Monthly Archives: March 2020

Double Jeopardy (1992, directed by Lawrence Schiller)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Salt Lake City is riveted by the sensational murder trial of mountain climber Lisa Burns Donnelly (Rachel Ward).  Lisa killed her ex-boyfriend, Eddie.  She says that she did it in self-defense after Eddie raped her.  The prosecution claims that she murdered Eddie after he caught her cheating on him with another man.  Lisa’s lawyer, Karen Hart (Sela Ward), is up for a judgeship.  Her husband, Jack (Bruce Boxleitner) is Lisa’s ex-boyfriend.  What Karen doesn’t know is that, other than Lisa, Jack is the only person who witnessed what happened the night of the murder because, just moments before, he and Lisa had been committing PG-13-rated adultery in her shower.

One of the interesting things — in fact, maybe the only interesting thing — about Double Jeopardy is that several online sellers claim that the film stars Aaron Eckhart.  It is true that Eckhart is in the movie.  It was shot in Salt Lake City while he was a student at BYU and it was his film debut.  However, Eckhart has about a minute of screen time and about five lines.  He plays a Marine named Dwayne who someone meets in an airport.  His big line is, “Semper Fi, babe!”

As for the film, since it’s set in Salt Lake City, there’s a lot of talk about how Lisa is being unfairly judged for her unconventional (read: non-Mormon) life style and there’s a heavy-handed subplot about Jack trying to put on a production of The Crucible but it doesn’t add up too much.  It would probably have been easier for the movie to make a point about religious and moral persecution if Lisa wasn’t actually guilty of murdering Eddie.  Instead, the movie leaves you thinking, “Maybe those Mormons have a point.”

Double Jeopardy tries hard to be something more than your standard legal thriller but it’s pretty forgettable.  Rachel Ward was always a great femme fatale and Sally Kirkland gives a good performance as the cop who sees through both Lisa and Jack.  The film was produced for Showtime at a time when cable was still trying to prove that it could provide original content worth paying for so there’s some cursing and sideboob tossed in, as if to say, “See?  You don’t get this on NBC!”  Otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers made-for-TV movie.

Spring Breakdown: Sand Sharks (dir by Mark Atkins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“There ain’t no party like a Sandman party!” Jimmy Green (played by Corin Nemec) announces in the 2012 film, Sand Sharks, and he’s right.

Jimmy is infamous for throwing (or, at least, attempting to throw) big parties and organizing wild festivals.  This movie was made before the Fyre Festival but watching Jimmy as he runs around and assures everyone that he’s about to put together the greatest music festival that the world has ever seen, it’s hard not to be reminded of the determined and incompetent people who were behind that legendary disaster.  Then again, no one was eaten by a shark during the Fyre Festival.  Jimmy can’t make the same claim about his parties.

In fact, when we first meet Jimmy, he’s trying to rebuild his reputation after his previous party ended in tragedy.  Apparently, 15 people died at that party and, though we don’t get all the details, it’s insinuated that they were eaten by sharks.  Jimmy isn’t one to let shark-related tragedy get him down, however.  Instead, he’s doing to put on another Sandman Festival and this time, he’ll keep everyone on the beach and out of the water!  Fortunately, for Jimmy, his father just happens to be the mayor of a beachside community.

Unfortunately, it turns out that sharks aren’t just in the ocean.  There’s also on the beach, swimming underneath the sand.  They’re sand hharks!  Now, the movie does provide an explanation for why all of those sharks are moving around underneath the sand but it’s really not important.  The important thing is that they’re out and they’re eating just about everyone that they meet.  That’s going to be a problem as far as the Sandman Festival is concerned.  Fortunately, Jimmy and the authorities are able to kill one sand shark.  However, when Jimmy discovers that there’s more than one sand shark, he keeps that news to himself.  The show must go on!

You can probably guess what happens next….

