The Review: A Holiday In Harlem

A Holiday In Harlem 7/10

What I think is the last holiday movie for the year L and I watched this movie called A Holiday In Harlem. This lady Jazmin is always busy with work and dodging being around her family. She ends up letting it slip to her grandmother that she is in the city and has to hang out with her. At a yoga class she falls on her grandmother and destroys her Achilles. Now she has to stay and run the yearly neighborhood gathering. She runs into her former best friend, Caleb, who she bounced on years ago without saying goodbye. Every good thing she tries to do has a bad aftertaste to it that causes more problems that get solved by trusting in others. This movie didn't have a heavy amount of drama or annoying characters which I liked.

Olivia Washington as Jazmin

Will Adams as Caleb

Tina Lifford as Mama Belle

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The Review: Bebe Winans We Three Kings

Bebe Winans We Three Kings 8/10

Yay a good holiday movie! Last night L and I watched this movie We Three Kings. Its the story of three sisters fighting for unclear reasons. This father named Lincoln King hides some clues for his young daughters Lydia, Grace, and Abigail, to find and solve on Christmas. He leaves a north star necklace for his wife. Next thing you know all the girls are adults and the mother is dead and the sisters have been avoiding each other. Gracie is a doctor and unlikable. Abigail plays piano in another state. Lydia has a candle shop and is annoying.

The Review: Make Or Bake Christmas

Make Or Bake Christmas 2/10

What a strange ass movie this was. L picked a movie for us to watch and it was this nonsense. I ain't taking the blame for this one. This woman named Emma works for this fake Martha Stewart ass lady named Leslie. Leslie wants to own this bakery called Sugar Bakers and threatens to fire Emma if she doesn't secretly get a floater job there and steal some recipes and stuff. This is illegal. So walks in with no baking experience and they immediately trust her which is why their business is slowly failing. Emma can't bake or lie. Seriously, her lying abilities are so bad I'm surprised they didn't show her crossing her fingers every time she talked.

The Review: Special The Piano Lesson

The Piano Lesson

I have never done a review this way. In a short amount of time I have watched three versions of The Piano Lesson. I saw the live show first. Then I attempted to watch the 2024 film. Then I watched the 1995 film before trying once again to watch the new one. Full disclosure: I am missing half an hour of it and will likely never watch it. I am going to take each character and actor/actress from these different versions and talk about how I received them and what I liked or didn't.

“Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano, which is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas on what to do with the piano. The brother, Boy Willie, is a sharecropper who wants to sell the piano to buy the land (Sutter's land) where his ancestors toiled as slaves. The sister, Berniece, remains emphatic about keeping the piano, which shows the carved faces of their great-grandfather's wife and son during the days of their enslavement.”

The Review: A Wesley South African Christmas

A Wesley South African Christmas -1/10

I am gonna shit all over this movie. I'm also gonna keep asking “What happened to the African baby?” So this is the movie we started watching on accident before going back and watching the second Wesley movie. Bootleg Chris Brown is in South Africa to close a deal with a family. The sister of the family don't trust him and doesn't want to make the deal. The brother of the African family wants to stall and make the deal and says that CB should invite his entire fucking family to Africa for the holidays all expenses paid. The fuck? Absent are the singing sister (simply said she cant come) and older brother (who its said he would come but never shows up), the horny uncle, as well as the twin daughters (guess they couldn't find another guy to cheat on one of them). They are not missed. They add a young woman to replace the singing sister.

The Review: A Wesley Christmas Wedding

A Wesley Christmas Wedding 0/10

Another Wesley movie another piece of ass. L and I started watching the third movie on accident and were trying to piece together what we recalled from the first movie. She then discovered that we missed the second movie (this one) so we started watching. This movie dumb. Its based around the bootleg Chris Brown son getting married to his sisters friend from the first movie. Turns out his ex wife that cheated is still married to him and he never settled that. He does by paying her two million dollars. His future wife, Ryan, has a mother that was acting like she was auditioning for a sequel to Mommie Dearest. Like, her character was far too outlandish for even this film.

The Review: Gremlins 1/2

Gremlins 7/10

Somehow L. and I ended up watching both Gremlin movies. She hadn't seen it since she was little and I hadn't seen it in god knows how many years. This movie was a cute little romp until it just became pure chaos. This inventor named Randall Peltzer goes to a shop in Chinatown after being led there by this little boy. His grandfather runs the place. Randall tries to sell some weird ass invention he has and hears a strange sound. Its a little creature in a box called a Mogwai. The old man doesn't wanna sell it because it is full of responsibilities. Randall offers $200 to buy it and the little boy is like “Take that money!” He ends up meeting Randall outside and selling it to him.

The Review: Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 (8/10)

A few weeks ago L and I watched this. She had already seen it before me though. This takes place two years after the first movie with Riley heading into high school. Her same emotions are there along with a new element called Sense of Self. Joy of course is just putting good memories in there and puts the bad memories in the trash. Riley and two of her friends get invited to a well known hockey camp. Suddenly a damn puberty alarm goes off and some workers start installing new gear. New emotions Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Envy show up. Anxiety quickly takes over and they get rid of the old team. The team have to fight back to get to the control room and stop Anxiety from ruining Riley's life.

