My rating: ????

Let’s not beat around the bush here, Holiday in the Wild is not a Christmas film.  I believed it was, and the original title was Christmas in the Wild, and there are some Christmas scenes, but really, this is in the same vein as Wild, Eat Pray Love, where a woman goes away and discovers herself, and something she’s passionate about.

This film was one that Kristin Davis was trying to get made for a while, as she is passionate about elephant conservation.

Now we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s talk about the film! Kristin Davis plays Kate, a New Yorker, whose son is off to college for the first time, and whose husband announces, as soon as the son has left, that he wants a divorce as he’s no longer happy.  Kate had booked a safari as a surprise for them both, as a second honeymoon, so they could reconnect.  So she goes off on the safari on her own.

Rob Lowe (yes, big names in this Netflix film!) plays Derek, a small plane pilot, who takes people on their safaris, but who lives at an elephant sanctuary, and who is always on the lookout for hurt or killed elephants.  He spots a dead elephant with a living calf on the flight to take Kate to her safari, and so diverts to call in help.  Kate decides to go with the calf, and announces that she’s a former vet, who stopped practicing, but can help out, and so decides to do that instead of going on safari.

Whilst this wasn’t a Christmas film, I did enjoy it.  The setting is beautiful, the story was enjoyable and I liked the story of self discovery.

My rating: ????

Mrs Miracle has James Van Der Beek (I very much enjoyed him in Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23, and haven’t ever seen Dawson’s Creek, sorry!), and Erin Karpluk (Being Erica, a very good series) in it, and when I saw that, I immediately stopped the film, so I could watch it with my husband, who loves both of these actors for the same reasons as me, plus, he did watch Dawson’s Creek!

James  Van Der Beek plays Seth, a widower with 2 energetic young boys, and a series of house keepers/ nanny’s, who quit due to them!  Erin Karpluk plays Reba, a travel agent who hasn’t been to any of the places that she’s selling to her clients, and desperately wants to go.

Along comes Mrs Merkle, who has a way with things, who knows how to handle the boys, and who puts Seth and Reba in each other’s way.

This was an enjoyable fantasy Christmas story, that I would watch again, and I have the second film saved up to watch soon!

My rating: ???

Christmas Bells Are Ringing has Samantha, a freelance photographer, go to Cape Cod for Christmas for her father’s wedding.  She has only ever been there for summer before so finds a lot of new traditions that she didn’t know about, like the snowman moving around the town magically.

This is the first time she’s been back since her mother died of cancer, and so there are decisions to make about the family home there, with Samantha’s father’s bride to be having a home locally, they don’t need the family home.

Samantha has submitted photos to a competition in a paper for a Christmas layout, and to get a jo with them as she wants to leave being freelance behind, but then finds out she needs to submit more photos before 23d December.  She needs to take them in Cape Cod, and so when she meets Mike, a childhood friend, who knows the area really well, he takes her around, so she can take all the photos she needs.

This was a Christmas romance film, with a lot of Christmas in there.  It was a little cheesy, but it was definitely a Christmas film!

My rating: ????

Annie Claus is Coming to Town is a sweet romance with fantasy, which I enjoyed!  Annie Claus is Santa’s only child, and she has to go out into the world for a while to see if she wants to live there, or take over Santa’s workshop some time in the future.

Annie is super efficient, and knows a lot about toys, which is really helpful to a little toy shop that she stumbles across near her motel in Los Angeles.  The owner, Ted, has given up hope, and has a large loan to pay back just before Christmas, so when Annie says she’ll volunteer in his shop, he’s pleased, but doesn’t see that this will be the turn around.

If Annie is to stay in the world, that would mean that the head elf would get to take over Santa’s workshop! The head elf has employed an actor to make Annie think that he’s fallen in love with her, so she’ll want to stay! 

I thought this was an enjoyable light film, that made me feel this really was a Christmas film.  If you spot it, give it a watch!

My rating: ????

In A Cinderella Christmas Angie works for her uncle’s business with her cousin, who takes all the credit for successes they have. Nicolas is a wealthy bachelor, and is hosting a Christmas masquerade party that Angie is event planning.  They get talking when she goes to the party, and fall for each other, but Angie had promised her cousin she wouldn’t go to the party, so runs away.

