Holiday season is Just Getting Started
Movie proves true love apparently never gets old, Chris Lackner writes.
MOVIES Big release on Dec. 8: Just Getting Started
Big picture: Uniting to offer some distraction from the ongoing Hollywood scandal are Morgan Freeman, Rene Russo and Tommy Lee Jones in an unlikely love-triangle and rom-com.
Freeman plays Duke, the manager of a luxury Palm Springs resort whose top-dog status is challenged when a roguish exmilitary man named Leo (Tommy Lee Jones) checks in. The two alphas square off at the poker table, on the golf course, at the ping-pong table and for the affections of Rene Russo.
In its late stages, Just Getting Started becomes an actioncomedy. Something about Duke secretly being in witness protection, mob hits, and aging alpha males teaming up to save the day.
On a side note: Russo is 63 and Freeman is 80 — good to see May-December romances are still alive-and-well in Tinseltown among the seniors’ circuit.
Forecast: This isn’t Game of Thrones; count on the mobsters not being very successful.
On a side note, the Dec. 15 release of Star Wars can’t come soon enough — the planet needs the daily distraction from whatever monstrous or juvenile tweets Donald Trump sent out the night before.
TV
Big events: El Camino Christmas (Dec. 8, Netflix); The Crown (Dec. 8, Netflix)
Big picture: The Royal Family is hot, and The Crown’s return is seemingly perfectly timed. Claire Foy continues to rule the small screen with her captivating portrayal of the young Queen Elizabeth II.
Her troublesome husband Prince Philip (Matt Smith) proves harder to control in season 2 — not to mention her quarrelsome uncle, the former Edward VIII (Alex Jennings) and rebellious sister. Prince Charles’ upbringing also provides personal struggle amid all the political battles.
The game of thrones is less bloody in modern England, but no less volatile. (I know the series is based on a true story, but couldn’t the writers play loose with the truth and have a crossover episode in which Tyrion Lannister plays the Queen’s hand — mainly to see him drink a whole wine bottle at high tea each day.)
Netflix also presents us with a dark, original holiday film, El Camino Christmas, about five strangers barricaded inside a liquor store on Christmas Eve during a botched robbery.
Vincent D’Onofrio, Jessica Alba (yes, someone cast her in a role again!), Luke Grimes, Tim Allen, and Dax Shepard co-star.
Allen makes the most of his screen time: the perennial sitcom dad has a darker edge on the standup circuit.
Here he ditches the cuddly Santa Clause beard for hobo stubble, and hot chocolate for the harder stuff.
Forecast: Given how popular the young members of the Royal Family are these days, this series has long legs. I predict season 30 will be about a young Prince Harry and his courtship of actress Meghan Markle on the streets of Toronto.
MUSIC
Big release on Dec. 8: Luke Bryan (What Makes You Country)
Big picture: What makes you country, Luke Bryan?
Not much by the tried-andtrue, gritty standards of the likes of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams — and certainly not your time sitting in a judge’s seat on American Idol.
However, give Bryan credit for his new song Most People Are Good. We need a little optimism — even in the form of bland, Hallmarkian rhymes: “I believe you love who you love / Ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of /I believe this world ain’t half as bad as it looks /I believe most people are good.” And he’s practically a sage with this line, “If you just go by the nightly news /Your faith in all mankind would be the first thing you lose.”
Forecast: You’re better off doing what I do every December. Not buying new albums, and playing the best Christmas duet ever on an endless loop off of YouTube: Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy by David Bowie and Bing Crosby. It never gets old. Call it what makes me Christmassy.