Cleaning Out The DVR: Killer Body (dir by David I. Strasser)

Posted on January 3, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(I recorded Killer Body off of Lifetime on December 30th.)

Oh my God, this was a great movie!

Okay, so check this out. Once upon a time, there was a medical student named Elizabeth (Lindsay Maxwell) who felt like she was being shunned and ignored by her classmates. She had a crush on a doctor named Chris (Peter Benson) but Chris was in love with Katie Jones (Sunny Mabrey), Eventually, Elizabeth ended up having a total melt down and was forced to drop out of medical school. Elizabeth become obsessed with plastic surgery, hoping to make herself look perfect (which, in this case, meant looking more and more like Katie). Now going by the name Liz Oakley, she goes from doctor to doctor, getting work done and then suing them for malpractice. And if she can’t get your medical license taken away, she’ll just spray you with poison perfume. Seriously, this film features 4 separate attacks by toxic perfume.

One day, Liz shows up at Katie’s office and, until Liz introduced herself, Katie doesn’t even recognize her. Liz wants some minor work done and she claims that she’s been referred by one of Katie’s colleagues. Of course, Liz soon proves herself to be just as unstable as you might expect someone who regularly murders people to be. Soon, all Katie’s like, “I don’t want you as my patient anymore,” and Liz is like, “Fine, I’ll just destroy your life.”

Soon, Liz is showing up on a college campus and making a seriously awkward attempt to befriend Liz’s daughter. Katie and Chris (whose brilliant medical career has been brought to an end by a stroke) take out a restraining order but there’s nothing in that order that can stop Liz from going to another, less ethical plastic surgeon and having more work done in her quest to be perfect and to look more like Katie. Of course, when the surgery results in Liz having a barely noticeable scar on her chin, it’s not a good thing…

Obviously, the success of a film like this pretty much hinges on the actress who is cast as the stalker/psycho character and fortunately, Liz is played by Lindsay Maxwell. Maxwell turns Liz into a force of uncontrollable, narcissistic nature and one of the more entertaining aspects of the film is watching as Liz goes from smiling to screaming in just a matter of seconds. On the one hand, Liz is a complete psycho but, on the other hand, who hasn’t wanted to be perfect and who hasn’t, at least once, thought about they would do to achieve that perfection? Maxwell wisely adds just a bit of vulnerability to the character, making Liz a psycho to whom you can relate. Sunny Mabrey and Peter Benson also contribute good performance but ultimately, the film is dominated by Lindsay Maxwell and her bottle of killer perfume.

Killer Body was a killer melodrama, exactly the type of movie that we watch Lifetime to see. Between the murders and the intrigue and the attempts to fool Chris into committing adultery, this was a wonderfully entertaining look at just how far people will go to achieve perfection.

Happy Noir Year!: THE BIG COMBO (United Artists 1955)

Posted on January 3, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

(ATTENTION: There’s a surprise waiting for you at the end of this post, so read on…)

Joseph H. Lewis started his directing career with low-budget Westerns starring singing cowboy Bob Baker and East Side Kids programmers, and ended it back on the range doing epsiodes of THE RIFLEMAN, GUNSMOKE, and THE BIG VALLEY. In between, he created some of the finest films noir the genre has to offer: MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS , SO DARK THE NIGHT, THE UNDERCOVER MAN, and especially GUN CRAZY . His last big screen noir outing is the culmination of his work in the genre, 1955’s THE BIG COMBO.

The plot is fairly simple: Police Lt. Leonard Diamond is out to crack gangster Mr. Brown’s “combination”, which controls crime in the city. But Philip Yordan’s screenplay takes that plot and adds exciting twists and turns, indelible characters, and a level of violence audiences weren’t…

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“Going All Kanye On You”: New Year’s Eve (dir by Garry Marshall)

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“New Year’s Eve is the worst, people who don’t drink or party all year suddenly going all Kanye on you.”

That line was delivered by Ashton Kutcher in the 2011 film, New Year’s Eve. Seven years ago, when the film was first released, I thought it was an awkward line, partially because Ashton Kutcher sounded like he was drowning in self-loathing when he said it and partially because the sudden reference to Kanye West felt like something that would be considered clever by 60-something screenwriter who had just spent a few hours scanning twitter to see “what the kids are into nowadays.”

