Lifetime Film Review: Abducted On Air (dir by Philippe Gagnon)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Whenever I find myself in need of motivation, I remember the words of Britney Spears:

You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?
You want a Maserati? You better work bitch
You want a Lamborghini? Sippin’ martinis?
Look hot in a bikini? You better work bitch
You wanna live fancy? Live in a big mansion?
Party in France?
You better work bitch, you better work bitch
You better work bitch, you better work bitch
Now get to work bitch!
Now get to work bitch!

As my fellow TSL writers can tell you, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t, at some point, shout out, “Get to work, bitch!” And while that habit has occasionally gotten me a few strange looks around the office, it definitely works. For instance, I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to write 24 film reviews in one day. I didn’t even know if it was worth the trouble. But I just thought to myself, “You better work, bitch!”

Unfortunately, that technique doesn’t work for everyone. Abducted on Air is about Sasha Bruder (Kim Shaw), a television news reporter who wants to make it to the top without actually having to actually earn it through hard work. Unfortunately, even though she has an on-air job at a local news station, it doesn’t seem like she’s heading anywhere. Her boss, Gavin (Bruce Dinsmore), doesn’t respect her and lead anchor Diane Baldwin (Perry Reeves) is the one who gets all the attention.

But then, one day, Sasha does not come into work. An investigation reveals that she was apparently abducted from the station and that her kidnapping was caught on video! For days, Sasha and her disappearance dominates the news. Where is Sasha Bruder and can she be rescued in time?

Of course, what the public doesn’t know is that Sasha set up her own kidnapping and is currently hanging out in a warehouse. Even though she insists that her co-worker, lover, and collaborator, Aidan Ferguson (Gord Rand), actually blindfold her and tie her up, that’s just so she’ll be able to bring some authenticity to her story when she eventually resurfaces.

Eventually, Sasha does decide to leave the warehouse. She emerges with a harrowing tale about how she was abducted and everything that she’s been through over the past couple of days. Sasha becomes a celebrity and is promoted to co-anchor of the morning newscast. Diane is not particularly happy about that but Gavin doesn’t care. All Gavin cares about are ratings and Sasha’s bringing them in.

However, faking a kidnapping is not as easy as it may look. When it looks like the truth about Sasha’s abduction might finally be revealed, Sasha has no choice but to take matters into her own hands….

I enjoyed Abducted On Air. Admittedly, a lot of that had to do with the fact that I tend to distrust television journalism, (In many ways, this was a film that seemed like it was specifically designed to appeal to my every bias.) This is a film about people obsessively trying to climb to the top of one of the the most superficial professions in existence and the fact that everyone in the movie is so obsessed with finding success in a dying industry actually gave Abducted On Air a bit of a satirical edge. Perrey Reeves and Kim Shaw both gave good performances as the two rival journalists, making this film a fun one to watch whenever you want to imagine what’s going on behind the scenes of your local news broadcast.

Lifetime Film Review: Deranged Granny (dir by Jennifer Liao)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Over the course of the last few years, Lifetime has been showing a lot of movies about psychotic grandmothers.

These movies usually follow the same pattern. A woman, who is either divorced or widowed and who has at least two young children, meets a handsome man who doesn’t like to talk about his past. After a whirlwind courtship, they get married. Though it’s a struggle at first, the new blended family finally starts to come together. Suddenly, the doorbell rings and …. IT’S GRANNY!

Where has grandma been? Sometimes, she’s been in a mental hospital. Sometimes, she’s been in jail. Sometimes, she’s recently escaped from a retirement community. The important thing is that she’s back and she’s suddenly ready to be a part of the family. The kids lover her and her daughter-in-law feels threatened. Everyone tells the new wife that she’s being paranoid and that grandma might be a little eccentric but she’s harmless. However, the viewers know that the grandma is actually a psycho because we’ve seen her murder at least two people by the fourth commercial break.

The appeal of these films is pretty easy to understand. It comes down to two things.

