A few years back I noticed that music videos were largely missing from IMDb. Sure you could find Thriller, but that was about it. I went and tried to get Metallica’s One submitted. I knew I could argue anyone into the ground about it. I did have to argue with someone at IMDb about it, but it went nowhere. Last year I went and checked to see if maybe it eventually had made it’s way in there. It had. Why not try again? I submitted Take On Me by a-ha knowing I could also argue anyone into the ground about it. It was almost instantly accepted the moment I pressed the submit button. I tried again and again with various videos. They were all accepted. I even received two emails from two separate people at IMDb telling me to keep submitting them with a couple little guidelines. I don’t think they should be marked as video rather than a regular music short, but it’s progress.
Lately it has been difficult for me to get on here and do full reviews of movies for various reasons. As a result, I thought it would be fun to spotlight a video here from time to time. There are some interesting ones out there. I know I found it interesting to discover that William Friedkin made Laura Branigan’s Self Control and Brian De Palma did Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark. I’ll try to have something to say about it, but other times it will just be the video itself.
This one is directed by veteran music video directors Vaughan Arnell and Anthea Benton. I love the choice of going with black and white. The 80s turned the use of color upside down from color meaning a dream like in The Wizard of Oz (1939) to black and white meaning a dream. The video essentially takes place inside of the lead singer’s mind filled with empty chairs, the rest of the band, and memories that play out on projections around him. To my knowledge, all the clips are original, but I’m not 100% sure and I’ve seen other music videos use clips from other films. Enjoy.
I did say I would write this a few days after I watched part 1, but obviously that didn’t happen. My health problems hit me hard. That’s why I greatly appreciated the person who thanked me for providing instructions on how to find songs used in Hallmark movies in my review of Valentine Ever After. I also found it hilarious to receive a comment by someone who I believe thinks they know quite a bit about Hallmark movies seeing as they wanted to lecture me about them bundled together with personal attacks. They must have missed the recent Hallmark movie Hearts of Spring. It covered leaving nasty comments with personal attacks about how you know better than someone about something on that person’s blog when you disagree with their opinion and the damage it can cause. It was also about mint chocolate chip milkshakes.
But we aren’t here to discuss the wonderful world of writing movie reviews. We’re here to discuss this film, and hopefully have a little fun doing it. Especially with what happened today. Right, Ted?
Karen Kingsbury’s The Bridge, Part 1 (2015, dir. Mike Rohl)
The movie begins not quite where the first film left off. The first film had two kids named Ryan and Molly who go to college, meet, and fall in love before going their separate ways basically because there was a second part to the movie. The actual reasons are that there was an extra guy and girl along with Molly’s dad who came in between the two of them. It also had the story of Charlie and Donna who come together after a personal tragedy to create a bookstore whose main mission isn’t so much to sell books, but act as a place where people can bond over their love of reading. They called it The Bridge. The movie ended with Donna turning down Charlie to go back to church with him and standing at the checkout counter with “to be continued…” below her.
This film begins by treating us to that conversation between Molly (Katie Findlay) and Ryan (Wyatt Nash) from the end of the first film. That one where the phones were sometimes lit up near the character’s ear, and sometimes not.
I’m still not sure why that was a thing. To my knowledge, all cellphones turn the screen black so that you don’t accidentally hit buttons with your face when you are talking on them next to your ear. I’ve seen other Hallmark movies do this right sometimes and other times incorrectly.
After that we cut to Seattle, Washington 7 years later. Seeing as the first film started in 2009 and took them to Christmas of that year, it would mean that this film takes place in 2016 during the holidays. I guess that’s why they originally planned to air this at that time. I can’t imagine what a disaster that would have been considering the plot of this film. Then they cut to this shot that immediately follows the title card, which told us when and where we are.
I know A Christmas Detour had a litany of ridiculously photoshopped in Christmas stuff at the very beginning of the film. However, not only does director Ron Oliver have a sense of humor, but his movie was supposed to be a comedy. These two movies on the other hand are supposed to be rather serious. Plus, the movie then cuts inside to show us Molly and her dad (Steve Bacic) who-along with the sets-announce clearly that we are at his business. The establishing shot didn’t need to be there. Particularly if this was how it was going to look. While not needing to be there, I can’t say I’m shocked that it ended up there after seeing 170+ Hallmark films at the time of writing this review. Just like I’m not shocked that the dialog between Molly and her dad is there establish that she is on the brink of marrying the guy who wasn’t worth mentioning in my first review and becoming CEO of her dad’s company just before fate will intervene to bring her back to Ryan. That’s her Hallmark movie within this Hallmark movie.
Now we are reintroduced to Ryan who has just arrived home for the holidays. They decided to age Wyatt by having him grow a little facial hair.
I’m sorry, but there’s just something about the pattern of his mustache hair that says Frollo Gaston from The Secret of the Hunchback (1996) to me.
The Secret of the Hunchback (1996, dir. Mike Joens & Ken C. Johnson)
While I really did think it was going to happen, Charlie does not sprout wings in this like Quasimodo does in that film to reveal he’s an angel.
If there’s anything they did to Molly to age her, then it’s so superficial that I didn’t even notice. Still, she does actually look like an adult instead of Emilia Clarke in Terminator Genisys (2015) who really looked like a teenager.
Then we are re-introduced to Charlie (Ted McGinley) as he goes around town saying the bookstore will be rebuilt and open for business soon. It’s at times like this in the film that I wonder if it was purely budget or if Hallmark trimmed a few scenes to make this fit the runtime they had for this early airing of the film. We never really see the storm except for a weird scene. Charlie enters The Bridge after talking to people on the street and then looks up at a hole in his ceiling when we get a flashback to the storm. It’s very short, but at first I honestly thought Donna (Faith Ford) had been struck by lightning.
It’s a very short scene. I didn’t try to catch a screenshot like that. It’s how it came out. It’s also the only one I have that illustrates the lightning part of things.
In the first film, Charlie had a character who was thin as a playing card. In this second film, McGinley actually gets to do some acting as we see him trying to deal with the destruction of the bookstore. Of course good acting for Charlie is not meant to be here for some reason so he winds up getting attacked by a pole in his car and is out in a coma for the remainder of the film. That’s too bad cause for a brief period there, you really do get a glimpse of McGinley adding some depth to Charlie.
Then Molly comes back to town and discovers this whole situation with The Bridge along with Ryan. By the way, that’s the whole movie. Charlie ends up in a coma because he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in his state and hit a pole. Molly comes back to town and with Ryan’s help, rallies the community and leverages the Internet to rebuild The Bridge. Then we get Charlie waking up from his coma to find that all is well thanks to the bonds he formed with and between the people the bookstore touched. I would think Hallmark viewers would be expecting something more substantial seeing as they were being asked to wait a whole year for this second film.
There are a couple of little subplots if you can even call them that. It’s really just the film tying up a few loose ends/removing a few roadblocks concerning Molly and Ryan to make sure they can end the film on a kiss between them.
There is one thing I found unintentionally funny about this movie.
I get why there are no last names. I mean I have seen Hallmark movies populate lists of names like this with crew members, but I understand. What’s funny is the one on the bottom. I wouldn’t think it was worth mentioning the obvious thing people associate with the name Slim if not for something that happened while I was watching the film. I mean other than this obvious association with the name Slim.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
I’m going to mention it because there is an actor in this movie that I kept mistaking for Wyatt Nash.
It really took till this scene for me to know for sure that I was seeing a different character when the guy in the blue shirt was onscreen. So, of course I’m thinking “will the real Wyatt Nash please stand up” when I see the name Slim.
My final thoughts on this one are that they basically took a single Hallmark film and divided it in two. If this had been condensed to a single film, then it still wouldn’t have been that good honestly, but it would have been an actual Hallmark movie. To give Karen Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt again, I have to imagine that her book didn’t divide the story with a seven year gap. I’m guessing there was more time to develop their relationship and flesh out Donna and Charlie that builds to all the connections that developed through the bookstore ultimately allowing them all to survive the literal and metaphorical storm. With obvious religious stuff that I’m sure is more pronounced in the book thrown in.
Long story short, don’t bother with either of these movies. There are far better films Hallmark has made. Even their usual average B-Movies are also often enjoyable on some level. Even if that is just the enjoyment of riffing on them and noticing goofs they make. Even the screenwriter of Hello, It’s Me told me on Twitter she was enjoying my reactions to the dialog she had written. People have a lot of fun doing live tweets of Hallmark movies and the cast and crew will sometimes hop onboard to have fun with the audience too. At the end of the day, these reviews are to give you my opinion on the film and to hopefully guide you to ones you’ll enjoy. Even if that’s just because I’ve talked about it enough that regardless of what I thought about it, you decide it sounds like something you might enjoy.
As always if they list them, here are the songs:
It seems to be a regular thing for me when I write these reviews to listen to a single song on an endless repeat. Might as well mention it as a little footnote for people. The song for this review was Holding Back the Years by Simply Red.
In retrospect, I probably should have been listening to Culture Club’s Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.
All this new Ghostbusters stuff is way too serious for me. That’s why what matters to me right now is finding a copy of the 1991 parody of Ghostbusters and Ghost from the same people behind Alyas Batman en Robin. I have included the original trailer below, and a new one that was made up recently. The second one is better because it has more footage from the film. I hope you get a few laughs out of them.
I know I already wrote about this film in one of my Amazon Prime experiment posts. For reasons that aren’t important, I am writing a long form review of this film. A bit of a fresh look.
Before anything, the movie starts with a title card saying something I’ve never seen on a movie. It says “Deposito Legal: V1912-2012”. From what I can gather online, this seems to essentially be a cultural preservation program by the Spanish government. Regardless, I’m not sure why it was necessary for it to be there at the beginning of the film along with the normal opening credits that you’d expect. Then again, this is a foreign indie movie from Amazon Prime so I guess I should be thankful there are even credits on this thing.
During the opening credits we get a kind of cool jazz sound that you might expect in a 90s late night cable movie or TV Show. Spicy City had one of these. Then we cut to a beach and meet one of our leads named Piero (Andrea Bruschi).
If you like that shot, then you might actually enjoy this movie because he and the female lead will often stare at things. Sometimes they will even stare right at you. Cut to title card, then we find out where Piero works.
I must admit that after the late night cable soundtrack over the credits followed by a guy on the radio, I was having flashbacks to Zalman King’s Pleasure or Pain.
Pleasure or Pain (2013, dir. Zalman King)
However, this movie won’t be assaulting you with endless erotica. Instead, it will be assaulting you with endless art film cliches. Also, he really reminded me of DJ Fernando Martinez from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. You can take a listen below if the video is still up.
He also mentions that he is broadcasting from Berlin before cutting to some empty places to make sure we know some Antonioni things are going to be happening in this movie. Then we meet our female lead Andrea (Katrin Bühring).
This should ring some French New Wave bells for me, but I just can’t think of any. No worries! I have plenty more. She’s on her way to the bookstore. She works there with her friend Marianne (Katharina Rivilis) that is most likely a lesbian and likes to stare and rub up against Andrea.
