4/28/2023 0 Comments Hunulu girls mini diary inside![]() He makes a pilgrimage there to visit his French New Wave poster, his Larry Bird jersey, another typewriter (yeesh, set decorators, we get the point,), a Hemingway book, and a copy of On the Road. ![]() His bedroom, though, she left untouched (and apparently dusted). Anyway, Jake goes back to his natal home, where he hasn’t been since he graduated from high school, to learn that his mother had become a hoarder. On her way out, Svetlana hands him a bundle of fan mail, so it’s clear there are ways to reach him, and you’re telling me there aren’t any nosy neighbors from his old neighborhood or meddling former classmates absolutely chomping at the bit to be the first one to tell him this tragic news? I don’t buy it, but that’s how the movie goes. It turns out she died a week ago and left everything to him. As he settles in, he turns on the radio and tunes it to jazz, so you know he’s cultured and intellectual and all that, well, I guess I can’t say jazz, but you know what I mean.īut! Just as he’s preparing for that quiet holiday season all by himself, he gets a call from a lawyer who represents his estranged mother’s estate. ![]() As the camera moves through Jake’s very neatly appointed home, there are some clues about his personality: a Bob Dylan book, a Nina Simone album, an old record player, literary awards, old typewriters, dog statues, and bottles of nice liquor. Does he? It doesn’t matter one way or the other, because this movie is going to show him he’s ABSOLUTELY WRONG about being alone. And, after an obligatory drone shot of Jake’s Land Rover driving down an empty, forested road, we learn that Ava is indeed a dog (and a cute one at that), because, as Jake explains to his housekeeper Svetlana ( Andrea Sooch), he likes to be alone. When a woman flirtatiously asks if he has plans to stay in the city he demurs that he has to get home to “his girl Ava.” She stammers that “she’s a very lucky woman,” but you and I both know that-given Jake’s warm-but-distant demeanor, his all-black wardrobe and thick-framed reading glasses, his scarf, his just scruffy enough facial hair, and the fact that this is that kind of movie-there’s about a 99.9 percent chance that Ava will in fact be a dog. ![]() I haven’t actually read Jake’s made-up books.) He’s very affable at his book signing, taking time to answer people’s questions and even settle a couple’s small dispute over whose name should go first in the inscription. I get quite the bee in my bonnet about the plethora of novels romanticizing WWII. Trés romantique! You know, except for that whole persecution and slaughter of eleven million people and the deaths of millions and millions more in the war effort. Jake Turner ( Justin Hartley) is a Genetically Blessed and Blandly Handsome author who writes wildly popular novels set in World War II. So, the conclusion of these very knotty and emotional plotlines ends up feeling like a strand of Christmas lights with a wonky fuse-a dim and flickering mess, with so much potential just out of reach, which might just abruptly go dark. This movie, which is about the relationship between a famous writer dealing with the aftermath of his estranged mother’s death and a woman who is trying to locate her birth mother, starts off okay enough, but it just doesn’t follow through to make the needed connections. Into everyone’s Christmas movie-watching some treacle will seep, and with The Noel Diary you may find yourself knee-deep-which isn’t all bad.
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