(Of course, hearing the line in 2018 was an even stranger experience. People who don’t drink or party all year suddenly going all Kanye on you? So, they’re putting on red MAGA caps and spending New Year’s Eve tweeting about prison reform? True, that’s the way a lot of people celebrated in my part of the world but I’m not sure how exactly that would play out in Times Square.)

In New Year’s Eve, Kutcher plays a character named Randy. Randy is a comic book artist, which means that he’s snarky and cynical and doesn’t really see the point of celebrating anything. Fortunately, he gets trapped in an elevator with Elise (Lea Michele) and, with her help, he comes to learn that New Year’s Eve is not the worst. Instead, it’s the most important holiday ever created and, if you don’t think so, you’re worse than the devil.

Fortunately, Hillary Swank is present to make sure that we all get the point. Swank plays Claire Morgan, who is in charge of making sure that the ball drops at exactly the right moment at Times Square and who gets a monologue where she explains that the purpose of the ball is to make you think about both the past and the future. As she explains it, the world comes together one night a year, all so everyone can watch that ball drop. Apparently, if the ball doesn’t drop, the new year doesn’t actually start and everyone is trapped in a timeless limbo, kind of like Iron Man at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

Of course, there’s more going on in New Year’s Eve than just Randy taking Kanye’s name in vain and Claire refusing the accept that Times Square is not the center of the universe. There’s also an old man (Robert De Niro) who wants to time his death so he passes right at the start of the new year. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the mother of frustrated teenager Abigail Breslin and gets to make a “girls gone wild” joke. (A Kanye reference and a girls gone wild joke in the same film? It’s like a pop culture tsunami!) Michelle Pfeiffer tries to accomplish all of her new year’s resolutions with the help of Zac Efron. Halle Berry worries about her husband (Common) , who is serving overseas. Josh Duhamel searches for a woman who once told him that his heart was more important than his business. Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel compete with Til Schweiger and Sarah Paulson to see who can be the family of the first child born in the new year. Jon Bon Jovi thinks about the woman that he nearly married and Katherine Heigl wonders if she’s ever going to have a career again. In other words, New Year’s Eve is an ensemble piece, one in which a bunch of slumming Oscar winners and overachieving TV actors step into small roles. It leads to some odd pairings. De Niro, for instance, shares scenes with Alyssa Milano while Sofia Vergara and Ludacris are both relegated to playing sidekicks. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s then-mayor and general threat to civil liberties everywhere, also shows up, playing himself with the type of smarminess that already has many people dreading the prospect of his 2020 presidential campaign. This is one of those films where everyone has a familiar face but no one makes much of an impression.

New Year’s Eve was directed by the late Garry Marshall and it’s the second film in his so-called holiday trilogy, sitting right between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. By most accounts, Garry Marshall was a nice guy and popular in the industry, which perhaps explains why so many familiar faces were willing to sign up to appear in New Year’s Eve. Though the film is ruthlessly mediocre, it’s actually the best of the holiday trilogy. For all the schmaltz and forced sentiment, one gets the feeling that the film actually is sincere in its belief in the importance of that ball dropping in Times Square.

I remember that, when New Year’s Eve was first released, a lot of people joked that Marshall was going to make an ensemble romantic comedy about every single holiday, all with the hope that at least one of them would eventually become a television perennial in the style of It’s A Wonderful Life or The Ten Commandments. Interestingly, that’s exactly what happened with New Year’s Eve. Yesterday, E! aired New Year’s Eve three times, back-to-back! For better or worse, this film is probably going to outlive us all, ensuring that, in the far future, viewers will spend New Year’s Eve asking themselves, “What’s a kanye?”

Catching Up With The Films of 2018: The Last Movie Star (dir by Adam Rifkin)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was once the biggest movie star in the world.

At times, that’s hard to believe. Vic may have started out as a stunt man before moving on to star in westerns and action movies but Vic is now 80 and he moves slowly and with a permanent slouch. At times, he appears to be so frail that you wonder how he even manages to get out of bed in the morning. Though he still possesses the acerbic wit for which was once famous, the words now come out a lot slower and his voice is tinged with pain that is both physical and emotional. It’s been a while since Vic appeared on a movie set. After years of being a self-described asshole, Vic now spends most of his time alone. His only friend appears to be his aging agent, Sonny (Chevy Chase).