This is when we find out she is involved with a guy named Oliver who is too busy to go and see French movies with her. You can’t really blame Oliver. She could be going to see Nouvelle Vague (1990). Apparently, someone ordered a book by Wilhelm Genazino because any movie with a lot of French New Wave references must include books. Now we cut to Piero making a call at a phone booth. He sets up a meeting before walking in front of what appears to be a rundown theater.
After standing there, he turns and goes inside. He happens to show up near the beginning of Shoot The Piano Player (1960).
Shoot The Piano Player (1960, dir. François Truffaut)
That was François Truffaut’s second feature film. It’s the first scene between Charlie and Léna. A large part of the movie is Charlie trying to get over his past and open up to her. It’s also about pulp fiction gangsters riding around with a kid, which contains one of the most awesome insert shots of all time. One of the gangsters says, “If I’m lying, may my mother keel over this instant!”
Shoot The Piano Player (1960, dir. François Truffaut)
No one else is in the theater except our two leads.
I’m just going to assume that the ghosts from Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003)…
Good Bye, Dragon Inn (2003, dir. Ming-liang Tsai)
migrated to Germany in the past decade or so to haunt this theater. The two of them of course take notice of each other, but don’t say anything. By that, I mean they stare at each other before cutting to the final scene of Shoot The Piano Player after Charlie is back at the bar, finds a new barmaid working there since Léna was gunned down, and somewhat solemnly plays the piano while looking off into the space behind the camera.
We see them briefly on a bus before going home with Piero where he seems to have just records, some lights, and a mattress on the floor.
Nice to know the Alain Delon spartan bedroom design caught on after Le Samouraï (1967).
Le Samouraï (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville)
Okay, to be fair, Bosch was probably thinking of the bedroom from The Mother and the Whore (1973).
The Mother and the Whore (1973, dir. Jean Eustache)
Especially since that is considered to be the last film of the French New Wave, and we see a clip from the film that is considered to have given birth to the French New Wave later on in this movie.
He looks up to see a crack in his ceiling.
Doctor Who
We now cut to more empty spaces to remind us of Antonioni before going to a park. Andrea is talking about how she needs to go and take photos of an abandoned building so the movie can reference Red Desert (1964) and Blow-Up (1966) before it is turned into a shopping mall. They also complain about development in the city, which is followed by people doing annoying things in the park.
Would have made my day if it were some people re-enacting Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968). Instead, it’s just some street performers waiting around for the ending of Nights of Cabiria (1957).
We then go to the title card with the camera panned left of the tower before we are back in the radio booth with Piero. He’s here to tell us that he has become obsessed by a guitarist that he hopes to get into the studio.
More scenes of outside including a shot to remind us this was probably shot in 2012.
That, and multiplexes are destroying single screen theaters with disposable films like The Hunger Games (2012). We should be returning to get more and more out of films like Shoot The Piano Player. Or simply buy the DVD like I did, and save yourself the trouble of a theater. After convincing his boss that he should go and interview this guitarist, we cut to every conversation an art film like this must include. Luckily they remember to leave dialogue heavy conversations to Éric Rohmer films by ending it short so we can get back to Antonioni.
Also, more of Andrea’s co-worker staring at her.
Now Piero’s girlfriend breaks up with him via a shot through glass into a restaurant. Not sure of why they weren’t filming in the restaurant, but I think this screenshot sums up this whole girlfriend thing.
We get the same scene with Andrea and her boyfriend, but they don’t breakup. Some more things happen, which has Andrea assaulted by jump cuts before she stares at the movie ticket. Then more outside Antonioni shots.
Just assume that if I don’t show it, then you’re getting shots like the ending of L’Eclisee (1962).
L’Eclisse (1962, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
L’Eclisse (1962, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Back in the plot of the film, Piero goes to the bookstore where she works. He’s looking for a book on the sea and Andrea brings him one that happens to be written by Marguerite Duras. That way I can show a screenshot of her film India Song (1975).
India Song (1975, dir. Marguerite Duras)
It juxtaposed cool imagery with sound that was played from a separate soundtrack which didn’t match what was onscreen even when people spoke to each other. I recall it being about trying to create a cultural island while trapped in another countries’ sea. Ties in with this film. They don’t actually acknowledge that they saw each other in the theater, but he makes note of her name before leaving. Then we cut so the movie can do a mini-version of Wavelength (1967) by zooming in on a picture of the sea, but this time with a platform at the center of it.
Wavelength (1967, dir. Michael Snow)
Piero stares at the crack wishing Matt Smith would come and fix it for him before walking past some red neon lights to pose, then goes back to the mysterious cinema.
Back at the bookstore, an annoying customer comes in so that Andrea will also have a reason to return to the theater. First, she kindly lets them shoot some handheld camerawork on her while she walks to get on a bus. Sadly, she goes from one annoyance to another.
That’s right, they are playing that movie.
Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
However, he’s not there now probably because he thought they were going to be playing a better French New Wave film like The 400 Blows (1959). That’s why after more DJ and Antonioni, we cut to a tracking shot. You didn’t think you’d get away watching a movie comprised of art film cliches from the 1960s that built on and fought cliches of Old Hollywood to tie in with the film’s ambivalence about the interconnections of the modern world while fighting against the destruction of local culture without one of these, did you?
I’m sure if they had held this shot a little longer than Jean-Pierre Léaud would have walked by Piero. It could have happened! He was waiting around on a bench in What Time Is It There? (2001).
What Time Is It There? (2001, dir. Ming-liang Tsai)
Then Piero goes and stands against a wall.
There isn’t even a clean white Antonioni wall to lean against anymore.
L’Avventura (1960, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Also, he stands there so that I can embed Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal.
Cut to more buildings, then we see Andrea run into a telephone booth. Not for any real reason other than so Piero can also run in there like in Old Hollywood movies and they can have a moment. They are also there because in movies the rain conveniently stops after the scene has finished. Just like in Bicycle Thieves (1948).
Bicycle Thieves (1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica)
The rain started so we could get this great scene with these guys. Then they turned off the rain machine so Antonio could spot the original international title of the movie and begin to chase him.
He tells her he has a radio program, they acknowledge each other’s existence, and their meeting in the cinema before parting ways. They are both not happy with it. He even takes a video of her walking away from him with his cellphone.
This is as good a time as any to mention that they keep switching languages in this movie to further the mish mash of cultures.
She goes home and we apparently need to see a shot of her head in the shower for a few seconds before she broods on the couch. Then we cut to Orlando Bosch’s Instagram feed…
to tell us that Piero has finally decided to “travel” to see the musician he was obsessed with before meeting Andrea. He sees the musician playing and goes to sit on a fountain. If the ghost of Anita Ekberg isn’t in it, then I don’t care about this part of the film.
Back home, Andrea is smoking, like they both do in this movie, before she notices that Piero is on the radio.
Now Piero runs down the street because he’ll be damned if Andrea is the only one who will do the Jean Seberg run at the end of Breathless in this movie.
Oh, and immediately after posting that picture of Piero, I realized that actor Andrea Bruschi has the same first name as the female character his character falls in love with. Well played, Orlando. Well played. He should go on one of those movie game shows like the one in We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) where one of the main characters lost because of a technicality over whether the question was asking about the character or the actor. It’s probably an easter egg about their interconnectedness. It fits since the next scene has Andrea staring at a candle before we are transported to the white dimension! Here they have sex before staring at us naked.
I’m sorry, but I took one look at this and instantly thought of Black Love (1971).
Black Love (1971, dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis)
Piero then talks more on the radio and I don’t care. We now go to Andrea walking across the streets before she goes into fast-motion. She does this so that I can include Kylie Minogue’s The Loco-motion.
During this fast-motion she appears to cross the same crosswalk twice. Could just be a similar looking one. I guess she is really out there hoping to run into him. She should have known that he would be standing in front of street art of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.
Luckily he then walks by a building that says “Luka” on the side of it now.
Lucky for me because I never have a good excuse to include a Suzanne Vega song in a review.
Or it’s supposed to be a reference to Luka from ER seeing as the character was from Croatia, ER is one of the most important TV Shows of all time, and Germany and Croatia have a history of relations so important that there’s even a Wikipedia article on it. Nah, I’m going with Suzanne Vega.
Then we cut to him at a record shop before settling on him at a bar. He meets some girl, there’s bad singing while they are drunk, he sleeps with her, and off he goes. I have no idea why that scene exists other than that it looks like they stumble onto the set of Before Sunset (2004) at one point. Doesn’t have anything to do with the movie either as far as I can tell, so onward.
Andrea now goes to abandoned buildings to take photographs…
because there were no colorful looking factories to take pictures of.
Red Desert (1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Red Desert (1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Meanwhile, David Hemmings is back in the park from earlier taking photographs.
Blow-Up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
There is something noteworthy here because this film does love to use art film cliches. When she walks through the entrance of the globe I’m quite sure it does a temporal overlap twice so we see her enter it three times from three different angles. Also…
Hemmings clearly beat Andrea to taking pictures here and left his calling card. I love how during that shot you can hear sound that I swear is like music Goblin would compose for one of Argento’s films. I only mention that since Hemmings was in Deep Red (1975).
We then go back to her place. We can see she uses a Sony Vaio computer. She uploads her photos to Facebook. The ghost theater has it’s own Facebook page. Most likely because Kino Intimes is an actual theater in Berlin that has been around since 1909. The scene is there so that she can notice a picture of the theater and remember the chance encounter.
She now turns to her creepy co-worker. She says she knows he hosts a radio show at midnight. She also gets a call from that long forgotten boyfriend of hers. She tells him she’s too busy for him. That’s when it’s time to go club dancing.
Dancing and kissing your co-worker. She goes to the bathroom to try and cool off, but the jump cuts aren’t helping matters. Then suddenly we are back at the bookstore to find out that Angela was so drunk she didn’t know she had kissed Marianne, which as we all know is when to make your move.
She’s says no thanks, but is clearly not happy. The jump cuts make matters worse for her though so after more Antonioni and Piero talking on the radio, she goes and has sex with her boyfriend. Then she immediately breaks up with him. She takes a bath and dunks her head underneath the water. This time we are transported to the black dimension for more of the living art exhibit.
Realizing how stupid the shots were, she pulls her head out of the water and proceeds to start drinking. Once again, the jump cuts only make matters worse for her. Then it’s off to walking for Andrea. She walks through a tilt shift shot before settling on a bench.
The Passenger (1975, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Back at the bookstore, Piero returns. He finally asks her out. They are going to meet on a bridge. It’s difficult to get dressed when jump cuts keep interfering. Anyways, as she is going to the bridge she is attacked by the Clockwork Orange gang because…
Leos Carax already struck a claim on lovers meeting on a bridge many years ago.
The Lovers on the Bridge (1991, dir. Leos Carax)
As a result, they miss their meeting. Think he’s simply going to return to the bookstore under the assumption that something must have come up like a normal person would do? Are you crazy? When someone misses a meeting with you, then it’s time to brood in public and drive out into the middle of nowhere to stare into the distance naked.
