Month: January 2022

I was fairly certain I had watched this before, but couldn’t remember a single detail. It was similarly bland this time around, but I did recall details from my previous view as I watched. Very loosely inspired by Tim Owens’s experience replacing Rob Halford in Judas Priest, this features Mark Wahlberg as the lead singer of a cover band who is hired to replace Jason Flemyng, the gay lead singer of the band he imitates. Unlike the actual story, this is inexplicably supposedly set in the 1980s, but looks nothing like the 1980s. In fact, Jennifer Aniston looks like she just walked off the set of Friends to film her scenes. The movie is rather dumb and entirely predictable, but the shoehorning of the Seattle grunge scene at the end is borderline offensive. I was mildly amused at the stunt casting of real life musicians such as Blas Elias, Jason Bonham, and Zakk Wylde as musicians in the various bands and former partners of musicians as the rock stars’ wives. I do somewhat like the soundtrack, even the songs credited to the fictional bands.  

Late twenty-somethings Raven Goodwin and Dominique Perry are constantly pressured to get married. When an attractive new pastor comes to their church at Christmastime, they find themselves rivals for his attention. The quality of the film is about average with any other romantic made for television Christmas film. It’s not a particularly unique story and I almost universally find outside pressure to couple up rather grotesque. The competition between the women gets downright nasty at times, but the leads are still appealing and it’s mostly harmless, mindless entertainment. While I tend to find religious themed films annoying, I do enjoy a church setting. Particularly in a film such as this where there is sniping and fighting, congregation members are constrained from certain types of actions unless they want to be subjected to community disapproval.   

Excited to be a surrogate for her two best friends, complications arise for Jasmine Batchelor when prenatal tests show anomalies in her fetus. The film relatively successfully attempts to touch upon a number of heavy subjects from abortion to surrogacy and the ethics involved with both of those. While her optimism and strong-headedness are not completely unappealing, Batchelor’s character is a bit difficult to empathize with. She makes a decision and attempts to steamroll everyone in her path forgetting that these are the people she most cares about and not bothering to really take in the multitude of consequences inherent in her decision. The rest of the characters are relegated to spending their time trying to reason with her.

Living with his mother and older brother in working-class England and despite his protestations otherwise, destined for a life working the coal mines, fourteen year old David Bradley finds escape from his circumstances in the form of a falcon which he trains. Their relationship gives him confidence and a bright light into his dreary circumstances. Unfortunate from cruel teachers to his callous brother, the system is against him. Bradley’s portrayal of the slight young boy isn’t particularly likable, especially early in the film, but the changes he expresses as he slowly develops some self confidence makes you want to hope that something better awaits him in the future.