Documentality: Yacht Rock A Dockumentary

Yacht Rock A Dockumentary 10/10

Last weekend L and I decided to check out this documentary on Max. We were like “Let's just check it out” and ended up sitting through the whole thing without pausing. This is unheard of. This had some really great music and I learned so much. I really didn't know that the term yacht rock didn't exist until a sketch group made a series online and used that name. I didn't know certain artists and bands were so blended together. I learned what counted as yacht rock and what didn't. I learned one dude from Steely Dan would likely stab you if you used that term in front of him. I found out that even Toto doesn't know what the fuck that song Africa is about. I also found out just when the genre started dying off. I swear, MTV was a curse disguised as a blessing. This is one of those things you could watch a few times and still enjoy it. I added a whole playlist to my Spotify Just a really feel good ass thing to watch.

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The Review: Nutcrackers

Nutcrackers DNF/10

This movie was wack. This dudes sister and her husband die and he has to try and get her four raggedy ass kids adopted. These kids are home-schooled and rabid as hell. Home school kids not even like that anymore. So he wants to keep the kids together but then doesn't care because he just wants to get back to the city. Halfway through L. and I realized we were not gonna finish this and I predicted how it would end and it did. So glad we tapped out on this one. It wasn't cute, funny, or touching. It was just annoying to me.

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The Review: Four Christmases

Four Christmases 7/10

It is time for us to begin watching Christmas movies. This one was funnier than I expected it to be. This couple Brad and Kate are not married and happy as hell about it. They cosplay at bars and have the sex and plan on going to Fiji to avoid spending time with their divorced parents (hence the title of this movie). Their flight ends up canceled after lying to their family that they were busy and the news slaps them on camera all dressed for Fiji and their families start calling them. Now they have to go.

The Review: Hell Bound (1957)

Hell Bound 2/10

Last weekend L. let me pick which old film we were gonna watch and I picked a stinker. The beginning of this movie is a narrated version of how this drug heist is gonna go. Guy pretends to be lost at sea, ship inspector shows up and puts himself into diabetic shock, nurse arrives and gets drugs from WW2 that were “leftover”, and they get paid from selling drugs. The rest of the movie is this guy Jordan making this happen in real life and failing every step of the way. The guy lost at sea is a tweaker. He falls for the nurse who is dating a mobster and she falls for the ambulance driver and gets stabbed by Jordan. The diabetic dude is no longer quite diabetic. The entire plan is far too convoluted and depends on far too many things going right to trust this to anyone he trusts this to. This would've been a little better to me by not showing the entire plan at the start of the movie.

John Russell as Jordan

June Blair as Paula

Stuart Whitman as Eddie Mason

Margo Woode as Jan

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The Review: The Penguin

The Penguin 10/10

This series was fucking great. This is gonna be full of spoilers. When I first heard that this was going to be a thing I rolled my ass, scoffed, knocked papers off my desk Malcolm X meme style. Why was this happening? Did it need to happen? Why does DC have so much money to throw away? Seriously, they have far too many series and most seem like ass and the one I did like got canceled (Swamp Thing) and is available only on Tubi of all places. I had no need to watch this. But I did and after the first episode realized that I needed to shut my whore mouth and continue watching this because it was nothing like what I expected.

Frivolous Flicks 2

Vampire Academy Series 0/10

A couple of weeks ago I was looking through Peacock and saw this series. I thought it was the movie but saw that there was an entire ass series based off the book series. I saw the movie years ago and it was the first film I ever gave a 0/10 to. Well, I'm not breaking any trends because after watching just one episode of this shit I had to do the same. Now, its been years since I read these books but I know the very basics of the story still. While watching just the first few minutes of this I was so confused by what was taking place. I had to look up the story to make sure I wasn't going crazy and misremembering shit. I was not. This basically took the title of the books and characters names and said “Okay, now let's just do stuff!” The story was impossible to follow considering with so many books there is a large mythology. The acting was like some old 90's CW (before it was known as CW) shit. It was filmed so dark I know it was intentional to hide how bad the fight choreography was. I just wondered to myself “Who is this for? Not fans of the books or movie.” Surely there must have been some kind of tax write off or something to do this. Before the episode was even complete I knew that I was done and had no plans to even try to hate watch myself through this.

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The Review: Invisible Ghost (1941)

Invisible Ghost 8/10

L and I watched this crazy ass movie on Youtube from this channel called Full Moon Matinee. This guy introduces classic movies and some have no commercials. This movie called Invisible Ghost was better than it really had any right to be. The host made it seem like it wouldn't be that good but we watched anyway because it was only 63 minutes long. I got upset at the start because as the host stated, there are no ghosts in this movie and the font and image used during the credits looked like a werewolf. Still, besides that trickery this was a good movie.