Category: Letterboxd Reviews

Miracle on 34th Street, 1947 – ★★★★

One of those movies that i’d seen in dribs and drabs over the years, but never fully given my attention, I decided to dive right into the original ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ over the 90s remake to see what made this such a much loved movie in the first place, and I totally get it.

The plot opens on Thanksgiving day, when a mysterious white haired, bearded man turns up to watch the Maceys thanksgiving day parade, and winds up berating and ultimately replacing a drunk actor hired to play Santa during the parade. After alls said and done, he does SUCH a good job that he’s hired to play Maceys ‘In store’ Santa, where he goes down an absolute storm after telling parents the best places to buy their kids much wanted christmas toys. The owners of Maceys are mortified at first, but realise that this approach brings in more customers than ever before, and higher profits. Causing them to pivot into becoming ‘the helping hand store’.

This is all too good to be true yes? Well, it is. Because the bearded man claims his real name is ‘Kris Kringle’ and that he’s the ACTUAL Santa Claus. Much to the confusion and dismissal of hard working realist divorcee Doris, who refuses to accept Kris’s story. Doris has a Daughter names Susan who she’s raising as a realist too, telling her that their is no Santa Claus and to take reality for what it is, rather than living in a fantasy. This somewhat bothers Doris’s coworker Fred, who has a bit of a thing for Doris, but it outrages Kris, who makes it his mission to not only prove to Doris that he IS the real Santa, but to help Susan nurture and develop her imagination.

Meanwhile, a pseudo psychologist working to do intelligence checks at Maceys has taken a GREAT disliking to Kris, and the feelings somewhat mutual. He wants Kris at minimum out of the store, and ideally committed, so he sets a trap in the hopes of snaring Santa, that will ultimately lead to the trial of the century! IS there REALLY a SANTA?!

I was very pleasently surprised by this one, it starts off maybe a little bit slow plot wise, but quickly picks up pace, delivering the kind of Schmaltzy christmas charm that you really want from a movie like this. The script is sluggish for the first 20 minutes or so, but then quickly picks up steam leading to a zippy second and third act that have a near perfect balance of light comedy, touching moments, romance and holiday cheer.

The act structurings are pretty evenly paced out, they dont rush things too badly and tonally its light and pleasent. The characters are all maybe a little *too* glossy stereotypical for my palette if im being honest, but I appreciate that this is a film from the 40s, when that kind of thing was all but unavoidable. The characters are well rounded and frankly delightful. With Doris bringing a dry and realistic edge to the situation, Kris being as delightful, charming and slightly irrasible as you could imagine Santa being, and Fred bringing a George Bailey level warmth to proceedings that helps act as the glue bringing these characters together.

Its a script that builds to a strong conclusion and sticks the landing. and its clear to me from story alone, how this has managed to stand the test of time.

Direction wise, its pretty reflective of studio pictures of the time, nothing too outlandish or ‘out there’ for the era. But its a good sturdy work, that again, holds up remarkably well for its age and delivers a genuine and sincere vision with the perfect level of energy.

Same goes for the cine as well, which again, isnt really breaking any boundaries on a technical level, but it does have a distinct grandness about it (the thanksgiving day parade footage itself is quite lovely) while also not shying away from mixing in good close up footage to really help bring the audience in on the action. This is largely edited together really solidly, and while It maybe would have been nice to have more B-roll and cutaways within the sequence structuring, Again, that wasnt entirely commonplace at the time, so it might be asking a bit much.

Performance wise Edmund Gwenn is a damn near perfect Kris Kringle, jolly, endlessly kind, patient and supportive, his warmth would melt the celluloid if it wasnt on Safety strip. he’s perfect here and pretty much makes the film what it is.

Same goes for Maureen Ohara and John Payne as Doris and Fred, they have fantastic on screen chemestry, Marueen plays the role with a genuiness that is unusual for this era of film makign and John compliments the cold realism with a bit more whimsical openness. These three actors frankly, were in the right place at the right time and toghether they achieve a rare lightning in a bottle moment honestly.

The rest of the cast keep things fairly campy, serious with a slight whimsy for comedic effect. its a solid production honestly. With only the soundtrack falling a little short, in the sense of…I dont actually remember any of the music in this film barring the occasional carol. I think it maybe would have helped if it had been a bit more prominent to the storytelling.