Number one, like many Lifetime films, it features a very universal fear at the heart of its melodrama. Every parent worries about how they’re going to live up to (or, in some case, improve upon) the example of the grandparents. Kids tend to love their grandparents, largely because they provide an escape from having to deal with mom and dad and all of their hangups about going to bed on time, not watching too much TV, and doing their homework. The grandparents get all of the good parts of parenting without any of the bad parts, or so it seems. Even more importantly, there’s always the fear that grandma is silently judging everything that her daughter-in-law is doing. This is something that almost everyone can relate to.

Number two, these films always manage to find the best actresses to play grandma. Usually, these are actresses who, because Hollywood is a terrible place, no longer seem to get the type of roles that they deserve. In the tradition of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in almost every film they made after Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, these actresses usually give wonderfully over-the-top performances as the psycho grandma.

Wendie Malick is the latest actress to star as one of Lifetime’s psycho grandmas. In Deranged Granny, she plays Barbara. Barbara never really recovered from the death of her son’s first wife and her grandchild. Now that Ethan (Josh Ventura) has remarried and has two stepchildren, Barbara is determined to be a part of their lives. Unfortunately, Barbara’s new daughter-in-law, Kendall (Amanda Righetti), comes to feel that Barbara is trying to push her out of her family’s life. Is Kendall being paranoid or is she correct in her suspicion that the main reason that Barbara is always cooking is because she’s obsessed with poisoning people? You can probably guess the answer to that question by the fact that the movie is called Deranged Granny and not Deranged Daughter-in-Law.

Not surprisingly, the main reason to watch Deranged Granny is for the performance of Wendie Malick. That we usually tend to associate Malick with comedic roles only makes it all the more effective when she suddenly starts poisoning everyone who looks at her the wrong way. Even when she’s not specifically trying to kill people, Malick delivers all of her faux friendly lines with just the perfect amount of passive aggressive condescension. What I especially liked about the film is that Barbara seemed to be having a lot of fun with her evil schemes. She may have been the granny from Hell but she still came across like she would be the fun grandma as well. Just don’t eat her cookies, especially if you have a food allergy.

Disgruntled Granny was a fun deranged grandma film. Watch it the next time you feel like you’re being silently judged.

Gun Street (1961, directed by Edward L. Cahn)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

During the closing days of the Old West (people ride horses and form posses but they also use hand-crank telephones), a notorious bank robber (played by Warren J. Kemmerling) escapes from prison. Everyone fears that the outlaw is heading for his home town, where he’s sworn that he’s going to get revenge on all of the people who he blames for his imprisonment. It’s up to Sheriff Chuck Morton (James Brown, not that James Brown) and Deputy Sam Freed (John Clarke) to alert all of the outlaw’s potential victims and to put together a posse to ride into the desert and hopefully end his reign of terror once and for all. Complicating matters (though only slighly) is that the sheriff and the outlaw grew up together and used to be friends.

Yet another B-feature from the very active director Edward L. Cahn (he was credited with having directed 127 films, 11 in 1961 alone!), Gun Street plays out like a lesser episode of Gunsmoke. Imagine High Noon, just without the red scare subtext and no Gary Cooper. James Brown and John Clarke are both believable as western lawman and they have a good rapport. Sandra Stone plays the outlaw’s sister, who now owns the local “dance hall” and, in her scenes with Brown, I thought it seemed as if the film was suggesting that she and the sheriff were once more than just friends. Unfortunately, that’s one of many potentially intriguing subplots that the film suggests without bothering to explore. Obviously made to be a second feature on a double bill, Gun Street is barely over an hour long, which doesn’t leave much time for anyone else in the film to make much of an impression. The short running time also means that the film moves so quickly that certain plot points go unexplained. Probably the most disappointing thing about Gun Street is that, after all of the build-up about how tough and dangerous this outlaw is, the film ends not with a bang but with an anti-climatic whimper. Did they run out of money during filming? Did Edward L. Cahn have to leave so he could go direct another film? We may never know.

