Merry Friendsmas – Movie Review

First Reaction – Merry Friendsmas has a great connection to what could have been and around in life.

Director: Stacie Davis Hamilton

Writer: Stacie Davis Hamilton (Screenplay)

Cast

• Brittany Abram
• Jashawna Bellamy
• Deon Campbell
• Estelle Hyman

Plot: Seven longtime friends reunite for their annual holiday retreat, where laughter, old memories, and heartfelt conversations help them reconnect, reflect, and rediscover the bonds that brought them together.

Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes 

There may be spoilers in the rest of the review

Story: Merry Friendsmas starts when the seven friends face struggles in their daily lives. They decide to put things aside for a reunion, giving them a chance to reconnect on old times.

However, the time together stirs up a mix of emotions which have affected their lives. The memories show what could have been, what they wanted and what they have. It shows the power of friendship can change lives forever.

Verdict on Merry Friendsmas

Recap

The movie follows a group of old high school friends who have reunited in their later years. They look back at their lives and remember memories who shaped them. However, the ups and downs they went through still haunt them. Can the time together rekindle their friendships for the rest of their lives.

Best Parts

The movie shines on having the reunions, which are easy to relate to, when we can look back at things from our youth. It has strong performances throughout. Where it gets the most in the bigger what ifs in life, these haunt a lot of people and this is seen clearly here.

Worst Parts

Some of the bigger moments feel more generic, we have seen a lot of them before and the lack of unique approach to former connections can hold things back.

Where to Watch

Vod (11/3/26)

Final Thoughts –Merry Friendsmas is an enjoyable reflection on life’s journey.

Movie-Themed Games That Deserve an Oscar

Hollywood and gaming go together pretty well. Take a famous film, throw in a few familiar characters and give people something to play, and you’re halfway there. Of course, some games do a much better job than others. The good ones capture what made the original film special, rather than just sticking its name on a box.

There are plenty to choose from, too. Slots, PC adventures and board games all have their own way of bringing the big screen to your living room.

Movie Slots Worth a Spin

Gladiator Jackpot

This slots game online takes its inspiration from Ridley Scott’s 2000 film. Playtech’s Gladiator Jackpot comes with five reels, three rows and 25 selectable paylines. And, if you hadn’t guessed, the bonus features are impressive. Furthermore, by collecting nine gold helmets during the bonus, players can then unlock the big attraction, which is the progressive jackpot.

King Kong

Like the big ape in Peter Jackson’s 2005 blockbuster, Playtech’s King Kong takes us from the jungle to the big city. There are two modes, Wild Jungle and Big City, each with its own features.

The Wizard of Oz: Ruby Slippers

Fancy following the Yellow Brick Road? Scientific Games brings the 1939 classic to the reels, complete with the famous Ruby Slippers as scatters to open the Emerald City Bonus, while wild reels and respins add to the action.

Ghostbusters

Who you gonna call? IGT, if you’re after a slot based on the 1984 comedy. The Stay Puft bonus brings free spins, along with stacked and locked wilds across 40 lines.

PC Games That Get It Right

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

This LucasArts adventure gives Indy a mystery to solve, with three different routes through the story. There’s plenty of puzzle-solving, exploration and classic Indiana Jones atmosphere. It shows that a film-inspired game doesn’t need constant explosions to keep you interested.

Alien: Isolation

If you prefer your gaming a little scarier, Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation is well worth a look. Hiding and staying alive matter more than shooting everything in sight because you’re stuck with a Xenomorph that learns from your actions. Not exactly a relaxing evening, then.

Spider-Man 2

Fancy swinging around New York? This game made web-slinging feel natural, giving players the chance to zip between buildings like the real deal. It’s one of those games where simply getting around the city is half the fun.

Board Games for Movie Nights

Expect dodgy deals and plenty of backstabbing in The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, which puts you in charge of a crime family battling rivals for control of New York.

Risk: Star Wars Edition swaps global conquest for a battle between the Rebels and the Empire, with three linked conflicts based on Return of the Jedi.

Finally, Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War brings Marvel’s superheroes together in a cooperative dice game, and you’ll need to work as a team to stop Thanos.

So, whether you fancy a slot, a creepy alien encounter or a bit of board-game treachery, there’s a movie-themed game to suit. No red carpet required.

Do Your Movie Preferences Influence the Games You Enjoy?

Ask someone what their favourite film says about them and they’ll usually have an answer ready. The quiet friend picks something slow and strange, the loud one picks a heist, and most people assume the same instincts carry over to whatever they play once the credits roll.

