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Tag: Kristen Stewart

  • ‘Happiest Season’ makes the yuletide gay | movie review

    ‘Happiest Season’ makes the yuletide gay | movie review

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    Happiest Season follows a lesbian couple who go home for the holidays for the first time. One problem: Harper’s family doesn’t know she’s gay and that Abby is her girlfriend. Hijinks ensue.

    Happiest Season is filled with hilarious misunderstandings, more than one coming out pun, and a running joke about dead fish. However, at its core, it’s a character-driven dramedy that’s so rooted in the queer experience that, to be frank, is going to be a bit divisive. Whether you’re satisfied by the end, I’m not sure, it’s up to you. But the journey there is a jolly holiday treat.



    ▶︎ Streaming on Hulu

    The holiday romantic comedy is as much a staple of the season as a dysfunctional family argument at the Christmas dinner. Oh wait. Either way, there’s often a formula to our holiday entertainment. However, Happiest Season—now streaming on Hulu—looks to break the mold by focusing on a lesbian couple played by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. And while the story does hit some of the same familiar beats, it’s a largely subversive take that’s rooted in the queer experience. Still, there’s something for every member of the family to enjoy. 

    Abby (Stewart) and Harper (Davis) are a long term couple living together happily in Pittsburgh—they’re so happy in fact that Abby is ready to pop the question much to her best friend John’s (Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy) chagrin. After talking about Abby’s dislike for the holiday since her parents died—take a drink for the holiday movie drinking game—Harper makes the spontaneous decision to invite her to her conservative small town for her family’s annual Christmas party. However, on the way Harper reveals that she lied to Abby about coming out to her family and asks her to pretend to instead be her roommate until she can tell her family she is gay after the holiday. 

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    From there, Happiest Season has all the hijinks you’d expect as the pair arrive having set the ruse. Immediately it’s clear the Harper’s mother Tippy (Mary Steenburgen) has taken Abby’s status as an orphan a little too to heart as she looks down at her with sadness. Her father Ted (Victor Garber), on the other hand, is too focused on his campaign for mayor to pay too much attention to her. And of course, there are the kooky siblings Jane (Mary Holland), an awkward and nerdy holiday lover, and Sloane (Alison Brie), a perfectionist in constant competition with Harper. 

    Every member of the cast is superb in creating little ticks and moments with their characters, especially Holland whose performance as Jane very nearly steals the film. After a series of misunderstandings, more than one pun about being in a closet, and a subplot about dead fish, Happiest Season heads for more dramatic territory as the strain of hiding her identity weighs on Abby and strains her relationship with Harper. It doesn’t help either that Harper seems to be slipping into her at home “straight” persona a little too well and her high school friend Riley (Aubrey Plaza) hits it off with Abby. 

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    Therein lies the problem with Happiest Season. The very act of hiding oneself until you’re comfortable is completely valid—something I did too for some time. However, the movie is a little too heavy-handed with Harper’s betrayal of Abby to the point that it’s hard to root for the couple. However, Dan Levy’s gorgeously delivered third act monologue about the very personal journey about coming out infuses some understanding that saves the ending a bit—still it will be quite divisive. 

    Happiest Season has its problems but at the core, it is the exact kind of delightfully entertaining holiday rom-com that we’re looking for. There are moments that had me laughing, crying, and screaming with delight. And, of course, there’s the lesson. “I’m gay.” Why are those two words so difficult for so many of us queer people to say? Happiest Season aims to find an answer to that question while simultaneously delivering an entertaining holiday comedy filled with the nutty characters we all love—and love to hate.

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    More movies, less problems

    Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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  • 'Underwater' rips off 'Alien' – and that's fine — movie review

    'Underwater' rips off 'Alien' – and that's fine — movie review

    Underwater follows the crew members of a deep-sea drilling rig as their vessel begins to fail. However, the real danger is lurking in the darkness of the sea.

    Quick review: Underwater is like if you took all the character development, world-building, and plot out of the original Alien and just left the horror bits — somehow it works.

    We’ve seen Alien copycats before to varying degrees of success. From the great (The Descent) to the fine (Life) to the insulting (Inseminoid, anyone?). But at the very least, Underwater is keenly aware of its position. It’s an economical, mindless, Hollywood thrill ride. Exactly what you’d expect from a mid-January horror. 

    Just the shallow idea of a plot

    From the very beginning of the movie, you know that they aren’t fooling around. Without any exposition or pretense, we hop straight into a deep-sea drilling operation in the Marianas Trench — aka the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans. Norah Price (a short-haired platinum blonde Kristen Stewart) is preparing for bed when the entire rig begins to fail and cave in around her. Narrowly escaping a painful death by crushing, she and Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie) another crew member make their way to the escape pod bay discovering another crew member (played by someone that doesn’t deserve to be mentioned) and the captain of the vessel (Vincent Cassel). They meet up with Emily (Jessica Henwick) and Liam (John Gallagher Jr.) in the bridge to form a plan of escape. 

    Not much of the plan makes sense and neither does the environment, but the movie doesn’t dwell on it. At just 95 minutes, it doesn’t have time to spend on needless things like a plot. The crew descends further down to the ocean floor to find another escape pod bay. However, before they can make it there they encounter something (or somethings) otherworldly that make their journey even more dangerous than it already is. 

    What you see is what you get with Underwater. Honestly, it’s refreshing. The scares are cheap but effective. The tension is derived solely from the environment — setting something under the sea or space is an easy way to build suspense. And the characters are really only made charming by the cast. But it’s so satisfying. It’s an elevated B-movie if such a thing even exists.

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    There really isn’t a moment to relax and take in the environment or get used to any space. However, the surprisingly effective production design is essential to the movie’s success. The tight dank corridors are endless and imperfect — filled with pipes and grates and wires like Alien. It’s the perfect setting for the story.

    The same goes for the bulky pressurized suits that are the only barrier between the crew and agonizing death at the hands of the depths of the ocean. The unreliability adds to the stakes.

    Stewart, even when phoning it in, has just the right level of movie star appeal to lock you into the screen. Cassel and Henwick also do great work with their limited screentime. However, you can’t read too far into anything with Underwater. By design, it’s shallow. It’s a theme park of a movie, as Martin Scorsese would put it, and it works for that very reason.

    Random thoughts ?

    • John Gallagher Jr. is incredibly underrated and should be a huge star by now. This movie wastes him.
    • The creature design is terrific, but the twist is jawdropping. Plus, the movie uses them sparingly enough to keep them interesting.
    • The first and last shots of Stewart are pure Hollywood hero shots.