Midnight Clear

Stephen Baldwin youngest of the acting Baldwin clan stars in this Christian based film about several people who are not having it real good on Christmas Eve. Baldwin named Lefty since childhood not because he's left handed, but because his family was so poor he played with his brother's old left handed baseball glove and was truly bad with it.

K Callan is a lonely old woman at Christmas time her kids gone off and left her and she's just alone with memories. Not even a cat for companionship and they are great companions. Mary Thornton is a mother with young Dominic Scott Key who just visited her brain damaged husband in the hospital and has to get to her family for Christmas a bit of a drive away. There's also Kirk Woller who is stuck at his gas station/ convenience store for Christmas Eve which doesn't make that much money in normal hours. There's also Mitchell Jarvis youth pastor of a church whose youth group ain't that crazy about doing Christmas carol singing on Christmas Eve. After all it's hardly a hip modern tradition so the kids feel.

All of them interconnect with the others at some point and have an up close and personal experience with the Christmas spirit. Baldwin is the most desperate of all. A degenerate alcohol abuser, has lost his wife and kids and job and he's got himself a gun. He will do harm to someone or to himself at some point it looks like.

This is a nice no frills type Christmas story and is definitely good for more than church audiences.

Midnight Clear is a movie about hope from the depths of despair. The holidays are often a time where people are more depressed than any other, yet should be a time for celebration. This movie deals with five people in a world of hurt, who find themselves connecting with each other - and 'saving' each other (figuratively and literally) on the night before Christmas. Believably done, simply executed and well acted, this film is sure to tug your heartstrings.

Nice performances by Stephen Baldwin and K Callen, the movie feels very minimalistic, but it helps to keep the focus on each of the five main characters. It's not a warm and fuzzy movie, but life often dances around the cold and messy, and this deals honestly within that realm.

Review Date 3/9/2018

PLEASE BEWARE OF SOME REVIEWERS THAT ONLY HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. I AVE OVER 400 REVIEWS OF "CHRISTMAS RELATED FILMS & SPECIALS" WHEN ITS A POSITIVE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION. NOW I HAVE NO AGENDA! I REVIEW MOVIES & SPECIALS AS A WAY TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN! I HAVE DISCOVERED MANY GEMS IN MY QUEST TO SEE AS MANY " C H R I S T M A S " MOVIES AS I CAN.

The lives of an unemployed divorcee (Stephen Baldwin), his suicidal mother (K Callan) and a couple intersect during Christmastime. This is almost a nonlinear movie and the filmmakers takes some bold steps at the ending by letting the viewer draw their own conclusions.

This is not a film the entire will love. Short attention span people will be bored. Stephen Baldwin however one dimensional performance almost kills the movie!

I saw this at the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan.

This was an okay film, but I felt with a better script it could have been a lot more engaging. It takes place on Christmas Eve in a small town in Arizona. Following a lonely old woman, a jobless man, a gas station worker, a grieving mother, and a young depressed youth pastor, the film shows them crossing paths and experience the holiday evening in different ways.

The problem with the film is that some of the story lines aren't as interesting as the others and some of them aren't as developed. I personally preferred the jobless Lefty (played by Stephen Baldwin, in a well acted dramatic role) and the old woman (wonderfully played by K Callan). There wasn't enough time spent on the youth pastor thus making his story seem unfinished. And there was too much time spent on the mother and the gas station worker, it wasn't a very interesting story.

The ending was nice, in fact, a little too nice, it seemed like everything came together too perfectly. But it wasn't that bad of a film. If during the holiday season, you're looking for a film to watch, I'd recommend this film before recommending one of those studio films that get released every holiday season to make big bucks.

MIDNIGHT CLEAR is an easily overlooked film: the cover of the DVD is bleak, the description of the story sounds a bit corny, and the promotion of the film has been scant. But what is not expected for those viewers able to overcome the above negative aspects is a well-made little series of interlocking vignettes that poignantly address the impact of random acts of kindness in a world grown calloused. It is touching in the best sense of the word and well worth watching even beyond the Christmas season.

The unnamed town gradually opens windows to some fairly sad people: an elderly woman Eva (K Callan) talks with her doctor on the telephone about her meds and we note that she may be facing the thought of suicide in her desolate life; a sweet woman Mary (Mary Thornton) and her young son Jacob (Dominic Scott Kay) visit their brain damaged husband/father in a rest home (the man was critically injured in an auto accident one year ago); a lonely many Kirk (Kirk B.R. Woller) stands in his isolated convenience store without patrons; a longtime drunk and lonely ex-husband Lefty (Stephen Baldwin) is fired from his menial job, despite a recent promotion, because of his consistent tardiness; Mitch (Mitchell Jarvis) works with kids for a church to assuage his guilt for having survived the auto accident that devastated Mar's husband's life, reluctantly agreeing to his pastor (Richard Fancy) to take his youth group caroling to the shut-ins on Christmas Eve.

Each of these characters influences the others by a seeming random act of kindness: Kirk helps Mary and Jacob with their broken car, Eva is given a meals on wheels by a church lady (Victoria Jackson), Mitch and his carolers provide some needed money by means of a token gift that will allow Lefty and Eva to attend Christmas Eve Service, and Eva's 'meals on wheels' ends up providing midnight food for Kirk and Mary and Jacob. Writer Wes Halula and director Dallas Jenkins carve a story that, though at times suggests it may become cloying, is genuinely touching. The cast, especially Baldwin and Callan, is excellent, and each of the characters is well developed, leaving the viewer with a sense of a morality tale we sorely need. Instead of a big booming Hollywood finish, the film simply tapers off with suggestions of the importance of selfless acts that can make a difference. It is well worth watching, especially now, and especially during the Christmas season. Grady Harp