Bumbling, overstuffed, and set in the middle-class fantasy world of Richard Curtis, Love Actually is an uneven ensemble romantic comedy that frequently appears on lists of the top Christmas movies. It had me suckered for a long time, even landing on my own list of favorite Christmas movies—but then I stopped to give the film some more thought.

It’s a very easy film not to think about. It slips down so easily, built on the stammering charms of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, and the jolly-hockey sticks enthusiasm of Emma Thompson. It has a great cast of established actors as well as up-and-coming ones, a twinkly Christmas setting, and an upbeat pop soundtrack. The problem is, the film doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny—it’s a terrible Christmas movie, and has some pretty cynical things to say about relationships. For a film that could also be described as a chick flick, it also has a rather repellent attitude towards women.

Many Christmas films follow a basic template—the protagonist (usually male) needs to overcome either a spiritual or physical challenge, otherwise Christmas is off. Die Hard‘s John McLane (Bruce Willis) overcomes a physical challenge, before reuniting with his wife and kids. Bad Santa‘s Willie T Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) may be an alcoholic, safe-cracking store santa, but even he encounters a Scrooge-like change of heart, and finds redemption in his highly dysfunctional but loving surrogate family.

But if you carefully examine the storylines in Love Actually, you’ll realise that it’s almost a counter-Christmas movie. Christmas is a time for giving and for family, whereas in Love Actually it’s a time for ignoring your family and chasing girls half your age. For most in men in the film, their only challenge is a personal one of self-gratification.

First, there’s dishy Prime Minister David (Grant), who instantly falls in love with Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), the film’s token working class person. They seal the deal with a cheeky snog backstage at David’s niece and nephew’s nativity play. But David isn’t there for the performance—it’s just sheer chance, and he has an awkward moment with his sister Karen (Thompson), who mistakenly thinks her brother’s there for the children. Fat chance, he’s just chasing a girl.

Then there’s Jamie (Firth), who buggers off to France after his wife cheats on him, only to fall for his Portuguese maid Aurélia (Lucia Moniz). He’s a bit sniffy towards her at first, and they don’t speak a word of each other’s language. But as soon as he catches sight of her in bra and panties, he’s head over heels. He ditches his family on Christmas Eve so he can fly back and declare his love to her.

Of all Love Actually‘s stories, the only one that follows a traditional Christmas movie arc is the one with Billy Mack (Bill Nighy). He’s the first character we meet after Hugh Grant’s touchy-feely opening monologue, a washed up rock and roller shamelessly aiming for one last shot at the big time, with a drossy cover of “Love is All Around”. Curtis can’t stop referencing the song in the first few minutes of Love Actually, since it was Wet Wet Wet’s mega-hit from Four Weddings and a Funeral. The twist is, it’s now called “Christmas is All Around”, and there’s fun to be had from the way Nighy shoehorns in those extra couple of syllables on the chorus.

Despite the best efforts of Nighy, Love Actually fails as a Christmas movie. It doesn’t really resemble one in terms of structure, and it has such a selfish message at heart. The film is also very cynical about relationships and women. Although billed as the “ultimate romantic comedy”, Curtis takes a strange stance on relationships in this film. On one hand, he’s all googly eyed and innocent, smitten with the idea of love at first sight; on the other he’s like Buddy Love, lascivious and skirt-chasing.

I have no problem accepting the notion of “love at first sight” in films. I was totally on board when Michael Corleone was hit by the thunderbolt in The Godfather, falling instantly in love with Apollonia. Don’t even get me started on Leo DiCaprio and Claire Daines doing their coochy-coo faces through the fish tank in Romeo and Juliet—loved it.

