(courtesy IMDb) Christmas is supposed to be a time of endless joy, peace and goodwill to all. But life doesn’t always play by the idealitically warm and fuzzy rules we lay down for it, and while the festive season should be all chestnuts roasting and sleigh rides, or if you’re Continue Reading
Movies
“This is it. Don’t get scared now.” Home Alone’s Kevin McAllister in Christmas classics mash-up
(courtesy IMP Awards) Christmas is always super busy, right? It’s part of the charm, part of the curse; but what if you could see a bona fide classic like Home Alone, well, fun parts of it anyway, woven into a number of other classics of the genre? And what if, Continue Reading
Festive movie review double: Your Christmas or Mine 1 and 2
(courtesy IMDb) Your Christmas or Mine? Coming with an inventive take on a romcom, let alone a festive romcom where the rules are even more restrictive, is no easy undertaking. But somehow Your Christmas or Mine manages it, delivering a story that, sure, strains the bounds of credibility but then Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Merry Gentlemen
(courtesy IMP Awards) If you’ve watched a Christmas film or two, and this reviewer has seen a considerable share of them, then you’ll quite familiar with the idea that when things go wrong in your life, your automatic first thought is to hightail it back to your hometown. Nothing unusual Continue Reading
Movie review: Gladiator II
(courtesy IMP Awards) Sequels are tricky things to pull off. Not only are you battling against the fearsomely rose-tinted power of nostalgia, but you are trying to engender the same emotional response and devotion that the original garnered but without the full force of novelty and with a need to Continue Reading
Birthday movie review: Spellbound
(courtesy IMP Awards) We all want a happy ever after. But what about if that happy ever after doesn’t quite work as you think it will; what do you do then, when expectations are dashed, even if it’s in a good but different way? That’s the great dilemma facing Princess Continue Reading
Movie review: Wicked
(courtesy IMP Awards) Having the loftiest of your hopes and dreams fulfilled in life is a very rare thing. Oh, we are very good at going big and large when it comes to how good things can be or how they might play out – unless you’re a glass half-empty Continue Reading
Fun animation movie trailers x 4: Elio, The Bad Guys 2, Night of the Zoopocalypse + Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Please stop thinking animated films are just for kids. Yes, they are a perfect way to entertain, amuse and inform children and thank goodness for them during school holidays, long car trips and inordinate waits anywhere. But these gems of cinema also beautifully entertain adults too, and not just the Continue Reading
Movie review: And Mrs
(courtesy IMP Awards) When my parent died within 3 1/2 years of each other, the grief that enveloped me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It felt as if all the old certainties had been swept away and that all the things I knew and could count on were Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
(courtesy IMP Awards) As a child of the Church (thought failed, ultimately, to stick in childhood), it’s always fascinated this reviewer how something as pure as belief in the goodness of a higher power, which should always elevate and enliven can somehow become a tool for oppressive, punitive religious expression. Continue Reading