Chabert Watch! Fatwa (2006)

love the US flag pine tree deodorizer.  Feels very 00's

Watched:  04/23/2025

Format:  Midnight Pulp

Viewing:  First

Director:  John R. Carter

An absolutely bizarre movie that sees the intersection of 

• the 1990's and 00's-era post Pulp Fiction crime flicks
• the success of shows like 24
• the belief that shooting on consumer video will lend an immediacy to the film (this is not correct)
• a first time director
• established actors
• unyielding pretentiousness

all in one neat package that winds up as one of those 90 minute movies that seems like it's been at least two hours, and so you check, and it's got another 30 minutes to go...  It's also one of those movies where everything seems very disconnected and then wants to make everything tie together in the last 20 minutes or so, but when put together, just starts stretching credulity way past the breaking point.

Fatwa (2006) is a post 9/11,  post fall of Iraq indie thriller// political commentary.  It follows a desperate would-be terrorist in DC who is planning *something* - it's hinted at early on he's going to make a nuclear device using household objects.  He's specifically targeting a US Senator played by Lauren Holly.  (Holly is also an Executive Producer, but I assume that was her negotiating and more of a ceremonial role.)

Chabert Watch! Christian Mingle The Movie (2014)

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First (and Last)

Director:  Corbin Bernsen

Job:  Ad company exec

new skill:  being brainwashed

Man: Jonathan Patrick Moore

Job of Man:  I don't know if I ever figured that out

Goes to/ Returns to:  Eventually goes to the Yucatan

Event:  several

Food:  Sushi

This is a movie about a mentally ill person who falls prey to a cult through a recruitment scheme posing as a dating site for Christians.  

Designed to be mistaken for a Hallmark movie, this infomercial for ChristianMingle.com (a very real dating site), our film - Christian Mingle The Movie (2014) - follows Lacey Chabert as a VP of Brand Management for a small advertising company.  She's unlucky in love, and is absolutely freaking out that, at age 30, she's still unmarried.  

The movie is written and directed by Corbin Bernsen, and so I have to lay a lot of blame at his feet, but also know he was having to make a movie for people who are maybe not really aware of how some of the things they wanted in their movie would play.  The film does have appearances by the eternally lovely Morgan Fairchild, Brian Keith, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bernsen, John O'Hurley and one actress I remember who was really pushed on us in sitcoms like 15 years ago.

On the surface level, it's a romantic comedy/ drama about a woman finding God while also finding a Good Man.  

On a meta level, this movie is essentially a warning shot to accomplished women who are being told they're a failure without a man.  Beware: you will have your entire life destroyed by people pretending good will but who will throw you away without batting an eye.

Chabert Horror Watch! Scarecrow (2013)

Chabert completes negotiations for her Hallmark contract

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sheldon Wilson

A movie with a pretty good idea behind it, this movie has an okay first half hour or so and then throws away all of that goodwill in the bin by becoming a movie where things keep happening, but nothing really resolves itself.  And I can't tell if that's intentional - like a joke on the part of the writers - or laziness or sheer incompetence.

It's not even clear, based on what we saw before, that ten seconds after the credits role, that our Final Girl isn't going to get killed.

What's most weird is that the description of the film on IMDB - from the producers, I'd guess - is not what actually happens in the movie.  There's elements of that, but that's not really what happens.  I almost feel like this was a description of the script at some point but then they made a different movie through rewrites.  

A group of high schoolers is going to spend their day of Saturday Detention (ala The Breakfast Club) on a farm "disassembling" the famed scarecrow from the old Miller farm that's part of the town's annual Scarecrow Festival.  But the movie opens on two horny teens sneaking onto the farm first, planning to spook their pals when they arrive, and getting killed by our monster.  

The town has an annual Scarecrow Festival during which they have some game where they ritualistically "bury" the Scarecrow.  But it's essentially a small-town fall fest, I guess.  We never see it.

Chabert 90's Watch! Lost in Space (1998)

Watched:  04/16/2025
Format:  Prime

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Stephen Hopkins

As Lost In Space (1998) concludes and 1990's-style "electronica" kicks in, complete with dialog samples from the film, you can find yourself missing your glow sticks and rave-ready mini-back-pack.  And you will also hear Lacey Chabert declare "this mission sucks".  

It does, Lacey.  It really, really does. 

It's maybe not a great sign for a movie that when the heroes are all killed in a fiery explosion in what becomes a divergent timeline, we cheered.

