tashinaknight Reviews

The Choice (I) (2016)

Stretches credibility

[4/10 · 28 August 2023]

This was the movie equivalent of a Danielle Steel novel and that's not a compliment. It was simplistic and didn't have much of a plot. The opening scene is at a hospital so it's no spoiler that there is something medical and it's not believable in the slightest. The movie spent a good part of the last third in blatant misdirection. Come to think of it, the whole movie could have been shortened to 30 minutes without losing anything and even then there wouldn't be enough plot to make it interesting.

I can only assume these Sparks movies are like Hallmark movies where everyone knows what to expect and only a certain type of person would like them. Those people are rating it 9 or 10 and the rest of us are giving it much lower ratings. I gave it a 4 only because I liked the settings for the most part and I enjoyed the sister of the main male character.

The Fulfillment of Mary Gray (1989 TV Movie)

For fans of the book....

[5/10 · 31 December 2022]

I don't even know what to say. This was one of my favorite books of all times. For most of the movie, I thought this was a rushed version that stayed pretty true to it. I think the casting was quite good and I think they managed to do pretty well for having to have so much time compression. The primary issue is that so much of the book was what the characters thought, and it's quite hard to show that in a movie where you can't see thoughts.

This is for fans of the book. I don't want to give any spoilers, but let's just say that the last 1/3 of the movie does not follow the book at all and my head was spinning because the first 2/3 of the movie was so true to the book. Try to go into the last 1/3 without any expectations at all (probably impossible). I'm only giving it a 5 because I don't think I'd watch it again. I think I'll go read the book again just to get it fixed properly back in my mind.

My Sweet Holiday (2020 TV Movie)

8 for the male lead, 6 for the kid, 4 for the rest

[6/10 · 4 January 2021]

I thought the male lead was quite good in this. Sure his part didn't make any sense at all, but I watched it all the way through because he was such a consistently believable nice guy. The little girl was cute, a decent actress for that age, and her singing was nice.

The female lead, on the other hand, was booooooring. Wow. She wasn't given much of a script to work with, but it's like she didn't even try. Also, the script had her be mean one minute and then nice the next minute, not interested and then super interested, acting like an adult then a teen. And she was passive aggressive and had no communication skills. It's just not believable that the male lead is interested in her at all once she does a few of her intense mood swings. He'd be running the other way!

The Christmas Bow (2020 TV Movie)

Solid performances and more complex than the usual

[7/10 · 3 January 2021]

While this is not one of my favorites, and I wouldn't watch it again, this is one of the better effort o the year for Hallmark. The characters were complex and the script was well done. I kept wondering if she was suppose to be adopted since she didn't look remotely to be the same ethnicity as her parents/grandparent. Hallmark has a ways to go on their inevitability for this sort of thing.

A Glenbrooke Christmas (2020 TV Movie)

8 for the acting, 6 for the screenplay

[6/10 · 21 December 2020]

The actors did what they could with the smarmy script. The conflict was dumb and not necessary.

The Long Goodbye-The Kara Tippetts Story (2019)

Very very very religious

[5/10 · 7 October 2019]

This is a reasonably well told story of the last year or so of a very Christian woman's life with a church planter husband and 4 kids. I was watching it because of medical interest, and there was very little medical in it. If you are interested in watching a Christian woman go through the dying process with grace, you'll want to watch this for sure and would likely rate it a 7 or 8. If you don't want a lot of preaching or are interested in the medical aspects of breast cancer, I'd skip it. The synopsis here of the plot does not mention it is highly religious, which I tend to suspect is because they want non-Christians to watch and hope to pick up followers, especially as it got more and more Christian as it went along. I hope that isn't true, but regardless, if you're evangelical, you will enjoy it.

Sailing Into Love (2019 TV Movie)

Decent movie, if they had a different lead actress

[6/10 · 11 July 2019]

This is one of the better Hallmark movies lately, and the lead actor has a ton of charisma, but man, that lead actress. What were they thinking. Sure, she is pretty, but to be an actress implies that one should have to be able to act, yes? Her voice is bad, and she just couldn't summon up any ability to carry off her lines. I hope this is her last Hallmark movie. I won't watch another with her.

Dare to Be Different (2017)

West Coast girl just doesn't get it....

