Mystic Christmas: Movie Review

Perfectly pleasant and often boring.

Mystic Christmas is an occasionally cute but often just boring Christmas romance. Usually exes at Christmas leads to a lot of fun in movie world, but here it’s just very tame. Juniper (Jessy Schram) is a marine expert returning home to temporarily help out the local aquarium. Her ex is the very nice Sawyer (Chandler Massey). They are both just nice people leading nice lives and it’s all a little boring.		2023 Directed by: Marlo Hunter Screenplay by: Nicole Drespel Starring: Jessy Schram, Chandler Massey

Tripped Up: Movie Review

A fresh, funny comedy about Gen Z girls and the food industry.

Life comes at you fast in Tripped Up. A dramedy about four girls in their mid-twenties, one of whom attempted to be a reality TV chef and is now a cog in fancy New York restaurant for a head chef who hates her. One bad decision later, and Lizzie and her three friends are on a road trip to a food festival in a last-ditch effort to save her career.		2023 Directed by: Shruti Ganguly Screenplay by: Cristina Catanzaro, Carrie Shaw Starring: Leah Lewis, Ariel Winter, Sasha Fox and Ashley Moore

Christmas by Design: Movie Review

A lazy Christmas romance.

I was looking forward to a fashion-based Christmas rom-com, but Hallmark’s Christmas by Design forgot the crucial element of successful romantic comedies – characters that audiences want to root for. Charlotte (Rebecca Dalton), aka Charlie, is fine by the end, but at the beginning she’s a delusional, extremely self-absorbed narcissist who likes being antagonistic towards strangers and dismissive of people who care about her. And it forgot the fashion.		2023 Directed by: Max McGuire Screenplay by: Carley Smale Starring: Rebecca Dalton, Thomas Chovanec

Checkin' It Twice: Movie Review

Checkin’ It Twice is my new favourite genre – the hockey rom-com. Scott (Kevin McGarry) is a journeyman minor league hockey player, he’s in his mid-30s still looking for his shot at the NHL, but instead he’s sent to Idaho Falls a feeder team for the AHL. Meanwhile, Ashley (Kim Matula) is a hot shot commercial real estate agent in New York who has just lost a client to her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend.		2023 Directed by: Kevin Fair Screenplay by: Steve Beauregard Starring: Kevin McGarry, Kim Matula

The Other Zoey: Movie Review

Cute, funny and relatable.

Zoey Miller (Josephine Langford) is The Other Zoey, the less popular, less cool Zoey, the one who’s not dating school soccer star Zack (Drew Starkey). And that’s fine by this Zoey, she’s more interested in getting into grad school for computer sciences anyways than dating some shallow jock. Until Zack gets hit by a car, gets amnesia, and mistakes this Zoey as Zoey Wallace, the soccer-playing very cool Zoey that he is dating, or was dating, it’s going to get complicated.		2023 Directed by: Sara Zandieh Screenplay by: Matthew Tabak Starring: Josephine Langford, Drew Starkey

Field Day: Movie Review

One thing about Hallmark movies that is abundantly true – they know their audience. Field Day is a sweet drama-romance about three middle-aged moms trying to find the right balance between work, love and their kids. Marissa (Carmel Amit) is a work-obsessed mom, struggling to be more present in her daughter’s life; Kelly (Shannon Chan-Kent) is an image-obsessed mom, pretending to be the picture-perfect mom.		2023 Directed by: David Winning Screenplay by: Julie Sherman Wolfe Starring: Rachel Boston, Carmel Amit, Shannon Chan-Kent and Benjamin Ayres

Tetris: Movie Review

Business smarts in a cold war-era drama, comedy, thriller.

2023 thus far is the year of the product/corporate biopic and despite some persistent naysayers who insist this is just commercialism of the worst genre, it is proving to add more interesting business obstacles onto the human aspects. Tetris is not the story of how it was created, but how it was purchased, sold and packaged to become one of the most popular video games worldwide.		2023 Directed by: Jon S. Baird Screenplay by: Noah Pink Starring: Taron Egerton