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