Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper!: Movie Review

An enjoyable and cute movie thanks to the charming and lovable lead character.

Ted Cooper is a great character. A relentlessly positive and optimistic man who greets every day with a smile and every little disaster with a laugh. It’s a bold move naming the movie after the fictional lead, but Robert Buckley makes this work. Ted never comes across as annoying but rather the friend that everyone wants in their life.		2025 Directed by: Jason Bourque Screenplay by: Russell Hainline Starring: Robert Buckley, Kimberley Sustad

Where the Wind Blows: Movie Review

Western drama with romance, an implausible story, and inconsistent characters.

Where the Wind Blows is western romance with an undefined setting (presumably 19th century, somewhere out west), and a unique story, but unable to get the pieces or characters necessary to fill out that story into something plausible, or even interesting or entertaining. Trevor Donovan stars as a single, untethered cowboy named Chase Logan.		2025 Directed by: John Schimke Screenplay by: Caroline Fyffe, Mike Maden, John Schimke Starring: Trevor Donovan, Ashley Elaine

Maintenance Required: Movie Review

A simplistic rom-com that can’t maintain interest.

You’ve Got Mail has become its own subgenre within the romantic comedy, to the point that some movies will just take that loose concept but present it very differently (like Hallmark’s surprising anti-AI rom-com Return to Office) or take the exact same plot pretty much verbatim but just the industry it’s set in, which is what Amazon’s Maintenance Required has done.		2025 Directed by: Lacey Uhlemeyer Screenplay by: Erin Falconer & Lacey Uhlemeyer, and Roo Berry Starring: Madelaine Petsch, Jacob Scipio

Home Turf: Movie Review

A cookie-cutter rom-com with no personality.

There is usually a maturity even if simplistic to most Hallmark romances, but that is nowhere to be found in their back-to-school / football-themed Home Turf. The movie, which I believe is supposed to be funny, features football players moving in with the uptight school’s president after their dorm floor is flooded. It falls to the handsome coach to smooth things over.		2025 Directed by: MacIain Nelson Screenplay by: Gregg Rossen, Brian Sawyer Starring: Nikki Deloach, Warren Christie