Love Actually seems to suggest that the moment you turn your back, your partner will be hopping into bed with someone else. This fate befalls Jamie, cuckolded by his wife, and Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen’s marriage is clearly damaged by Harry’s ill-advised flirtation with Mia (Heike Makatsch). Even hunky, handsome Chiwetel Ejiofor isn’t immune. Having just married the gorgeous Juliet (Keira Knightley), he isn’t aware that his Best Man Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is hopelessly in love with her, and spent their whole wedding obsessively filming close ups of her smiling face. If that wasn’t enough, he shows up on their doorstep on Christmas Eve, posing as carol singers and declaring his love to her with some cue cards, in the manner of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

Juliet’s actions in this segment are pretty despicable, which brings us to the subject of how women are portrayed in Love Actually. Most barely register as characters. Many are either prizes to be won, floozies, or too over-the-hill to be attractive anymore. Things are way rosier if you’re a bloke in Love Actually. If your wife cheats on you, dies, or gets a bit old and knackered, don’t worry because there’s always some young bit of crumpet waiting around the corner for you. And while there is a long-standing tradition in Hollywood where older men play opposite young, attractive actresses in films, but Love Actually really pushes the envelope. Alan Rickman and Heike Makatsch, Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon, Colin Firth and Lucia Moniz, Liam Neeson and Claudia Schiffer—all these match ups felt highly implausible.

The objectification of women is most evident in the film’s most risible storyline, that of Colin (Kris Marshall), a hollow-eyed creep who’s poison with the ladies. He treats himself to a ticket to Milwaukee because he’s heard American birds get turned on by an English accent. Of course, in the world of Love Actually, he’s able to rock up in a dive bar and stumble upon a trio of hotties instantly seduced by the way he speaks. A foursome follows, soon to be a quintet when Denise Richards gets back home.

All this goes against what we normally expect from Christmas movies, which usually reinforce the virtues of self-sacrifice, open-mindedness and the pleasures of family life. While there is nothing wrong with skirting genre expectations, Love Actually is filled with bogus Christmas cheer. In fact it preaches the opposite—screw your family, chase the girl, and look after your own best interests.

If over the holidays the doorbell rings and your significant other tells you that it’s carol singers, maybe go see for yourself. Just in case…

Guy Ritchie’s never had a problem with making his movies look good. His latest, retro spy-thriller reboot The Man From U.N.C.L.E., is arguably his slickest looking movie yet. He has trouble, though, when indulging in the pleasures of his eye-popping imagery just isn’t enough to sustain our interest. It’s a magic act: he’s showing us flashy, amazing things to distract us from the fact that his (recent) movies are, at their core, typical franchise cash grabs that don’t really mean or say anything interesting. But as long as he can keep us enthralled with his stylish visual tricks, who’s to say we can’t go home happy, buzzing with ignorant bliss?

As a late-summer action romp, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is easy-peasy viewing. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s brimming with attitude. The television show on which it’s based ran from 1964-68 and starred Robert Vaughn as American secret operative Napoleon Solo, and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, his Soviet counterpart. It piggybacked on the burgeoning popularity of James Bond at the time, and while Ritchie’s movie does the same, it simultaneously—and more enthusiastically—capitalizes on the current trendiness of mod ’60s attitude and fashion brought on largely by the sucess of Mad Men.

Taking Vaughn’s place as Solo is Superman himself, Henry Cavill; filling in for McCallum is the beastly but dapper Armie Hammer. The movie opens in East Berlin, with our two heroes at odds. Solo recruits a car mechanic named Gaby (Ex Machina‘s Alicia Vikander) to aid the Americans in shutting down a Nazi crime ring with plans of nuclear world dominance. She’s a gifted mechanic, but what Solo’s interested in is her lineage: her uncle is affiliated with the bad guys, and her father’s a nuclear physicist who’s been captured by them. Before they can skedaddle and hop the Berlin wall to rejoin Solo’s extraction team, they’re intercepted by Kuryakin, who pursues them in a brisk, high-speed Road Runner chase through the moonlit Berlin streets.

