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EricBrunel
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Operation Christmas (2016)
Great and unusual Christmas movie
I saw this movie in pretty bad conditions: it was airing on French TV, and, as basically all Hallmark movies, it was targeted at middle-aged housewives, who are supposed not to be able to speak English at all and to want everything in French. So no English version available, only dubbed in French, and therefore with rewritten dialog. And for this kind of movie, let's say the writers and the dubbing actors are rarely encouraged to do their best...
So it took me a bit of time to get into it, the beginning feeling a bit awkward with the actors speaking in a voice that isn't theirs and having sometimes cheesy lines of rewritten dialog. But from when Olivia and Scott meet for the second time and the "Operation Christmas" actually starts to get prepared, I got hooked. No Santa Claus or so-called "Christmas magic" here: it's a story of real people in quite a difficult situation who are just trying to get their little share of happiness in this supposedly joyful time of the year. This is the kind of movie that relies a lot on the actors, and I guess that for such a film often considered "minor", some would just "do the job" and hurry back home for dinner. Here, the whole cast is great and does an excellent work. But one of them especially shines, and that's Tricia Helfer: she gives everything she's got to her character, and really makes you feel for this woman, torn between the excitement of a starting romance she thought would no more happen, and her high doubts about herself being able to cope with the kind of life you get with a man in the military. And let me be honest: mostly because of her performance and in spite of the awkward French dubbing, I ended up with my eyes not completely dry.
So of course, there are probably some factual inaccuracies and the ending is quite cliché. Well now, as someone else has pointed out: this is a Hallmark movie, it has to have a cliché ending. But all in all, this is one of the best Christmas movies I've seen, and if it ever reaches my side of the Atlantic as a DVD, I'll definitely buy it - and probably get another weird look from my wife for getting this kind of "girly" stuff...
Bloodwork (2012)
Not as bad as I feared.
OK, so I watched it without much hope, since I had read a few comments here and I expected something quite bad, especially considering this movie doesn't seem to be widely distributed and it had been quite difficult to find. But I actually found out it really wasn't as bad as I feared.
So first, a little summary - with quite a few spoilers, so be warned if you haven't seen it: two college boys accept to be part of an experiment in a pharmaceutical lab for what is presented to them as a test for a new drug for allergies. The test quickly proves itself to be something completely different though, as the drug being tested aims at making people more or less invulnerable. The problem being that it has quite nasty side-effects: first removing all feeling of disgust, then basically every kind of social inhibition, and also being extremely addictive. In the end, the movie gets into zombie-movie territory, even though there are actually no zombies in it, but flesh eating people who are almost impossible to kill are close enough
So of course, the characters are quite mono-dimensional, and there isn't a lot of surprise here. The most "complex" character seems to me to be Dr Wilcox, and I think Tricia Helfer did quite a nice job: she has obligations and wants it to work, she's probably paid a lot for it and she might also know how everything will end up if she fails, knowing who her clients are. But her doubts show more and more as the experiment turns slowly into a complete disaster. So of course, she has cheesy lines, but after all, she hasn't been the one writing the dialogue
I found the acting mostly quite good, considering the obviously low budget and the simple enough characters.
I thought the atmosphere was quite good too, and I really ended up weirded out and wondering as the side effects started to show. The scene with the couple having sex while they are run over by cockroaches and don't seem to care the least definitely worked for me. The idea of having one of the study subjects needing an operation and ending up dying because it was impossible to cut her open as the wounds healed instantly was also very nice.
There are a few things that were quite bad though, mostly because they were completely unbelievable: the team of 'specialists' putting explosives more or less randomly in the building, the two college guys miraculously succeeding to escape after we've seen them running before the explosion when they were like on the 4th or 5th floor (hint: the only way they could have escaped here would have been to jump out of a window, and from this high, they would be dead or severely injured), the Aaron guy still alive in the end, but with a wound around his neck (either he has taken the drug, and he wouldn't have the wound, or he didn't, and he would be dead), and the guy chopping a head off with an ax, which is so unrealistic that is is quite laughable.
But in the end, I found the movie quite enjoyable. I spent a nice moment watching it, and I find myself remembering more the good points than the bad ones. I'll probably even watch it again one of these days.