The sand sharks are a lot of fun and this SyFy film provides plenty of spring break mayhem as festival goers are yanked under the sand but, for me, the main attraction of this film is seeing Corin Nemec just unleashed like a force of nature.  Nemec starts the film going at about 100 miles per hour and he doesn’t slow down for a single second.  As played by Nemec, Jimmy never stop talking and he never stops hustling and he’s so committed to putting on the greatest festival ever that it’s impossible not to like him, even if his actions do end up getting a lot of people killed.  Nemec seems to be having a lot of fun with the role of Jimmy and it’s just as much fun to watch him.

Of course, Jimmy isn’t the only character in the film.  Brooke Hogan plays Dr. Sandy Powers, who is a shark expert.  At one point, Sandy looks out at the beach and tells Sheriff John Stone (Eric Scott Woods) that “We’re stuck between a rock and a shark place,” and if you don’t cheer for that line, I worry about you and your sense of humor.  As that line indicates, Sand Sharks is a film that cheerfully embraces the ludicrousness of it’s storyline.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should you.  This is the type of film where people often snap, “Bite me!” right before a shark leaps out of the sand and does just that.  This is pure entertainment and, if you’re a fan of SyFy shark films, Sand Sharks is a lot of fun.  Between the sand sharks and Corin Nemec playing the hipster-from-Hell, what more could you want?

Music Video Of The Day: Sad Song by Blake Lewis (2009, dir by Ana Veselic)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I can still remember the night when it was announced that Blake Lewis has lost the sixth season of American Idol to Jordin Sparks.  That was when the world stopped making sense to me.  Nothing against Jordin but how, I wondered, could she have won while Blake was so cute and adorkable!?  It just didn’t make sense to me!

Of course, the judges were never on Blake’s side.  During the final weeks, when it became obvious that the finale would be Blake vs. Jordin, the judges went out of their way to nitpick every performance that Blake gave.  It upset me.  I spent a lot of time that March calling and voting for Blake.  When he lost, American Idol lost me as well.  I’ve never voted since and, of course, I’m now actually an adult so it would hard for me to justify still caring about the show at this point.

(My cousin-in-law Ronny used to say that he would only watch American Idol to see the judges be mean.  Once they stopped being mean, he lost interest.  He had the right idea.  Reality competition shows are so positive now that I have a difficult time watching them.  For instance, last year, I nearly threw my shoes at the TV while trying to watch an episode of America’s Got Talent.  The whole thing where the judges are all crying and going, “YOU!  You are what this competition is about!” is just so creepy and weird.)

Anyway, Blake continued to make music even after losing American Idol.  This is his video for Sad Song, which came off of his second studio album, Heartbreak on Vinyl.  The video is meant to recall both 40s film noir and 80s video glitz and I think it succeeds fairly well.  Blake’s co-star in the video is Casey Carlson, who was featured during the 8th season of American Idol.

Enjoy!

(Speaking of sad songs, my vacation’s nearly over!  Boo hoo, says I.)

Cinemax Friday: The Hit List (1993, directed by William Webb)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Charlie Pike (Jeff Fahey) is an assassin with a conscience.  He learned how to kill while serving in the military and now, he uses his skills to help out the Committee, a shadowy organization of lawyers who are determined to take out the leaders of organized crime.  When Charlie announces that he has decided to retire from the killing game, the Committee’s Peter Mayhew (James Coburn!) asks him to take on one more job as a personal favor to him.

Mayhew puts Charlie in contact with the beautiful and alluring Jordan (Yancy Butler, making her film debut).  Jordan is the widow of a businessman who was murdered by the mob.  Jordan asks Charlie to kill the man who killed her husband.  Charlie agrees but, after he does the job, he discovers that the man he killed was actually a government informant who was scheduled to testify to Congress!  Someone double-crossed Charlie and now, Charlie’s got both the police and another group of assassins trying to track him down.  Jordan claims that Mayhew told her that the informant was responsible for her husband’s death.  Mayhew denies it and says that Jordan must have set Charlie up.  Charlie has to figure out who to trust before it’s too late.  Complicating matters is that Charlie and Jordan have become lovers.