Back in March of 1998, I was at FAO Schwarz in Manhattan, and there was a huge, pre-release push for Lost in Space (1998) which was coming in just two or three weeks.   They had a life-size robot and toys with the display type I thought Star Wars would get (I underestimated).  I found this guy's web-page about the 1998 display that he wrote in 2006.  That robot kinda convinced me:  this movie will rule!

Anyway, the trailers were fine.  And after seeing the toys and the robot, I bought into the look, the chance to refresh an older property - that I had never actually seen.  The casting, which included William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers, and Heather Graham, was insane. Matt LeBlanc of Friends fame also starred, and that was fine.  The movie also, of course, starred a teenage Lacey Chabert, which hit me in no particular way in '98 as I'd never seen Party of Five.   

It's been 27 years since I've seen the 1998 movie of Lost In Space - which I last saw on April 11th, 1998*.  But I have now completed the trilogy of Chabert vehicles that had the word "Lost" in the title (see also The Lost and The Lost Tree).  And, curiously, each film represents a different sort of bad.  A Lower-budget, silly and derivative studio pic with The Lost, a microbudget flick trying and failing to do supernatural thrills with with The Lost Tree, and - as Stuart put it - bloated 1990's studio excess, with Lost in Space.  

Chabert Watch! The Lost Tree (2016)

Watched:  04/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Brian A. Metcalf

Woof.

The Lost Tree (2016)?  More like "lost me 30 seconds in".  Amirite?  Where are my Lost Tree bros?

To me, the thing that is most interesting about this very not-good movie is less the movie than digging in a bit to how Hollywood works/ worked.  It's famously a town of hustlers, and for a brief while in the late 90's and through the 00's, thanks to the power of indie film, some of that got celebrated as we had breakout films like Swingers.  But since Ed Wood got his hands on a fog machine, genre has also been a part of indie film made for no money, but hoping an idea and a performance will carry the day.

That does not happen here.

This movie is a mess from the start.  The camera-work is maybe not the best, and shot on consumer video as near as I can tell.  The audio in mostly fine, I guess, but the soundtrack/ score is doing some Olympic-class lifting, desperately trying to convince the viewer something is happening, and we're not just watching a dude wander around by himself in an empty cabin or an open field for insanely long stretches.

I will be honest and say:  I watched this movie and I can describe what happens in it, but if there's a story here with a point or an ironic twist, I am at a loss.  

Chabert Watch! The Lost (2009)

Watched:  04/11/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bryan Goeres

Here's my theory:  the writers came up with the ending for The Lost (2009), and then had to work backward from there.  Desperate to keep anyone from guessing the ending, they kinda screwed up what you need to do with a mystery, which is leave clues that make you realize "oh, yeah, it was kinda there all along!"  But, nope.  They hid it so well, and the twist is so out of left field, you're just sort of left shrugging.

Not that anyone was invested in the prior 85 or so minutes of the movie before the twist ending.  

This is an oddly misogynistic supernatural thriller/ psychological mystery wherein Lacey Chabert plays a young woman in a Spanish insane asylum.  Three years prior, she seems to have set a mansion on fire as well as someone inside.  As a student, she was living in the guest house.  She looks pale and spooky as she watches it all burn, and maybe has psychic powers.

The movie is kind of badly shot.  The audio is poorly mixed, and not helped by Assante mumbling his way through the dialog so badly we turned on subtitles.  Also, a good portion of the cast is Spanish and not hitting every line in a way you can hear.  So when Dina Meyer shows up enunciating, it's a trip.  

Armand Assante, who I've only ever seen in Judge Dredd, plays a psychiatrist who examined Chabert briefly 3 years ago before saying "she's nuts" and leaving her in the Spanish psych ward.  Why she did not come back stateside, I am unsure.  Chabert's sister is Dina Meyer, who basically blackmails Assante into going to take a look at Chabert again.

Chabert Watch! The Color of Rain (2014)

Watched:  04/05/2025

Viewing:  First

Format:  Hallmark

Director:  Anne Wheeler

Job:  Church school admin

new skill:  widow

Man: Warren Christie

Job of Man:  I don't know if I ever figured that out

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in place

Event:  Christmas pageant

Food:  Italian, also, what other people bring by

So, I'm rapidly running out of Chabert Hallmark movies that are not holiday-themed, and I'm not sure I'll be diving into Christmas movies any time soon.

