Clea DuVall | Cinema Parrot Disco

Happiest Season (2020)

Directed by & Story by Clea DuVall

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, Mary Holland,Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen

Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia)
The film follows a woman who struggles to come out to her conservative parents while she and her girlfriend visit them during Christmas.

My Opinion:

First of all, can I just say that I hate watching Christmas movies during any month other than December?? Seems pointless. At least the U.K. did get this before Christmas (I think??) – I just didn’t have that streaming service at the time. So, I suppose it lost a tiny bit of that special “Christmas feeling” by watching this in May but it’s also not an overly Christmassy film anyway despite being set in that time period. So watch it now if you want! It’s still enjoyable. It looked like it could be decent so I didn’t want to wait until December.

I liked this one. I’m not one of these Kristen Stewart haters but I’m also not of the generation who seem to absolutely love her for some reason. I don’t have much of an opinion on her one way or another but she was good in this (and very good in the film Underwater that I watched the other day & will try to review this week – she carried that whole movie). I liked her relationship with Mackenzie Davis in this and wanted them to live happily ever after & all that but I didn’t really feel they had much chemistry. Stewart’s character was more likeable & sympathetic and I kept thinking she might be better off with Aubrey Plaza. Well, they were still fine as a couple but a lot of the other characters helped to make this a really enjoyable movie. It was a bit slow to start but picked up when the family of the Mackenzie Davis character showed up as well as Dan Levy, as Kristen Stewart’s friend.

Victor Garber & especially Mary Steenburgen were great as the parents of Mackenzie Davis, whose house the couple stay at for several days over Christmas. Steenburgen was hilarious as the type of mother who wants her family to be perfect and is always making snide bitchy comments. Her treatment of the, I think middle?, of the three sisters was especially funny – that poor girl is always pushed aside and never lives up to expectations like the other two sisters do. Besides Stewart, my favorite characters were the middle sister (played by Mary Holland), Steenburgen as the pushy mother, and Dan Levy as Stewart’s friend. Don’t think I’ve seen Levy in anything before (I’ve not seen Schitt’s Creek). He was funny & I was glad he ended up in the movie a bit more by the end. We also had some fun sibling rivalry between Davis and her “bitchy” sister Alison Brie plus Aubrey Plaza, as I mentioned earlier, who plays a family friend & former secret girlfriend of Davis. I find Aubrey Plaza hit or miss but this was a good character for her.

I especially enjoyed this movie because it was “pleasant”. That sounds like a horrible compliment but I do mean it in a good way as there have been FAR too many dreary & depressing drama movies during this pandemic. I think we could all use a break from that! Sometimes you just want a lightweight rom-com with good characters & a fun sense of humor. The characters are what really make this film & it’s great that they had so many good ones. And I want to read the book the middle sister is writing. Her painting was pretty good too. Stop being mean to Jane!

My Rating: 7/10

Today’s IMDB Top 250 Guest Review comes from Mark of Marked Movies. He also reviewed Heat for this project – you can read that review HERE. Thanks for the reviews, Mark! 🙂 Now let’s hear his thoughts on the movie Argo, IMDB rank 195 out of 250…

There are still some movies up for grabs if anyone wants to do a guest IMDB Top 250 review. You can find the list HERE. See the full IMDB Top 250 list & links to all the films that have been reviewed HERE.

Director: Ben Affleck.
Screenplay: Chris Terrio.
Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher Denham, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Victor Garber, Kyle Chandler, Zeljko Ivanek, Richard Kind, Kerry Bishé, Chris Messina Michael Parks, Taylor Schilling, Titus Welliver, Bob Gunton, Keith Szarabajka, Philip Baker Hall.

After a great directorial debut with “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007 and a brilliant sophomore effort with “The Town” in 2010, all eyes were on Ben Affleck in his third outing as director. Questions were asked as to whether he could do it again. And the answer? The answer is a resounding, ‘Yes’. Argo completes Affleck’s hat-trick behind the camera and confirms that he’s definitely a director that has an abundance of talent and awareness.

Based on true events in a post-revolution Iran in 1979. A mob of Ayatollah supporters storm the US Embassy and take 56 American hostages. 6 officers managed to escape, however, and take refuge in the home of a Canadian Ambassador. After two months in hiding and their sanctuary becoming increasingly risky, the CIA hatch a plan to get them home and extraction officer Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) is given that responsibility. His plan is to create a fake movie called “Argo” and pretend that the six officers in hiding are his crew, scouting for shooting locations within the country.

Before going into Argo, I admittedly expected a heavy-handed political thriller but that’s not exactly what it delivers. Apart from the first five minutes of a brief overview of the, questionable, political relations between the U.S. and Iran, it sidesteps any political agenda and gets down to capturing the thrilling, human drama at it’s core. I’m not adverse to political film’s at all. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy them but Affleck is wise not to get too bogged down in boardroom banter and bureaucracy when there’s an brilliantly exciting story to tell. It does share similarities with the great political tinged thrillers of the 1970′s like Alan J. Pakula’s “All The Presidents Men” or “The Parallax View“. The late 70′s and early 80′s style is captured to perfection by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and Affleck’s orchestration can sit comfortably beside any from that great decade of cinema.

Chris Terrio’s solid screenplay delivers many dialogue driven scenes but Affleck keeps things moving at a frantic pace and not for a second, does the film ever get dull or drawn out. The tension is almost unbearable at times. Why Affleck didn’t, at the very least, nab an Oscar nomination for his substantial and well-constructed direction here is beyond me. There’s no doubt that he’s in complete command of his material as he leaps from Tehran to Washington to Tinseltown and delivers completely satisfying environments and effortless shifts in tone for the whole film to gel and come to life. He has the ability to capture a politically ravaged country; the backroom jargon of the CIA and the dark humour of Hollywood (that shares more than a passing resemblance to Barry Levinson’s “Wag The Dog“). In order to capture this ludicrous, stranger-than-fiction story in it’s entirety, it demands a maestro at work and Affleck can certainly consider himself one.

This is the edge-of-your-seat tension that “Zero Dark Thirty” wishes it had. With only three film’s under his hat, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Affleck has been at this directing malarky for a very long time. The comparisons with actor, turned quality director, Clint Eastwood will rage on and if anyone thinks otherwise, then Affleck can tell them to “Argo fuck yourself“.