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?

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. 

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.

Happy Hanukkah with Ben Grimm

It's been a rough week (already, and it's not even Wednesday).  After the events in Australia this weekend, we wanted to share some additional holiday joy and light.  And what more Signal Watch way to do that than with a little Ben Grimm?

I don't know how many people saw Fantastic Four: First Steps and found out that Ben Grimm is Jewish, but he sure is.  It's a rare nod to the faith shared by a whole lot of the guys who founded comics and superheroes in America.  And for those who know their Marvel and FF lore, Ben was often seen as a stand-in for one of my personal heroes Jack Kirby (aka:  Jacob Kurtzberg), who was very much a Jewish kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan (thanks for the correction, Rex!).  

In the comics, Ben is known to throw a pretty good Hanukkah party.  

Anyway, no, I'm not Jewish by birth or practice, but we've been focusing so much on Christmas this season, felt it was time to bring up the eight crazy nights in celebration.

Holiday Noir Watch: Repeat Performance (1947)

Watched:  12/16/2025

Format:  Kanopy

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Alfred L. Werker

I'd seen Repeat Performance (1947) a few years back, I assume during one of the windows where blogging was on pause, because I have no write-up of the movie.  I'm very sure I saw it as part of Noir City Austin, but if I found out it was under different circumstances, okay then.

I didn't remember it particularly well, just a few impressions that turned out to hold.  I remembered it had a really solid ending that kind of saved the movie for me, the lead was a little aimless, and it sagged in the middle.  But it also was a curious exploration of a concept that would be pretty popular now and would withstand a remake.

The film opens on Joan Leslie murdering a "Barney" (Louis Hayward) and then fleeing to find friends at a New Years' party.  She's asking for help, and Richard Basehart takes her to see George Sanders Tom Conway.  En route, she makes a wish to have the whole year to do over - and she gets it.

After Joan Leslie has adjusted to the idea that she is living over 1946, she races home to change things.  

But no matter what she tries to do, fate keeps bending back to the inevitable conclusions of the year before.  Her husband, Barney, will play around on her with playwright Paula Costello (Virginia Field).  She'll star in Costello's play.  Richard Basehart will find himself under the thrall of Mrs. Howell Mrs. Shaw (Natalie Schafer), a wealthy financer of the arts, who will do him dirty.  And it doesn't matter what Joan Leslie changes.

If marching inevitably toward one's doom is a feature of noir, then this slam dunks so hard it shatters the noir backboard.  But it is a weird fantasy movie, and for this sort of stuff that lived mostly in pulp magazines and would become more familiar with TV anthology series like Twilight Zone, it feels really early for a movie to be pulling mystical hoo-har and genre mixing.

If I'm looking for a way to strike it as noir, it's one part "oh, magic", and one part "this movie has a femme fatale, but our female lead is both dumb and spineless, not the usual strong woman at home.".  Sure, they frame her as such, but she's a dope when it comes to her shit-bag of a husband.  

That's no shade on Joan Leslie, who nails what she's given... but two years after WWII, it seems very, very odd that wed have a movie where a woman - who has murdered her philandering husband and is given another chance - once she sees how things are lining up - wouldn't kick his ass to the curb and avoid, you know, MURDER a second time.  He's also a terrible drunk, emotionally abusive, capable of physical abuse, and not once does he demonstrate why anyone wants to spend time with him.  He's arguably also the least handsome guy in every scene.

And still this lady is clinging onto him after he humiliates her and ruins himself.  It's kind of painful to watch. 

Virginia Field as the evil Paula Costello is actually pretty great.  Hats off.  She is one stone cold b.  

Anyway, not my favorite, but it's interesting.  

Holiday Goofiness Watch: North Pole Nutrias (2002) and A Meowy Christmas (2017)

Watched:  NPN  12/07/2025, MC  12/14/2025

Format:  YouTube/ YouTube

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  Rick Dealup/ Steve Rudzinski

As we near Christmas, we did two quick watches with Dug and K to get ourselves in the Christmas Spirit.  The first was North Pole Nutrias (2002), a puppet-show running about 26 minutes and created by New Orleans-based pair Quintron and Miss Pussycat.  The second was a little indie movie out of Pittsburgh called A Meowy Christmas from 2018.  This one runs about 55 minutes, but feels like it's about 6 days.

While watching North Pole Nutrias, I learned not everyone knows what a Nutria is - which is a large-ish rodent that lives along rivers and near water.  They've invaded the waterways for New Orleans and cause enough problems that there's been a bounty on the animals.  But!