Before long, Solo and Kuryakin are informed by their respective superiors that they’re to work together in bringing down the terrorists. They’re contrasting personalities make it hard for them to shed their adversarial attitudes, but Gaby does her best to ease the tension. Kuryakin’s a staunch patriot with a bad rage problem (he Hulks out from time to time), and Solo’s laid-back American arrogance goes against everything he and his people stand for.

The movie’s essentially a dick-measuring contest between the two, and idiotic as it may be, it’s a lot of fun to watch the strapping lads try to out-man each other by showing off their signature spy tricks. Cavill and Hammer are charismatic and look fantastic in the movie’s countless tailor-made European suits. As characters, Solo and Kuryakin are indefensibly shallow and one-dimensional, almost charicature-like, but in Ritchie’s world, it works. The actors aren’t so much embodying characters as they are exaggerated American and Soviet attitudes from the Cold War era. It’s not brilliantly written material, but the snappy banter is always good for a laugh. Though there’s only one English character of significance (played by Hugh Grant), Ritchie and co-writer Lionel Wigram still manage to infuse the proceedings with a generous helping of British cheekiness.

Vikander suffers the most from the surface-level writing. Her performance in Ex Machina was a revelation, and to see her reduced to a walking, talking plot device is sad. She’s given one moment: while staying in a hotel room with Kuryakin (they’re working undercover as an engaged couple), Gaby has too much to drink and starts dancing like, well, a drunk girl (a moment made all the more fun with the knowledge that Vikander is an accomplished ballerina). She loosens up the Russian’s stoic veneer by forcing him to join her in dance and then roughing him up a bit by wrestling him around the room, knocking over furniture. Alas, Ritchie is stingy with Gaby, only allowing her to let loose the one time.

The international vistas (most of the story plays out in Italy, which looks infuriatingly gorgeous) and vintage costumes and super-cool sunglasses more often than not outshine the actors. Ritchie glamorizes every piece of clothing we see, to the point where the movie stills look like they’re ripped from a fashion magazine rather than a movie. He’s confident in his visual style at this point in his career, and he knows how to make everyone and everything look great, even when zooming by the camera in a blur of color.

The plot is over-stuffed and hard to follow, but it’s never too distracting. Allegiances shift, unexpected wrenches get thrown into every plan, a romance between Gaby and Kuryakin is incessantly teased—it’s all standard espionage stuff. But you know what? It’s an entertaining movie, bottom line. Ritchie cleverly chops up and rearranges the timelines of certain events to raise questions and provide amusing revelations later: in one scene we see Gaby making a phone call to an off-screen mystery person; only later, when the information is most relevant, is it revealed who she was talking to. It’s not the most revolutionary device in the world, but the time-jumping keeps things fresh and active. Ritchie made some of the worst movies of his career with those Sherlock Holmes turd piles, but The Man From U.N.C.L.E. proves that he still knows how to wow us at the movies, even with the studio system breathing down his neck. Good on you, Mr. Ritchie—now, can you please just make another gangster flick? Pretty please?

Hugh Grant goes with rom-coms like teenage girls and vampires. Like eggs and bacon. Like Hall and Oates. Like Kirk and Spock. You get the idea, pick a Valentine’s card, put Hugh Grant’s face on it, commence swooning. He may be getting a bit older and a bit less believable as the dashing, stuttering, male lead he’s become famous for playing, but well, if we know anything about Hollywood, it’s that the men are allowed to get older as long as their female love interests stay just as young. The Rewrite, the latest from Music and Lyrics and Did You Hear About the Morgans writer-director Marc Lawrence, does have a young love interest—AND a very age-appropriate love interest as well in the form of Marisa Tomei. But where the film bores isn’t in its coupling—indeed that only serves to make us quite nostalgic for an A-game Grant and Tomei rom-com that never was—instead it’s the film’s trite plot and over-gimmicked characters that would have amused ten years ago and are now too overplayed.