I don't know what was going on at Hallmark in 2014, or if this was a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie or what.  The Hall of Fame movies tend to be a little closer to regular-ol-movies as they originally aired on network TV, often on Sundays, but this was likely always on the cable channel.  The Color of Rain (2014) is based on the real life of two families who each was dealt a blow by cancer, each side losing a spouse, and then the two remaining spouses meeting and falling for each other.  And the resulting side-eye they get from their support structures.

I guess I'm basically shocked that this movie made its way to Hallmark, because it's sort of the opposite of the usually marshmallow fluff comfort treat that the network is known for.  Instead, it strives to show how people going through a spousal death and in the throes of grieving really are feeling and dealing with day-to-day life - and it's not a rose-colored version.  As both families have kids, they require daily care as well as the emotional support needed when you lose a parent - and that can include the kids just flipping out.  Man in this movie is angry with God, and this is a movie about good, church-going folks with the pastor as a supporting character and the center of their lives seemingly the church and its attached school.

Chabert's character had three years of knowing her husband was sick and had already taken on everything, but Man's character loses his wife abruptly to cancer, and is utterly unprepared.  The connection comes as Chabert is kind of the only one making sense to him in the wake of his wife's passing.

Chabert Watch! Non-Stop (2013)

Watched:  04/03/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Richard Gabai

Is this movie an absurdist comedy?  Or a straight-up Lifetime thriller that had two drafts written and then they shot it?  I honestly, earnestly do not know.

Non-Stop (2013) is a 90 minute movie that starts getting to the action in minute 41 or so, dragging out a both boring and overly elaborate set-up that includes exposition dropped during the credits - because no one thought to include this information in the rest of the film.  This is Lacey Chabert doing her absolute best against a movie that makes no sense and every actor seems to think they're in a different movie.  Meanwhile, Chabert is trying to convey something that the writing doesn't help her with at all.

I am not averse to the locked-room-mystery-aboard-transportation.  Give me a murder on a boat, a lady vanishing from a train, snakes on a plane.  But this is not a murder mystery for Lacey to sleuth out.  This is a movie that doesn't understand how these movies work, provides far too few potential suspects and a single motivation, and muffs the ending.  It realizes it has plot holes at the 2/3rds point and goes back and tries to paper them over with gigantic neon signs along the way, so you know what's up every time a plot point is introduced and where we're headed.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Journey (2023)

the sixth of six of these.  I deserve a cookie for finishing.

Watched:  03/18/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ron Oliver

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  empathy for other humans

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Greece

Event:  None, really

Food:  Greek cuisine

First, I finally figured out where I knew Alison Sweeney from - she was on Days of Our Lives when that was the go-to soap opera to watch in the 1990's thanks to Sweeney's character, Sami (who was batshit) and Deidre Hall's Marlena was possessed by a demon.  Weird, wild stuff.

On to the show:

With our couple established in the third Wedding Veil installment, we get the direct sequel here in the 6th and (mercifully) final installment, entitled The Wedding Veil Journey (2023).  

In this movie Alison Sweeney and Man are realizing their schedules as an art auctioneer and restaurateur are incompatible, and they never see each other.  In fact, they never managed a honeymoon in what we're told is three years later, meaning the movies are actually supposed to span something like 6+ years.  

Sweeney and Man head off for Greece, but their plan is bad.  They will stay only one night in a hotel and then wing it from there.  Because of flight delays, they wind up arriving late, have nowhere to stay, and wind up in a struggling but lovely resort that seems honestly super nice.  And clearly the production had the run of the place, likely due to COVID.

Chabert Watch: The Wedding Veil Inspiration (2023)

okay, I guess the hat is fine.

Watched:  03/14/2025

Format:  Hallmark 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art professor

new skill:  Social media phenom

Man: Paolo Bernardini

Job of Man: Lace mogul

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Chicago

Event:  Lace store opening

Food:  we're back on Mac n' Cheese

The Wedding Veil Inspiration (2023) is part 5 (of 6) of The Wedding Veil series, and direct sequel to The Wedding Veil Unveiled.  The longer this veil nonsense goes on, the more they've piled in continuity, but like the driest of fan-fiction, it's all just rehashing the original concept while shoving our leads through some standard life-experience.  And, of course, now suggesting that the veil is not just for romance but ensuring its victims procreate.  