North Pole Nutrias is, apparently, a bit of a holiday tradition for the hep cats of New Orleans, and I get it.  It's a puppet show, shot on tape, and has some distinct vibes of music and art scenes of the late 90's.  Kind of an embracing of the media we'd grown up on - specials like Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas - but made with an intentional lo-fi feel and hand-made aesthetic.  Think Pee-Wee's Playhouse, that you know through the glossed up version and are just used to.  

Christmas Horror Watch: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Watched:  12/13/2025

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lee Harry

Sometimes horror fans complain that critics will say "this is pretty good for horror" or something of the like.  And I agree - that's a bit dismissive of a whole genre.  But my suspicion about why this happens is that sometime in high school, a person who would one day become a critic was with friends who rented something like Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), and their takeaway was "this is what you guys are watching?"

On its face, yes.  This is a movie with problems.  It's three years after the first film's release, and this sequel - put out well into the age of VHS where most people probably saw the first Silent Night, Deadly Night - spends 36 minutes doing a mix of clip show of the first movie and having our new villain/ protagonist relay the story of the first film to a psychiatrist.  Then it spends ~30 minutes relaying the fate of the brother of the first Kill Krazy Kris Kringle (our hero/villain) before it unleashes our guy onto the world, where he immediately goes after his abusive former Mother Superior.  

There is, to my surprise, an added bit of pretension at the end as we learn the surviving nun was the same woman our Second Santa avenged after near SA - killing the dude with a Jeep.  I did not think this was the sort of movie to include dramatic irony, but here we are.

By the way, I did figure out immediately that at some point I'd seen the first half of Silent Night, Deadly Night, but I must not have finished the movie.  

But if your critics' only takeaway was "that wasn't very good", I am afraid they're missing the point.  This is the opposite of "elevated horror" - this is Santa Exploitation Horror.  This is a mad man walking around a suburban street firing off something like 20 shots from a six-shooter while he laughs stiffly and badly.  This is a guy murdering people for talking in the movie theater and punishing "naughty" people with an axe to the head.  It's not scary - it's basically a comedy.

So does it succeed as a film delivering on that premise?  

I mean, I think so.  This is a Rental movie to watch while drinking beer, and maybe cheer a bit when some murders happen.  

Thanks to the merging of the first film into the first act of this movie, it's also a wildly overcomplicated movie for a movie about a guy who puts on a Santa hat to kill people.  And it's part of the movie's charm.

I am only sad that I watched it by myself.

One day I need to do a post about how maybe the usefulness of critics and awards is minimal, and that what really makes a movie survive is a culture that can sustain those movies.  And horror and the horror fanbase is amazing about keeping movies alive and making lowkey celebs out of people who made a cheap movie 40 years ago.

Chabert Holiday Rewatch: The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014)

My original rules for ChabertQuest 2025 included not re-watching and re-posting on movies I'd already seen and written up.  Somehow it bothered me that I didn't rewatch this one even though I'd previously seen The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014) and wrote it up back during lockdown.  

All I remembered was that the snow was pretty much non-existent (in Vermont on December) and maybe you could see some blankets thrown down to double as snow.  So, I decided to give it one more whirl to make sure no Chabert-stone was left unturned during ChabertQuest.  

This may have aired on Hallmark, but, is so, it's a small, indie movie that was licensed to Hallmark, which was their model for a while.  These days, I think they own a lot more of the movies that they air.  Thus, older movies like this are out there, but not officially Hallmark at this point.  

This movie arrives in Year 2 of Chabert making movies for Hallmark-type outfits.  She'd made Matchmaker Santa in 2013, and by 2014 was in A Royal Christmas, which is kind of considered a Hallmark classic by Hallmark nerds, and is arguably the real start of Chabert's rise to Hallmark supremacy.  In 2014, for good or ill, she also made this movie.

Chabert Christmas Watch: She's Making a List (2025)

Watched:  12/06/2025

Format:  Hallmark Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stacey N. Harding

Job: Spy for the Naughtylist

Location of story:  Unclear but LA?/ Snowy generic USA

new skill: Empathy

Man: Andrew Walker

Job of Man: Restaurant consultant

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to?

Event: Christmas Eve

Food: dessert pizza

Here you go, Randolph.