[5/10 · 28 May 2018]

I was 15 in 1979 and this was my music growing up so I feel like I understand the history reasonably well. The Cure, Split Enz, Adam & and the Ants, The English Beat, and Devo were at the center of my music world. This documentary doesn't make a lot of sense to me, or at least the spin on how amazingly groundbreaking it was. I'm sure this radio station was a big deal in Long Island, but it just seems really late to the party to me. They make a big deal about being so influential and how MTV could barely have existed without them, but WLIR didn't even change format to New Wave until August 1982 - new wave (and MTV which started a year before WLIR) was well established by then. I listed to KROQ's New Wave format in Los Angeles for many years before WLIR even changed format to New Wave. This is from Wikipedia (about KROQ): "By 1980 the station had fully committed to a post-new wave modern rock orientation." And they say "post-new wave" because they'd been playing New Wave since 1976 and by 1980 it was about time for post-New Wave - WLIR didn't even start playing New Wave until 2 years after KROQ went "post-new-wave." Not exactly groundbreaking from my perspective. I can see looking at some old playlists that they were playing some New Wave songs before the format change, but definitely mixed in with plenty of Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen.

I don't think the documentary knew what it wanted to be. If it wanted to be about the politics and staff of the Long Island radio station, that part of the story doesn't seem very interesting unless you lived there at the time. If they were going to tell a story of a groundbreaking New Wave station, they should have made it about KROQ. If they were going to tell more of a New Wave story, then WLIR could have just been a small segment in the latter part of the documentary.

I will say that the interviews with the Dave Wakeling, Thomas Dolby and others were worth at least fast forwarding to get to, but I can't really recommend the documentary itself. I'm giving it a 5 for probably being interesting to a NY audience and for getting to see some artists on camera that I haven't seen for many years.

What the Health (2017)

Very biased

[4/10 · 16 July 2017]

The film is well shot and seemed very much like a filmmaker going in search of something to make a movie about. I like to educate myself and I am low sugar now, but also thinking of cutting down significantly on meat, so I am not on one side or the other of this debate. I did think that the movie was not well named or well described in its blurbs. It says it's examining the link between diet and disease, but really, it's a vegan film trying to scare non-vegans into veganism. I know a plant based diet is a good idea. But a one-sided scary movie is not what will persuade me. It's like watching a documentary called "World Religion" and it trying to preach one particular denomination. Even just the first couple minutes made me doubt the movie. It was equating (this isn't a spoiler - it was literally one fact in the first 3 min of the film) - processed meat and cigarettes as being cancer causing, even to the point of showing eggs and cigarettes being fried up and served to kids as a way to show they are equal. So I want to the WHO site which says, "No, processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos (IARC Group 1, carcinogenic to humans), but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk." So yes, technically they are in the same class, but no attempt was made to explain that one might raise the risk of one type of cancer by a few percent and the other might increase another cancer risk by 50%. Misleading at best.

Again, I think an overall plant based diet is best, but ramming it down people's throat with a very one sided view while naming the film something very bland and generic to get a wider audience is disingenuous.

Love at First Glance (2017 TV Movie)

Very confusing and didn't love it

[5/10 · 9 April 2017]

I do love the actress (loved Twelve Dates of Christmas), but I didn't love the movie. It was mostly a bunch of smarmy stories (and I love Hallmark, so I can take most smarmy but this was over the top) put together about this way-better-than-perfect guy that she thinks she likes, except that she doesn't know him, who was conveniently out of the country for the whole movie. Meanwhile her male best friend/roommate (who is one of the regular cast of Hallmark guys) was being kind and supportive and always there for her. You know how in a Hallmark movie, even if there is an ex and a new guy and a guy best friend, it's always clear who the girl will end up with. Well, not this one. Does she fall in love with the perfect guy she's never talked to in person? Does she fall in love with the super nice roommate or best friend (I even watched the beginning again, and it didn't explain their relationship at the start of the movie)? I won't give spoilers, but I didn't know the answer until late in the movie. I was so unsure that I wasn't rooting for either of them, so when she picked, I actually didn't care.

Journey Back to Christmas (2016 TV Movie)

Unbelievable and so very simplistic, and not in a good way

[4/10 · 18 January 2017]

This first part is not a spoiler: I love Hallmark movies, but this one was not only not really romantic but was also very unbelievable. The main character is very low intelligence. Super sweet, but completely too naive to be believed. And there are just too many plot holes.