Andrea decides to stare into the candle, which in the past transported her to the white dimension. It doesn’t work this time so she runs back to the phone booth to feel it up. After Piero stares at the crack in his ceiling some more, he decides to not go back to the bookstore, but to also go and mope in the phone booth. Honestly, this is where the film should have quit while it was ahead. We could have just chalked him not sticking around, not returning to the bookstore, and her not looking up the radio station to two people who had a sudden connection, but were easily scared back into isolation. They had both returned to the place they shared a meeting, and would have never seen each other again. People do that kind of thing in real life. It’s not unrealistic. Unfortunately, the movie goes on for another 10 minutes.
We cut to Andrea and she tries calling the radio station where he works, but they moved. More jump cuts ultimately make this task impossible for her. She also has the painting of the sea the editing gave us the impression was at his place earlier.
After she has a conversation with her creepy co-worker about love, we cut to what could have been, as they have a meeting on the bridge that never happened. We get some of that sweet 80’s music video black and white like in Simply Red’s If You Don’t Know Me By Now.
Or if you can forgive some of the grain, then the black and white from Debbie Gibson’s Only In My Dreams. Black and white took the place of color in the 80s for dream sequences.
Again, it could stop here too, but it continues. Piero goes on the radio to say more dialog that probably ties in with the story, but I don’t care about. Both Andrea and Piero go to a train station and miss each other there because what would a movie like this be without a train scene with the characters missing each other?
The big problem here is that the longer this missing each other and trying to find each other stuff goes on, you just keep wondering more and more why he doesn’t go back to the bookstore. He even returns to the movie theater, but apparently the bookstore is off limits.
Andrea is now bothered at the bookstore by a little kid and out of focus camera obstructions at the bottom of the frame…
so she returns to the park from earlier. Those street performers finally have their time to shine, which culminates in tossing her a glass globe before running away. She goes home because that’s where the jump cuts live. They help her this time because she gets a call with an address of where Piero resides. Then it’s time for her to do the Seberg run.
Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
She arrives at his place and stands in his doorway staring. It cuts to the white dimension to show her naked, then back to him naked looking out his window. Then cut to the beach from the start of the film where he says, “I once dreamed she was coming to me and looked at me.” End of movie.
So, what part was real? Any of it? Was this one of those movies with an unreliable narrator like this one.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, dir. Alain Resnais)
Maybe he’ll return to the bookstore in a year to try and convince her they had a thing once while playing a symbolic game with her creepy co-worker.
If you feel like Monica Vitti looks here…
L’Avventura (1960, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
then I don’t blame you.
It’s obvious that Orlando Bosch put a lot of thought into making this movie, but he forgot a few things. The first is that it was 2015 when he released this movie. These art film cliches were old by the time The Lovers on the Bridge came out in the 90s after being filtered through MTV. I don’t care if they were metaphors for something else as one user review I read somewhere says. They are endless and really grate on the nerves. You stop caring what they could possibly be there for, and just want them to stop.
He also couldn’t have picked a worse 60’s art film director to focus on than Antonioni. Ingmar Bergman is even quoted on IMDb as not liking him, which of course is somewhat hilarious since he died on the same day as him. Even my first film class book makes special note about the criticism about his work: “All his characters live lives that are boring and empty, meaningless and sterile and that his films are accordingly boring, sterile and abstract.” A view I do not share. Antonioni just seems to be the trend these days so I’m guessing that’s why he went with it. I’ve seen it show up in many films of the past 25 years that cover similar themes to this film. You can even say that The Time Machine (I Found at a Yard Sale) (2011) tried to do the Antonioni thing.
It’s annoying and it has holes in the script when it doesn’t end at the right time. Just let this stuff go. All of these films are readily available if people want to revisit them. There’s no need to compile a best of collection. Leave them in the past, and move on. They are perfectly captured and preserved. I hope Bosch takes the talent he seems to have, and puts it into his own work, with his own style.
Finally, I’ve reached the last one of the Sal V. Miers late night cable movies currently available. This is the second best one after Bikini Model Mayhem (2016). Again, Miers politics are all over this one like they were in Bikini Model Mayhem. He also added some of his love for Old Hollywood into the mix. Let’s dig in.
After another one of those annoying title cards that I had to black box, we are introduced to one of our main characters and a guy who will disappear as fast as he did Bikini Model Mayhem.
That’s Officer Supansky on the right. He’s played by Robbie Carroll who needed to be convinced to support G.W. Bushwacker in Bikini Model Mayhem. On the left is Felicity who is played by Katie Morgan. You may remember her as playing the first robot we were introduced to in Bikini Model Mayhem and the warden in Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016). This film is much more of an ensemble cast movie than Bikini Model Mayhem or Bad Girls Behind Bars. He is not actually revealed to be a cop quite yet. He is here to hire her for a whopping $50. She doesn’t think that’s enough. I’m pretty sure what he does next would be considered entrapment. He strips butt naked. That apparently makes things totally different for her. Of course we can’t see that for no good reason except this is late night cable. In fact, just after she goes in with her mouth, it cuts to the outside of the building. Then it goes back inside for the standard game of hide the penis while the guy stays in a Zen like trance and either the girl goes over the top or tries to match his intensity. I believe this is the only time I’ve seen the male actors sweat, or at least appear to sweat. Once that business is over with he proves himself to be the dick they can show.
No seriously, his full name is Dick Supansky. Then I learn another interesting phrase from a Miers’ movie. According to her, he “got his ashes hauled.” I still prefer the burping of the worm joke from Bad Girls Behind Bars. He offers her an alternative to going to jail. She can go participate in a ridiculous plot so the movie can make a political statement instead of having to serve time. She of course takes his offer instead of jail because we already had that movie.
Before we get to find out what she is going to have to do, we are introduced to a character that honestly had me worried. I know having a character who has “cognitive disabilities” didn’t stop the movie Forrest Gump (1994) from him having sex. Regardless, it had me worried, but there’s a payoff to this.
That’s Charlie played by Brandon C. Greene. He works as the janitor at a science facility. In the end, it’s his film as he slowly but surely emerges from the background.
From right to left that’s easy to manipulate (Otto Bauer), harder to manipulate (Pristine Edge), and hardest to manipulate (Ryan McLane). Pristine Edge. I like that one. I also like that if you change Otto and Ryan to Jack and John, then you get Jack Bauer and John McLane.
Next we meet the two ladies who will be joining Felicity.
That’s Piper on the left played by Erika Jordan and Violet in the middle played by Dillion Harper. We find out that 18 months prior, the scientists made contact with aliens from Venus because of course they did. Also because of course they did, they want to use a mind transfer device to put three people from Venus in their bodies. Felicity is a little confused. Not as confused as Violet though since she thought the scientists meant they would baking cookies to host a party for the people from Venus. Felicity wonders why the three of them are ideal candidates. I mean she’s a hooker, Piper is a drug runner, and Violet jaywalked after she robbed a liquor store. The scientists explain the deal. First, they don’t have much choice. Two, the people from Venus insisted on attractive women. Felicity still thinks this is weird, but I know this would seal the deal for me.
That’s a face you can trust. However, they aren’t convinced yet. That’s when they leave the lab set of Bikini Model Mayhem to talk outside of what looks like a house painted blue. Let’s get the political commentary in here now. Felicity says it sounds scary, Violet says “they are scientists”, Felicity says “What does that have to do with anything?”, and Piper asks her if she is a Republican.
Time for Old Hollywood. Felicity says it all seems a little too Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Violet says Freaky Friday. I think we can safely say she is referring to the Lindsay Lohan version considering Felicity responds with “there’s no accounting for taste.” It’s sad, but I haven’t seen either version or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. No, they don’t make the joke at the start of a sex scene about Who’s On First.
Anyhow, they decide to do it so Piper steps inside of a shower…
and emerges as Zorax. Felicity becomes Zonondor. Violet becomes Zimbabwe. The movie is on auto-pilot now. The three visitors from Venus are here to drain the scientists of their smarts via an orgasm, or the “little death” as they call it. They aren’t really worried about the male ones, which is why they insisted on attractive women to be their hosts. They didn’t know that “one of the greatest minds on Earth” could be female based on their “survey of Earth’s popular culture.” Zorax says this, to which Zonondor corrects her that this was true “at least, not up until the 1960’s.” Very true. We didn’t even get Space Mutiny till 1988 and the MST3K episode on it till 1997.
David Ryder: Listen, lady!
Lea Jansen: Doctor!
David Ryder: Doctor!
Crow: Doctor Lady!
Also, harder to manipulate must have been bisexual as all women in late night cable movies are because it just takes Zorax saying she saw a spider for her to be all over her. They are also bisexual presumedly because that stuff is much easier than playing hide the sausage from the camera. The hardest to manipulate is that way because he and hard to manipulate are an item. He eventually caves in and is turned into a blabbering idiot like his colleagues.
During all of this, Charlie has become more and more of a prominent character as he finds a pair of panties and notices these very smart people he works around are acting like children. He’s onto the visitors from Venus. He has a nice little conversation with the ladies. He explains that he knows he’s not the smartest person around. He knows he’s stuck taking care of the scientists since the universe of this movie stops at the edge of the set. They tell him smarts aren’t everything. He tells them that it’s still helpful. He’s also not 100% convinced that these visitors really are doing this for the greater good to prevent Earth from coming after Venus. He explains that the scientists could have done great things, but now they are helpless. Ultimately, he proposes that while he believes they could have focused their smarts on problems at home instead of space exploration, why not leave their smarts with him. The visitors had already made it clear that the smarts they got from the scientists were really of no use to them.
Of course his argument is solid and so is another part of him because that’s the only way the transfer is going to work.
With the ladies given their bodies back, they depart to leave Charlie to get to work. Oh, but before Felicity leaves, she actually offers her services to Charlie who says he already had that while she was out. Charlie decides to roll up his sleeves and get to work.
So, let’s say you strip out all of the sex from this movie. You have three white scientists who are interested in exploring space. Three women are given a chance to be a plot device instead of going to jail. One of which was arrested by a cop who took advantage of her because according to him: “I can.” Three visitors from Venus come to Earth because they believe these three white scientists are going to use their intelligence to ultimately attack them. They deliberately insist on attractive female bodies because they are convinced by Earth’s popular culture that the scientists can only be straight men. They drain the three scientists of their smarts. A lightly mentally handicapped black man figures them out. He convinces them to give him their smarts with the concession that he’ll focus on problems here on Earth. Interesting.
Then just like Bad Girls Behind Bars, we get a blooper reel. It’s far more complete though. The only part of it that is noteworthy is when you can hear Miers speaking. Miers says, “I’m rolling sound…unlike when I started in this business. Buster Keaton, he was, he was great.”
I couldn’t find that explicit quote doing a cursory Google search, but it certainly fits Keaton.
