Every year I pick out one or two cheesy christmas movies as part of my holiday season. Last week I watched the mediocre Lindsay Lohan movie and this week I settled on this movie. More cheese, right? Um, no. This movie is good. I mean really good. Sure, there are the occasional reminders that it is the holiday season but it almost certainly is not a holiday movie (although I do expect that the christmas village scene in the middle of the movie was a wink at the audience from the director). First, the two leads have ridiculous chemistry. And it isn't the crappy syrupy kind that we see in so many other xmas movies. The supporting cast is also excellent, of course (Bonnie Bedelia should have been a bigger star). It is the rare movie that completely sucks me in and allows me to give myself up to it. I didn't want it to end. Some reviews were critical of the fact that there is a bit of a mystery in the movie. I don't agree with that sentiment. As I said earlier, this movie would have been just fine on its own if it hadn't gotten tagged with the "holiday" tag.

Finally, the best thing about the movie is that it is subtle. It didn't beat you over the head with the potential for romance. I would image that many people were disappointed in the last scene (probably the same group that hated the ending of the Sopranos) because they didn't show you exactly what happened. The best movies allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. We don't need to see everything on screen to know that something happened. That's not the point.

The worst part about the movie? I think that this movie ruined the Hallmark-ish kinds of movies for me. The movie started in a traditional way and for the first 20 minutes I had the mindset that cheese was on the way. Instead I was blown away. How do I go back to the traditional schlock? Damn you, Netflix.

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