2024 Favorites!

I Do, In Fact, Want This

When I saw the thumbnail for Nobody Wants This pop up on Netflix, I was intrigued. I love Kristin Bell from The Good Place and I have a forever-crush on Adam Brody from his role on the Gilmore Girls, and that was pretty much all I needed to be sold on the show. But I was deep in Christmas movies at the time, so I waited until a cold snap in bleakest January to binge this breezy L.A. rom com. In another era, this would have been a theatrical movie that packed humor and heart into ninety minutes, ending with an HEA that has viewers leaving the theater with tears in their eyes and a smile on their face. While Nobody Wants This has plenty of humor and heart, spreading out the story over ten half-hour episodes dilutes the comedy and the season ends with only half of the story told. Bell and Brody are both great, and Nobody Wants This is worth watching, but I think this is an instance where less would have been more.

New Year's Eve is Amateur Hour

Every year, my husband and I watch Love, Actually at Christmastime. We talk about how weird it is that 18-year-old Kiera Knightley is being stalked by her husband's best friend, and how Martine McCutcheon is in no way fat despite the movie's insistence that she is. We encourage Laura Linney to turn off her phone and have sex with Carl already, and my husband always tries on his British accent when Colin arrives in Wisconsin to find four hot girls who just love British guys. I'm aware that Love, Actually is deeply flawed, and yet I don't care. It's great. It's well written and well edited and the performances are excellent. I had always heard that its American cousins, Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, weren't nearly as good. But New Year's Eve is streaming on Hulu, and this newsletter is coming out on NYE, and it's directed by Gerry Marshall and stars a bunch of actors I like. How bad can it be?

Inject This Candy Straight Into My Veins

Like every other pophead in America, I'm obsessed with Sabrina Carpenter. For awhile, I was squicked out by her girlish hypersexuality, but as she slowly took over my Spotify playlists I realized that she's in no way innocent. Though it may seem like she came out of nowhere, she's actually been in the entertainment business for nearly two decades and has a very canny approach to her career. She's honed her sexy image into a caricature of 1950's filmy femininity, but her naughty, self-aware lyrics make her seem like your snarky best friend. She really clicked for me when I saw a Reddit comment describing her look as drag--campy, over-torqued, and designed to both skewer and revel in the ridiculousness of performance. When I saw that she was doing a Christmas special for Netflix, I decided to save that delicious little treat for the end of my Christmas movie binge. But now I think I miscalculated. I should have watched A Nonsense Christmas earlier in December, so I could have watched it ten times already.

Paris! Christmas! Waltz!

I spent one week in Paris when I was 20. I went to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and Versailles and the Opera House and Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge, and had absolutely the best, most incredible time. I've never been back, but that's the thing about Paris: it remains. So I'm a sucker for all things Parisian. You know what else I love? Dancing. Sometimes, a dramatic emotional climax can only be expressed through a high-pressure dance routine. And Christmas...look, you know I love Christmas. So if there was ever an SEO-driven movie title designed to target me specifically, it's A Paris Christmas Waltz.

Why, Exactly, Are You Keeping This Secret?

My affection for Lindsay Lohan knows no bounds. I grew up watching her in The Parent Trap and Mean Girls. When she was in her bad girl party phase, I was in my bad girl party phase. When she was in her Greek island phase I was decidedly not in any sort of Greek island phase, but I could sit in my gray cubicle and imagine a Greek island phase. Now, she's in her Netflix rom-com phase. Conveniently, so am I! I've excitedly watched The Other Christmas One and The Irish One, and The New Lindsay Lohan Movie was one of my most anticipated movies of the season.

It Isn't This Hard to Get Pentatonix Tickets

I will admit that, of all Netflix's Christmas offerings this year, I was least interested in Meet Me Next Christmas. Hot Frosty and The Merry Gentlemen feature rampant manchest, so obviously I was most excited about those. The next tier was the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Our Little Secret and the Sabrina Carpenter Christmas Special (review coming next week!). Meet Me Next Christmas was on the bottom of the list, even though I like Christina Milian. I just don't like her as much as I like a gimmicky premise, with or without Lindsay Lohan. However, I didn't do this movie justice. Milian and her costar, Devale Ellis, have the best chemistry of this year's crop, and it turns out that there's plenty of gimmicky premise to go around.

I Can't Be Snarky, This Movie is Genuinely Lovely

I am not particularly interested in time travel. There's the stark historical reality that, as a woman, I'm already living in basically the only era where I can expect to have (some) fundamental rights. But also, I'm also a huge fan of running water, electricity, and grocery stores where I can find the world's bounty at my fingertips. And ice. Do you know how hard it used to be to get ice, especially in the climates where you really need it? So I probably wouldn't travel back in time. But if I did, I could do worse than to travel back to a 1940s movie set, filming at the gorgeous Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.That's the setting for A Biltmore Christmas, which is possibly the best Hallmark movie I've ever watched.

Dance for Me, Twinkletoes

I love a man who can dance. Or maybe I just like Channing Tatum in Magic Mike? Either way, I find that watching men dance rides that perfect edge between sexy and hilarious. Female strippers can be depressing, but male strippers have this zesty absurdity that makes their dance routines sort of wholesome, even when they end up naked. To be clear, I'm pretty much talking about male strippers in movies. I've never actually seen a male revue, which seems like something I should remedy in 2025. Or maybe I should visit the small town in The Merry Gentlemen and catch a mid-afternoon strip show.

Mom, I Will Not Be Mad if You Are a Secret Scottish Duchess

There is Nothing Sexier than Ice Cold Abs

What Are They Doing to Those Pumpkins?

Long-time readers will know that I want more romance movies for every occasion. Give me your Halloween romance, your Hannukah romance, your Every Holiday romance. But I'm not the only one befuddled by the lack of Thanksgiving romances. The holiday has all the small-town and extended family hijinks that a Hallmark movie could want, plus the opportunity for sexy cooking scenes and second-chance romance. But for whatever reason, Thanksgiving rom-coms are thin on the ground. Last year I reviewed Pumpkin Pie Wars, so this year I decided to stick with the theme and review Growing the Big One, a 2010 movie starring...Shannon Doherty?