Here is how I rank the three Sal V. Miers movies currently available through the Cinemax/HBO apps:
I don’t read comic books. I’m not a big fan of superhero movies. I’m not particularly a fan of the Marvel movies we have been getting. I couldn’t get my hands on the 70’s Captain America movies. Jedadiah had the nerve to write about the Turkish Captain America movie before I started writing on Through the Shattered Lens. I don’t really even recall much about the Chris Evans’ Captain America movies except he’s kind of lovable, but vapid. None of that matters. This is pure cheesy fun. The only real crime this movie commits is not having a budget. That, and I think they thought they were making a Bond film. Let’s dig in because to not talk about this film in detail would be an injustice.
This movie drops you right into something that just screams Captain America: 1936 Italy.
Get used to title cards. This movie has a bunch of them even when they aren’t necessary, or don’t make any sense. We are introduced to a child prodigy when the movie bothers to subtitle the actors speaking foreign languages so we can actually know what’s going on. I thought I had a dubbed version of this movie for awhile. In come the Nazis or Fascists and they take the kid and kill his family. A tape recorder is running during this because he was playing the piano. It winds up recording the murder of his family.
Now it’s off to Fortress Lorenzo. I know this because the title card tells me so.
We are here because we need to watch the bad guys looking at stock footage of a white rat. Then the grand reveal!
Okay, they are working with a low budget, but that is simply a rat they have turned into Red Skull Rat. We do actually get a real Red Skull (Scott Paulin) when they put the kid in what looks like an electric chair.
There’s a female scientist (Carla Cassola) here who doesn’t like what is being done to this kid and escapes as they zap him. What part is she going to play in this movie? Wait for it later. It’s kind of awesome and really stupid.
Now we cut to 7 Years Later, which means 1943 because again, title cards told me so. Two of them in case I can’t add and to make sure I know that 7 years have past for…um…reasons? Now we are at the White House, which is in Washington, D.C. Thank goodness for this title card. Otherwise, I might have been confused.
We find out that the scientist lady who escaped 7 years prior in 1936 Italy from Fortress Lorenzo perfected a process of taking a boy with birth defects and making him “as fast and as strong as an athlete” in America. Hitler already has Red Skull at this point. They plan to have a regiment of super soldiers and Steve Rogers has volunteered to be the first. You might be thinking right now that the few lines of dialog that were subtitled earlier mentioned how old the kid was so that adding 7 years would explain how Red Skull will appear as an adult. Of course not.
Now we go to Redondo Beach, California via another title card.
Meet 1990’s Captain America (Matt Salinger)!
I did not try to catch him with looks like that on his face. He does that all on his own throughout this movie. He limps around and says goodbye to the family and girlfriend. Now it’s off to a top secret diner with scientist lady. They get there one week later. I know this because another title card tells me so.
It would have been very confusing without it. At least I thought it was them. It turns out it’s a couple of military guys who proceed to go through a secret entrance in the cloakroom and down to an underground lab. Of course Senator Kirby is there.
Is that Jack Kirby? He really does call him Senator Kirby. He is also the only person he greets by name for no reason. They’ve kept all the details about this a secret between one guy and the lady because once they die, the movie can just randomly give Captain America his things without having to explain anything. How fast does that happen?
Zap him!
I love how during this they cut several times to parts of his body that don’t appear to change to show he is getting stronger. His vitals signs are stable. Thank God! Also, thank God for plot convenience because there’s a traitor in their midst you see. He immediately shoots and kills both the guy and the scientist before getting himself electrocuted. Captain America also takes a bullet to the chest.
Don’t worry about him. We now cut to him lying in a bed.
I can’t tell you how much time has passed, where this bed is located, or if this building is the White House or not because there wasn’t a title card to tell me so. Taking a bullet to the chest is really going to put the Captain down for awhile, right? I mean he’s not Superman or anything. They even said that earlier. That’s not a issue for 1990’s Captain America. He hears something about the bad guys having a launch site and he’s up and ready in the blink of an eye.
Then we cut to footage of a plane from so far back that we can’t tell it isn’t actually from 1943 or whenever it is now. He now has his uniform and his shield. The uniform is apparently fireproof and looks like it does because the scientist lady loved the red, white, and blue.
Captain America says that there’s something nobody has talked about. It’s that he would like some backup. Captain America wasn’t paying attention earlier. Since the traitor killed off the guy and scientist lady, he is the only one of his kind. Captain America jumps out of the plane and within seconds is spotted.
Then with probably the best special effects this movie has to offer, he throws the shield to knock down a guard tower. Cut to Red Skull who apparently is psychic because an alarm going off automatically means it’s Captain America.
Meanwhile, Captain America is outside probably wondering why it’s necessary for him to be wearing the uniform when there’s no fire around. That’s of course when he blows some stuff up to make his own fire before entering the launch site. He spots Red Skull, says “holy mackerel”, and greets him by throwing his shield at him. Red Skull catches it without any trouble.
He throws the shield into the ground. Red Skull proceeds to beat Captain America up and straps him to a rocket.
He mentions New York while he is strangling Captain America, but then tells him the rocket is going to the White House. Captain America grabs Red Skull’s hand to make him come along for the ride so Red Skull cuts off his own hand, and the missile launches. Now we cut to Washington, D.C. again.
I’m not sure where in Washington, D.C. though because the title card doesn’t tell me this time. It cuts to another building and then to what I think is a hotel room. There’s a kid there who is up at 4 A.M. because he wants to see the president since the title card said the set he is on is in Washington D.C. Mom puts him to bed and the kid makes a wish to be the president one day. The kid is having none of this. He gets up and grabs his decoder ring.
I’d make a joke about Ovaltine seeing as that is a Captain Midnight decoder ring, but something way better is about to happen. The kid now goes to that place we saw earlier and sees this through his camera.
Captain America sees the kid so he punches and kicks on the rocket till a wing breaks off. The rocket nearly hits the kid.
Then the rocket misses the building. That’s right. Captain America kicked and punched a rocket he was attached to and it changed its trajectory to miss the target. You won’t see Chris Evans do that in any Captain America movie. Probably because it’s bullshit. Anyhow, we now cutaway to somewhere in Alaska.
I’m not sure where in Alaska, but it certainly is “somewhere”. Wherever it is, the rocket crashes into the ground and there is a hand in a red glove sticking out of it now. I’m not sure rockets work that way so that missing the White House would place it in Alaska, but I’m no expert. However, I am an expert at reading title cards because I now know we are in Springfield, Ohio.
This is the house of the kid from earlier who is talking to his friend about what he saw. Thanks to him we find out that was the White House earlier. The movie also helps you to know that Captain America kicked off a wing from the rocket because if you blink during that scene you’ll miss it.
The kids decide they need to figure out who this guy on a rocket was. The blonde kid asks if he had a trident. The other kid says no, which means it wasn’t Sub-Mariner. The kid also rules out that it was the Human Torch because he would have blown up the rocket. Yes, the kids just ruled out that our current Captain America was strapped to the rocket. I would say that’s the coolest thing in this movie, but I’d be lying.
Now we fly through the decades to reach 1993. The kid grew up to be Ronny Cox who was elected as president in 1992. Ronny Cox is going to be leaving for Rome to try and negotiate a ban on “environmentally damaging industrial practices.” By that I mean he is going to Rome so that Red Skull can easily have him kidnapped.
We then cut to that place from earlier. There’s no title card, but thankfully it does look like the one that said the White House. Ronny Cox talks to a General Fleming who doesn’t like these new environmental guidelines President Ronny Cox has written up. He also isn’t happy that his leg lamp he had in A Christmas Story (1983) was broken because he’s played by Darren McGavin. Now we go to Fortress Lorenzo, Italy.
First necessary title card we’ve had in awhile seeing as the shot of this place was so dark earlier that it could have been anything. Not sure why we really need to know this is Fortress Lorenzo though seeing as they could have just used the same establishing shot and then cut to Red Skull inside or other established villains. Inside we find that Red Skull is a ventriloquist on top of being psychic because he doesn’t actually move his lips, but we hear his voice.
What’s that you say? He’s too far away in that screenshot to tell that his lips are closed? Don’t worry! His lips don’t move here either.
Finally, Red Skull decides it’s time to speak with his lips. This is when we find out that it was Red Skull that hired Sirhan Sirhan to kill Bobby Kennedy and Oswald to kill JFK. Also, it apparently cost over $22 million to kill Martin Luther King. Because doing these things were so tough and they didn’t get anything for it, he decides that instead of killing Ronny Cox, they should implant something into his brain to control him. Red Skull also isn’t so red anymore and has hair. He also wears gloves so we can’t see that he has both of his hands. I’m going to just stop calling him Red Skull at this point. He’s Red “Blofeld” Skull, or Redfeld for short.
Now we cut to Alaska.
It is the same shot from earlier, but minus the “somewhere in” and the blue tint. Some Germans from a West German Alaskan Field Station find Captain America. I know this because of an actual sign and not a title card. They brought him back in a block of ice where we get blurry shots, closeups of eyes, and ice falling on the ground. Captain America has broken right out of the ice and immediately leaves without saying a word.
Captain America doesn’t have time to talk. He only has an hour left in the movie and hasn’t even made it back to California before going on vacation in Italy. That is his shield he is holding. It was nice of Redfeld to strap his shield to the missile along with him. No really, he did strap Captain America to the rocket with his shield.
It’s off to the White House now. Ronny Cox looks at a paper filled with a lot of nonsense text that is repeated in several locations. There is also a picture taken by a scientist at the Alaskan station that he so did not take because we saw him take a picture of Captain America’s back and not a profile shot. None of that matters because as Ronny Cox is about to toss the paper onto a table, we see that 150 convicts have been released.
That must have been wonderful news for Menahem Golan who produced this movie. It meant there would be plenty of criminals on the street for Charles Bronson to shoot in Death Wish V (1994). Ronny immediately calls his old friend who now works for the Washington Dispatch, which was established in 1889. Again, I know this because an actual sign tells me. Don’t worry, the title cards come back. Ronny Cox’s old friend grew up to be Ned Beatty.
He is here because he already did Superman (1978) so he needed to balance that out with a Marvel movie. Beatty is off to find out what happened.
Then we go to Rome via a title card and are introduced to Redfeld’s daughter.
Why? Because Redfeld doesn’t do things himself anymore. He sends his daughter to deal with Captain America. How does that logic work? Redfeld couldn’t even keep his own hand against Captain America and he is a super soldier too. She’s not going to seduce him either. He is legitimately sending her to kill Captain America. Last time we saw Captain America he was in Alaska, but he has made his way to Northern Canada.
I love how it cuts to Captain America breathing heavily against a tree, to a chopper in the sky, and then to a newspaper being held by one of the bad girls that says “British Columbia Gazette”. Maybe because they realized that Northern Canada could mean he was over near Hudson Bay or that they thought their audience wouldn’t know where British Columbia was located. This did come out in 1990 (sort of) so I’m going with option number two.
The ladies immediately spot Captain America to which he gives us another great look.
