Disc Type

The story is simple. It chronicles a conversation between two people. Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found bloody and beaten in an alley by an older man, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard). He takes her to his sparse flat to care for her and help her. What takes place is a long conversation full of intellectual digressions about Joe. It slowly reveals what led to her downfall. Seligman is a sheltered bookworm who has a detached curiosity about her story. 

The cast is impressive including Shia LeBeouf, Uma Thurman, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Udo Kier among others. The director is Lars von Trier, the famed Danish auteur and provocateur. Von Trier has always tried to find hidden and shameful areas of human behaviors in his films. Many of his films are rigorous exercises in the depths of human pain. They attempt to push expectations. They explore behaviors that seem too absurd to be real, but that is because most of us refuse to acknowledge certain parts of ourselves.

I don’t say this often, but I’m always happy when I get an opportunity to say it: this movie took me by surprise. I not usually one for the holiday film; don’t get me wrong, I’m no Grinch; however, I have found that magic of Christmas tends to wear off when the illusion of Santa is destroyed. (To all those who are still believers I recommend you stop reading now.) That being said, I have no shame in admitting that in case of Signed, Sealed, and Delivered, I felt the magic once again. Don’t call me a believer again; however, let’s just say it made me want to believe again.

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered as it turns out is actually a full-on Hallmark television series following the everyday lives of characters who work in the  dead letter office of the United States Postal Service. Led by Oliver O’Toole (Eric Mabius), this group that includes Shane McInerney (Kristin Booth), Rita Haywith (Crystal Lowe), and Norman Dorman (Geof Gustafson), works overtime ensuring that letters make it to the intended party, believing in the significance that each piece of parcel can bring into the lives of the intended. This time around, it’s Christmas, and their final letter has a very challenging recipient: GOD.

Tis the season to be...overwhelmed with a crushing number of Christmas-themed movies on our television screens. In addition to holiday staples like A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, and Die Hard (yeah, I said it), many networks roll out original, made-for-TV yuletide tales. The Hallmark Channel is certainly doing its part this year with its “Countdown to Christmas”, which includes 12 new movies. One of those films transports us to the fictional land of Cordinia for the painfully cliched romantic-comedy stylings of A Royal Christmas.

Emily Taylor (Lacey Chabert) is a Philly girl who has been dating her charming boyfriend Leo (Stephen Hagan) for almost a year. Leo is a foreigner who came to America to attend business school, and Emily is a seamstress/aspiring fashion designer. (Get it? She's a seamstress...and her last name sounds like “tailor”...it's *that* kind of movie.) As the couple prepares to spend their first Christmas together, Leo is summoned back home by his mother. It's right around this time that Leo reveals to Emily that he's actually Prince Leopold, heir to the throne of Cordinia.

Holiday movies, to be more specific holiday kids’ movies: talk about being out of my depth. It’s been quite some time since the days where I used to sit down to enjoy a kids’ movie; dare I say that I don’t have the slightest clue what the kiddies are into these days? Seems to be a lot of movies about planes, trains, and automobiles (pun intended) dominating the box office; however, not the case with Frozen in Time, which is centered around the most popular holiday of all time: Christmas. To give this film the proper justice that it deserves, I turned to someone who would be able to watch this with the objective view needed: I sat down and watched the film with my godson Amare.

Frozen in Time tells the tale of mischievous brother and sister, Eric and Patty. It’s Christmas Eve, and the family is loading up the car to spend Christmas with their inventor grandfather. From the start of the film, Eric and Patty demonstrate the traits that lead kids into being put on the naughty list; they fail to listen to their parent’s instruction, they blow off chores in favor of having dangerous fun, and they attempt to sneak cookies when they are told that they can’t have any. However, it is one act of disobedience that land them in the biggest trouble they have ever been in. When the two sneak into their grandfather’s workshop and come across a mysterious clock, intrigued by the clock the two accidently break the clock. What they don’t know that this is not an ordinary clock. By breaking the clock, the two have thrust themselves into a time loop, doomed to repeat Christmas Eve over and over again, and we all know what the biggest problem with that is: never getting to open the presents the next day.

It’s great to see the love that comic books and their characters are getting from the public; only a couple decades ago people didn’t look so kindly on the medium.  Growing up it wasn’t the wisest decision to broadcast to your classmates about your enthusiasm over the new Punisher or Batman comic.  I got lucky and never really had to deal with bullies, but I had friends who had their fair share of torment over liking the kind of music, movies or comics that they did.  The comic book store was a safe haven away from it all, and it was between the pages that all of us comic book geeks would escape and live vicariously through the animated panels before reality came barreling in. 

In the documentary Legends of the Knight, writer and director Brett Culp seems to have two goals.  First is to tell the story of how Michael Uslan made it his personal mission to bring Batman to the screen and to be viewed as a serious character, unlike the parody of what he was in the Adam West series.  There is also the other side of this documentary; the heart of it that after watching this film I don’t think it is possible to view superheroes the same way ever again.  I don’t mean to imply there is anything negative here. In fact it is quite the opposite, and the stories that fill this feature will tug at your heartstrings to the point that I believe it could possibly change and make a difference.