If you’re looking for a good western about one town awaiting the arrival of an outlaw, rewatch High Noon.

Lifetime Film Review: Poolboy Nightmare (dir by Rolfe Kanefsky)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After 10 minutes of watching Pool Boy Nightmare, I called Erin into the living room and I told her that, even though I don’t swim and I actually have a morbid fear of drowning, I felt we definitely needed to get a pool put into the backyard.

I mean, the film just made getting a pool look like such a brilliant idea. Not only do you get an aesthetically pleasing addition to the exterior of your house but, once you get a pool, everyone suddenly wants to be your friend and, more importantly, they want to do stuff for you. And, even though I don’t swim, I still enjoy going outside and pretending like I’m capable of getting a tan (I’m a redhead. We burn but we don’t exactly tan) and I look cute in a bikini so I could definitely get some use out of the pool while everyone else was splashing around.

Add to that, getting a pool apparently also meant getting a totally hunky pool boy, the type of guy who has a lot of tattoos and who has obviously just gotten out of prison so he’s got those hungry eyes going, if you know what I mean.

About an hour after watching the film, I called Erin back into the living room. “We’re going to have to cancel getting the pool,” I told her.

“We weren’t getting one,” she told me.

“I don’t want it anymore. Contact whoever you need to contact and tell them to rip up the contract because the pool’s been cancelled.”

“Uhmmm …. okay.”

Seriously, owning a pool is a lot of work! Apparently, if you don’t keep it full of water, your best friend will show up in the middle of the night and and just walk right over the edge and end up breaking her leg. Plus, if you put too much chlorine in the pool, someone could end up burning their skin and having to go to the hospital. There’s also always the risk of a dead rat showing up in your filter. And, of course, there’s the drowning risk. It just seemed like too much.

Of course, in Poolboy Nightmare, the main problem with the pool was that Adam the pool boy (played by Tanner Zagarino) turned out to be a total psycho with a Norman Bates-style mother obsession. Complicating things was that Adam ended up sleeping with Gale (Jessica Morris) and then dating Gale’s teenage daughter, Becca (Ellie Dacey-Alden)! Gale knows that Adam is totally bad news but, if she tells Becca that, it’ll mean confessing that she slept with Becca’s boyfriend. You can see how that might get awkward.

Anyway, Poolboy Nightmare is …. well, it’s alright. It get a lot of entertaining mileage by playing into all of the stories that you hear about bored women in the suburbs who end up sleeping with their pool boy. The film’s first third is fun, with its emphasis on Adam walking around shirtless and every woman in the house ogling him. You almost expect to hear a 70s bassline on the soundtrack whenever anyone catches sight of him. Once Adam goes psycho, the film becomes a standard stalker film where everyone is, unfortunately, required to do the stupidest thing possible. Fortunately, there’s enough hints that the film is meant to be something of a parody that it remains entertaining until the final credits.

Seriously, though, don’t get a pool. They’re dangerous.

Lifetime Film Review: Sinfidelity (dir by Tamar Halpern)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, imagine that you’re living the life of Angela (Jade Tailor).

You’re married to a successful businessman. You’ve got a nice house. You’ve got attractive friends. Really, you’ve got everything that most people are conditioned to want out of life. And yet, you can’t shake your suspicion that something is not right.

Part of the problem is that your husband, Greg (Mark Jude Sullivan), has cheated in the past. And even though he says that’s all in the past, it’s hard for you to trust him. Your anniversary is approaching and Greg doesn’t appear to have made even the slightest of plans to celebrate it. Instead, he’s spending all of his time at work. Plus, you instinctively mistrust his assistant, Lisa (Caroline Cole). Maybe you’re being silly but then again, deep down, you know that no one can resist someone named Lisa.

(That’s just the burden that we Lisas have to deal with.)

You notice that Lisa is wearing expensive earrings. The next day, you find one of those earrings in your house. You immediately decide that Greg and Lisa must be having an affair.

