A Christmas Regret Watch: A Little Piece of Heaven (1991)

everything on this DVD cover is a lie

Watched:  12/23/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second (and last)

Director:  Mimi Leder

While watching A Little Piece of Heaven (1991) for ChabertQuest2025, I knew instantly that this would be a movie to share with Dug and K.  

As longtime readers will know, sharing terrible Christmas movies with Jamie's brother, Dug and his wife K, is a yearly tradition here at The Signal Watch.  And, for reasons I cannot guess, Christmas seems to really bring out some absolute nonsense, from failed comedy concepts like Santa with Muscles to the utterly sincere failures, like this one.

There are many flavors of "this movie is a bad idea" out there, and we've covered a lot of them.  But this TV movie commits the sin of, as Dug put it, insisting that the ends justifies the means.  Even if the ends are highly, highly questionable.  And the means are absolutely mortifying.  

This movie contains:

• a very 90's take on an actor playing someone "special"
• drugging a child
• kidnapping a drugged child
• light casual racism
• 90's screenplay ingrained racism
• child slave labor
• child emotional labor
• gaslighting within gaslighting, like an inception where we're passing through layers of bullshit that's knee-deep
• nonsense rationalization
• child abuse-ploitation
• more kidnapping
• transporting minors
• abandoning pigs
• basically casting all those horror stories you see about people kidnapping people off the street and keeping them in their basement, or imprisoning children, and turning the abductor into a hero
• the greatest bullshit ending to a movie ever committed to screen
• Kirk Cameron

But, fun fact, a very young Lacey Chabert received an Emmy Nomination for her role as "Princess".  

Anyway, somehow this movie was written, produced, filmed, edited and given a plum primetime slot on network TV.  And everyone thought this was fine.  Even the scene where it's clear someone is tossing chickens out of a window.  And all of young Jussie Smollet's dialog.  

Merry Christmas, Every Buddy

Emmylou beneath the tree

Merry Christmas from The Signal Watch, pals.  

Here's to a quiet, peaceful Christmas for all of us.  May the season be merry and bright, and may you spend the holiday as you like, with loved ones or otherwise.  We wish you the best.

Here's to peace on Earth, goodwill to all, and the chance for all of us to be our best.

As we do every Christmas Eve, we're sharing Ms. Darlene Love singing Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).  

Hallmark Holiday Watch: The Christmas Baby (2025)

Watched:  12/22/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eva Tavares

This movie was very offbeat for Hallmark, but a welcome change of pace.  I tuned in because I saw a few Ali Liebert movies a while back and thought she was better than the average bear.  She's been wearing multiple hats the past few years, though, and directing two or so movies per year while appearing in other movies and producing some.  So hats off for Ms. Liebert.  I can barely chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.

Liebert co-stars in The Christmas Baby (2025) with Katherine Barrell, who some may know from Wynona Earp.  The pair play a married couple in Albany, New York, going about their childfree existence when someone leaves a baby in a stroller at Liebert's mail store while she's in the back.

This isn't a Hallmark romcom, it's a dramedy, leaning towards drama.  Unlike 99% of Hallmark's Christmas output, there's a lot of tears and a lot of very real feelings and issues.  It feels more like a TV movie from days of yore than a feel-good Christmas bit of Christmas marshmallow.  

And questions to answer.  Who is the mother?  What does it mean to suddenly have parenthood thrust on you and what feelings would you have if that wasn't the plan?  What if you and your wife are suddenly not on the same page?  And why aren't you?  And if you commit to this kid, what's to say someone won't just take them away?

Chabert Watch: Home Front (2002) (aka: The Scoundrel's Wife)

Watched:  12/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Glen Pitre

There's a lot going on in Home Front (aka: The Scoundrel's Wife - 2002).  Some might argue too much.  

A period piece taking place mostly during World War II, it's about a woman and her family living on Louisiana's Gulf Coast, who are pariahs already when the war breaks out.  It seems some years before the woman (Tatum O'Neal) and her husband may have gotten up to misdeeds that will be shared later.

It's a bit of a frustrating movie because it's a look at some real life things - that German U-Boats were off the US coast causing havoc, there was concern about internal collaborators, etc....  And some of this forgotten history is illuminated brilliantly, really, as O'Neal's family is awakened by a fire's glow off in the distance, out over the water as a U-Boat hits a shipping vessel.  

Meanwhile, life in the small fishing village carries on for O'Neal and her teenage son, Blue, and her daughter, Florida (Chabert), just aging into adulthood.  A doctor moves in nextdoor, but he has what seems to be a German accent (Julian Sands).  Meanwhile, the town Priest (Tim Curry) wrestles with alcohol.

Holiday Watch: Die Hard (1988)

Watched:  12/20/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  John McTiernan

One of the great points of relief for me this year has been that, at long last, people are being shamed on social media for asking if Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie.  It is.  We're done.  Shut up.

What younger audiences won't know is how much Die Hard changed the game for action movies.  

I'll often point to Commando (1985) as the template for action movies, and in some ways, that's right.  But it also reflects the kind of movie being made where our hero was already a super soldier we understood stood above other men.  He could walk through a hail of gunfire without so much as a scratch and dispatch 100 anonymous henchmen before tangling with the Big Boss at the end of the movie.  And in the 1980's, action heroes were guys like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris.  

Die Hard suggested that much more of a common man could be an action hero in the right situation.  He'd get the crap beat out of him, he'd get injured, he'd make mistakes, but as long as he kept a cool head and remembered Bonnie Bedelia needed him now, he just might save the day. 

Superwatch: Superman (2025)

Watched:  12/19/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Fifth

Director:  James Gunn

Wanted to get in one more viewing of Superman (2025) before the end of the year.  And so I did.