I thought this was sweet, even if a little ‘what?’ in places. 

It was very much Cinderella, but not a lot of Christmas.

My rating: ???

Lucy is a lawyer in a New York based law firm, and she is looking forward to her elder sister, who has a disability, coming to visit.  Then she gets a call from her uncle to say that her sister has died.  Lucy is in shock, and has to go home for the funeral, and to sort out her sister’s things.

When Lucy is home, she finds out that she can inherit the house her sister lived in, if she lives there for 30 days.  Otherwise, her sister has said it will go to the local pet sanctuary.   Lucy wants the house, and so she stays around, and learns just how important her sister was to the community.  Lucy also has to confront her past, as she feels guilty about the accident that lead to her sister being disabled.  She was going to see Lucy to tell her something when the accident happened.

You know there has to be a love interest, and it’s Lucy’s boyfriend that she split up with from the time of her sister’s crash.  He’s her sister’s lawyer, so he knows more about Lucy and her sister than most people, and so also knows why Lucy is hanging around, so no awkward moment on that front!

There was a lot of self discovery, some romance, and a sprinkling of Christmas.  I’m trying to decide if it was enough Christmas to make me call this a Christmas film, and I think the answer is no.  It was a nice film, but not a Christmas film.

And I think nice sums it up.  It was fine, but another film that I wouldn’t be digging out to watch again!

My rating: ????

An entire film with George Michael songs only, entitled Last Christmas… I didn’t know what to expect, but in my head I had thought rom-com, from the trailer, I had seen.


I was partially correct. I don’t want to spoil the film, so I‘m just going to talk about the early bits, but try to tell you what I thought!


Emilia Clarke (yes, Daenerys from Game of Thrones, and wow does she have expressive eyebrows. I don’t think I had appreciated them much before!) plays a young woman, Katarina aka Kate, who makes bad choices and doesn’t understand how her life can be this awful.

Emma Thompson plays her mother, who escaped with her family from Yugoslav. She is pretty dramatic, and drives Kate nuts.


Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) plays Tom, who appears in Kate’s life, showing her things she had never seen or appreciated before. “Look up!” is something he says a lot when they first meet.

Kate works at a year round Christmas shop and dresses as an elf, with Michelle Yeoh playing the shop owner, called Santa.

This was a Christmas film with a message of looking outside yourself to see how you can help others lines to make yourself happy.

All in all, I enjoyed the film! I think I’ve only seen vague adverts, as reading IMDB I saw that people had guessed the entire plot 3 months ago as the adverts were too obvious! So, don’t watch those!

It’s more like It’s a Wonderful Life than Love Actually in that I mean I was sobbing my little heart out, but the two people I went with weren’t. I’m a cryer, though! I cried at Dumbo (the original, not sure I on put myself through the new one).

To sum up, do go and see Last Christmas. I enjoyed it, as did the other two (the non cryers!) that I went with. It was a very Christmasy film, and it was interesting listening to all of the George Michael songs throughout!

My rating: ???

Christmas Joy has Joy, a market researcher in a big city, having to rush home as her aunt has had a bad fall. When she gets there, she learns the best thing she can do to help out is to help out with the Cookie Crawl. No, I had never heard of such a thing either! Apparently it’s where people decorate their houses inside in creative ways and themes, and offer cookies, with the best house winning.

Joy’s aunt has taken part in this Cookie Crawl for years, and has help from Ben, who Joy used to fancy when they were both young. Ben offers Joy help, but Joy tells him she can do it on her own.

This was a fun Christmas film, with Christmas events, and failure a possibility if Joy doesn’t acknowledge that she needs help! All round, there are worse films to watch!

My rating: ???

Home For Christmas Day has an Army widow (Jane) with a daughter (Betsy) about to head off to college, and then Betsy falls for a solider (Tyler).

Jane is unhappy about the situation as she doesn’t want her daughter to have her heart broken if something happens to Tyler. This is because Jane hasn’t moved on since the death of her husband, but does have a very good friend, Jackson, the owner of the diner that Betsy works at, and where she met Tyler.

This was another romcom for me more than a Christmas film, and there’s only one scene that I can think of as Christmasy, and overall it just felt a bit cheesy.