The Hit List is essentially a 40s film noir reinterpreted for the direct-to-video age.  Jeff Fahey has the Alan Ladd role while Yancy Butler does her best imitation of Lana Turner.  Fahey was one of the best actors to routinely star in the neo-noirs that used to populate late night Cinemax and The Hit List features one of his best performances.  Fahey is a convincing killer but he still brings enough humanity to the role that you believe Charlie could find himself falling for Jordan.  Yancy Butler is a sultry and sexy femme fatale and James Coburn is James Coburn, supercool, slick, and always in control.  It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which one of the two is betraying Fahey but all three commit to their roles and give enjoyable performances.  I especially liked the scene where Mayhew accuses Jordan of double-crossing Charlie and James Coburn grins like he’s having the time of his life.  James Coburn was one of those actors who could liven up and improve any scene in any movie and he proves that here.

The Hit List is a well-made B-noir that’s elevated by its cast and which will leave you nostalgic for Cinemax in the 90s.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Robert Clouse Edition

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we pay tribute to director Robert Clouse, who was born 92 years ago today.  Best-known for directing Bruce Lee’s biggest hit, Enter The Dragon, Clouse was responsible for some of the most memorable action films of the 70s and the 80s.  He was an action auteur who never got the respect that he deserved but we can pay tribute to him today.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Enter The Dragon (1973, directed by Robert Clouse)

Black Belt Jones (1974, directed by Robert Clouse)

The Ultimate Warrior (1975, directed by Robert Clouse)

Gymkata (1985, directed by Robert Clouse)

Scenes That We Love: The Bandit Fools Smokey in Hal Needham’s Smokey and The Bandit

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today would have been Hal Needham’s 89th birthday and that means that it’s time to celebrate with Smokey and the Bandit.

Before he made a name for himself as a director, Hal Needham was a legendary stuntman.  In 1977, the same year that Smokey and the Bandit came out, Gabriel Toys even sold as a “Hal Needham Western Movie Stunt Set,” which came with a spring-launched Hal Needham action figure.  When Needham went into directing, he made unpretentious movies for people who wanted to have a good time at the theater.  The majority of his films featured fast cars, tough good old boys, and spectacular action.  They also often featured Burt Reynolds doing what he did best.  Needham made the type of movies that never won Academy Awards but which audiences loved.  In fact, audiences still love them.  When I watch Smokey and the Bandit, I always want to quit my job and just smuggle Coors east of the Mississippi for a living.  I know that Coors is legal now so there’s no need to smuggle it but that’s the power of a good Hal Needham film.

In the scene below, the Bandit (Burt Reynolds) and Snowman (Jerry Reed) manage to avoid getting caught by the Mississippi Highway Patrol.  Not only do we get to hear Eastbound and Down but this scene also features the moment that Hal Needham knew the film was going to be a hit.  He later said that, as soon as Burt Reynolds broke the fourth wall and stared straight at the camera with “that shit-eating grin on his face,” he knew that audiences were going to love the Bandit.

And he was right.

Hal Needham died in 2013 and Burt Reynolds followed him five years later.  However, their legacy lives on.  The characters of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood were based on Burt and Hal.  If anyone could have taken on and beat the Manson family single-handed, it would have been the great Hal Needham.

Spring Breakdown: The Spring Break Murders (a.k.a. To.Get.Her) (dir by Erica Dunton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It’s a weekend of no consequences.”

That’s a phrase that is uttered many times over the course of the 2011 film, The Spring Break Murders (which is also known as To.Get.Her.)  In fact, it’s a phrase that’s uttered so many times that I actually started to get sick of hearing it.  Initially, I thought that it was evidence of lazy writing and that the film’s director and screenwriter, Erica Dunton, was so oddly proud of the phrase that she was determined to push it on us whether it actually meant anything or not.

By the end of the film, my opinion had changed.  There’s a big twist in The Spring Break Murders, one that took me totally by surprise and which I’m still thinking about as I write up this review.  Needless to say, I can’t reveal the twist here in this review.  But I can say that it’s a good one and it’s worth the wait and, by the end of it, you’ll understand why the characters were so fixated on that phrase.  By the end of the film, “It’s a weekend of no consequences” goes from being a cliche to a truly brilliant piece of dialogue.