What do you do? Do you file for divorce? Do you change the locks and kick your husband out of the house? Do you blow up his car?

Those are all good options but Angela decides that the best way to get back at Greg is to have an affair of her own. She ends up hooking up with Franco (Aidan Bristow), a handsome photographer. Angela does this despite the fact that Franco gives off obsessive stalker vibes from the minute that she meets him. Then again, it’s not like Angela’s looking for a relationship. Angela’s looking for revenge and you do strange things when you’re looking for revenge. Still, I would have gotten out of Franco’s place as soon as I saw all of the pictures he had taken of a woman who superficially resembled me. Franco claims that the pictures are of his sister, who died under mysterious circumstances years ago and …. yeah, it’s time to leave.

Still, Angela doesn’t leave. She spends the night with Franco. When she leaves the next morning and returns home to confront Greg, Grey can’t understand why she’s so upset.

“I know!” Angela says.

“About the trip to Italy?” Greg asks.

Yes, that’s right! Greg was actually being a good husband. He bought Angela earrings and a trip to Italy for their anniversary and he’s been working late to make sure that they would have enough money to afford it. He had Lisa set up the trip and he also had her deliver the earrings. Lisa thought it would be fun to wear the earrings before dropping them off which …. well, okay, that doesn’t make much sense but hey, whatever. What’s important is that Greg is not cheating and that they’re going to Italy and their marriage is not in trouble! Yay!

The only problem, of course, is that Angela’s already had a one night stand with Franco and Franco is not only obsessive but apparently a bit psychotic as well. That means that Franco’s not just going to take no for an answer….

You can probably guess where all of this is heading. This is a Lifetime film and any fan of Lifetime knows what happens when you get an obsessed stalker. Sinfidelity doesn’t exactly break any new ground as far as Lifetime thrillers are concerned but Jade Tailor gives a good performance as Angela and the film opens with an genuinely creepy sequence that’s set at a roller disco. Any film that features a roller disco is automatically going to be better than any film that doesn’t have a roller disco. That’s always been my philosophy.

In the end, Sinfidelity has a worthwhile message. Don’t cheat on your spouse unless you have all the facts first. Otherwise, your act of revenge might lead to you getting stalked by a psycho photographer. Seriously, the more you know, right?

Film Review: She’s Out of Control (dir by Stan Dragoti)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Creepy movie, this is. Creepy, creepy movie.

The 1989 film, She’s Out of Control, tells the story of Doug Simpson (Tony Danza, showing why he never became a movie star), a radio manager and the single father of two daughters. When Doug goes out of town, his girlfriend, Janet (Catherine Hicks), gives 16 year-old Katie Simpson (Ami Dolenz) a make-over. When Doug leaves, Katie is awkward and wears braces and thick glasses. When he returns, she’s lost the braces, she’s switched to contacts, and every boy in the neighborhood wants a date with her. Doug freaks out.

And listen, I get it. I know that the point of the film is that parents are protective and I know that when I first started to develop and get noticed by boys, certain members of my family freaked out as well. (Of course, I was a little bit younger than Katie, who is portrayed as being the most absurdly sheltered 16 year-old of all time.) And I also understand that this film is not only a comedy but also an 80s comedy and, on top of that, an 80s comedy starring Tony Danza. So, I’m willing to accept that Doug’s reaction had to be exaggerated a bit for the joke, as it is, to qualify as being a joke.

But seriously, Doug freaks out so much that it’s just really creepy, not to mention a little bit insulting to teenage girls in general. Katie loses her glasses and her braces and suddenly, Doug is incapable of seeing her as being anything other than some sort of hypersexualized vixen. Doug goes from being protective to being rather obsessive and, since the film is told from his point of view, that means that, whenever the camera ogles Katie, it comes across as if Doug is ogling his own daughter and …. I mean, yeah, it’s pretty icky. The film’s title may be She’s Out Of Control but that’s never an accurate description of anything that Katie does over the course of the film. Instead, the only person who is truly out of control is Doug but he’s out of control to such an extent that it’s hard to watch him without hearing the voice of Dr. Phil in background, saying, “I’m a mandated reporter so I’m going to be makin’ a call as soon as the show is over….”

