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A JOYOUS CHRISTMASA Joyous Christmas raised the bar real high for holiday movies in 2017. Bring a hankie, some Kleenex, a sleeve. This one will wreck your tear ducts. In a way, it’s a sort of dichotomy – for me, anyway – that our main character, Rachel Kennedy (Natalie Knepp), is a motivational speaker. As someone who has no use for motivational speakers, I associate an element of sleaze with such vocation. Rachel is also a best-selling author. A child of loss, she started out years ago as a blogger intending to make a difference.Today, around the holiday season, she’s come back home to Fall Oaks, Massachusetts, and she’s big noise, the hometown heroine. Look, the mayor’s just handed her the key to the city. In two weeks, she’s hosting a live event, Rachel Kennedy’s Inspiration Celebration.She’s here with her bossy manager of five years, Stuart, and her personal assistant Bridget. Rachel’s got an estranged brother, David, in Fall Oaks whom she hasn’t seen in three years, not since their mom passed away. It’s too late to get in touch, anyway. She’s burned that bridge down.Some plot spoilers.As the movie opens, Rachel is the sort of motivational speaker that I loathe: contrived and calculating in her approach; her self-interest palpable; her mantra: “You cannot make anyone happy until you’re happy.” Thankfully, we’re not exposed too long to that Rachel. About to cross the street, she’s almost mowed down by a car when she’s saved by a stranger. When a shaken Rachel asks the good samaritan how she can possibly thank her, she’s told: “Help someone else who needs help.”Rachel’s staff doesn’t yet have all their ducks in a row. To ramrod the prepping for the Inspiration Celebration event, Rachel’s manager hires Jack (Michael Rady), a local event producer. Jack is a chill hombre who once ran his own company in Boston until he got fed up with the bullsh–. Jack right away gets to the root of the issue, which is that Rachel needs to connect even more with her public. Her persona is off-putting. Jack proposes that Rachel even toss in a Christmas flavor into her presentation. No surprise that Rachel is giving hard resistance. She insists, “Christmas isn’t my forté.”So far, I haven’t mentioned anything that suggests this is an exceptional holiday film. And I won’t broach any more plot bits. It’s a beautiful, sensitively-told story. A Joyous Christmas aired on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel, meaning there isn’t as much frivolity as if it’d been aired on the regular Hallmark channel. Oh, the first half is peppered with standard rom-com fluff, as Rachel and Jack squabble and keep each other at arm’s length, except – who we kiddin’? – all this time, they’re inexorably growing closer. But even the lighthearted stuff is handled well. The back half is when it unfolds a potent and moving drama. I’ve said this ad nauseam: More often than not, with these Hallmark vehicles, it’s the female lead who lands the meaty role. And while Natalie Knepp is just wonderful, it’s her male co-star, Michael Rady, who snags the powerhouse moments. Matching him in the category of Acting the Sh– out of a Role, Bonnie Bedelia tugs at your heart strings. She cuts a tragic, almost wizened figure. You sense that her character has gone thru stuff and come out the other side a better human. To me, she’s the star of the movie. A Joyous Christmas isn’t such a memorable movie title, but don’t let that fool ya. This is an instant classic with much to take from it. Oh, look, the local community center in trouble. The simple pleasure of competing in a candy cane relay race. Warmth from a sip during a hot cocoa contest. And I cannot say enough about the sensational song “Christmas Memories” that was performed with such deep emotion. And if that’s truly Michael Rady providing the tremendous vocals, well, damn. Also, somewhere along the way, Rachel reevaluates her me-first motivational message. So everyone wins.*********************************************************************************************ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMASChristmastime without a Lindy Booth Hallmark movie is like someone had stuffed coal in my stocking and then peed in it. So I was stoked about Rocky Mountain Christmas which not only had Lindy – one of my favorite redheads – in it but Kristoffer Polaha, as well. Polaha is such a relaxed dude.Maybe some plot spoilers.Lindy plays Sarah McKinney, a gifted interior designer. As chief designer for the entire chain of the Almaden Hotels, she’s snagged rave reviews, the latest being from style column of The New York Sentinel’s afternoon edition, that one waxing giddy about the window decorations of the Almaden Hotel.But yin and yang, right? To counter her professional success, there’s her recent breakup with celebrity tech titan Eric Gold. They’d been…