For a while, actor Lacey Chabert has been tapped The Queen of Hallmark Christmas.   At the start of 2025, Hallmark signed an exclusive contract with Chabert, and as far as I know, the only such contract ever signed by the media concern, locking in talent.  What numbers they had on hand to drive that decision must have been pretty interesting.

This year, Chabert would go on to star in a Halloween movie,  this movie - She's Making a List (2025) , and in January, she's starring in a movie about being stranded in paradise.  She has both her own product line in Hallmark stores, and Keepsake - a line of ornaments at Hallmark - released a Lacey Chabert ornament.  Not a "here's a Star Trek character" ornament, just a Lacey Chabert ornament.  

Just before starting on this post, NathanC sent me an article from Variety that states Chabert is filming a Hallmark movie at Disney World for Christmas 2026.  So, she's doing okay, if you're wondering.  

So, for Hallmark and Chabert both, a LOT was riding on the film.  Would all this investment pay off? 

Santa Watch: Violent Night (2022)

Watched:  12/06/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Tommy Wirkola

LOL.  Oh my.

Really enjoyed this more than I should have, but I also really liked Deadly Games/3615 code Père Noël.  And after so many Hallmark movies, it's honestly kind of nice to spice things up a bit.

I guess the plot summary is:  An insanely rich family with government ties is taken hostage by a group of well-armed thieves.  Santa Claus happens to be in the house at the moment and gets involved, remembering how he was once a viking berserker with a war hammer named "Skullcrusher".  Things get intensely violent.

It's a knowing mish-mash of holiday favorites, from Die Hard to Home Alone, of having to fight back on the quietest night of the year.  

David Harbour plays ol' Kris Kringle as a miserable drunk, who bemoans - as one does in modern movies - the lack of meaning in Christmas and lack of belief in Santa.  John Leguizamo plays "Scrooge", the Hans Gruber of this bunch of international thieves.  Beverly D'Angelo - who looks great, btw - plays the cut-throat matriarch of the family.  Edi Patterson plays her alcoholic daughter with an obnoxious influencer son and a himbo actor boyfriend.  

The focal family with the young girl with belief in Santa is played by people I've never seen before, Alexis Louder and Alex Hassell, plus Leah Brady as Trudy.  

I guess I just loved how they manhandled some aspects of how holiday movies work - like the power of belief, of Christmas magic solving problems, how Home Alone works, and Santa's usual bag of tricks.

Anyway, it was a lot of Rated-R fun, and I was cackling.  A really good palate cleanser if things got a little too sweet for you in your holiday movie watching.  

Hallmark Christmas Miscellanea Watch: A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025) and Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025)

Watched:  11/30 and 12/1/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  AGOOC - Clare Niederpruem / CatCC - Lucie Guest

Sunday we decided to lean into the Hallmark Season with their big dollar movie, A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025).  Monday I was doing other things and we let play Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025).  And it was a study in where Hallmark is going in 2025 with a more ambitious, less-boilerplate film versus classic Hallmark formula.

A Grand Ole Opry Christmas was a sincere time-travel movie about a woman (Nikki Deloach) whose father was a 90's country star in a Brooks and Dunn model, but he threw in the towel and quit making music.  A few years later he died, and she doesn't know why he quit making music.  She, and her best friend (Kristoffer Polaha), are transported to the mid-90's via Christmas/ Grand Ole Opry magic to learn what happened.  

Mean, Christmas at the Catnip Cafe is about a big city marketing exec (Erin Cahill) who inherits half of a cat cafe in small town upstate New York.  The other half is owned by an overworked veterinarian (Paul Campbell).  She wants to sell to buy a condo in LA.  He wants to keep his cafe open.  But they mutually wish to get to business time.

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Holiday Touchdown - a Bills Love Story (2025)

Watched:  11/25/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

So, for reasons beyond my understanding, the NFL has entered into an alliance with Hallmark to produce movies about super-fans of their teams falling in love at Christmas.  

In no way will this get repetitive after 32 movies.

Despite some real star-power (for Hallmark) the first movie was a complete mess.  And I expected more-of-same.

Holiday Touchdown: a Bills Love Story (2025) actually solved some of the issues of the first movie but then blew my mind by trying to create a sort of MCU of NFL-themed movies by showing the characters from the first movie in this one.  And the magical Santa is in this one mucking with people's lives.

The last movie had some star power with Diedrich Bader, Richard Riehle, Ed Begley Jr., Christine Ebersole, et al.  What it didn't really have was much actual representation by the Chiefs players.  