Ned Beatty is also out here driving around because somehow! What follows is Captain America being chased through the forest by women on motorcycles. He throws and hits the daughter in her helmet before getting shot by her in the arm. That’s when Ned Beatty shows up because just roll with it. He asks Captain America who they were and he says Nazis.
Now we get what is probably the most ridiculous thing in the movie. As Ned Beatty talks to Captain America, he notices that Beatty has a tape recorder made in Japan and is driving a Volkswagen. Captain America isn’t looking so good here.
That’s when this happens.
Yep! Captain America just pretended to be car sick so he could steal Ned Beatty’s car. You won’t see Chris Evans do that. Most likely because Captain America isn’t supposed to be a car thief. I also love that it’s Ned Beatty in particular he leaves in the middle of the wilderness.
He keeps driving till he runs out of fuel, then gets into the back of a truck. The truck then drives by the camera with it’s back door open and ocean in the background, which means Captain America has reached California.
He also has a trench coat now and a bag conveniently big enough to hold his shield. He is very confused by this lady who probably was once an extra on Baywatch. He then finally finds his house from the beginning of the movie. A car pulls up in front of the place and this woman (Kim Gillingham) gets out.
That of course means it’s Captain America’s girl from the 1940s who looked like this.
He tries to grab her, she hits him in the head with her purse, and Captain America falls to the ground.
I guess he was crazy from the heat. Surprisingly, the credits say it is the same actress who played both roles. I don’t see it, but hair and makeup can do some amazing things. What did she have in her purse anyways that knocked him down so easily? We get a little reintroduction here between Captain America and his girlfriend in old lady makeup who is the mother of the blonde named Sharon.
Then we go back to Fortress Lorenzo where honestly Redfeld’s daughter appears to use the fact that Ned Beatty is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter as a reason that she couldn’t capture Captain America. I guess that means if Roger Ebert had been out there, then he would have also gotten Captain America to safety because he once won a Pulitzer prize. He also would have gotten his car stolen. She’s also convinced that the reporter can lead them to Captain America.
A few things happen now, but it just means that everyone knows where Captain America is now. What’s really important is that Captain America is now learning how to work a VCR.
You can see that Redfeld’s daughter wasted no time whatsoever because she has already bugged the place and is listening in from the top of the frame.
I think you know what happens now. Ned Beatty shows up and dies. Captain America’s old flame dies. Her husband winds up in the hospital. Captain America and Sharon escape Redfeld’s daughter’s wrath. During this scene we also find out that scientist lady kept a diary because Captain America needs to know Redfeld’s real name. Oh, and while they don’t show it. It appears that Redfeld’s daughter electrocuted the old girlfriend to death offscreen. She doesn’t mess around. Neither does Captain America at the end of this movie. That’s another part that’s awesome about this film. The president has also been kidnapped by 20 heavily armed men. I don’t believe that. Redfeld only uses the baddest of the bad 1980s girls that money can buy.
Things have really gotten serious, but I’ll pare you the details.
He goes to the previously secret diner, into the ladies room, knocks down a wall, and descends into the secret room. He finds the diary before having to defend himself from bad guys. Captain America really has two modes of fighting in this movie: ninja mode and street brawler mode. Either way, he wins through the power of wildly confusing editing. He wins, and it’s off to Italy with Sharon. Can you guess what happens next?
Captain America again pretends he needs to puke, then takes the car to leave Sharon behind. This time it’s even better than before. The reason is because in about 1 minute of runtime she catches up to him making that taking the car scene pointless. They are at some people’s house who give them the tape recorder from the beginning of the film, they get it fixed, and they are off to have lunch so they can be attacked.
Captain America runs away and discovers the two dumbest kids in Italy who don’t know to move when two people are running towards them with a car speeding behind the two people running towards them. Flip, confusing editing, Captain America pays for a bike, and they take that bike immediately off a cliff because it has no brakes. Captain America has no problem stealing cars, but he pays for bicycles.
During all of this action one of the ladies dropped her purse with a picture of Redfeld inside, the weather magically changes to rain, and then they start driving to Fortress Lorenzo where the weather is just fine again. The bad guys are in pursuit. Do I need to show what happens next? Nah, she gets out, spots the bad guys, runs back to the car, and drives it away to draw the bad guys away from Captain America who she has now ditched. That appears to be the running gag in this movie. She is captured and held separately in the fortress with Ronny Cox. Captain America now dons the uniform once more and somehow climbs up on this ledge.
You know the drill. Sharon and Ronny Cox escape on their own. Along with Captain America and crazy editing, they force Redfeld to a cliff where he apparently keeps his piano for some reason.
Redfeld is going to set off a bomb so Captain America pulls out the tape recorder to remind him of the child he once was. Redfeld’s daughter also shoots Captain America in the arm again here. It’s a very touching moment as he remembers, his daughter looks on, and he looks off the cliff realizing what a monster he has become. However, he still wants to set off the bomb to destroy them both so Captain America throws his shield and knocks him off the cliff.
I love how it looks like you can see someone dressed like Redfeld’s daughter push the dummy of Redfeld off the cliff.
Redfeld’s daughter picks up a gun to shoot Captain America. Captain America’s shield is still in the air and on its way back to him. He tells her “heads up”, we hear it hit her, and he catches it. We never see her body or the shield connect with her head. Captain America just severed Redfeld’s daughter’s head with his shield. I can’t think of any other explanation.
With the bad guys defeated, Captain America looks off towards the sky for some reason.
Then he appears in full uniform and transforms into his comic book character.
But there’s one final piece of information we need to know. The nations agree to an environmental protection treaty. Ronny Cox says to remember those who have “sacrificed all to make our world a better place to live.” And “to Captain America, we are all back in the fight.” They even ask you in the credits to support The Environmental Protection Act of 1990.
There is one more thing to mention here.
This movie was an American and Yugoslavian co-production. That wasn’t unusual. Jadran Film worked on many co-productions. They would fall from being a powerhouse when Yugoslavia broke up. Yugoslavia was breaking up into separate states right around 1990. That means as Yugoslavia was about to break into separate states, they co-produced a movie about one of the most nationalist and patriotic superheroes in the world.
My final thoughts on this movie are to go enjoy the new Captain America movie, then come back and have some fun with this one. At the very least, it will make you appreciate that we are getting Marvel movies now that have proper budgets, good actors, and crews that put in an effort into making the films. 1990’s Captain America approves!
I know I’m a little late to this one, but there’s a real benefit to that for me. I get to watch part two in a few days. Hallmark was originally going to wait a whole year to air the second part. However, after receiving a bunch of angry feedback, which must have been really bad, they aired the second part in March. Hallmark of course kept calling it “popular demand.” I doubt that. This is going to be a short review because there isn’t a movie here. I’m going to deflate it for you and me. If you’ve already seen The Notebook (2004), then just go watch that again. This could have easily been called Karen Kingsbury’s The Notebook. It’s also one of the most lazily produced Hallmark movies I’ve watched so far. How fast do we get to see that? Here is what it cuts to right after that shot above.
I had no idea that North Carolina moved to the metric system back in the 1990s. I also didn’t know that North Carolina moved to British Columbia, which is the only place Murchie’s exists. That’s Ted McGinley down there as Charlie. He will be a slightly altered psychic version of himself from The Note movies. Inside we find Donna played by Faith Ford.
It also looks like Karen Kingsbury can time travel back to 1997 to place her book released in 2015 on the shelves. It will pop up in other places too. There are of course other recent books back in 1997 as well.
They meet over a copy of Slow Road to Brownsville by David Reynolds, fall in love, get married, she gets pregnant, it’s stillborn, and suddenly they get the idea to create a bookstore in order to get over their loss by helping others via that bookstore. Bookstore made! Enter the kids of the film.
Now we meet every rich young girl heading off to college.
I’m really glad this is a Hallmark movie and not a Lifetime movie, or that shot would probably mean something totally different. Her name is Molly (Katie Findlay) and she’s from a mansion with text floating below it that tells us we are now in “Seattle 2009”. The back of that head belongs to every father who wants their kid to go to college so they can come back and take over the family business. He is played by actor Steve Bacic. Another guy comes into the room here. That sentence alone is about as much acknowledgment of his character this movie gives him. We also find out that Molly and her best friend are actually 300 years old on top of her friend being cute and funny. Those lines and a few others are there because they didn’t have much faith in Katie Findlay and Steve Bacic to convey their relationship to us with their face and body language even though they both did that perfectly. Especially Steve Bacic who comes prepackaged with the face that instantly says that.
Then this happens.
Not sure what happened with the camera there, but moving on. We also find out that her mother is dead because Hallmark, and that Molly has no major. That doesn’t sound odd. She’s a freshman.
Anyways, we are now off to Nashville, Tennessee. Molly nearly walks into oncoming traffic so that her love interest for the movie can rescue her. His name is Ryan (Wyatt Nash) since going with Noah would be too obvious considering a storm is going to wipe out the bookstore in part two.
That thing popping up behind him is a guitar because he’s a musician. They go to sign up for classes and keep finding that they are picking out the same ones. They say it’s to “step outside [their] comfort zone.” He immediately takes her to The Bridge, which is the name of the bookstore. We again find there are Karen Kingsbury books all over the place. Also, Karen has once again used her powers of time travel to make a cameo.
If R.L. Stine can use his ability to slide into different dimensions in order to appear in Goosebumps (2015), then I’m fine with this.
Upon meeting Molly, Charlie immediately is able to tell that she has traveled out of the country, is a sport’s fan, and she loved The Little House Series as a kid. Ryan says Charlie is a magician, but I’m waiting for part two where I’m sure he’s going to turn out to be a Whitelighter. He’s as devoid of self as Brian Krause’s character was on that show. So is Ryan for that matter.
This all goes exactly where you think it does. They look around and he drops her out on a trail to walk home through the forest.
I know that they later explain this as her trying to hide that her Dad has her setup in a great place and she is trying to hide that from him, but this still came across as weird.
Ryan decides to take Molly on a tour of Franklin, Tennessee. He says, “Most people head straight for Nashville, but Franklin is really hitting its stride.” I agree, it is well on its way to turning into Oak Bay, British Columbia as those street signs and banner behind them announce to the audience.
They have some more back and forth, then it’s back to the forest for Molly.
There’s a lot of talking and it is a bit tough to tell how much time has past. It all amounts to them having something they want to do, but needing a kick in the butt in order to follow through with it. That, and even after she tells him about living in a great house, he still leaves her in the forest. She also gives him a copy of Jane Eyre. Never read it, but I have seen I Walked With A Zombie (1943), which probably is the weirdest film adaptation of that book.
Some blonde shows up now for the same reason as the guy from the beginning and is as worth mentioning as a single sentence affords. We need to keep moving cause we have plenty less of this movie to talk about.
Quick scene of Charlie harassing his wife to come to church with him.
