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rinfillmore
Reviews
An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008)
A heartfelt holiday movie
I love this movie and have tried to see it each year around Thanksgiving if I can manage to catch it. Tatiana Maslany is great in a role she completed well before Orphan Black made her famous. I'm only sorry she didn't perform in the follow up "An Old Fashioned Christmas" as the young woman who took her place in that movie is nowhere near as good.
While I gather from other reviews that this story is far removed from the Louisa May Alcott story on which it is loosely based, I still felt it maintains an affinity with Alcott's writing and that Tillie is a believable Alcott heroine. The love story with Gad and the familial rapprochement that is the focus of the storyline are all quite charming and make one feel the hope of the holidays. Best of all, they actually filmed it somewhere with snow and cold weather, versus the horrible Hollywood tendency to blow some fake snow over green bushes and pretend it's winter. Definitely worth a watching.
A Season for Miracles (1999)
One of the better Hallmark Christmas movies
While I admit to being a sucker for just about any corny Christmas movie, this one is far above the norm as one can tell just from the cast list. Laura Dern, Lynn Redgrave, Cathy Baker, and Carla Gugino are all well respected lead actresses for good reason, and here some of them play quite small roles, though it's the quality of the supporting cast that makes this film far better than most. Patty Dukes as the angel is probably the corniest element, but one has to accept a bit of corn in a holiday movie, and she handles the role as well as anyone could. As other reviewers here have said, the dialog is quite good, and the performances by the children, especially the always-strong Mae Whitman, are engaging without ever becoming too cute. Definitely worth a watch.