Ultimately? this is a lovely little Holiday classic, it hits all the right notes, aims for sincere over glossy and delivers the exact kind of cozy Christmas watching that I strive to find every year. Definitely one i’ll try and watch again next year and definitely recommended!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/miracle-on-34th-street/1/

by tytdreviews

Eight Crazy Nights, 2002 – ★★½

2-3 years of exposure to this movie via Tiktok sounds finally got the better of me, and I decided last night, through a fugg of mince pies and rum hot chocolate to see if the early 2000’s Animated Adam Sandler vehical ‘Eight Crazy Nights’ was as fun as my ‘for you’ page kept telling me it DEFINITELY was…It was not.

The plot is set in the small town of Dukesberry and follows ‘Davey Stone’. Davey used to be the towns best juniour basketball player, and was seen as a model citizen of the community, but after a tragic incident in his preteens, the now 33 year old alcoholic is a delinquent and on the verge of throwing his life completely away. When Davey has a major involvement with the local law enforcement, the judge is all but ready to throw the book at him. When help from the past arrives in the form of ‘Whitey’ a tiny extroadinarily hairy man with one adult sized foot, and one child sized foot.

Whitey has been a silent pillar of the community now for the better part of 70 years, running the juniour basketball league for most of his life, and as a side hustle he spends his days travelling around Dukesberry picking up odd jobs whenever they arise in order to pay the bills and to keep both him and his sister comfortable.

Whitey offers the judge an alternative, put Davey under his care and guidence with the goal being to train him as the new juniour basketball league coach, so that Whitey can wind down his career. The judge agrees, on the condition that Davey does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else, and if he does, the Judge, without hesitation, will give him a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Davey has other ideas though, and what follows is a battle of wills, as Whitey desperately tries to appeal to Daveys past better nature, and Davey takes every opportunity to belittle, prank and injust Whitey, while also making everyone elses lives a misery in the process. But when its revealed that theres an upcoming awards evening and that Whitey has his heart set on winning the ‘Patch’ an award recognising the citizen of dukesberry who’s made the most impact on the community (Something he’s been trying to win for years) It may fall to Davey to reconnect with his festive spirit and help an old mans dream come true.

I’ll get the nice things out of the way up front on this one really, its nice to see a film attempt to do a contemporary Chanuka story, and while it does muddy Christmas into the mix a fair bit, I appreciated that this film was at least trying to make a somewhat serious attempt at a holiday movie for it. I will also say that the animation here looks quite nice for the most part, and that studded throughout this film are several legitimately funny moments and gags. stuff that actually made me properly laugh, and (some) songs that I thought were well written and composed, catchey even…

But its there really that my praise kind of begins and ends. I knew going into this, that this was ultimately an ‘Adam Sandler’ film, so I wasnt exactly expecting to find something that would absolutely blow me away. But this film has a serious identity crisis that pretty much hamstrings the entire thing.

First up is the plotting and pacing. Its pretty much inescapable that this films script is just, kind of incoherent. a massive chunk of the film is just Davey being genuinely unkind to people, and even when its revealed WHY he’s so mean, his redemption and character transformation; and the rewards he gets for doing so, dont feel earned and dont make a whole lot of sense. there comes a point about 15 minutes from the end, where something of an intervention happens (entirely in Daveys mind) and then suddenly, not only is he a completely changed man, but the town seem to completely 180 on him, and he suddenly becomes the 2nd most loved man in the town, despite only about 20 minutes taking place ‘in film’ where, 20 minutes prior, the town were actively hunting him to put him in jail.

Its a movie that seems totally content to just disregard character development arcs and growth, stuff just happens in this film, and the audience are just expected to go with it, which I found quite jarring and it really threw me out of the thing. Not to mention that the act structuring is pretty much all over the place, the films treated more as a series of ‘gag’ vignettes with a very feint story running through it. When it can be bothered to push the plot along, it will. But once that first 20 minutes of ‘first act’ establishing stuff is out of the way, the whole film essentially just collapses into sketch comedy and the aforementioned jarring plot changes that we’re just supposed to go along with.