The Rewrite isn’t your usual rom-com, and that’s because it isn’t actually a rom-com. Not in the strictest sense of the genre. There’s sexy time, and single people, but no one is actually pursuing anyone in this film. Instead we have Hugh Grant playing washed up screenwriter Keith Michaels, his Oscar-winning hey-day long over, struggling to sell any of his ideas for a film. Producers want sexy female action films and he’s showing his age pitching nostalgic retrospective pieces. He begs his agent for a job of any sort and she suggests a teaching gig at an upstate New York college. He’s above such things, but when his electricity gets turned off he unsurprisingly rethinks the offer.

Upon almost instant arrival to his new gig Michaels makes the immediate mistake of shacking up with a student, impressing her with tales of his award-winning career. As a prospective for his screenwriting class, Karen (Bella Heathcote) gets into his class of course, but Michaels has a hard time shaking her off when he’s told that professor-student relationships are—surprise, surprise—strictly forbidden and grounds for dismissal.

Oblivious and narcissistic, Michaels picks almost his entire class based on their Facebook profile pictures. Which means older student Holly Carpenter (Marisa Tomei) doesn’t make the cut, she with two daughters, just trying to finish her education, and happy to simply receive some feedback from Professor Michaels on a script she’s written.

After proving how ill-fit he is for academia when he offends a fellow English department professor (Allison Janney) by (in an almost too naive way) poking fun at Jane Austen, Michaels finds himself on thin ice and, with no actual teaching experience, not especially sure what he’s doing. The middle of the film drags somewhat as Michaels begins to connect with his students, understanding more about them through their writing and letting them lead the class discussions to create the illusion he’s actually teaching. He and Tomei have a few candid conversations during office hours and around campus where she snoopily (though with a believable amiability) inquires into his personal life and offers advice around his estrangement to his son.

Additionally, his prying but friendly neighbor Jim (Chris Elliott) and the department head Dr. Lerner (J.K. Simmons) serve their particular purposes acting as Keith’s one-dimensional friends teaching him life lessons in accepting his life’s progression into an older man with a new career. Teachers might be slightly offended by the implications that not only do those who can’t do, teach, but that it’s not particularly requiring of talent.

The film ends predictably, though not believably, but this film never boasts believability as a goal. The title confused me at first, as Michaels doesn’t actually do any writing in the film, a more sentimental person had to point out it must refer to him rewriting his own life. There aren’t enough eye-rolls in the world. Altogether, I give credit to Tomei and Grant, who really do make a great pair with a believable chemistry. I only wish this script had opted for a rewrite as they are never allowed to be much more than friends until a rather awkward shift at the very end. Me-via-1999 was beyond disappointed in the lack of heart-swelling I felt, and modern me was just annoyed at how calculable everything felt.

Marc Lawrence has either lost some of his romanticism or hasn’t quite figured out how to allow it to age with his protagonists, not to mention the modern sensibilities and expectations of today’s audiences. Here’s hoping he figures it out, as he’s clearly very talented, as are both Grant and Tomei who I will gladly watch on-screen anytime. I hope someone thinks to put them in another film together, and this time give them something to bite into.

The Rewrite has a limited New York City theatrical release February 13.

Cloud Atlas is a big film by all definitions; it contains an inordinate amount of characters spread out across hundreds of years, making the shear scope of the production epic. Not to mention the estimated budget of 100 million dollars (though it was independently financed outside the studio). To pull off such an ambitious feat, the film split the directorial duties among a trio of film visionaries, Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and the Wachowskis siblings (Andy and Lana, The Matrix trilogy). However, Cloud Atlas’ biggest accomplishment may also be its biggest flaw; the overloaded plotlines are never boring, but at times they can be too much to follow.

When characters are first introduced in the opening sequence, one of them in particular seems to be speaking directly to the audience. That character is an older man (Jim Broadbent) on a typewriter who describes his time spent as an editor has made him dislike gimmicky storytelling involving flashbacks and flashforwards. But he goes on to say that if you have some patience you can then see that there is a method to its madness. That whole scene only lasts a few moments before going on to the next introduction, but it almost seemed to be begging the viewer to embrace what is about to unfold.