The research behind that theory is a lot messier, and the place it comes apart is the difference between the suspense a film builds and the wait a game makes you sit through.

Quiet Viewers, Loud Films

There is some evidence for the stereotype. A 2013 study by researchers in Madrid and Amsterdam matched personality scores to the film likes of more than 53,000 Facebook users. Higher extraversion went with drama, romance, comedy and action, and lower scores with animation, tragedy, neo-noir and science fiction.

The usual explanation goes back to Hans Eysenck, who argued in the 1960s that introverts run at a higher resting level of arousal and so look for less stimulation, not more. A 1980 study that tested the theory with caffeine and different times of day predicted that extraverts “should be stimulation seekers and introverts stimulation avoiders.” It has been tested for decades with mixed results, but it’s why people expect an introvert to want a quieter evening.

If those instincts carried over to games, suspense would be the easiest place to see it. Someone who loves a slow-burn thriller is happy to sit with an unanswered question for two hours, so you’d expect them to enjoy roulette too, a game that is mostly a wait for the ball to settle.

In roulette, you pick a number, a colour or a group of numbers before the wheel spins, and the bet pays if the ball stops on your pick. Whether at a physical table or in online casino roulette games, the dynamic is identical: once the wheel turns, player agency drops to zero. That leaves both the thriller fan and the player waiting passively for an outcome – yet the two experiences feel entirely different.

How a Thriller Holds You

Alfred Hitchcock explained it to François Truffaut with a bomb. Two people chat at a table and the bomb underneath goes off, which gives the audience “fifteen seconds of surprise.” Show the audience the bomb first, tell them it goes off at one o’clock, and the same dull conversation becomes “fifteen minutes of suspense.”

Some good thrillers do the opposite. Conclave, which we called “a riveting thriller that grabs our attention and never lets it go,” keeps its secrets as close as the cardinals do, and the pleasure is working them out alongside Ralph Fiennes. Black Bag does something similar with a dinner table full of spies.

The philosopher Noël Carroll argued that “suspense cannot be engendered simply by means of uncertainty.” You have to care about one outcome and fear it’s the less likely one. He also had an answer for why people who know exactly how Psycho ends still tense up in the motel office: it’s enough to imagine, for the length of the scene, that the outcome is open.

Waiting on a Wheel

A spin works without any of that. At a roulette table every player knows as much as everyone else, and the result isn’t arranged for effect. In Hitchcock’s terms it’s all surprise and no suspense, and it’s over in seconds. There is also the money. A film costs the price of the ticket however it ends. A bet can lose everything that’s riding on it, and roulette, like other casino games, is built to pay back less than it takes over time.

 

Taste Isn’t a Personality Test

The more careful studies make the personality-predicts-taste idea look shakier still. In 2011, Peter Rentfrow and colleagues asked more than 3,000 people to rate 108 entertainment genres and found five broad clusters of taste, which they labelled communal, aesthetic, dark and cerebral, plus a fifth built around action, adventure and suspense. In their online sample, personality helped predict four of them. The action-and-suspense cluster was the exception: once the researchers knew someone’s age, gender and education, adding personality told them very little more. The researchers were candid about another limit: “all the data analyzed were based on self-reports.”

Horror points to a different trait altogether. A study published in 1987, which surveyed people leaving a Halloween II screening, pointed to sensation seeking, youth and being male as the things that predicted enjoyment.

What You Pick on a Given Night

The theory that holds up best is also the least romantic. Dolf Zillmann’s mood management research suggests people choose entertainment to adjust how they feel at the time: something calming after a frantic day, something gripping when they’re bored. A 2003 paper testing the idea summed up its premise as “self-exposure to media fare is motivated by hedonic purposes,” which is a formal way of saying people pick what they think will make them feel better. The same person might want a slow mystery on Sunday and a co-op video game with friends on Friday. Even the same film lands differently watched alone on a laptop or in a packed cinema on opening night.

Best Movies About Wealthy Men and Romance

Cal Hockley orders dinner for Rose without asking what she wants. The moment takes seconds and settles the question of what her engagement is actually for. No line of dialogue in the film does it as fast.

Hollywood has been working that shorthand since the 1950s. Money arrives on screen before character does, the audience fills in the rest, and the plot is whatever gap opens between the two. The 1953 version of that gap and the 2025 version turn out to be recognizably the same gap.

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Three women rent a Manhattan apartment they cannot afford as a staging ground for meeting rich husbands. The plan is stated in the first reel and pursued without embarrassment, which is why the film never turns coy about it. Nobody pretends to be in love with anyone.