No, he doesn’t quote the title of his 2015 movie Do You Believe?, and he gives in to go see a cheesy action flick. Would have made my day if he said the local theater was doing a retrospective of 90s action films and they were going to show Blue Tornado (1991).
The main thing the movie revolves around is an assignment to make a video about where he is going to be in 10 years that Ryan has been given. On the Charlie and Donna side, it’s figuring out that bookstores aren’t just a checkout counter and never really were in order to keep afloat.
Then…well…things sure happen. Sort of. They just spend time together. She starts coming around to not taking over the family business. We find out he can’t sing, but the movie tells us he is amazing and he is offered a chance to drop out to go on tour with someone. You aren’t missing anything. Oh, we do find out that Charlie really likes Christmas!
He also believes that dogs have every right to be chefs.
More things happen. Blah. Then this occurs.
Yes, those three things do happen in quick succession. We see Douglas Sirk snow outside, Ryan says “it’s snowing”, and then Ryan and Molly step outside to no snow falling. It doesn’t start up again either.
Stuff happens and Molly’s cellphone magically goes from being lit to dark a couple of times between camera cuts during a single conversation. That part was at least entertaining.
Ryan and Molly are apart. Charlie and Donna are still together. Donna still won’t go to church with him. And to be continued…
I jumped over scenes, but you missed nothing. They are just people in front of a camera doing and saying nothing of consequence. In other words, it’s like watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014). The Bridge is the classic tale of a writer who took a bunch of romance cliches, arranged them into a religious allegory, Hallmark saw what they thought was a gold mine, threw as little money as possible at it, delivered a movie where nothing happens or is resolved, told people they’d have to wait a year for the conclusion, and then were told that was unacceptable by their audience so they aired part two a few a months later. I haven’t read the book, but to give Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt, I would be pissed to see my work turned into this if I were her.
I’ve only glanced at the plot summary for part two, but I’m guessing her stillborn pregnancy isn’t water under The Bridge. It will reappear as a literal storm that destroys the bookstore. Charlie will die in the comfort of his religion and with her side at his side. Donna will come to the Church. The movie will still think we actually care about the two young actor’s story who are there just to have a happy ending contrast to the patchwork life led by Donna and Charlie. Finally, Ryan and Molly will have a kid that will be the grandchild Donna never had after she and Charlie largely adopted Ryan and Molly in their own way. At least that’s what I am expecting.
I have to watch part two at this point, but you don’t have to watch either of them.
Sure looks like the same place from On the Twelfth Day of Christmas and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery. It may be the same place as in those movies, but I’m not sure. This is North Bay, Ontario you are looking, which is where the film was shot. That’s a step up here since last time they put the title card over a shot of Littleton, New Hampshire.
It looks like these Flower Shop Mystery movies are a thing now. I don’t mind. Especially not when they are written by good old Gary Goldstein. It seems you can always count on a Hallmark film written by Goldstein to have something odd in it. I would love to know if these things are in his scripts and if he does it on purpose, or if it is just a strange coincidence. Regardless, this one is no exception.
The Chicago Cafe has still been changed to the Chicago Bar. Although, you will see Marco (Brennan Elliott) walk around the kitchen of his “bar” carrying groceries. Not sure what that was about. Art On Main has also still been changed to Bloomers Flower Shop via a tarp. It looks fine on her shop, but I don’t get why they bothered with his place. Also, if you go to Google Maps, then you’ll find a Asian character next to the word “Chicago”. I’m guessing that was photoshopped out or the place changed between July 2015 and when they made this. That’s possible seeing as it changed drastically between September 2013 and 2015 according to photos on Google Maps. I lean towards photoshopping because of a scene later, but let’s move on and talk about the movie now.
The movie begins and we get three for the price of one with this screenshot.
First, Abby Knight (Brooke Shields) has been sent money anonymously to deliver black roses to someone. Second, Abby’s assistant Nikki Bender (Kate Drummond) was just reminded she truly works for a nutcase. Turns out Abby already compared the handwriting to signatures on old receipts. She also said she couldn’t get DNA off the envelope flap because it is self-adhesive. That is Nikki’s reaction. That was me when I saw a shot later in this film. Finally, they put the two prominent actors from Degrassi in the same cast listing. But that’s not all!
That’s right! Someone involved with these movies realized they accidentally called it Mills College in the first film. They make sure you know they fixed it. Yes, the plot does revolve around the college, but they show that name a lot. They also have a scene where the news gets the name of the flower shop wrong and they repeatedly yell at the screen to correct them.
We find out that the black roses are for a Bruce Barnes (Daniel Kash) who happens to be the pre-law professor for Abby’s daughter Sydney (Celeste Desjardins). Abby is apparently terrified of him. We also find out that Kenny (Ricardo Hoyos), her TA, is the only thing keeping her in the class. It is pretty cool when your TA is Zig Novak from Degrassi.
Marco now comes in to remind us he still exists. Normally that would be me trying to be funny and cynical, but he seriously only gets in a couple of words before Abby is off and running to the college. Abby runs into an old lawyer friend of hers who teaches at the college. I think this screenshot sums up how much she likes him.
They had some bad experiences in the past. Abby does bring up that up that he “dated and dumped half of [her] friends.” However, I don’t think it helps when one of your answers to that is “I showed every one of your girlfriends a great time, and I would’ve shown you the same, if you’d ever given me a chance.” So, it was all but her that he went out with rather than just half, and he would have shown all of them a “great time.” Good work, pal! No seriously, good job! You made sure no one will care when you are dead. A case they both once worked on that he won is also brought up here to give us information for the ending of the movie.
After talking with her daughter so Sydney can setup a red herring by telling us the guy getting the black roses has famous black pencils, she goes to his office. But first, we have to pass by his secretary to introduce her character and find out there is some obvious friction between her and the professor.
He likes black pencils, is being delivered black roses, and has a black secretary. I totally didn’t spot that while watching the movie. Then we meet Bruce. She winds up calling him a “tool” to Marco, but this site isn’t Hallmark. His character is an asshole. Plain and simple. That’s all you really need to know about him. This is just another setup for Abby to become the prime suspect in the murder that is about to happen. This happens because Abby doesn’t put up with assholes. She decides to turn around outside and go right back to his office after having initially left the building.
Actor Jeff Teravainen has part of a black pencil glued to his chest and isn’t moving. He’s dead. That’s when Abby runs out to get help and I realize just how obvious this film tried to make who the killer is so I’m skipping this part. All you need to know is that no one but Abby was in their with the body. I love how they have Brooke refer to the black roses as “theme roses.” It’s too bad he doesn’t ask what theme. This whole bit is the equivalent of an old murder mystery movie where the detective says the killer is somewhere in this room so nobody leave the house.
She returns to the shop where Marco and Abby have a little back and forth about Abby keeping a “low profile.” Then we find out that this must be the official news station of Hallmark movies…
Then we meet Connor McKay of the Illinois-Eagle Times.
Pat Mastroianni can call himself whatever he wants in this movie, but he will always be…
Degrassi Junior High
in my heart. By the way, between him and actor Ricardo Koyos, that means we have an actor from the first episode of Degrassi-discounting The Kids of Degrassi Street-and an actor from the most recent episode of Degrassi in the same movie together. That’s awesome! Sadly, he’s barely in the movie. Maybe he’ll be a recurring character seeing as the press is bound to keep popping up in these movies.
Now it’s time to vent to Beau Bridges, which also reminds us he exists because he’s gone as fast as Marco. This is followed by another fly over of the actual place they filmed this in. I can’t tell you how refreshing this is after that last few Hallmark movies I watched that pieced together stock footage from all over the place. Along those lines, I give them credit for this too.
Often when a Hallmark movie shows a newspaper or an article online then they just use someone else’s writing. Sometimes they slightly modify it. The first film did it. That’s probably here as well, but they made sure to put this wrapping on it so that I wasn’t able to notice. Good work!
The detective comes in to remind us that Abby had knocked over pencils in the professor’s office earlier so that her fingerprints would be on the one that killed the guy. With his lines done, actor Paulino Nunes makes his exit. He has to get back to beating out other actors for having the highest number of acting credits in a lifetime. He’s a busy man.
Now the suspects board comes out.
I hope you like that board because you will be looking at it and listening to a lot of conversations around it during this movie. Explaining all the info dropped at this board would be really boring. So, let’s laugh at this lady’s shocked look on her face when she sees Abby, who is now famous as a potential murderer, walking on the street.
On the upside for Abby, business has picked up since she has become a prime suspect in a murder. People all want those black “revenge roses”. Nikki says they are “for bad occasions. Arguments, divorces, breakups, just to say ‘I hate you’.” That part is immediately followed by a scene with the detective where Brooke Shields does this after venting about the dead man, which included calling him a “womanizer”.
After Marco and Abby talk to each other, they go on a stakeout like they did in the first movie. This time it’s of the dead guy’s funeral on the ground floor of a building with windows. Marco heads in to scope things out while Abby uses her binoculars. Joey Jeremiah stops by her car to remind us he is still in the movie before leaving again. In here Marco gets in a conversation with the dead guy’s wife so I can be proven wrong part way through writing this review. Turns out it’s “Chicago Bar and Grill”. He even calls it a restaurant. This only leaves me more confused. We can clearly see neighboring businesses have their real names. Well, they did seem to remove where it says “Lingerie & Luxuries” on Cintra May’s, which is next door to his Bar and Grill, but still. I guess they thought it would constitute official endorsement, or maybe that’s what it was called in the book. I don’t know.
We are also reminded that Barnes is a jerk to his secretary. Kenny also shows up to the funeral to again remind us he is in the movie still. I really think this movie wanted you to constantly think that it had to be one of the actors from Degrassi since they are kind of on the periphery of all the action. Heck, Joey is actually seen in the background looking in Abby’s flower shop in the dark at one point. We also learn that Kenny was real friendly with a guy who was involved in a case awhile back.
Board time!
Abby goes and talks with Kenny who mentions some internship that the dead guy supposedly secured him. He also mentions that the dead guy had just split up with a woman so that we suspect the secretary.
This is when Kelly Taylor popped up to tell me it’s time to dance.
I will not! I looked through a bunch of episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 to find an onscreen writing credit for Gary Goldstein to include here, but failed. I’m not happy. Help me, Beau!
Yeah, but I’m not supposed to eat ice cream anymore. However, we’ve now reached the point where you have the setup of this film. I could take you through the rest, but it would be me regurgitating their mulling over the board and getting information to add to that board by talking to people. It’s as boring as it sounds.
My final thoughts are these. They dropped the extra guy who was in the first one. That’s a plus. Another plus is that they didn’t have to do any setup so we could cut right to Marco and Abby solving a mystery. However, I swear I remember more snappy screwball comedy back and forth between them in the first film, and it just isn’t here. Luckily, we do have another one of these films coming in June. Gary seemed to try to improve between the first and second, so maybe the third one will bring in more of that kind of dialogue. Also, the board thing really gets annoying. It didn’t help to organize the facts, but seemed to just confuse me more. Maybe that was the intention. Regardless, I can’t recommend this one even if it did have Pat Mastroianni in it who I really hope will be playing a recurring character.
