In a world that is a strange amalgam of 1950s rockabilly culture and every 1980s post-apocalyptic trope, Michael Paré and a ragtag group of misfits are hired to rescue his former girlfriend, kidnapped rocker Diane Lane, from Willem Dafoe and his biker gang by her boyfriend manager Rick Moranis. It’s as magnificent as that sentence can possibly convey. It also has an excellent soundtrack, especially the songs performed by the music acts featured in the film. 
As with many classic novels, I’ve never read Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine is Jane, who after her own harrowing childhood is hired to look after mysterious Orson Welles’s young ward. At a brisk hour and a half, I’m certain there are character-defining scenes that must be missing from this portrayal. Fontaine’s portrayal is fairly acceptable, but Welles’s over-acting, directed to no one else in the world but himself, does nothing to further the romantic angle of the story. The young actors in the film (Peggy Ann Garner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Margaret O’Brien) all give sweet performances and it’s a shame they weren’t more of the focus of the story if they were going to butcher the novel anyway.
It’s a testament to the caliber of the actors here and their performances that a film that has as many problematic story lines as this one is still endearing. Alan Rickman cheating on his much superior wife with a predatory co-worker is the least of its issues. We have Hugh Grant as a Prime Minister hitting on a staff member whom for unknown reasons everyone calls fat. There’s Andrew Lincoln obsessively lusting after his best friend’s new wife, even at their wedding. Kris Marshall is such an aggressive creeper that he has to take his schtick across the pond. And yet I still get warm feelings from many of the other story lines and watch it almost every year, except Kris Marshall’s scenes. I fast-forward through that crap. 
After a series of rules violations, Texas State University’s football team is forced to restart with an entirely new coaching staff and team. Enter a ragtag team of underdogs that include 34-year old Scott Bakula, graduate assistant Sinbad, and soccer player Kathy Ireland. For no real good reason, a dean of the university does whatever he can to make them fail, plus there’s a love interest for Bakula. It’s such an incredibly forgettable sports film that even the relative likability of Bakula and Sinbad offer nothing to save it. 
Returning to his neighborhood after being released from jail, ex-gang member Glenn Plummer finds himself trying to save his pre-teen son from a similar fate. It’s a familiar story that is unfortunately drawn out here by focusing too much time on the exploits that wind him in jail instead of the redemption he later experiences. It picks up in the latter bit when Plummer discovers some inner peace in jail at the same time his son is struggling on the outside. It is a film that has has its heart in the right place but other than a few of the performances is lacking.
Charlene deGuzman is a recovering sex addict with the most hipsteriest wardrobe who is given a place to stay by her sponsor Melissa Leo. At her new home, she strikes up a musical friendship with Leo’s brother John Hawkes. There’s a definite quirky indie vibe about the entire film which can get annoying at times, but I went in it because of the cast and wasn’t disappointed by the performances. I liked seeing the collaboration between deGuzman and Hawkes develop, two completely different characters who learned more about themselves because of the differences.
I somewhat remember the time period when Joaquin Phoenix pretended he had lost his mind and was quitting acting to become a rapper. At the time, it mostly seemed like people were putting up with his shenanigans because that’s what the public is expected to do with celebrities. I had been long intrigued enough to want to see how the film resulting from this farce would turn out and I found it incredibly disappointing and mostly dull. It’s entirely possible every little bit of it was acting, but a bit too much of the underlying tone reads as a couple of dude-bros doing whatever they felt like doing and caring not about the consequences on the people around them. It plays off like an even more mean-spirited version of a Borat film.
There’s nothing about this film that says Christmas except the title, yet I only watch it at Christmas time. Dick Powell is an office worker who enters contests with dreams of making it big and marrying his girl. When some of his co-workers play a prank and make him think he’s won a coffee slogan contest, he quickly goes on a shopping spree, sharing his newfound wealth with his entire neighborhood. It’s a breezy little romp with plenty of good-feeling humor that still makes me feel like Christmas even when it’s not set anywhere near the winter holidays.
In this animated special, Tangie is a stuffed bear whose smile was stitched on upside down during a factory mishap. Like a piece of ugly fruit, he’s rejected by all the shopping mall customers and winds up in a resale shop with an array of other misfit anthropomorphic objects. It’s a sweet little Christmas film about found family rendered in simple but colorful traditional animation that doesn’t overstay its welcome. The only weirdness is that every time I watch I think Tangie is voiced by Michael J. Fox and am surprised to discover it’s really later (pre)teen idol Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann are former violinists living together on a farm, beginning to experience the effects of civil war moving towards their remote island. It’s a surreal, abstract look at war and what it does to people. There’s no obvious delineation between the two sides nor any commentary on any of the reasons they are fighting. Even still, there can be no bystanders; everyone is forced to choose a side. It pulls at whatever connecting threads that lie between two people until there is nothing left and everything is laid bare. 