The plea to be patient between the back and forth storytelling proved to be necessary as Cloud Atlas contains six different time periods, each with their own plotline and characters. While everything happens in linear fashion in each time period, the film does jump between the six different time periods at will. Even though there are six different storylines, similar themes and characters are shared across them all, making everything connected to each other. The film brilliantly shifts from one period to another by using cleaver scene transitions. One example of this is when the thundering sound of horses galloping from one era leads into the next with a similar sound of a train racing on its tracks.

Cloud Atlas spans across several hundreds of years, ranging from the 1800s to the 2300s and several years in between as well. In the earliest setting of 1850, Adam (Jim Sturgess) is a wealthy pro-slavery American Lawyer who is poisoned by a corrupt doctor (Tom Hanks) for his fortune. He eventually switches his stance on slavery when a slave saves his life. In 1931, an upcoming composer (Ben Whisaw) works closely under one of the best known composers of the time (Jim Broadbent), but fears that his original masterpiece will be wrongfully claimed by his famous superior. Set in the 1970s, the daughter of a famous reporter, Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), is an investigative journalist who is looking to prove herself by uncovering a corrupt business leader (Hugh Grant). In the year 2012, a publisher named Timothy (Jim Broadbent) finally makes it big when an author’s (Tom Hanks) book flies off shelves after he murders a book critic. A few men go after Timothy for his money, which he does not have, forcing him to ask his deceitful brother for a loan who instead offers him a safe house. But Timothy’s finds himself captive in a nursing home instead. A hundred years in the future, a slave restaurant waitress manages to escape from her captivity to start a revolution. The last storyline is set far into the future, a member of an advanced civilization (Halle Berry) teams up with an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) to help solve each other’s dilemmas.

The common theme that stiches the six tales together is the desire of freedom. No matter what age the character lives in, there is someone there that wants to restrict the amount of power and freedom you possess. During each stretch of time, characters are morally challenged to stand up for what they believe in.

Because most cast in the film got to play both the hero and the villain, Cloud Atlas must have been an actor’s fantasy. Take the numerous roles that Tom Hanks had in the film for an example. He wonderfully portrayed the crooked doctor back in the 1800s but got a chance to redeem himself later as a good scientist in a different time period. Hanks, like other fellow cast members, is sometimes unrecognizable at first because of the amazing makeup job that serves as a disguise to their age, ethnicity and even gender.

Cloud Atlas is an entertaining yet dense film that contains many wonderfully told stories which link together seamlessly. All the stories brilliantly peak at the same time, making for one epic climax, once you first let all the stories develop independently. It is easy to get caught up in the web of trying to make all the connections between the characters – making a repeat viewing seemingly necessary. However, the major themes and messages are apparent enough in the film without the requirement of multiple viewings; but you must accept that some of the finer details will likely get lost in the shuffle.

With the announcement earlier this week that the new film by directors The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas was going to have its world premiere at this year’s edition of The Toronto International Film Festival, a trailer was almost immediately released. And boy is it a stunner. With a story that looks to be spanning hundreds of years and an international cast to go along with it, Cloud Atlas will either be a gigantic success or complete mess. The cast is led by Tom Hanks and Halle Berry but also includes Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant.

The Wachowskis were last seen with the Speed Racer. A film that I felt was one of the most underrated films of the past decade. They of course are famous for directing the uneven Matrix trilogy. Tykwer is the German mastermind behind such ingenious work as Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior. He also directed the mostly unseen The International.

All the talent behind and in front of the camera is here. The only problem is the film’s runtime. Word is that the studio wanted the directors to deliver a film no more than two and a half hours. Judging by this trailer (which itself is 3 times the length of most trailers) this could put a strain on the story of the film. Let’s hope these guys can deliver. But for now, check out the trailer below.

Watch the official trailer for Cloud Atlas: