Christmas Movie Review: Timepiece (1996)

 This is a made for TV movie based on the novel of Richard L. Evans.  David Parkin (Kevin Kilner) falls for his secretary, Mary Chandler (Naomi Watts).   Problem is she is pregnant by a soldier who was killed.  Parkin proposes marriage anyway and he shortly becomes a father.  Lawrence (James Earl Jones) is a friend of the family.  Lawrence works with clocks, and Parkin collects.  He gets a special clock for his bride.  A few years later when the baby girl develops meningitis, Lawrence insists on coming over to keep her company.  He seems to lift her spirits.  The fever finally breaks and she survives.

There are some rough people in town.  One is the son of a customer of Lawrence.  He has alcohol addiction and is always seeking money.  The customer leaves a nice clock to Lawrence when she dies, rather than her son.  She lives her estate and money to the church.  The son confronts Lawrence with a gun in his store.  There is a struggle, the gun goes off and the son is killed.  Parkin comes on them a moment later.  He takes responsibility saying the struggle was with him and the son died in self defense.  He does this because he does not think Lawrence will get a fair trial as he is African American and there is a rascist tone in town.  Lawrence hesitates, but then goes along with it.

Court finds Parkin not guilty for self defense.  However friends of the son do not buy it.  They go to Lawrence's store and beagt him up, and then throw a molotov cocktail in the upper window of the Parkin home.  The daughter who survived meningitis succombs to smoke inhalation as the gas bomb lands in her room.  The family struggles, and as a coule they become more distant.  Father leads them to a family in need.  Turns out it is the wife and children of the man who killed their daughter.  That man is in prison.  Parkin and his wife are able to take them Christmas and forgive in their heart.  In the meantime Lawrence, who was given an angel for an unpaid debt, takes the angel and places it as a memorial to the little girl who died.

This is like a Hallmark movie with lots of trouble and pain and then feeling better at the end.  

Movie Review: ****The Impossible (2012)

This movie shows a young family with parents (Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor) and three boys, as they are swept from their pool where they are vacationing in Thailand, by the tsunami of 2004.  Talk about your crazy scenes.  They follow the mother as she is swept away, and under the water, and poked with a branch in her chest, and her leg is also wounded.  She is being swept away with one of her sons as they try to keep close to each other, and they eventually come to a halt.  Her oldest son, Lucas (Tom Holland) does manage to stay with her.
The movie also shows the struggle of her husband, trying to locate her.  Somehow the two younger boys have survived and are with him.  However he puts them on a rescue truck as he is intent on continuing to search for his wife.  Consequently they are separated.  Mother and oldest son, in their wanderings, rescue a small boy, who eventually is found by his family.  However mother and son become separated in the hospital, as son is helping others, and mother taken to surgery without his knowing where she has gone. 
Just as you are about ready to give up on this family ever getting back together, the impossible happens.  The reunion of the three boys with their father is very dramatic, and then with mother who is in hospital with her wounds.
This is one crazy story based on actual events.  One can only imagine the devestation as a result of this natural disaster.