Speaking of everyone’s favorite unlicensed TV doctor, Doug starts to see a psychologist who is an even bigger jackass than Dr. Phil and that’s probably a good thing. Not only does Doug clearly need some mental help but it also allows the film to introduce Wallace Shawn as Dr. Fishbinder, the pompous author of a book that deals with how to raise an unruly teenager. Shawn is one of the film’s few good points. He plays Fishbinder as being such a self-important little weasel that he’s always entertaining to watch. Fishbinder encourages Doug to be strict and warns him that, if he isn’t, Katie will be pregnant in no time. Definitely, don’t let her to go to prom. “That’s where 87% of teenage girls lose their virginity!” Fishbinder exclaims, news to which Tony Danza responds by mugging for the camera like an extra in a Roger Corman monster film.

Katie has many suitors over the course of the film, some of whom are more memorable than others. Dana Ashbrook (who played drug dealer-turned-deputy Bobby Briggs on Twin Peaks) is the rebel with a heart of gold. A very young Matthew Perry is the spoiled rich kid who is only interested in one thing. An even younger Dustin Diamond (you might know him better as Screech Powers on Saved By The Bell) pops up as a kid who gawks at Katie on the beach. And while Doug comes across as being a jerk for most of the film, one can understand why anyone would be upset at the thought of Dustin Diamond coming any parent would be upset by the thought of Dustin Diamond coming anywhere near their daughter.

In the end, the main problem with the movie is that it asks you to sympathize with Doug Simpson but he’s so obviously overreacting to every little thing that you quickly grow tired of him and his worries. Of course, it doesn’t help that he’s played by Tony Danza, whose eyes often seem as if they’re on the verge of popping out of his head. Danza wanders through the movie with a perpetually shocked expression on his face and it gets old after a while. By the time he’s forcing his daughter’s friends to listen to songs from his old vinyl collection, most viewers will be done with him. It doesn’t help that Doug is described as being some sort of former hippie protester type. It’s hard to think of any other boomer actor who would be less convincing as a former hippie than Tony Danza.

She’s Out Of Control is a forgettable and, quit frankly, rather annoying little film. However, it has achieved a certain bit of fame because it was one of the film’s that Roger Ebert consistently cited as being one of the worst that he had ever reviewed. You have to keep in mind that Ebert was a film reviewer for over 40 years and during that time, he reviewed a lot of movies that he disliked. He even published at least three books devoted to negative reviews that he had written. Considering the amount of bad films that Ebert watched, the fact that he specifically cited She’s Out Of Control as one of the absolute worst films that he had ever sat through …. well, it was enough to encourage me to actually watch the film when I came across it on Starz. And, in this case, Ebert was right. It was pretty bad.

She’s Out Of Control is a dumb movie about dumb people doing dumb things. The key word is dumb.

The Films of 2020: The Vast of Night (dir by Andrew Patterson)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Vast of Night opens with an announcement that we are about to watch the latest episode of something called Paradox Theater. While the fact that what we’re watching is supposed to be a television show never directly ties into the plot, it’s still a clever little twist that pays homage to old anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. It’s appropriate because The Vast of Night tells the type of story that one might expect to see on one of those old shows. It’s the story of two ordinary people confronting the unknown.

Taking place in New Mexico in the 1950s, The Vast of Night tells the story of two friends. Everett Sloan (Jake Horowitz) is a teenage disc jockey at the local radio station. Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick) is a switchboard operator. The opening scenes of the film are devoted to Everett and Fay walking around the local high school. Fay has a new tape recorder, which was apparently considered to be something of a luxury item in the 1950s. Everett is full of advice. They’re both immediately likable and their friendship is enormously appealing. They’re the type of people that I would want to be friends with if I ever found myself living in the 1950s.