Fox spent $1.9 million and took roughly $8 million, and the picture was the studio’s second release in CinemaScope. The widescreen format was meant to sell spectacle, and it gets used here on apartments and clothes. The ending undercuts the premise, since Schatze marries a man she believes has nothing.

Sabrina (1954)

Billy Wilder’s version puts the chauffeur’s daughter between two brothers, one a playboy and one who runs the family company and has never taken a day off. The film costs Linus his detachment rather than costing Sabrina her principles. That was an unusual direction for 1954.

The budget was about $2.2 million against roughly $4 million in domestic rentals. Wilder keeps the Larrabee wealth mostly off screen and in dialogue, so the money works as a condition of the story and never becomes a set. That restraint is why the film still plays, and it is the opposite of what the genre would do 40 years later. Casting Humphrey Bogart as the older brother helps, since Bogart at 54 brings no romantic ease to the part and has to earn the ending by changing.

Pretty Woman (1990)

Made for $14 million and returning $463.4 million worldwide, this is the commercial peak of the form. Garry Marshall shot a version of a much darker script, and the sanding down is visible in places, particularly in how little the film wants to sit with what Vivian does for a living.

The shopping sequence is the part people remember, and it is also the part that did the most damage. The film taught a generation to find a rich guy by standing in the right doorway. It never tests the method, and nothing outside the film supports it. Edward’s money buys access to rooms and not the scene on the fire escape, which the script makes him climb.

Indecent Proposal (1993)

Indecent Proposal took $266.6 million worldwide and finished as the sixth highest-grossing release of its year, which surprised people who had read the reviews. Adrian Lyne builds the whole picture on a single offer made in a Las Vegas hotel, and then spends two hours on the aftermath instead of the offer.

The film is better than its reputation on one specific point. It understands that the damage arrives after the night. Both people now know the number, and neither can stop knowing it. Everything that follows is two characters trying to unlearn a fact.

Titanic (1997)

$2.26 billion worldwide, and the wealthy man is the antagonist. James Cameron uses Cal as a structural device, giving Rose something concrete to escape so the ship has something to mean. Strip out the engagement and half the story stops working.

What Cameron gets right is the texture of that world. The dinner table and the deference of the staff are both shown as constraints on Rose, and the film is careful to make the first-class rooms feel smaller than the third-class ones. It went on to take 11 Academy Awards, tying the record set by Ben-Hur.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation opened to $51.1 million and hit $100 million in the U.S. on its way to $353.6 million worldwide. That is a considerable result for a literary adaptation with an unhappy ending.

Critics split on the maximalism, and the objection missed something. Gatsby’s parties are supposed to be exhausting and slightly wrong, because every one of them is aimed at a single house across the water. Luhrmann’s excess is the point being made, and the film is at its best when Daisy finally arrives and the parties stop mattering to anyone on screen.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Warner Bros. spent $30 million and took $239 million worldwide, and the film won the weekend box office on debut with $26.5 million across three days. It was the strongest opening for a studio romantic comedy in three years.

The wealth here belongs to a family rather than a man, which changes the problem. Nick comes with a set of obligations attached to a person, and the film’s real conflict is between Rachel and a mother who has already calculated the cost of the match. The mahjong scene does more with money than the entire wedding sequence. By the end of its run it was the most successful studio romantic comedy in North America in nearly a decade, past the $110.2 million that Trainwreck had taken in 2015.

Materialists (2025)

Celine Song’s film put a New York matchmaker between a wealthy suitor and a broke ex, and it became the first independent release of 2025 to cross $100 million at the global box office. A24 made it for $20 million, and it became only the third film the studio has taken past $100 million, after Everything Everywhere All at Once and Civil War.

Song’s contribution is treating the arithmetic as visible and boring. Her characters discuss height, income and age brackets in the flat tone of people reading a spreadsheet, and the discomfort comes from recognizing the vocabulary. The film has been argued about since release, mostly by people describing the ending as a cop-out and missing that the ending is the argument.

The Renunciation Ending

Almost every film here ends with the wealth handed back, spent down or refused. The yacht goes in the trailer and the renunciation goes in the third act, and the second one is what audiences have been buying tickets for across 70 years.

The entry nobody has made is the one where the rich man stays rich, keeps the girl and pays nothing for either. Its absence is the most telling fact in the category, because it implies the money functioned as the obstacle all along, and the pleasure was in watching it come down.