No more notes.  I've already written too much about this movie.  But it meant a lot to have a Superman movie this year that hit so many right notes/ actually felt like the Superman I know from comics, cartoons, etc...  while still being a fresh take.  

TCM Remembers 2025

prepare to get weepy.

This is the first time in a while I've been surprised by so many names as they went by - I simply didn't hear or read that they had merged with the infinite.  As you know, we'll post sometimes if we learn of someone's passing.  Not always, but it's a feature.

I simply did not know about any of the following, and I feel like I should have, or would have back in Twitter's golden age:

• Connie Francis
• Jules Feiffer
• Joe Don Baker
• James Mitchum
• Lalo Schifrin
• Peter Jason
• Robert McGinnis (this one shocks me that I didn't know)
• Jeannot Szwarc
• Peter Greene

To all of these, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Happy Birthday, Audrey Totter - Noir Watch: Lady in the Lake (1947)

Watched:  12/18/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  ha ha ha ha...  oh, mercy

Director:  Robert Montgomery

December 20th marks the birthday of Signal Watch patron saint of noir bad girls, Audrey Totter.  

For more on one of our favorite stars of the silver screen, here's a post from earlier this year on Moviejawn.

Last year, through a series of misadventures, we missed our annual watch of Lady in the Lake (1947), and so we wanted to make sure we got in this year's screening.   You have your Christmas movies, I have mine.  

Robert Montgomery stars and directs, mostly as Marlowe's voice over.  Montgomery is not a bad actor, but his Marlowe is maybe my least favorite - I mean, Bogart plays the same guy in The Big Sleep, and I'm a huge fan of Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet.*

There's truly nothing like this movie - not from this era.  95% of the film is presented from the subjective viewpoint of Philip Marlowe - our lead and a detective.**  The idea is that the audience is looking through Marlowe's eyes - eyes which are a camera the size and weight of a Mini-Cooper.  As a studio film where they let a new director run with an idea, it's some very strange viewing that in 2025, feels like the world's longest videogame cut-scene.

Holiday Watch: The Bishop's Wife (1947)

Watched:  12/18/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Henry Koster

I will be honest and say that when we watched The Bishop's Wife  (1947) the first time during COVID, I am pretty sure I was about three sheets to the wind and maybe didn't quite give this movie its due.  I seem a bit dismissive of the whole thing in my post.

But this time around, I quite liked the movie.  

David Niven plays a Bishop, recently appointed, who has been tasked with raising funds for the building and completion of a new Cathedral.  His new responsibilities and position have left him stressed and ignoring his wife (Loretta Young) and daughter (the same girl who played Zuzu in It's a Wonderful Life, Karolyn Grimes).  

After Niven prays on his challenges, an angel, played by Cary Grant in a tailored suit, appears to him, promising to assist.  Niven is shocked, but comes to accept it as truth.  But is uncertain how the angel can help.  

The movie has a tremendous amount of fun showing how Dudley, the angel, can and does help in large and small ways.  Sometimes he's guiding blind men through traffic, sometimes he's setting the conditions for a scholar to finally write their great work.  As an angel, he knows just what to say, and in the Bishop's house, which seems an unfriendly place, the staff - especially the maid Mathilda (Elsa Lanchester) - take an immediate shine to him.  

However, as the Bishop goes about his business, it leaves Dudley, posing as an assistant, to spend time with the Bishop's wife.  And both seem to get along famously.  

There's an odd bit of melancholy to the film - first with the state of affairs for the Bishop and Julia.  Julia's wish they'd never left their old neighborhood and church, and the Bishop worrying over how to please demanding patrons.  This is a family in crisis.  But (SPOILERS) as the film rolls to a conclusion, we learn that Dudley has fallen for Julia, and she's made him realize how tired of his life as a wanderer he is.  And maybe this touch of happiness, of what could have been, is a wound he'll carry. He can make others happy or help them, but who is there for Dudley?

The film is cagey about Julia's feelings - and in 1947 can't have a Bishop's actual wife say them out loud.  

It does make me wonder - did Wim Wenders watch this movie and think "yes, but what if...?"  Likely not - he would have said so.  But his Wings of Desire is a favorite, and I think it'd make a truly interesting double-bill.  

Chabert Re-Watch: Christmas at Castle Hart (2021)

Watched:  I think 12/12/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  Stefan Scaini

Job: Phony event planner

Location of story:  Ireland somewhere

new skill: Faking it til she's making it

Man: Stuart Townsend

Job of Man: Earl?  Duke?  Something./ Architect

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to

Event: Christmas Soiree

Food: I forget

My intention with these posts is not to get overly meta, but when this movie ended I said to Jamie:

I rewatched this one because I barely wrote it up before, and couldn't remember it at all, and now that I've rewatched it, I am not going to remember it in three weeks.

Y'all, I didn't even remember to write up Christmas at Castle Hart (2021) the night we watched it.  And I only rewatched it because I felt I needed to write it up.

I don't know what kind of personal purgatory I've sent myself to with my whimsy, but here we are.

On to the show.

Chabert plays a caterer who gets fired from her gig because her sister (Ali Hardiman) is a real piece of work but Chabert is a good girl and supports her dimwitted sister.  The two head to Ireland to look up some family genealogy since they have the holidays and time to spare (and famously no one is short-handed for catering help during Christmas, and money is not a thing in Hallmarkland).  

Their plan:  When they get back to the US, they plan to start their own event planning company, but whilst in Ireland - drink?  

Well, instead of a relaxing time in the Emerald Isle confusion and lies abound, and Chabert poses as her former boss - an event planner to the stars, hitching herself to a major local event in a sleepy town in a generic North American version of "Ireland" based on post cards and Lucky Charms commercials.