The Spring Break Murders tells the story of five friends and one eventful weekend.  At the start of the movie, a voice-over informs us that, by the end of the weekend, only one of the friends will still be alive and the four others will be dead at the hands of one man.  The five friends have flown in from all over so that they can spend the weekend at a beach house owned by the mother of Ana Frost (Jazzy de Liser).  Ana is apparently a bit of a problem child.  Haunted by her father’s suicide, she hates her mother’s fiancee, Robert (Ed Wagenseller), and is secretly paying for the entire weekend with his credit card.  (She even bought everyone’s plane tickets.)  Robert is supposed to be staying at the beach house with Ana while Ana’s mother has a weekend to herself but Ana sharply informs him that he will be spending the weekend at a hotel.  Though angered, Robert agrees.  At first, it’s tempting to assume that Ana is just a spoiled brat but, as with everything in this movie, there’s more to it than that and nothing is what it first seems.

All five of the friends have their own issues that they’re dealing with.  One of them has just discovered that she won’t be attending Oxford.  Another one blames herself for death of her sister.  The token religious girl is scared to come out to her parents while the pregnant girl has been dumped by her boyfriend and has been overly medicated by her family.  And, at first, it’s easy to roll your eyes at the fact that everyone has at least one dramatic problem.  As I watched these five friends acting miserable in a nightclub, I found myself wondering if I really wanted to watch a movie about the type of depressing and overly dramatic people who I usually mute on twitter.  But I kept watching because I suspected there was more to the story than was immediately apparent.

And it turned out that I was right.  There’s a lot more to the story.  Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is without spoiling the film.  What I can tell you is that this is a film that worth sticking with.  During the film’s first half (which can seem unfocused before you learn the film’s twist), you may be tempted to stop watching but stick with it because almost everything that initially seems self-indulgent pays off in the end.  Though both of this film’s titles — To.Get.Her and The Spring Break Murders — might make it sound like a generic horror film, it’s actually an intriguing mystery with a clever twist.  It’s a movie that sicks with you.  I imagine that I’ll be thinking about it for days to come.

That said, it’s not a perfect film.  There’s a subplot about Ana’s mother cheating on Robert that never really makes much sense and the pace lags whenever the attention is taken away from the friends and given to any of the film’s other characters.  There are also a few flashbacks that, occasionally, feel a bit awkward, as if they’ve been forced into the action.  As one might expect from a low-budget independent film, some of the actors are better than others.  Jazzy de Lisser is a stand-out and she gets good support from Chelsea Logan, who plays the pregnant friend.  The rest of the cast is a bit more uneven.  In the end, though, this is an effectively clever little film and one that will reward repeat viewings.

Music Video of the Day: In Front Of The Alamo by Hal Ketchum (2007, dir by Glenn Sweitzer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Alamo Day.  It was 184 years ago, today, that 600 men gave their lives in the name of Texas.

That’s one of the many things that I think sets us native Texans apart from the rest of the United States.  Texans believe in freedom.  We always have and we always will.  Some of us may be conservative and some of us may be liberal but what we have in common is a desire to do it our own way.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as moved as I was during the days immediately after Hurricane Harvey.  A lot of people outside of the state seemed to think that Harvey was a disaster of such immense proportions that it would lead to the end of both the state’s reputation for independence and our way of life.   So, what did we do?  We did what Texans always do.  We came together and we helped each other.  We did what we could and, when someone came along who could do the job better, we supported them.  We appreciated everyone who came down to lend a helping hand and we checked on our neighbors to make sure that they were okay.  See, that’s the thing about Texas.  We don’t surrender.  We fight and we help those who need it and, for that reason, we’re the greatest state in the union.

(In fact, if we had never joined the United States, the Republic Texas would probably be a world superpower right now.  Oh well.  In the end, it all worked out.)

Anyway. this music video is about the Alamo so it seems appropriate for today!

Enjoy!