Then theres the humour, as mentioned; there are a handful of moments across the runtime that are genuinely funny. Stuff that actually came across as smart and fairly well written. but for about 75% of the runtime? This is a PG13 movie from 2002 made by Adam Sandlers production company and it feels every INCH of it. Big recurring gags in this film include Whitey having seizures randomly, TONS of fart and poo gags, gross out humour, dirty jokes, innuendos…lowest common denominator gags that…unless you were a 10-15 year old kid between 2002 and 2005, land like cold sick to any other demographic.

I could have accepted some gross out a handful of times in the mix with other gags. But its just relentless, barely 15 minutes goes by without someone being covered in poop, visually on screen pooping, or folks talking about poop. Theres also a surprising amount of swearing in the film, which caught me off guard, because It made me kind of realise that I dont really know who in 2025 this film would actively appeal to, the amount of swearing, dirty humour and graphic gross out means its not really a kids movie, it wouldnt be good as a family movie with younger kids either. I think if your an adult coming to this for the first time, unless your MASSIVELY into Sandlers other productions, you’ll find this thing grating…really, the only people I could see (maybe) getting into this, were the kids who watched it when it came out in the 2000s, who now revisit it for nostalgia, or families with older kids who also REALLY like Adam Sandler movies. Which, as you can imagine, really puts this film in with a niche crowd.

The characters are all pretty stereotypical, though im inclined to believe that was intentional, if not a little border racist at times. the narrative is hazy and inconsistent. The whole thing just kind of felt sloppy and underdeveloped to me.

As mentioned, I will say the visuals are fairly well handled, the animation is smooth and consistent, theres some subtle early CG work here that works quite well to compliment the art style, it looks quite nice to me. It feels wintery and festive, which is all you can really ask for.

Performance wise? Well…its Adam Sandler being Adam Sandler, he doesnt sound terrible, but if he did, id have had more questions than answers, he also voices Whitey in this…and its horrendous, its unmistakably just Adam sandler doing a shrill high pitched voice. it sounds like the kind of ‘fake voice’ V/O artists do for a gag inbetween takes, but somehow this actually ended up in the movie. It works in places, but for the vast majority of the runtime, its nails on a chalkboard.

Cameos from Jon Lovitz and Tom Kenny were welcome, but fleeting…everyone else sounded like they were in the booth till the cheque cleared.

This is also a musical, and the soundtrack is pretty hit and miss. The two big songs from the film that seem to have made it to Tiktok (Technical Foul and the ‘Bum Biddy’ song) are the best the film has to offer by a long LONG margin, with the other songs ranging from fumbled and kind of awkward, to just downright unlistenable, even having Alison Krauss on vocals for some numbers doesnt save them, the incidental music however? pretty damn solid if you ask me, probably one of the stronger elements of this one!

Im glad I saw ‘Eight Crazy Nights’ at least once, and I cant say I wont EVER watch it again…But its a seriously flawed movie that had more about it that I didnt like, than stuff that I did. I think if you caught the two songs I mentioned above on youtube, id say youd pretty much seen the best of this movie, Im sure it has its fans, and I didnt actively HATE it…but it wasnt really fore me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/eight-crazy-nights/

by tytdreviews

Fear of Fanny, 2006 – ★★★

Tonight, me and my partner began our annual rewatch of ‘Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas’ frankly, a delicacy for seasonal viewing that quite literally has to be SEEN, to be believed. I’ve revisited the series for the better part of 20 years now, and without fail, it never fails to shock and surprise me at just how bizarre that period of Mincmeat mayhem really truely was.

Well; after watching the first episode tonight, I noticed that BBC iplayer had resurfaced ‘Fear of Fanny’ a 2006 ‘biopic’ essentially showing a snatched glance at the lives of Fanny and Johnny Cradock from around 1955 through to Fannys final years between 1990 and 1994. and it was ‘Okay.’

Theres a few things that ultimately kind of hamstring this feature, the first is that, its really kind of inconsistent on detail and the fragmented nature of the film makes it even harder to really properly tell exactly when and where all of this is actually supposed to be taking place in relation to what we’re seeing.

