It’s Christmas Eve once more and so once again the folly of my annual advent calendar of movies that are a bit Christmas(ish) must draw to a close. And what better way to go out than 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home? That is a clearly a rhetorical question for there is no better way. As…
Tag: film
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 23
I don’t know if 1990’s Home Alone is a good film or not. I honestly can’t be objective about it at all. I’m not sure when I first saw it, but I do know I rented (or got my parents to rent it) from our local video shop at some point in the early 90s…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 22
2008’s Step Brothers is very much the kind of movie you might expect a late 2000’s movie starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly to be. If you watch the trailer then you really don’t need to watch the rest of the movie unless you really like that kind of thing. Which sadly I don’t.…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 21
2006’s Starter For Ten is a relatively undemanding coming-of-age comedy that is as quintessentially British as they come. It’s not massively original and a little too content to indulge in clichés throughout. Also, the cast playing the supposedly first-year university students are all, quite evidently, in their mid-twenties. However, the notion of basing the plot…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 20
While my efforts to catalogue every movie with even the most tenuous links to Christmas in the form of an annual Advent calendar might seem a tad pointless, I am occasionally rewarded for my endeavours. For were it not for this yearly exercise in futility I would not have chanced upon a film called Happy…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 19
I didn’t hate 2005’s The Family Stone but I’m not sure I really liked it all that much either. It mostly seems to be about a people who are quite hard to like, not being liked by other people who are also hard to like. They mostly do seem to end up liking each other…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 18
Having included The Expendables 2 in last year’s Christmas countdown, I felt it only right to revisit the original movie for this year’s efforts. As someone who has always enjoyed a 90s action movie, even those of dubious quality, I was pretty excited about seeing this first instalment of Stallone’s homage to the genre. And,…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 17
2021’s The Tomorrow War was denied a cinematic release due to the Covid 19 pandemic, which is a shame because it really is the kind of movie that was made for the big screen. Not that it’s especially good, because it isn’t, but it does have lots of explosions and action and stuff, which would…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 16
2004’s adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days is rather a departure from the book. I assume. I’ve never read the book. Prior to watching this film, my only acquaintance with the tale was the 1980s cartoon Around the World with Willy Fogg, which was very different. Although I don’t think Jules Verne ever…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 15
2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks has, to date, spawned three sequels (the first of which was ingeniously entitled The Squeakquel). I haven’t seen any of them, and I’m not in any hurry to do so. Not that I hated the 2007 outing. Objectively I can’t imagine anyone would really think this is a good movie,…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 14
1997’s Boogie Nights is something of a genre-defying tour-de-force. Certainly it defied any expectations I had prior to watching it, and, for a movie that is ostensibly about the pornographic film industry in the late seventies and early eighties, it is surprisingly heart-warming at times. Indeed it oscillates seamlessly from moments that are hilariously funny,…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 13
I was a little bit too old for the Harry Potter novels when they first came out, but I’m always one to jump on a bandwagon, so by the time the movies started appearing, I was well-versed in the world of wizardry and witchcraft. I quite liked the books in the main – I can…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 12
1995’s Strange Days seems like it should have been a success. Directed by Kathryn Bigalow, co-written by James Cameron and starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett and Juliette Lewis, it appeared to have all the ingredients of a sure-fire hit. But it was, in fact, a commercial failure and critical opinion was divided to almost polar…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 11
Despite claiming to not be a fan of the genre, it has become apparent that rom-coms have featured multiple times in my annual Christmas countdowns and, more often than not, I’ve actually enjoyed watching them. That said, I probably wouldn’t have watched many of them if I weren’t so committed to compiling this pointless annual…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 10
Michael Bay’s 2001 movie about the bombing of Pearl Harbor is exactly the kind of movie we’ve come to expect from Michael Bay. Spectacular special effects, but rather light on anything resembling narrative, acting and credible dialogue. Throw in an abundance of clichés and an excessively long running time and you have formula that has…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 9
There were 12 years between the release of the second and third instalments of the Bridget Jones franchise but the extended break appears to have had no ill effects. 2016’s Bridget Jones Baby is no less charming than its predecessors and, if not quite as good as the 2001 original, which would be a tall…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 8