This one had Joey Pantoliano playing a version of himself as a wacky uncle.  Our stars are Woman (Holland Roden) and Man (Matthew Daddario, who I didn't know, but people keep fan-casting his sister as Wonder Woman, and... fair).  They're childhood friends and neighbors, and the running gag is everyone knows he's pining for Woman.

There's lot of Bills-specific humor which I vaguely get, and lots of regional-specific stuff, which did not lose me, but sure felt like them making sure we knew they were in Buffalo and not doing the usual "we filmed in Vancouver, but please believe this is Arizona" thing Hallmark will do.

The pair find out Joey Pants has been receiving gifts every year from an anonymous source, going back to when he was drafted and this same anonymous person also sent his family groceries and money.  The movie is them solving the mystery.  

Along the way, they fall in love, blah blah blah...  but there's also LOTS of Bills players and coaches and owners and whatnot.  And the main character is a project manager on the new stadium, so there's lots of discussion about that.  But none about how expensive tickets are supposed to be in the new stadium.

I dunno, like a lot of the new Hallmark movies, it's actually kind of funny.  Not gut-bustingly, but I had a chuckle or two.  It feels more like a sitcom than a Hallmark movie.  And that is not a complaint.  Anyway, they fixed a lot that didn't work in last year's offering.

Chabert Holiday Micro-Watch: Maybe This Christmas (2025)

Chabert may have signed an exclusive deal with Hallmark for making movies and selling some lovely products in Hallmark stores, but after last year's slam dunk ad with Philosophy, she's now got a gig with Maybelline.  And while we don't believe she could possibly have a blemish, this year she's re-teaming with Dustin Milligan to sell concealer.

Over a handful of 30-second episodes, we get more story than most Hallmark movies.

All 5 episodes in one convenient video:

"Hallmark Channel's Christmas Concert" (2019) might be the Hallmark Channel's Star Wars Holiday Special

This item does not appear on the IMDB for Ms. Lacey Chabert under "actor", but under "self" so I'd initially missed it.  But it popped up on Hallmark as an option, and I wasn't going to not watch it.  

So, what is it?

It's a bizarre artifact of where Hallmark was in 2019, I guess.  And the watchword for the whole show is "awkward".  There clearly was a lack of rehearsal time, and a spirit of "we're pros, we'll wing it" that doesn't play particularly well.  No one here is Bob Hope and keeping this on the rails.

The show is *not* exactly a concert, but kinda, sorta framed like one of those old-school Christmas specials where a celebrity pretends they're in their house.  Lacey Chabert is throwing a party where other Hallmark stars are her guests, but she's also acknowledging the camera (and sometimes awkwardly looking at it).  

One-by-one, a series of Hallmark stars come in, and then they each sing a Christmas standard in what I assume is not actually Chabert's livingroom and kitchen.  But it's not a set - I'm pretty sure that's a real house.  No set would be this poorly designed for television coverage.

Chabert Hallmark Holiday Watch: A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023)

what do you know?  I watched this on the 2nd anniversary of the movie's release

Watched:  11/18/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Dustin Rikert

Job: Doctor

Location of story:  Somewhere in Scotland

new skill:  Lording over peasants

Man:  James Robinson

Job of Man:  Groundskeeper

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  Some underwhelming solstice thing, a banger of a party and a ball

Food:  liquor, really

So, I thought I'd covered this movie because of the image I used for my 2023 Hallmark report when I was moving too fast assembling my ChabertQuest2025 list.  But I had not.  So here we go.

This is a movie about a naive American doctor and her family who inherit a Scottish castle.  However, the diabolical groundskeeper seduces and bamboozles the doctor into falling for him so that he may claim ownership of the lands he's worked since he was a child.  That same labor presumably led to his father's early demise, and this is his revenge.  

With dead eyed smiles, he earns the trust of the stressed out family, offering to take care of everything and let them live off the fat of their inheritance.  

Unfortunately the movie ends just after he's successfully bedded the heiress doctor but before we can put his nefarious schemes into motion, so we never see that part.

