viewA Merry Little Ex-Mas, Netflix 2025
3.5/5 Hot Chocolates
So begins Larry's 100 Holiday Movie Season! My family and I have been studying the genre for a decade, and for the past five years, I have been reviewing them on my Instagram. I am now applying the format of the Drable/100 Word review and cataloging them here. But don't worry, Instagram Fam, I will still post them there to preserve this cherished tradition.
Notable Stars: Alicia Silverstone, Jameela Jamil, and Melissa Joan Hart. Silverstone, Hart produced for Mellisa Joan’s Mom’s Heartbreak Films production company.
Alicia Silverstone joins the Christmas Movie industrial complex.
Consciously uncoupling Silverstone and Oliver Hudson attempt to maintain post-breakup holiday normalcy with their young adult children, new paramours, friends, and Granddads. Awkward festive gatherings, hurt feelings, and rekindled emotions ensue.
After years of trying, Netflix got its version of the Hallmark Christmas RomCom right, mimicking the look/feel with a few meta inside jokes while tweaking the Young Professional Female Gets Stuck In Wintertown trope.
Middle-aged “what now” angst and Silverstone's puppy-dog eyes ground the plot, and the writing sprinkles the story with core genre elements: humor, empathy, warmth, and baking.
Stream it.
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All reviews on Larry's 100 are exactly 100 words. Read why →
viewAbout Schmidt, Alexander Payne (2002)
This movie hits differently at 52 than at 32.
In 2002, it was a dull Election follow-up; in hindsight, it matches his Nebraska with its suburban inner-sprawl dread. A bleak movie that sends time running short pings to midlife doldrums. Birth, school, work, death-level doom.
Nicholson gives one of his last great performances, injecting a sneering everyman menace into scenes. Hope Davis at her mousy best, with June Squibb, Dermot Mulroney, Kathy Bates, and Dr. Johnny Fever layering the slow-motion cringe with despair.
Pre-smartphone. Schmidt driving to Rush Limbaugh on AM radio? Quaint.
Need motivation to get going? Watch it.
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All reviews on Larry's 100 are exactly 100 words. Read why →
viewPavements, Alex Ross Perry (2024)
An inventive and funny movie about a band. Parts documentary, narrative, and musical. The alchemy of farce, myth, and sentimentality is authentic to Pavement; even the parody is believable.
I searched my Human Intelligence for a comp, and the best I could find was Nathan Fielder. Both use absurdity to find truth.
I cried watching. Was it nostalgia and middle age? Was it watching with my teen daughter? Was it ignoring societal suffocation to revel in the community of the film’s third act? Was it the lyrics divorced from 90s cynicism by musical theater? Who knows, I did. Watch It.
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All reviews on Larry's 100 are exactly 100 words. Read why →