Everett goes to his job at the radio station. Fay takes her seat behind the switchboard. She listens to Everett’s show, which is suddenly interrupted by a strange audio signal. Fay starts to get calls from people reporting some sort of strange phenomenon in the sky while Everett asks if anyone who was listening to the show can identity the origin of the signal. An unseen man named Billy (played, in a wonderful voice-over performance, by Bruce Davis) calls and explains that he used to be in the military. He tells Everett a story that, at first, seems impossible to believe but, as the night goes on, becomes more and more plausible.

Filmed in my home state of Texas, The Vast of Night is triumph of atmosphere and good writing. This is an independent film that makes brilliant use of its low-budget, using unknown (but talented) actors and just a few locations to tell a story that grows progressively creepier with each passing minute. Making his directorial debut, Andrew Patterson keeps the story running at a steady and involving pace while collaborating with cinematogrpaher M.I. Litten-Menz to fill the screen with shadowy images and tight close-ups that work to keep the audience off-balance.

There’s an authenticity to The Vast of Night, one that would probably not be there if the film had been a big budget studio film. Despite the opening declaration that we’re just watching an episode of a TV show, the characters in The Vast of Night feel very real. Whether it’s Billy saying that he never told his story to anyone because he figured they wouldn’t believe him because of the color of skin or the character of eccentric old Mabel (played by Gail Cronauer), telling her strange story in the most comforting tones possible, the film is full of little details that bring the story to life,

It’s an entertaining film, one that builds to a somewhat unexpected climax. The story and the characters stay with you after it ends. I look forward to seen what Andrew Patterson does next and Sierra McCormick deserves to be a big star. Watch the movie on Prime. It’s good.

The Films of 2020: Athlete A (dir by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

By now, we all know who Larry Nassar is and what he did.

Nassar was the USA Gymnastic Team doctor, the guy who worked with some of America’s top gymnasts. For several years, he was the guy who you would see standing in the background of televised gymnastic events, including the Olympics. If any of the gymnasts were injured during a competition, he was the man who television audiences would see running out to the mat. He was the man who both viewers and gymnasts were conditioned to see as being a protector. In the documentary Athlete A, there’s footage of Nassar kneeling down beside an injured gymnast while a commentator assures the people watching at home that there’s no reason to be worried. If anyone is going to know what to do, the commentator explains, it’s going to be Larry Nassar.

In 2015, USA Gymnastics cut ties with Larry Nassar, citing “athlete concerns.” In 2016, the Indianapolis Star broke the story that two gymnasts had accused Nassar of sexual abuse. (Despite the accusations, Nassar still received 27% of the vote when he ran for his local school board that same year.) When Nassar was arrested in 2016 and put on trial, more gymnasts came forward. It is currently estimated that there are over 265 identified victims of Nassar’s abuse and an infinite number who may never be identified. After Nassar pled guilty to charges of possessing child pornography, he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison. After pleading guilty to seven counts of sexual assault against minors, Nassar was given a state sentence of 175 years. This was followed by an additional state sentence of 40 to 125 years when he pled guilty to three more assaults. At the time of his sentencing, the judge said, “I just signed your death warrant.” At the time, I remember being more than a little worried that Nassar would attempt to cite those words as proof that the judge was biased against him and that he would request a new sentencing hearing. Of course, that’s exactly what Nassar did. Fortunately, that request was denied and Larry Nassar will die in prison.

Athlete A is hardly the first documentary to be made about Larry Nassar and the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal but it is the first one to truly explore how a monster like Larry Nassar was not only able to thrive but also why he was shielded by the very people who should have been protecting his victims. As the documentary shows, USA Gymnastics is a brand and it’s champions — especially it’s female champions — are expected to be the perfect ambassadors for the brand. That means following orders, winning gold medals, and not complaining. Despite all of the footage that we see of various commentators rhapsodizing about the special relationship between the gymnasts and their coaches, the gymnasts themselves are treated as just being a commodity that’s valuable as long as they can keep winning medals and keep bringing money into USA Gymnastics. Once they can no longer win, those coaches no loner have any use for them.