Now, if you want to know who did it, then scroll past this picture of another fine moment of Joey Jeremiah from Degrassi Junior High. This was back when he was probably small enough that Brooke Shields could have easily broken him in half. He’s really tiny in that first episode.
There are no songs to include this time so you can stop here.
Okay, here you go. Kenny did it. He had worked on a case with the guy who was killed. A case Abby was on back when she worked as a lawyer. He wasn’t given the credit for his work. Kenny wanted to get away from his father. His father bribed the dead guy to not give Kenny a clerkship far away since he wanted him to take over the family business. Kenny saw an opportunity to kill the professor and blame it on Abby. He made sure to do it before the dead professor sent out any of the letters about the job. That way he could arrange to get it himself. Thus, he would escape his father.
Not too satisfying of an ending. Not too satisfying of a mystery. Not too satisfying of a movie. Skip this one.
Okay, let’s get them out of the way right up front. If you felt burned by Chance at Romance, then take a chance on Love by Chance. That’s the first joke that came to mind when I heard the title of this movie. Lucky for me, it turned out to be accurate. This is one of the best Hallmark movies I’ve seen so far. I am up to 168 at the time of writing this. The other thing is this opening piece of stock footage.
They cut to that right after a shot of the space needle, which told us this is supposed to be Seattle. There’s no way someone realistically would notice this while watching the movie, but I did when I went over my screenshots to write this review. Look at the street signs. I’m pretty sure this is stock footage from China. Either that, or it’s a Chinatown somewhere. Those street signs have Chinese characters on them and the Romanized version of those characters. I looked where they got their stock footage for this film and couldn’t find it.
Now let’s talk about the movie.
The movie opens up by reminding us that pastries exist before teasing long time Hallmark fans as to whether they can figure out if the bakery is using the same set as the kitchen from the Murder, She Baked series. It isn’t. This one is much larger whereas the kitchen in that series always felt surprisingly claustrophobic in its size. During this we are introduced to our secondary lady of the film named Claire Michaels played by Beau Garrett.
That’s right! I said secondary. This isn’t really her movie and how she ends up with Eric Carlton played by Benjamin Ayres. Hallmark knew this. It’s Brenda Strong that they interviewed on Home & Family to plug this movie, not Beau Garrett. I don’t watch the show, but this always pops up during the credits of these movies. They tease a talk with the star of the movie that you just watched.
Brenda Strong plays the mom named Helen Michaels. Despite her being in a lot of stuff over the years people probably still remember her best from the couple of episodes of Seinfeld she was is in back in the 90s as Sue Ellen Mischke. Since I don’t have that particular season of Seinfeld, you are stuck being reminded that she was in the lousy film The Leisure Class last year.
The Leisure Class (2015, dir. Jason Mann)
Or I’m sure if Lisa could, then she would have me insert a Degrassi animated GIF to describe just how much she disliked that movie.
By the way, along with Bridget Regan who was in The Magic Stocking, that makes two actors from The Leisure Class who were also in Hallmark movies in the past year.
The other main actor in this film is Brenda Strong’s husband Sam Michaels played by actor Garwin Sanford.
You have no idea how much it bothered me trying to remember where I knew this guy from. I sometimes wish Hallmark would popup a thing on the screen that would say, “Here’s where you might know such and such actor from.” In his case, he played Narim on Stargate SG-1.
He was kind of the humans go between guy with one of the very advanced races the team encountered along with the Tokra, The Nox, and The Asgard. The difference was that the Tollan were incredibly arrogant, isolationist, and thought their superior technology meant they were automatically safe from any threat. They were practically offended at the idea that someone would say they might be in trouble. In the end, their race was brutally wiped out.
Stargate SG-1
With Garwin Sanford showing up in this movie, that makes at least two major/very memorable side characters who have shown up in Hallmark movies from Stargate SG-1 in the past month with Michael Shanks being in Hearts of Spring. I especially bring up Sanford’s role on that show because if you do remember him from that series, then know that he plays the husband in a similar fashion. In Stargate SG-1 he was level-headed, kind, charming, had a bit of a child-like wonder about things, and a great deal of maturity about him and the way he spoke. That’s him in this movie to Brenda Strong’s nutty matchmaking mother. Whereas in that he was that to Amanda Tapping who incidentally was named Samantha, but was always called Sam. I’m sure that’s not a coincidence on Hallmark’s part that his name in this movie is Sam.
The parents are so much the center of attention of the movie here that I am going to kind of treat this like a Godfrey Ho movie. If you already have heard me explain what that means in another review, then you feel free to skip over this explanation. Ho was a director in Asia who popularized the cut and paste technique of filmmaking. He would take old or unreleased films from the region, shoot some footage with caucasian actors, then clumsily spliced them together. In reviewing his films, it’s common practice to review each set of footage separately, while occasionally mentioning how the two unrelated plots are connected. Sometimes you will even find the caucasian footage on YouTube edited out of the other original film. That’s how I’m going to review this movie. I’m mainly just going to tell the story as if the whole thing plays on the parents side with some minor connections to the other story since that’s really how it is.
The film opens up and meet Mom walking outside with a confidence as if she is going to break into the theme song from That Girl before coming into her daughter’s bakery
She really tries to set up her daughter. She even just gave out her phone number to a guy. She is holding a party at her daughter’s bakery so that she can attempt to set her up again while also trying to help out her business.
At the party Mom is trying to explain to her daughter who this man is that she called out of the blue. This is also when we find out Mom and Dad are about to go globetrotting. At least that’s the plan. Enter Dad!
A little side thing to mention. The actor on the right in the picture below, named John Cassini, is excellent in this.
He’s one of those quality characters actors that can make a big difference in a movie. His character’s name is Marco and is the daughter’s close friend at the bakery.
The attempt at matchmaking continues from the party into the kitchen. After complimenting her on her smile and sealing the deal on her going on a date with a guy, she gives a smile herself that either says, “that’s my daughter!” or, “I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”
I love Brenda Strong in this.
I gotta give it to this first guy she goes out with. He’s kind enough to realize that she is going to need a lot of wine to get through his boring story.
At home, Mom and Dad are having a conversation about their daughter finding love. While Mom is preoccupied with finding her daughter a lover, he is wondering what ever happened to them spending their retirement together. That will be the main part of this story. The Mom becoming so obsessed that the Dad all but up and quits the idea of going to Italy. If he were an idiot he would have even thought she was cheating on him at one point.
Now Mom goes too far and signs up her daughter on a dating website. I know it’s a Hallmark cliche, but this may be the first Hallmark movie since The Color of Rain that I’ve seen what I am quite sure is Linux showing up in a Hallmark movie.
Who cares that the URL isn’t quite right because it’s Brenda Strong using Linux! That’s awesome.
We also have the return of the use of IMDb publicity photos within the movie.
Mom actually sets up a date with this guy. No, I don’t mean that she tells her daughter to meet with this guy. I mean that she actually meets with the guy at a bar and tries to sell him on her idea of meeting her daughter. I love when he asks her if she’s done this before. You’d expect an answer like, “No, but I’m desperate to find her someone.” Nope! She just casually mentions that she has done it twice already before continuing with her pitch as if there is nothing unusual going on. Luckily, the fact that the camera keeps cutting behind these things…
doesn’t prevent the guy on the right from jumping in. That’s Dr. Eric Carlton (Benjamin Aryes). He’s actually there waiting for someone, but she’s called away on the grounds that this is a Hallmark movie as soon as she shows up. After telling him that “Doctor Gorgeous” isn’t for him, she gives him his card and actor Benjamin Ayres gives us a great look on his face.
He tries to pass this off to “Doctor Gorgeous” as her just being a real estate agent. Ha! Mom isn’t going to be dissuaded by any of this.
Mom shows up the next day at his practice, it turns out the secretary/nurse knows her, and she immediately uses that to coerce him into going to get coffee with her. Cue Benjamin’s face!
Just as he’s leaving, a colleague of his says out loud, “Why can’t I ever meet older, married women?”
This is when Mom goes into full real estate agent/matchmaker mode. She actually convinces him here, and this sales pitch continues outside.
It’s about here where we find out that at least part of this movie was filmed in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. I think that’s a new one on me for a Hallmark movie.
Mom has invited him to a fundraising gig to meet her daughter. The fundraiser is being held at a gallery that is actually at 3045 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3J6, Canada.
After Mom tries to pry her daughter for some details, Mom and him meet again to talk.
Turns out he likes the daughter, but has a little problem. That problem being her mother. Think that’s gonna stop her?
After a short conversation between Mom, Dad, and their daughter we discover something.
That’s right! While this film is going on,…
I Do, I Do, I Do (2015, dir. Ron Oliver)
Autumn Reeser is about to enter her own version of Groundhog Day and…
Hearts of Spring (2016, dir. Marita Grabiak)
Lisa Whelchel is about to enter the Mommy Blogger’s Convention.
This building is clearly the romantic nexus of Hallmark films.
Now Dad is starting to get really confused about what happened to them enjoying their retirement.
Mom meets with Eric again and tells him that it has to be her to tell the daughter she set this up. Mom now tries to find a way to tell her daughter by setting up a shopping trip with her. Dad is getting more fed up with all of this.
On this trip, the daughter drops into the conversation that one of the things she loves about her new relationship is that “somehow we found each other.” She says it’s just “like you and Dad.” Of course, it will turn out that it was no chance Mom met Dad either. Another great look from Brenda Strong that sums up her character at this point quite nicely.
Now Mom and Dad have a conversation over a map of Italy. This is probably the most adult and realistic conversation you’ll hear in a Hallmark movie.
While Brenda Strong has the majority of the scenes in this movie, Garwin Sanford plays every single one of his scenes perfectly.
Mom has a heart to heart with Eric, but this is where things go really wrong…sort of. The Uncle (Peter Graham-Gaudreau) of the family sees Mom and Eric on a bridge talking, snaps a photo, and goes to Dad with it. Dad is preoccupied at first with a fountain that looked smaller online, but then he hears the Uncle out. To which we get this.
He immediately goes to the computer and finds out that his wife set up their daughter on a dating website. How it was all just sitting there instantly waiting to be discovered or why she was looking at dating profiles for a guy named George who is using location manager Braden Jennings’ picture or Producer, Cinematographer, and owner of Bass Tracks films Stefan Berrill going under the name of Neal, we are never told. Dad goes and has a long talk with Mom. She confesses that she kind of setup their meeting up too. It’s sweet and all, but he knows that their daughter might not see what she did so nicely the way he does concerning their meeting. However, at the end of the day they still are a long married couple that loves each other so the real outcome of their talk is that the both agree the fountain really is big.
Mom and Dad now make a full confession to the daughter. I love that one of the daughter’s responses is “Ok, so he witnessed your insanity and he still thought it was a good idea to meet your daughter?”
We now discover where the bakery is in real life.