It *does* have a pretty good bit of insight at the end that just about had me flabbergasted for a Hallmark movie.  But it also brings in Man #2 and Not-Sarah Sherman as secondary romance victims of the veil, suggesting that its not just women who will be forced into romance by possessing the veil.

Italian Handsome Man Paolo is opening his lace store in Chicago (I think the suggestion is its on the Magnificent Mile) and Autumn Reeser is teaching Art History for Non-Art Majors.  She's also in line to become Department Chair of the Art History Department.  Like all movies, no one involved has bothered to speak to anyone in Academia to ask "hey, how does one become Department Chair?", which is something one could find out.  And if the usual processes are in place here, it is not at all obvious as Reeser is being mentored by a faculty near retirement age.  I won't keep complaining that's not how this works, because sometimes it is.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Expectations (2023)

Watched:  03/13/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:   First

Director:  Peter Benson

Job:  Curator at an Art Museum

new skill:  interior decorating

Man: Kevin McGarry

Job of Man: art teacher

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Boston

Event:  Museum gala

Food:  Pineapple pizza (her pregnancy craving)

If one concept needed absolutely no sequels, it was The Wedding Veil, but here we are.  

Because we're doing all of this for science, I looked up the book that these movies are all supposedly based on, and it has nothing to do with anything in the movie.  I have no idea why they keep crediting the author.  The only thing the movies have in common with the book is that there's a wedding veil.  The plot and characters seem totally different.

The author is a Texas romance writer, and seems to pen hot and heavy romances about cowboys that take place here in the Lone Star State.  At some point, she renamed the book to make it more Texas themed.  Anyway, the series is well reviewed by romance fans, so get on that, if that's your jam. 

Back to our film!  

It's an indeterminate amount of time since we last checked in with Chabert and Man.  And as we have already been told in the first installment, and mentioned in two other films - they're happily -ever-aftering.   So, as we enter this film, we must put together a movie that both has some sort of conflict and doesn't disrupt the Hallmark promise of life being great after marriage.  Thus, we have a film with multiple plot threads and issues that rise up, and then fizzle away like water on a hot plate.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022)

Reeser really went all-in on the hat

Watched:  03/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing;  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  cooking Italian food

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in NYC

Event:  Auction House gala

Food:  a bunch of Italian food, esp. cannoli, and sloppy joes?

I don't think I understood The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022).  I mean, I got what happened in it, but I didn't get it.  But I do hope these movies are increasingly titled like Jason Bourne movies.

Our skeptic (Alison Sweeney) of the veil's awesome powers goes through a long-projected, but fairly painless breakup with her boyfriend of a few years.  He's a classical trumpet player and has a chance to play for the LA Symphony, so with him leaving NYC, they hang it up.

In the two prior movies, we got the foreshadowing that maybe this was a relationship of convenience, and, indeed, it seems that way as the two don't even try to do long-distance and see if they'll miss each other - they just break up when he takes the job.  She is a native New Yorker, and can't imagine living elsewhere (fair) and is also working her dream job at an art auction house (also, you go girl.  Live your auction life).  So, yeah, she's kinda set.  Sweeney sheds no tears, just settles into a malaise.

Of course, Sweeney is now in possession of the reality-bending wedding veil which insists that people hook-up, and no sooner has she taken it to the tailor to get a snag fixed than she meets Man, who is there getting fitted for a tux.  

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil - Unveiled (2022)

Watched:  03/03/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art Prof

new skill:  I'd say researching art, but that is literally her job.  So, I guess, making lace?

Man: Paolo Bernardini

Job of Man:  Sales and Marketing for a lace company?

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Venice

Event:  None?

Food:  I am sure they ate Italian food and talked about it

Budgets on Hallmark films make no sense to me.  

We're making our way through the Wedding Veil series, I guess.  It's a five movie (to date) series about a magical wedding veil that forces people to fall in love.  Frankly - its power is terrifying.  

Three Hallmark stars (Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Allison Sweeney) buy the veil together, as their "something borrowed" item they'll all wear.  And the first movie sees Lacey Chabert fall in love with a terrible, terrible human who looks like a Bad Boy version of Mikey Day.  

This is the best the veil can do?

Regarding budgets - the first movie ostensibly took place in San Francisco and Boston, but that was clearly Canada.  Nice locales, but nothing you don't see in many-a-mid-budget Hallmark flick.  