At the legendary Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, young girls were separated from their parents and trained by Béla Károlyi, a strict taskmaster who had no hesitation about slapping a gymnast who he felt hadn’t done well. Into this harsh environment came Larry Nassar, a seemingly dorky and friendly guy who claimed to only be concerned with the health and the safety of the gymnasts. Nassar would assure the gymnasts, most of whom had yet to even reach puberty, that everything he was doing was for their benefit. Some of them, he abused for years, from the moment they came in for their first check-up until the day that they finally retired from competition. And, when many of the gymnasts grew older and realized that what Nassar was doing was not okay, they would discover that no one was willing to listen to them. Though the first complaints agaist Nassar were made in the 90s, it wasn’t until 2015 that anything was done about him. In fact, parents were often lied to. As is recounted in this film, the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, Steve Penny, assured at least one gymnast and her parents that he had forwarded their concerns about Nassar when he had done no such thing. Though Nassar’s trial got the majority of the coverage, Steve Penny would also be arrested and charged with deliberately tampering with evidence in order to protect him.

As I said a few paragraphs ago, this is hardly the first documentary about what went on behind the scenes at USA Gymnastics. It probably won’t be the last. But this may be the most important one because, through heart-wrenching interviews with Nassar’s victims, Athlete A shows how a man like Nassar was able to abuse young girls for years while those who should have been protecting the athletes were making the decision to look away. Some of the most powerful moments in the film come from the contrast between the reality of what was happening and the way that USA Gymnastics presented itself in public. The doctor who was supposed to take care of the athletes was a monster and the coaches, who were presented as being strict but caring, were his enablers. Everyone wanted to benefit from the success of the athletes but no one was willing to stand up for them.

Athlete A is not easy to watch. It’s a harrowing documentary but it’s also an important one.

The Films of 2020: All The Bright Places (dir by Brett Haley)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

All The Bright Places tells the story of two teenagers in Indiana.

Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) is pretty, popular, and secretly very depressed. She’s still recovering from the death of her sister and her friends aren’t being particularly helpful. (At one point, her boyfriend asks how much longer she’s going to be depressed because she’s “been this way for a really long time.”) Violet lives in a nice, comfortable home and probably has a bright future ahead of her but she can’t communicate how she’s feeling to her parents (Luke Wilson and Kelli O’Hara), who are dealing with their grief in their own ways.

Finch (Justice Smith) is a student who is viewed, by his classmates, as being something of a freak. Unlike Violet, who holds back her emotions, Finch doesn’t hold back his feelings and, as a result, it’s gotten him in trouble. If not for a somewhat sympathetic principal (Keegan-Michael Key), Finch probably would have been expelled a while ago. As it is, he’s on probation and he’s running the risk of not graduating. Finch lives with his sister (Alexandra Shipp). Their parents are pretty much not in the picture.

One night, Finch happens to see Violet standing on a bridge and thinking about jumping. From that moment, an unexpected relationship begins. Though Violet is, at first, hesitant to open up to Finch (or anyone else, for that matter), Finch continues to try to talk to her. Eventually, for a class, they’re assigned to do a report on the wonders of Indiana. Soon, they’re going from location to location and Violet is slowly starting to enjoy life again while Finch encourage her to open up about her feelings and to once again start writing….

And, at this point, you’re probably thinking that this just a typical YA film, one that’s only distinguished by the fact that, instead of having a manic pixie dream girl, it has a manic pixie dream guy. That was certainly how I felt during the first third of this film. However, All The Bright Places is too smart of a film to settle for telling such a simple story and Finch is too complex of a character to be dismissed as a trope. Even as Violet gets better, Finch’s own behavior grows more erratic. (In fact, it could be argued that this film’s greatest contribution to the cultural discussion is its attempt to seriously explore what would cause someone to become a manic pixie dream person in the first place.) When events conspire to cause Violet and Finch to be separated, it leads to tragedy.