OK spoilers now: We are supposed to believe that she goes to the future, is completely uninterested in all future technology and then goes back to the past with seemingly no attempt to even figure out how she might profit at all from having been able to ask the kid with the iPad what were the "hottest stocks of the late 40's" or anything like that. I mean, yeah, I'm all about the romance, but put me in the future for a couple days and then send me back, and I am at least going to figure out how to make my life a little easier. Whenever they mentioned new technology, she just looked confused and then ignored it. She didn't even ask to hold the iPad. She knew she had gone to the future, but still couldn't believe her house was changed from how it was 70 years earlier. Everything was too cute and tidy. She just happens to get a key to a storage closet with all the Christmas decorations for the gazebo. No one ever bothered to look in the closet before (all it takes is a locksmith). Even though she loves taking photos, she doesn't notice that she left her camera behind, and then magically 71 years later, the camera has undeveloped film that turns out to have perfect photos on it. No aging to the film at all and all the photos are completely professional. Also, there really is no romance to the film. The male character does seem to have the hots for the time traveler, so I thought they were going to be the two to fall in love and then maybe "Journey Back to Christmas." But halfway through, it turned out that the his love interest was a woman who he obviously thought of as a little sister and had no feelings for at all, as evidenced by him not having a clue why she'd be jealous of the time traveler. And the Candice character didn't really seem to be very passionate about her husband. She was glad he was still alive, but wasn't overwhelmed with joy or anything as one might expect if one found out the love of one's life was alive after knowing he was dead. Anyway, the actors do a decent job (if Candice was supposed to play someone not very smart - and the older guy she knew when he was a child was a really good actor) but the screenplay was so dismal, I will definitely not be watching this one again.

Winter's Tale (2014)

Couldn't get through it

[1/10 · 11 September 2015]

This book was my very favorite book for 20 years and I was actually really enthusiastic about it being made into a movie, just so that people who hadn't read the book could share the fantastic story. After it came out, I heard that it wasn't very good, so I delayed watching it for quite a while and finally sat down tonight to give it a try. I lasted exactly 32 minutes, until a scene with Pearly caused me to give it up (no spoiler - just a section where the book and movie parted ways forever). I couldn't believe the direction they were taking the movie and I just couldn't let it corrupt my memories of the book. As a matter of fact, I've started re-reading it now, just to get that 30 minutes of movie out of my brain. This is a review for people who've read the book, although I don't think I would have liked the movie even if I hadn't read it. I am especially sad that people who see the movie will think it's like the book, which it isn't. And also sad that in my lifetime no one else is likely to attempt a "real" version of it that really does follow the storyline of the book.

A Christmas Wish (2011 TV Movie)

Very very very belief oriented

[4/10 · 25 December 2014]

This might be a positive or negative review, depending on beliefs.

Overall, the movie was pretty mediocre TV-movie fare, with a couple better then normal actors. I'll watch almost any Hallmark Channel style Christmas movie while I surf the internet. I'm not terribly picky - some turn out to be surprisingly good, some are just terrible. I rarely have to just give up on one.

This one I did. If I were religious, I think I would have given it a 6 out of 10 by the end. I am generally tolerant of a certain amount of religion in a movie, but this one was just over the top and preachy (and not just religious, but go-to-church religious). I started to fast forward those bits, but finally turned it off. If you are not solidly a religious church going person, I'd recommend giving it a pass.

If you are, I think you'll like it. It's nothing special, but not a bad example of the genre.

TL;DR: every 5-10 minutes there was another religious segment.

When Sparks Fly (2014 TV Movie)

Cute, but nothing special

[8/10 · 29 June 2014]

This was a little dumb but cute enough to be worth your while if this is your genre. The character of Sammie was way too over-the-top and she wasn't believable as a person you think would exist in real life. The female lead was not bad but not very memorable. Also, the way the script is written makes it a little hard to like her - she makes a few questionable decisions.

Lochlyn Munro wasn't your typical romantic male lead, but did a really good job in this and was easily my favorite. I don't remember having seen him before, but looking at his IMDb profile, he's a busy guy and I can see why. He was very believable and likable. Overall, not a movie I'll probably see again, but worth my time on a lazy Saturday night.

Looking for Mr. Right (2014 TV Movie)

Yawn

[4/10 · 10 June 2014]

I watch pretty much all Hallmark Channel romances. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. This one was far more tedious than most. There was very little romance to it. The hero was on screen a very low percentage of the time. I actually liked him, but never really got much of a chance to get to know him or root for him.

The heroine was not a great person - naive in a bad way (only to further plot points) and thoughtless. I think the fault lay mostly with the screenplay. I didn't mind the general directing and the actors actually seemed pretty good. They just didn't have much to work with but a formulaic script. Came here to rate it primarily to remind myself not to watch it again.