It’s Mc Burney Coffee & Tea House at 20504 Fraser Hwy, Langley, BC V3A 4G3, Canada. Hallmark really likes shooting in Langley. If you are curious, the restaurant from Appetite For Love is just a little east along Fraser Highway from this place.
Mom has a talk with Eric, then a nice talk with Dad. They are okay, and Mom agrees to back off.
In the end, the young couple forgives all of these issues and kisses.
Meanwhile! Yes, the daughter has had her own plot this whole time. While Mom, Dad, and Eric were doing their thing and having a few scenes with the daughter, Claire and her friend Marco have been trying to prepare for a restaurant critic named The Wandering Gourmet. They mistake several people for this critic. They fuss about it. Of course that works out too.
If you’re coming to this movie to see yet another young love film with the parents played by quality actors pushed into the background, then go elsewhere. The movie is a story about a woman who is going to be leaving to go to Italy with her husband, but feels this unbearable feeling that she can’t leave without knowing her daughter has found love. In the end, she lets go of it. Of course the love thing has to work out cause it’s Hallmark, but it could have just as easily ended without that part. I think I’ve mentioned just about everyone here, but you might be wondering how Beau Garrett’s performance is here. She’s perfectly fine. There’s just not much for her to do so it’s not a performance to really judge her on. You are watching this movie for Brenda Strong, Garwin Sanford, Benjamin Ayres, and John Cassini in a good supporting role. It’s their film.
Pro tip! Don’t stay up till 3 in the morning trying to figure out the locations used in a Hallmark movie. Sure, it means you can make some nice jokes, but the next few days you are exhausted. Plus, I was going to go hiking today. Now that’s shot. Oh, and so is some guy in a shack because boat guy, shown above, showed up while “haunting bluegrass music” played according to my captions.
Now we cut to San Francisco because of the Golden Gate stock footage. Inside we meet our interior designer named Sayre Hoyle played by Shenae Grimes-Beech. Hmm…I guess she got married. However, she”ll always be Darcy from Degrassi: TNG to me. While her name is Sayre, they just call her Sar throughout the movie, or at least that’s what my captions kept saying. She’s making a sales pitch. I’m not sure what Latin gibberish on her laptop has to do with interior design,…
but when her phone goes off, she simply says “cue music” and the deal is done! Good job on the phone too!
All the shots of cellphone screens are done well in this movie. Unfortunately, the call is from Beck Merchant (Sean Faris), her father’s lawyer, telling her that her brother Danny (Kelly McCabe) is dead. She is told that she has a message on her voicemail with the details, but we cut to her office to find out her brother has left a cryptic and foreshadowing message as well.
Now we cut to a swamp to establish they are in Louisiana before cutting to this…
to make sure we don’t forget that Camden, Maine exists.
Now we meet the family lawyer Beck Merchant who represents her dad’s company called Hoyle Enterprises. He invites her back to the family estate. By the family estate, I mean the house from Unleashing Mr. Darcy.
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (2016, dir. David Winning)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (2016, dir. David Winning)
I forgot to mention that the J.R. of the family, named Huff Hoyle, is played by John Schneider. If Schneider wants that house, then he’ll have it torn down and moved from New York to Louisiana piece by piece!
Next we meet Sar’s only surviving brother Chris played by Jeremy Guilbaut.
Am I the only one that thinks Jeremy could do a good impression of Kyle MacLachlan? Take a look at this shot.
See! Also, I’m sure Schneider imports cherry pie from Twin Peaks. Only the best for his family.
Now we go inside and meet Sar’s mother Alma played by Marilyn Norry. Then the cops come in to talk to her brother, Huff, and the lawyer.
They’ve come to tell them that frogs have entered town and appear to be headed for Huff estate. That’s my requisite Frogs (1972) joke. They have actually come to tell them that the dead brother named Danny appears to have died from an accidental firearms discharge. Old cop believes that determination, but young cop isn’t so sure. He raises some good points. To the best of his knowledge Danny was never an outdoorsman so why the heck would he be out fishing where they found him. There was also no bait. The whole thing smells funny to him. But Schneider is having none of this.
Sar then talks to the lawyer and an old boyfriend named Clark comes up. This is when we go to visit Danny so that we can meet the crazy guy from this movie.
It’s funny. I can totally see this guy in another movie warning kids not to go to Camp Crystal Lake. This is Slap Watkins (Primo Allon).
We now go to a school to meet Jessica (Kristen Comerford). She’s a former close friend of Danny’s. This scene exists to tell us in no uncertain terms that not only did Danny hate fishing, but also guns. It is suspicious that he supposedly was fishing at the time and found with a gun.
Now we cut to a shot to remind us that Telluride, Colorado exists,…
before cutting inside a clothing store so that we can find out she and Clark were an item in high school before the lawyer shows up. They decide to go and talk over breakfast.
They go to Schneider’s favorite diner. He saw Rae’s at 2901 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA, and had a duplicate made in Louisiana, but with the generic name Diner. That was Rae’s one request.
All jokes and plot summary aside for a moment. Here is what the stock footage Hallmark bought for this shot from FootageBank actually looks like.
Look at how they changed the signs and added shadows to it. I’m not an expert in Photoshop so that may be incredibly easy for all I know, but I’m impressed.
Edit: Look to the comments section to find out how I was wrong to be impressed here. Chuck does a great job explaining why this doesn’t look right.
Back in the movie, the scene in the restaurant is there to tell us how the lawyer went to LSU with Chris, pledged his fraternity, and when the company lawyer retired, they hired him. The lawyer also drops the information that the father pushed for a thorough investigation after the recent death, but they found nothing so that it will be suspicious later when Sar instantly finds something the cops didn’t notice in plain sight.
Sar now goes to visit Jessica again to find out more information. We find out that Danny was well liked by the workers at Huff’s factory. She also brings up a recent accident at the plant. Apparently, as a result, Danny’s tires were slashed. Also, we discover that Danny cancelled plans for a picnic on the day he died.
Now we cut to a police station that I don’t know where it’s from, but they did the photoshopping thing to it too. This time you can actually see it just below where it says “Sheriff”.
Of course there’s an American Flag. There’s one inside too hanging on the wall. Sar’s not happy with the sheriff and neither am I. Look at that!
Guy gives Louisiana, British Columbian sheriffs a bad name. Just in case we didn’t know the sheriff isn’t on the level.
The young cop and Sar go to visit the fishing shack where they meet up with the lawyer. This scene is to tell us that her and Danny used to hide things in the walls. Sar also finds a nightclub matchbook meaning the cops didn’t do their job, or someone planted it. We go back to the house to remind us Schneider is the head of the family, wants this matchbook looked into, and we find out that Danny didn’t go to nightclubs.
Off to the family factory and we run into Clark (Sean Poague). The lawyer takes her on a tour of the factory. This is when we discover the recent accident that killed a worker is not what this cross is referring to.
A man named Sonny Holzer died a long time ago when the lawyer was a kid.
Next important thing is that we learn a reporter is saying that Danny might have been killed in revenge. Who am I kidding? It’s John Schneider going into his angry father mode again.
If the crazy guy in Hearts of Spring was the real highlight of that film, then Schneider’s outbursts in this make him the equivalent. After Schneider reluctantly leaves the room after finishing his dinner table scene, we find out from the lawyer about that recent accident. A guy named Billy Pollock died only a month prior. The story is that he was drinking a lot when it happened.
We go and meet Billy’s wife, but it really isn’t important. What’s important is that Sar appears to go onto some cross between Pinterest and Facebook.
Kind of weird, but it’s there because of the baseball photo. The people in the photo are tagged. The person in the middle is Danny and the person on right is Slap. That’s when who else but the lawyer calls her up. They go to a cajun restaurant.
You have no idea how much I searched to find where this was located. It’s a cajun food restaurant, appears to have the address 8667, and I knew the stock footage sites to search because they are in the credits of the movie, but nope. Even with all that info, this is still a mystery to me. Sometimes you have to let things go, or not because the lawyer and Sar now sit down to talk so we get some more details. Turns out that after information was leaked to the paper about the accident that killed Billy, Slap was fired and Pollack was “cut…from the payroll.” Danny was the one who had to give Slap his pink slip.
Now someone pretends they are going to run into Sar’s car with theirs while she is parked.
That doesn’t faze a Shenae Grimes! The woman survived this creeper who was just as much of a threat many years prior.
Degrassi: The Next Generation
That means it’s off to the factory so Clark can drop some info. He had stumbled upon Danny and Chris arguing because Danny thought that Billy was murdered. Chris apparently didn’t care how he died. Don’t dig up info on the company. End of story!
Now the spotlight starts to turn on Chris. That’s when Schneider bursts into the room because John knows it’s been too long since he did his thing.
This outburst winds him up in the hospital because this time it was too much for his heart. They take him to the photoshopped version of the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
We really can jump over a lot now. Slap tries to kill Sar with a knife. We have a conversation between the lawyer and Sar that hints Huff may have had something to do with the really old accident that we now learned happened 20 years ago. After Sar talks with the wife of the guy who died 20 years prior, we find out his lawyer died too. Turns out also that Huff ordered Clark to be beaten. We saw him in the hospital looking pretty bad.
Now we can really really skip over things. Slap takes Sar hostage with a gun. He ends up getting shot by the cops in Mission, British Columbia where they shot this, which is close to where they did parts of Garage Sale Mystery: Guilty Until Proven Innocent.
This is when I say, if you don’t want the ending spoiled, then stop here. I recommend this one so you can stop here if you don’t want to know the ending. To separate this from the ending below, I have embedded the famous coffee scene from the Twin Peaks inspired game Deadly Premonition since I did reference Twin Peaks earlier.
Okay, here’s the deal. Huff killed the guy 20 years prior. We also find out that his lawyer didn’t die by accident either. It turns out Beck is the son of said lawyer. He got close to the family in the hope of exposing Huff for the murder of his father and Huff’s general corruption that lead to this whole string of incidents. As for the more recent murder, that wasn’t Huff. Well, not directly. Huff told his son Clark to deal with the issue with Billy Pollock, which he did. He got Slap riled up by making sure he got fired by Danny. Slap then went and killed Danny as a result. Danny caught it on a tiny camera, which Sar found in one of those hidden places I mentioned earlier. The matchbook was placed by Beck to help lead Sar while maintaining his cover with the family. So off to jail goes Huff and Clark.
Then even in this movie it ends with a kiss between Sar and the lawyer.
I already said it, but I do recommend this one. I’m not a fan these cozy mysteries that Hallmark is churning out lately. The Gourmet Detective being an exception. This, and Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise, are just better. The cozy mystery ones tend to be too whitewashed, obvious, and sometimes they really don’t go for it. By that I mean like in Flower Shop Mystery: Mum’s The Word. They needed to cut a lot of the setup between the two crime solvers. Just let them do their thing. The acting here is good all around. I especially liked John Schneider and his over the top moments. It was also nice to see Shenae Grimes again. Those are my final thoughts. Check it out!
Through the Shattered Lens 