Co-hosts disagree on THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, a new film about the title character (played by Amanda Seyfried) who founded the Shaker religion. Eileen liked it because she has a morbid religious streak that makes her obsessively interested in movies about old-time people who see visions and start mad spiritual communities. Dolores, on the other hand, hates movies set in the 18th century “when everything was so ILL” and found THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE a dull empty frustrating would-be-hipster work that makes the artfully simple utilitarian structures of Shaker architecture look like Restoration Hardware stores. A lively debate ensues!

Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores found Jim Jarmusch’s new indie film Father Mother Sister Brother a sleep-inducing slog. It’s a comedy-drama anthology film in three chapters about difficult family relationships that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. Jarmusch calls it an “anti-action film” that avoids commercial expectations of such typically hard-hitting effects as “drama, violence, revenge, sex” in order to create a film that’s minimalist, focused, delicate, and deliberately simple, like “three flower arrangements.” So consider yourself warned!

In honor of the season, co-hosts Eileen and Dolores take on the made-for-TV holiday movie, focusing especially on the perennial Hallmark Channel favorite, A SHOE ADDICT’S CHRISTMAS (2018). It’s about a thirtysomething department store employee and shoe-lover named Noelle (Candace Cameron Bure) who’s lost both her creative and romantic mojo, which leads her guardian angel Charlie (Jean Smart) to use her Ghost of Christmas Past and Future powers in showing Noelle how to find a man and a plan. Naturally several Christmas miracles ensue. Eileen, a Hallmark Channel newbie, is appalled by these eye-hurting spectacles while Dolores points out how to read against the grain and discover the socially critical women-centered melodramas that survive in surreal forms in these ultra-popular movies.