I used to have a house mate, back in the late nineties, who described Oliver Stone’s Platoon as his favourite movie. Given that we agreed on pretty much everything related to cinema, you’d have thought I’d have watched it straight away, but for some reason I waited over two decades. As pointless as this annual…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 7
End of Days is a perplexingly bad movie that fails to work on almost every level. Even as a mindless action vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger it doesn’t really work. My recollection of action movies from the eighties and nineties was that if Arnie was playing the lead, it was predominantly so he could beat up…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 6
1995’s Toy Story was a game-changing movie in many respects. The first feature length computer-animated movie, the first feature length release from Pixar, and of course the first movie in a franchise which has, to date, spawned three sequels and a spin-off on the silver screen, as well as a number of animated shorts and…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 5
Postman Pat was a childhood favourite of mine, so it was with some trepidation that I sat down to watch his 2014 cinematic debut. Obviously I didn’t watch Postman Pat: The Movie in an actual cinema, nor did I watch it in 2014. I discovered it in more recent years when it was available on…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 4
2011’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo initially seemed to me to be a pointless endeavour. There was already a pretty good 2009 screen-version of the novel, and indeed of the whole of Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, so this seemed like a redundant attempt at making an English-language version of the movie for…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 3
Kingsman: The Secret Service is not a movie that is meant to be take too seriously, and is at least partially intended to be a spoof of the spy movie genre. But while it is most definitely tongue-in-cheek, it is actually a pretty good action movie in its own right. Like so many of the…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 2
2010’s Little Fockers is the third and (to date) final installment in the Meet the Parents series. Like many such movie franchises, Meet the Parents appears to be one of diminishing returns. I quite liked the 2000 original and even if the 2004 sequel was a shameless cash-in predominantly made up of recycled jokes from…
The Seventh Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 1
As December rolls around again, thus begins my annual homage to movies, which are not exactly Christmas movies, but which nonetheless have some Christmas(ish) elements. This is my seventh consecutive year of doing this and if it was ever worth doing (which is wasn’t) then any merit ceased to be obvious by the end of…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 24
It’s Christmas Eve again, and therefore time once more to bring an end to my annual Christmas Countdown of films that are a bit Christmas(ish). You’d imagine that after six years of this pointless lunacy that I would finally have fun out of movies but, alas, I already have another 24 lined up for next…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 23
2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level is the sequel to 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which is, in itself, both a reboot and sequel of sorts to the original Jumanji. It may help to have seen the previous Jumanji movies to enjoy the 2019 offering, but it’s not really necessary. The Jumanji movies know who…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 22
2020’s Wonder Woman 1984 may not be as good as 2017’s Wonder Woman but it’s by no means the worst entry in the DC Extended Universe. Which may be faint praise, given some of the abominations that have been churned out under the umbrella of that particular franchise. But Wonder Woman was a great movie…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 21
Compared to the largely coherent Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Extended Universe has always seemed a bit shambolic and rushed. Which isn’t to say there haven’t been some good movies to come out of the project. My Christmas Eve entry for the 2019 iteration my advent calendar was the rather excellent Shazam, which is technically…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 20
It’s pretty much accepted wisdom that every even numbered Star Trek movie is good and every odd numbered Star Trek movie is bad. It’s not actually true anymore, though it is a little more true when you only consider the movies starring the cast from the original series. I still think that’s both a little…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 19
The original 1972 version of The Poseidon Adventure is infinitely better than the 2006 ‘reimagining’ of the story. It is still, fundamentally, a popcorn disaster movie, that requires a certain amount of suspended disbelief, and clearly the special effects are no match for the remake, but the advantage the original has over the subsequent version…
The Sixth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 18
Danny DeVito’s 1989 black comedy reunites him with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner after their successful collaborations in Romancing the Stone and The Jewell of the Nile. The War of the Roses is quite a departure from those earlier movies but none the less enjoyable for it. Having absolutely nothing to do with the actual…
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