But the sequel, The Wedding Veil Unveiled (2022) - starring Autumn Reeser - takes place all over Venice, Italy.  They left the continent and went somewhere awesome.  You even see the library from Last Crusade.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil (2022)

Watched:  03/01/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:   First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job:  Assistant Curator at an Art Museum

new skill:  walking in 6" heels on grass

Man: Kevin McGarry

Job of Man: philanthropist

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Boston

Event:  Museum Gala

Food:  mac n' cheese

So...   apparently - despite starting as recently as 2022 with this movie, The Wedding Veil, there are already 5 movies in the Wedding Veil series, and likely more on the way.  I kind of knew this series existed, and was avoiding starting the series so we didn't need to sprint through five movies on the same topic.  But we're running out of other Chabert options here on Hallmark as we speedrace our way through her non-Christmas filmography in a way I did not anticipate when I was like "you know what would entertain Randy...".  But 2025 has been 2025, so here we are.

Basically, the idea of The Wedding Veil series is something like The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (which I've never seen).  It's about how possession of this 19th century wedding veil will lead to true love.  Three friends, who just happen to be played by Lacey Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Alison Sweeney - three of the top Hallmark stars - find and purchase a wedding veil together, all agreeing to share the veil when they find it in an antiques shop in San Francisco.

I call shenanigans that three people would agree to look the same at their weddings in a spur-of-the-moment decision, but here we are.  And we *will* get three movies of our heroes getting married, I guess.

This movie has to do the heavy lifting for the series as it has to establish (a) the magical power of the veil, (b) who each of the three leads in the series are, and (c) what their particular deal is with romance.  Fortunately, we all know Chabert is up to this task.

Chabert Watch! The Dancing Detective - a Deadly Tango (2023)

Watched:  02/20/2025

Format:  Hallmark/ Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stefan Scaini

Job:  Police detective

new skill:  ballroom dancing

Man: Will Kemp

Job of Man: dance instructor

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Malta

Event:  Dance competition

Food:  cocktails

This movie is bonkers.  

You will never follow the premise, because it is baffling and exists to making the central conceit of the title happen - that a detective will dance!

For reasons, The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango (2023) is shot in Malta, a place of which I am mostly uninformed, but makes Malta seem lovely, and I'd love to see it.  It's modern, but retained its architecture, features old-world streets and buildings, and many pleasantly snoozing cats. But also because it's Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean, the sun is brutal and I pity the DP.

As a Maltese-shot film, a lot of the talent in the movie is local.  All the characters sport very Anglo-sounding names while the actors mostly wrestle down a range of accents from Maltese, to multi-lingual-kinda-Spanish to Slovenian.  

The film basically exists to exploit the fact that Will Kemp, one of the Hallmark A-Listers, has a background in dance.  Lacey Chabert, who is the co-star, does not.  Chabert and Kemp are both Executive Producers on this movie, and I cannot imagine what the business dealings at Hallmark are actually like, as this is also a Bristow produced movie, like the Safari movie we caught the other day.  Globetrotters, these Bristows.

The set-up:  a suave CEO dies suddenly - and while no one else sees it but us, the audience, we know he was poisoned by someone dressed as a ninja.  It turns out he's the CEO of a company like the Arthur Murray Dance Company, which is actually global (I didn't realize Arthur Murray still existed until last year when I noticed a studio next to a restaurant where I sometimes meet my folks).  So, this is high stakes!  Someone is bumping off CEOs!  Of dance!

Chabert Watch! Love on Safari (2018)

Watched:  02/18/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leif Bristow

Job: Web designer for corporations

new skill:  looking at giraffes, deus ex machina identification

Man: Jon Cor

Job of Man: Safari ranger

Goes to/ Returns to:  goes to South Africa

Event:  Birthday for Lacey

Food:  Cookies

First of all, Brad sucks.  

Brad is Chabert's City Man, and he prides himself on loving spreadsheets.  That's fine.  I love to spend time in Google Sheets, too.  But that and misogyny are his whole personality.  He's a gigantic tool, and we're supposed to dislike him, and, hey... mission accomplished.

Chabert plays a web developer from Chicago.  In the way that only seems to happen in movies, when a great-uncle she hasn't seen in 20 years dies, Chabert inherits a whole frikkin' animal reserve and lodge in South Africa and is now responsible for miles of bushland, the animals upon it, and the people employed by the reserve.  All without a letter or phone call from the uncle forewarning her of his plans.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent/ Riddle Me Dead (2021)

Watched:  02/14/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Peter Benson/ David Winning

Job: Puzzle Maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  complete knowledge of plant scientific names/ riddle show participant

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  canceled puzzle contest w/ a computer, taping of a game show

Food:  Italian cooking made by supporting characters/ some diner food

I guess I should mention, Jamie was digging these movies a bit.  Her reason, and I agree, is that they're not structured like a Christmas film or romcom, and the two leads bounce off each other very well.  It's a refreshing change.