When Vic receives an invitation to attend a film festival in Nashville and accept a career achievement award, Vic goes in hopes of not only getting his ego stroked but also visiting some of the places where he grew up. It’s only once Vic has arrived that he discovers that the film festival is basically a group of wannabe hipsters hanging out in the back of a bar. Under the direction of Doug (Clark Duke), the film festival has previously given lifetime achievement awards to everyone from Al Pacino to Robert De Niro. Vic’s the first recipient to actually show up.

After a night of watching a younger version of himself and answering inane questions about his career and his turbulent personal life, Vic comforts himself by getting drunk and yelling at Doug and his friends. The next day, while the film festival continues, Vic get Doug’s sister, Lil (Ariel Winter), to drive him around Tennessee. Vic wants to visit the places of his youth. As for Lil, she just wants to get rid of her cranky passenger so that she can deal with her emotionally abusive boyfriend.

As you probably already guessed, in The Last Movie Star, Burt Reynolds may have been cast as a character named Vic Edwards but he was basically playing himself. (Director Adam Rifkin has said that he would have abandoned the film if Reynolds had turned down the role) When Vic watches himself onscreen, the clips are from Burt Reynolds’s old movies. When Vic falls asleep and has a dream in which he confronts his younger self, the film uses footage from Deliverance and Smoky and the Bandit. (“Slow down!” Vic yells as the cocky, younger version of him speeds down a country road.) When Vic considers his own mortality, it’s obvious that the aging and frail Reynolds was doing the same thing.

At the start of the film, both Vic and Reynolds seem so infirm that you wonder how he’ll ever make it through the weekend. But, as the film progresses, an interesting thing happens. Before our eyes, both Vic and the actor playing him become stronger. His confidence returns and, as Vic confronts the past, we finally start to see some hints of the old charisma that once made him the world’s biggest film star. As we watch the film, we realize that his body may be weak but his mind is still sharp. We come to realize that Vic now understands that he will die someday but he’s still not going to give up. He may accept his own mortality but he’s not going to surrender to it.

That Burt Reynolds passed away just a few month after The Last Movie Star was released adds an extra poignance to his performance in the film. The Last Movie Star has its flaws. The pacing is inconsistent and, when it comes to Vic relationship with Lil, the film too often falls back on anti-millennial clichés. In the end, the film works best as a tribute to its star. The film argues, quite convincingly, that if anyone deserved to be known as the last movie star, it was him.

Celebrate Life Day With The Star Wars Holiday Special!

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Life Day!

The Star Wars Holiday Special was first aired in 1978 and, over the years, it has achieved a certain amount of infamy. Some people say that it’s the worst thing to ever be made for TV. To those people, I say that 1) that’s not a good attitude to have on Life Day and 2) have you seen Disco Beaver From Outer Space?

Anyway, this is a musical Star Wars extravaganza. One thing that makes it interesting is that Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher were all ordered to appear in it. Seeing as how Harrison Ford tends to come across as being grumpy on a good day, I can only imagine how he reacted to filming The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Also, a few years ago, Val reviewed the Hell out of this thing. Be sure to check out her review.

And now, for those of you looking to experience a dubious piece of pop culture history on this Christmas, we present to you …. The Star Wars Holiday Special!

Enjoy The Miracle on 34th Street!

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now, before anyone asks, this is not the Oscar-nominated original with Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood. Nor is it the 90s remake with Richard Attenborough and that girl who gives a hundred interviews a year about how she doesn’t care about being famous.

Instead, this is a 46-minute made-for-TV production from 1955! It stars the one and only Thomas Mitchell (you’ll remember him as Uncle Billy from It’s A Wonderful Life) as the man who might be Santa Claus!

Even though this version may not be quite the holiday masterpiece that the original is, I still like it. You really can’t go wrong with Thomas Mitchell as Santa.

Enjoy!

And remember….

THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS!

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: The Christmas Pact (dir by Marita Grabiak)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ll admit it. I get sentimental around Christmas time.

Actually, to be honest, I’m sentimental all the time but I’m even more so once December rolls around. Suddenly, the simplest little things can bring tears to my mismatched eyes. I find myself telling complete strangers about how much I relate to Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street and Violet Bickerstaff in It’s a Wonderful Life. December is the time of the year when I suddenly find myself walking up to my neighbors and complimenting them on how they decorated their house. I actually find myself spending more money on other people than on myself.

