One Starry Christmas (2014)

I just don't understand it. I'm easily pleased, I'm often about as easily pleased as you can get, and yet there are still movies that come along that get my rage rising from almost the very first scene, despite having the resources available to do better. The worst thing for a movie to do is be dull, but it's also terrible when a film feels lazy, and gives the sense that viewers aren't being treated with anything other than disdain. As is the case with One Starry Christmas.

Sarah Carter plays Holly Jensen, a young woman (and astronomer, hence the title) who heads back to visit her folks for Christmas, also hoping to surprise her potential fiance (Paul Popowich). She ends up sitting on a bus alongside a genuine cowboy type (Damon Runyan), which proves fortunate when the bus breaks down and Mr. Gentleman Cowboy helps her out. To repay the favour, she ends up inviting him for a bite to eat with her folks, who then end up inviting him to Christmas dinner, insisting that he also brings along his brother. The potential fiance isn't too happy about this, but that's okay because he's a bit of a douchebag anyway. Sort of. Well, the movie needs to paint him that way to lead everyone to a predictable final act.

Rickie Castaneda is the man responsible for this weak script, one that alternates between Christmas cliches and cowboy cliches (of course he has great manners, and of course he opts to show everyone how to line dance when the opportunity arises). Director John Bradshaw does nothing to distract from the horrible material, presenting everything in a flat, plain manner that seems to show a complete lack of imagination/interest.

Carter, Popowich and Runyan all try to do something decent, I suppose, with what they're given, but none of them make a great impression. Actually, I'm telling a small lie there because I spent a lot of the movie considering just how much time Popowich spent bemoaning the fact that he would always be "the guy who looks like Paul Rudd, but isn't Paul Rudd". Kathleen Laskey and Neil Crone do better, however, in the role of Holly's parents. Both believe in a very romantic idea of love, although the former is more open and vocal about it while the latter sometimes hides behind humour to tease more of a reaction from his wife. George Canyon gets to join Runyan in the "who can be stuck playing a more cliched cowboy?" performance stakes, and Daniel Karasik is a dot com millionaire who hosts a party that lets gentleman cowboy shine (yes, the line dancing occurs there).

Not JUST lazy and careless, One Starry Christmas also has one or two moments that will make you cringe with embarrassment. I feel sorry for everyone involved, who will all either go on to build a CV that this will be omitted from or end up stuck in permanent TV movie hell.*

*Not that all TV movies are bad. But the bad ones are . . . . . . . . . . BAD.

2/10

Not available on shiny disc at the moment, so go for this pack instead - http://www.amazon.com/Holiday-Romance-Collection-Movie-Pack/dp/B00DNLZRLU/ref=sr_1_7?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418332695&sr=1-7&keywords=christmas+movies

Red Mist AKA Freakdog (2008)

You might know of Paddy Breathnach already if you note down the names of people involved with movies that you disliked because a LOT of people disliked Shrooms.  I only ended up giving it a generous 5/10 after a rewatch allowed me to enjoy individual elements while my anger abated. Red Mist AKA Freakdog is a slight improvement over Shrooms but it only just provides a better viewing experience, mainly thanks to the echoes of Patrick. The main thing dragging it down is . . . . . . . . . . . well, I'll get to that shortly.

Andrew Lee Potts plays Kenneth, a shy and stuttering hospital worker who likes to look at corpses and cut himself. He's not a well man and doesn't have the best social skills but that doesn't stop him from trying to get close to Catherine (Arielle Kebbel), a young woman learning her craft at the hospital. When Catherine is out one evening with a group of her colleagues (played by Alex Wyndham, Katie McGrath, Sarah Carter and Martin Compston) things take a turn for the worse when Kenneth approaches the group and is brutally rebuffed. He then tells them that he has footage on his phone of one of them sneaking drugs from the pharmacy, drugs that they have been using for recreational purposes. The group then decide to let Kenneth join in with their fun but only so that they can spike his drink and teach him a lesson. As is often the case, things go wrong and Kenneth ends up in a coma. Catherine feels incredibly guilty but her colleagues just want everything to be over so that they can get on with their lives. In an attempt to help out, Catherine visits the comatose Kenneth and starts to secretly administer some experimental drugs that she hopes may help his condition. That's when people start acting as if they're possessed while trying to kill everyone who helped put Kenneth where he is. Could Kenneth be reaching out from his hospital bed? Is it the experimental drug?

The idea may not be an original one but it's not bad. The screenplay by Spence Wright covers familiar ground and it sits very much at the mid-point of quality when it comes to this type of fare. Breathnach does okay with the direction, though it would have been nice to see things getting a bit nastier during the death scenes, and the cast features those already mentioned plus Stephen Dillane and MyAnna Buring (I'll admit it, I like to watch the lovely Miss Buring in anything, so sue me).

BUT, and it is a big but (so big that Sir Mix-A-Lot himself may pop along to admire it), everything in the film from the acting to the unfolding plot to the dialogue exchanges between characters is undone by one huge mis-step. For some reason, those involved decided to try and make the whole thing appear as if it was set in America. Not in any convincing way, you understand, as that would take too much effort and care. Oh no, this movie being set in America means that we get a horrible mix of accents from the poor actors onscreen, a few establishing shots of somewhere that we're supposed to accept is America and then . . . . . . . . . . . well, that's it. There's not really anything else to help convince viewers that they're watching a movie set in the USA. It's as if Paddy Breathnach and Spence Wright watched Slaughter High and thought "well, we can make something as bad as that". Yet I still love Slaughter High to this day, it has a goofy charm to it and feels like those involved actually did their best with what they had. This movie misses that, which is why it also ends up with a generous 5/10 and why I am now wondering whether or not I should stop being so easily pleased.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Mist-Blu-ray-Arielle-Kennel/dp/B0029TQW98/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1346363564&sr=1-2