It’s a sweet-natured and poignant film, one that sensitively explores depression and mental illness. It’s also a film that understands how, when you’re a certain age and even if you’re not also having to deal with burdens of depression and anxiety, almost anything can seem like the end of the world. It takes its character’s seriously and it doesn’t pander to its audience with any shallow promises about how things are magically going to get better once they graduate high school and head off to college. At the same time, it’s also a very life-affirming film, one that encourages us to celebrate life and experience it while we can.

Elle Faning and especially Justice Smith give two achingly sincere and touching performances. I was especially impressed with the work of Smith. Smith plays up Finch’s intelligence and his curiosity about the world while, at the same time, also showing why Finch’s attention might occasionally be a bit overwhelming. I look forward to seeing what he does in the future.

The Films of 2020: The Binge (dir by Jeremy Garelick)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

America, in the near future.

Due to a rise in crime coupled with an economic collapse, a new moralistic government has taken power. All drugs and alcohol have been banned …. except for one day of the year. On that day, anyone who is 18 years old or older will be able to drink, smoke, inject, and snort anything that they want. This is the annual …. BINGE!

Okay, so does this sound familiar to anyone?

The Binge is a mix of The Purge and Superbad. Three dorky high school students (played by Skyler Gisondo, Eduardo Franco, and Dexter Darden) want to take part in their first binge but it’s not going to easy, largely because they’re not actually cool enough to have been invited to any of the big Binge parties. Unless they can find a way to sneak into the legendary Library Party, they’re going to miss out on all the fun and they’re not going to get laid.

Vince Vaughn, meanwhile, plays the high school principal who, at the start of the film, exhorts his students not to binge so hard that they end up getting horribly disfigured or bring any sort of shame on the reputation of their school. However, when he finds out that his own daughter has snuck out of the house and is taking part in the Binge, he hits the streets and ends up binging himself.

And listen, The Binge gets off to a good start. It opens with a Morgan Freeman sound alike narrating a short film about how much better life in America is thanks to the Binge. Yes, it’s totally ripped off from The Purge but let us give the film some credit for at least admitting that it’s not exactly an original idea. The short film is followed by a scene of Vaughn standing in a shabby high school auditorium, explaining to his students why binging is not a good idea and he goes through all of the classic horror stories that teenagers have been told through the years to keep them from indulging. Vaughn comes across like some sort of demented gym teacher in this scene and it’s genuinely funny.

Meanwhile, throughout the high school, the students share stories about what they’ve heard life was like before the Binge. Someone talks about how people used to do keg stands just for someone else to ask, “What’s a keg?” Another student talks about how her mother claims that there used to be a show called Sex and the City, in which the characters would have sex and drink pink alcohol.

Those early scenes are funny but the rest of the film doesn’t live up to them. Once the Binge begins, the film becomes just another raunchy high school party film and, to be honest, it’s a bit dull. It’s also hard not to notice that, for a bunch of people who have apparently never drank or done drugs before, some of the characters handle getting drunk and stoned surprisingly well. You would also think that, if you could only drink or do drugs one time a year, some people would at least try to be a little bit creative in how they did it. Instead, it appears that everyone learned how to binge by watching old episodes of Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, and 90210. With the exception of one drug-induced musical number that occurs about halfway into the film and a pretty amusing contest to see who can snort the most coke while doing the best Pacino imitation, everyone’s just so boring.

This is one of those comedies where people randomly screaming is often used as a substitute for any sort of real wit or clever dialogue. The main characters are so poorly defined that you really never care whether or not they’re going to get laid, get stoned, go to prom, or get into college. I appreciated any movie that satirizes prohibition but The Binge, much like the students that Vince Vaughn warned about at the start of the film, fails to live up to its potential.