(take 2)

Chabert Hallmark Holiday Watch: Haul Out the Holly - Lit Up (2023)

Watched: 11/16/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  second

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Job: Copywriter/ Editor?  She never works during this whole movie

Location of story:  Evergreen Lane - which I think is in Salt Lake City

new skill:  Mastery of the Christmas Arts

Man:  Wes Brown

Job of Man:  Architect

Goes to/ Returns to:  stays in same place (this is the 2nd installment)

Event:  Several ongoing Christmas festivities

Food:  Cookies

Editor's Note:  So, y'all.  Despite my stated goals and belief I'd done a phenomenal job documenting ChabertQuest 2025 (pats self on back), I messed this one up.  Yes, I'd seen this movie, but had I written it up?  I had not.  Thought I had, but that was a lie I told myself, and discovered my error in July.  I felt terrible as we agreed the the deal was I would watch and review all of the movies I could find starring one Lacey Chabert and you'd be like "why are you doing this?"

So, here we are, rewatching this one.  And writing up this movie.  For you, the people.

There were really only so many directions one could go with the premise of Haul Out The Holly (2022), the first film in what is now a trilogy.  

The premise of the first film is that a woman breaks up with her live-in boyfriend and goes home for Christmas, only to find that her parents weren't expecting her and are actually moving to a seniors' condo in Florida.  She's essentially left behind in her parents' McMansion.  However, her own father was head of the HOA, and he set up a very Christmassy set of rules, which Chabert finds herself required to adhere to (despite the fact she does not own the house) and is force marched through the holiday season.  

Guys, she also falls for Man nextdoor along the way.

So... we end the film with Christmas, love, and a 5000 square foot house in which she'll creep around like a Victorian ghost, I guess.  

But what next?  Haul out another holiday?  Tragedy strikes Evergreen Lane?  She casually starts putting out inverted pineapples when the neighbors come over?

Here in the sequel, Emily (Chabert) been gifted her parents house, she's all-in on Christmas madness, dating Man, and helping out with the neighborhood festivities.  

However, as Christmas approaches and events are just beginning, the Jolly Johnsons, winners of a Christmas-themed reality show, move into the cul-de-sac.  To the longtime Christmas-nerds of Evergreen Lane, this is like having your favorite quarterback or rock star move in and they flip out (yes, these movies operate in a cartoonish heightened reality).  

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Three Wisest Men (2025)

Watched:  11/16/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Three Wisest Men (2025) is the third film in the very popular (for Hallmark) Wise Men series.  We previously covered the first and second installments.  

The problem with this movie is that we've established not just three characters, but their mom, spouses and partners, children, etc...  and it is not a small cast.  And everyone needs to get a plotline.  So it's a lot of movie.  I couldn't help but notice that this one was an "extended cut", which means whatever aired with commercials had less movie, and I have to assume that made this even more of a jumble.  

From a business perspective, it's a fascinating peek into how Hallmark now functions like an old-school studio with their constellation of stars.  

Hallmark Watch: A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025)

Watched:  11/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Hallmark fans are never happy.  And maybe with good reason.  There's a contingent that seems to get mad if anything actually happens in the movies, and others who get mad if it's not a particular kind of movie. Which leaves Hallmark in a pickle as they can't keep making the same movies over and over from a decade or two ago, but anything *new* is also a threat to part of their audience.

But, all that matters is if people watch, and apparently they are watching.  And, given the viewership habits of Hallmark viewers - which means a lack of awareness of debuts of new movies, watching later, catching the movies on the app or whenever...  that's a pretty good turn out of viewership across streaming and cable.

This year it seems Hallmark is cramming more value into fewer movies to drive up advertising during broadcast and draw eyeballs to the app.  This is opposite the decade-ago strategy of going for quantity over quality - ie: they chose not to release 75 new movies in a single Christmas and hope the novelty kept folks locked in.  But it's a risk when you make new kinds of movies and fewer of them, and give people a chance to tune away.

Hallmark Watch: A Big Fat Family Christmas (2022)

Watched:  11/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jennifer Liao

So, we were busy and we had stuff going on as I was having some foot surgery on the 6th, so we kind of randomly put this movie on.

There are two very exciting things about this movie, and one is that it co-stars Tia Carrerre as the "mom" if you want to feel your age, Gen-X'ers.  And she is desperately trying to underdress so she is not obviously Tia Carrerre.

The second is that I was 4/5ths of the way through the movie and the dad character made a particular face and I ran to IMDB.  And, yes, the guy playing the dad is Yee Jee Tso, who I suddenly recognized as someone from the 1990's Nickelodeon show Fifteen.  Not even a main character.  Just a guy.  Which means this guy is exactly my age and somehow wound up 30 years later playing the husband to Tia Carrerre.  Well done, my dude.