Anyway - we went ahead and knocked these two out.  You're welcome.  

I will note - the audio was pretty bad in these two movies.  I can't say what happened, but there were garbled lines, the echo of shooting on location mixed with ADR. Wind.  It was all over the place.  

With two years since our last movies, we have some new supporting cast, and we're given some lines about what happened to the former colleagues.  

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver (2019)

you'd think the prop would indicate this movie is more fun than it is

Watched 02/10/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  close-up magic

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  Birthday at Magic Manor

Food:  I don't think there was any food

In a move that makes total sense from a cost-savings perspective, Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliot (as Detective Man) return for a third installment in the Crossword Mysteries series - a series which was clearly shot all in one big sprint for these three installments.  Chabert has the same hair, and, occasionally, the same jacket.  The sets for the police office and the newspaper are the same, and the cast remains intact-ish.  

This time, the only tie to a crossword puzzle is that - in order to create a single day's crossword puzzle, Chabert has enrolled in weeks of magic classes at an approximation of LA's Magic Castle.  I do not know if New York has one of these.*  

It is a crazy reason for Chabert to be on site, but I guess it's weird Jessica Fletcher was always floating around when someone dropped dead 23x a year.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Proposing Murder (2019)

Watched 02/08/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McCutcheon

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  Escaping from enclosed spaces

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  None, really

Food: you know, I don't think they stop to eat in this movie

If I was concerned this was going to be a series of movies about crimes being hidden in crossword puzzles, I needn't have worried.  Instead, the crossword tie-in here is that the victim is a friend of Chabert who (prior to checking out involuntarily) asks Lacey to hide his marriage proposal in the Sunday puzzle.  A few days later (that very Sunday!), he manages to gets murdered.  

Rather than a crossword housing the mystery, there's a whole thing about cryptography, WWII codes and a hidden treasure.  It's not bad.  The idea here is that Chabert's character is naturally adept at solving puzzles and codes, as well as driven to do so, exploiting her interns along the way - in pursuit of justice!

Detective Man is assigned to the case, and immediately he and Chabert cross paths.  Flirty paths, with meaningful glances.

Our victim, Chabert's platonic college pal, had just received tenure at College University, and was getting engaged to a woman he met a year ago.  She's a chef with access to pointy knives.  In addition to the fiancé, other possible suspects pop up, like a librarian, a faculty member, an antiquarian and an ex who is a surgeon.

Chabert Watch/ Forgot to Mention It Watch: Moonlight in Vermont (2017)

Watched: 01/15/2025 

Format: Hallmark 

Viewing: First 

Director: Mel Damski

Job: Manhattan-based Realtor

new skill: talking to peasants

Man: Carlo Marks

Job of Man: Chef at B'n'B

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Vermont

Event: MapleFest/ MapleFest ball or some nonsense

Food: Maple syrup

I watched this in January, before I committed to the Chabert-a-thon, and forgot about it immediately after watching it, but saw it pass by on Hallmark and was like "oh, right.  That one."

This movie was bad and I didn't like it.  There are two male leads, and both characters are terrible humans who suck.  The jury is out on what kind of human Chabert's character is, but she's dressed very smartly.

Chabert plays a born-and-raised Manhattanite who is dating a Manhattan guy who sucks.  They break up because she works too much/ is completely inconsiderate of her boyfriend over and over, apparently.

Mad that she's been dumped, she joins with best-pal Fiona Vroom, and they go to her father's BnB in Vermont at the height of MapleFest.  AND WHO AMONG US HASN'T FOUND LOVE AT MAPLEFEST?

Her father had been a big-deal real estate guy in NYC, but after Chabert's mother passed has slowed down and re-married to Rebecca Staab (who this viewer knows from her role as a seductress of older, but viable gents on Superman and Lois).  It turns out Chabert and her father have some tension about him selling the family apartment after her mother's passing, and leaving town to live in Vermont.  She's kind of mean about it to him, but they've saved any discussion of this gigantic topic for the movie instead of when it happened.