closest thing the US has to Bollywood.

Bollywood is a good description of them - its been a while since I've seen them but as your a Columbo fan why not start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Town_Without_Christmas - 3 movies all with Peter Falk as an Angel

Mrs Miracle is also a good series (there is a new one in the series this year which will be the first without Doris Roberts who played her)

And where does one find these films?

The princess switch.

The princess switch switched again

The princess switch 3 romancing the star

The princess switch 4 the huygening

A Christmas prince

A Christmas prince 2

A Christmas prince 3

There was a whole channel of them on Freeview last year

I don’t think we get free view, though will have to check with Russell as I’m not entirely sure how our TV works. I think we only have streaming services.

Looks like Hallmark can added to Amazon Prime video for £5 a month

Edit 99p a month for the first 3 months

There seems to be a fair few Hallmark movies included in Prime, to be fair

Will have a look, ta!

Either is good but both is gold.

A film like Chronicle but about Santa could be kind of awesome.

Like how Robot Santa in Futurama is kind of awesome.

I just watched this (at 8:30am because I’m really ill) and it was lovely. Kate Winslet and Jude Law are super pretty, and tve old man is lovely, and even Jack Black is great.

Top Fact: The old man is Eli Wallach, who played the "Ugly" in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"

The Holiday is one of the greatest films ever made. Probably fourth bestest ever.

Yeah, it was ok! Movie lite. No huge plot, easy to watch. Definitely not one of the best movies ever, but absolutely fine.

Seren is on her 4th watch through of Rise of the Guardians, wants to dress up as Jack frost all the time which is great because it's literally just a stick and a grey hoodie

Robin Robin is a new 30 minute Aardman animation on Netflix and I really enjoyed it.

It about a robin raised by mice.

As it's Aardman, it has plenty of gags. The Magpie's song about all his things is a highlight.

Good enough that I would watch it again.

The magpie is easily the best thing about the film. We’ve watched it a couple of times, too.

We had Muppets Christmas Carol on today. It’s still great.

So, Russell’s old boss bought us the Polar Express download, so we watched that and I take it all back. I absolutely loved it and I cried buckets. I totally recognised Steve Tyler as one of the elves, too.

One of my fav Christmas films.

I did not make it through Home Alone. Yay for sleep! Darwin seemed to enjoy it though!l, especially the bit with the burglars. Kevin is almost unwatchable though. He’s so irritating. I know the character is supposed to be, but I think it’s actually the acting that’s irritating.