Its presumed we open in 1955, but by that point we’ve already missed quite a significant portion of Fannys more interesting lived experiences. Instead; we’re thrown right into her seemingly treating every ‘performance’ as if it may very well be the be all and end all of her career. I feel the special really does bring to life how cold and unusual she could truely be to people, and how her fear of abandonment manifested in a most unsightly way, but the film never truly gets to the nub of the issue, instead having lots of moments of ‘we’ll let the audience decide for themselves’ contrasted with several blunt moments, where the cast may as well be giving the audience Fannys psychological evaluation direction down the barrel of the camera.

then at around the 30 minute mark, we suddenly jump in time and its 1972…only, noone looks any older, and fashion hasnt really updated much. So I actually have NO idea when this thing was supposed to have started, or if the opening up until that point was supposed to be curated scenes from 1955 up to 1971…and things only really get more unweildy from there, as we jump from ’72 to ’78 to ’87 and finally to 1990…which is 4 years before she died, so not even really an ‘end’ so to speak. The events depicted in the feature ACTUALLY did happen, but because they dont really do enough to differentiate the passage of time they make almost 40 years of history feel like it happened in 5.

At its core, this biopic attempts to humanise Fanny, and to put much closer attention on her relationship with Johnny, her rock in many ways and her foundational support through her own battled emotions. and thats the part of this that I enjoyed the most, seeing these characters interact with each other on a base level with all the ‘act’ and pretense stripped back created a genuinely tender piece at times that I found quite moving.

Unfortunately, the feature spends most of the first 2 acts just running the same story over and over again (Fanny is a monster, someone new comes along, shes nice to them at first, gradually gets more and more involved in their life, and meaner, until they push back, and Fanny gets rid of them…usually rounded off with the person being given the chuck, telling Fanny a cold home truth that shakes her a bit) Which was fine the first time or two, but it happens a lot, and I feel that a lot of patient viewers would struggle to get quite far into this one as a result. Which is a shame because the best of this film lies in its final 30-40 minutes.

The characterisations are mostly spot on, the dialogues lovely, its just the pacing and structuring that I feel really kind of muddy this one a bit.

Direction is pretty solid, this isnt much out of the usual for BBC4 docu-dramas from the mid 2000s, its definitely got a flare to it that gives it some creative zeal, but its nothing standout beyond a few flourishes, smae goes for the cine here, which is clean, competent and helps drive home the feeling of isolation and distance Fanny had with everyone.

For me? and it pains me to say it, But I just didnt care for Julia Davies performance here as Fanny, she didnt look like Fanny, her delivery didnt match the tone or rhythm of Fanny, the makeup wasnt quite a match for Fannys. She didnt really embody the character for me, I just spent most of the film feeling like I was watching someone half attempt a Fanny impression. Davies is a skilled comedian and performer, and I know shes been great in several things i’ve seen. But this just didnt hit the spot for me. I took much more pleasure in watching Mark Gatiss as Johnny Craddock, not only do I feel like he really captured the likeness and mannerisms of Johnny, but he slowly eeks the character out across the runtime, from just ‘the browbeaten husband’ into a genuinely empathetic and tender character piece, I actually felt quite a sense of sorrow from Gatiss performance here, and I think he honestly nailed it.

Add to the above that the scores a bit hit and miss, easy listening and ‘smooth jazz’ wasnt what i’d envisioned for a score on this one. I dont think it really works, but I could see why they went the way they did…and the BIGGEST crime this feature commits…which is that they didnt even ATTEMPT to recreate any of the footage from her christmas specials. and I came away from this one glad that I watched it, probably unlikely to revisit it for a good long while, and a bit melancholic honestly. Fanny was a complex person who needed support that simply didnt exist at the time. and to see her fall from grace and the loss of anything and everything around her was a genuinely upsetting thing. But I dont quite feel like this film found its feet until it was really way to late to course correct. Starts wobbly, ends strong, soggy bottom.

If you, like me, came to Fanny from her Christmas programme, and want to get a better understanding of the woman, this is a pretty solid enough ‘crash course’ on everything that happened around the time of those shows…But I dont feel like it truely grasps who she was, and why she came to be the way she ended up.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/fear-of-fanny/

by tytdreviews