And I guess I’m not alone in that. I mean, that really is one of the big things about the holidays. Regardless of how cynical or snarky the world may be, it’s always safe to be sentimental in December. That’s something that’s certainly understood by the programmers at Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel. This month, both of those networks have broadcast some of the most sentimental films ever made.

Take The Christmas Pact, for instance. This film, which aired on Lifetime, was one of the most unabashedly sentimental films that I’ve ever seen. That’s not a complaint, of course. Or at least, that’s not a complaint in December. If the film had been released in October and called The Halloween Pact or maybe The Labor Day Pact, I might feel differently. But this is The Christmas Pact!

In this one, Kyla Pratt played Sadie and Jarod Joseph played Ben. They’ve grown up next to each other. They’re best friends. One year, they plant a tree and, every year after that, they meet at the tree on Christmas and they not only add a ormenant but they also discuss their Christmas wishes. It’s an incredibly sweet idea and, from the start, it’s pretty obvious that they’re meant to be together.

Unfortunately, the path of true love never runs clear. In this case, it’s partially because everyone swears that you can’t fall in love with your best friend. (I actually used to believe that but then I did fall in love with my best friend. Yay love!) It’s also because Sadie has big plans and opportunities, the majority of which involve leaving town for some place better. Can true love survive in a complicated world?

Of course it can! It’s Christmas!

Anyway, The Christmas Pact has a nice idea behind it, even if it is sometimes easy to get annoyed with just how unnecessarily difficult Ben and (especially) Sadie make things. In the end, though, Kyla Pratt and Jarod Joseph had enough chemistry to keep the story moving. As I said earlier, it’s December. Things that wouldn’t work in any other month do work in December.

That’s the magic of Christmas.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Christmas Perfection (dir by David Jackson)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For me, Christmas Perfection was about as perfect as a Christmas film can get.

It’s all about Darcy (Caitlin Thompson), who grew up dreaming of the type of perfect Christmas that she never actually got to experience. Her parents are divorced and can hardly handle being in the same room together. Her best friend has the type of dark sense of humor that doesn’t always go along with Yuletide joy. Her best friend since childhood, Brandon (James Henri-Thomas), is obviously in love with her but Darcy continually insists that he’s just a friend. She dreams of a perfect boyfriend, one who makes every Christmas special.

Every December, Darcy sets up her Christmas village. It’s a recreation of the perfect Irish village that she always used to hear about when she was younger and it’s full of figures that are based on the people from Darcy’s life. Darcy has created the perfect world in which she wishes she could live.

And then one day, through a little Christmas magic, Darcy wakes up in her perfect village!

It’s a village where every day is Christmas. Every day, Darcy wakes up and puts on a perfect Christmas sweater. Her parents, who love each other and never fight in this perfect fantasy world, start every day with a perfectly prepared breakfast. In her perfect Christmas village, everyone gathers in the pub and dances and Darcy ends up each day by making a snowman with her perfect boyfriend, Tom (Robbie Silverman).

Everything’s perfect, right?

But then, something unexpected happens. Suddenly, Brandon shows up! It turns out that, through the same magic that transported Darcy, Brandon is now a part of the Christmas village. Brandon takes one look around and tells Darcy that this is insane. She’s created a world that’s so perfect that it’s also a prison. By creating a rigidly perfect Christmas, Darcy has lost sight of what the holiday is all about!

Darcy dismisses Brandon’s concerns. But, as day after day passes, she starts to realize that a world without spontaneity isn’t a world worth living in. Tom may be the idealized guy but that also means that, at the end of every day, he’s going to make the exact snowman in the exact same way and he’s not going to listen to Darcy’s suggestions for how they could make the snowman different. I mean, everyone knows what a snowman is supposed to look like, right?

Now, I know this might sound like it’s just a Christmas-themed version of Groundhog Day and certainly, that’s a legitimate comparison. That said, I still liked the film. It even brought tears to my mismatched, multi-colored eyes. I looked at Darcy and I watched her obsessive attempts to make the holidays perfect and, as a child of divorce, I knew exactly what she was going through. Year after year, you wonder why you couldn’t keep your parents together and you fool yourself into thinking that, if you can just get them together for one perfect day, you can magically erase all of the pain and sadness of the year before. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that and sometimes, like Darcy, we spend so much time pursuing an idealized dream that we forget that there’s still joy and happiness to be found in the messiness of reality as well. It may not always be easy to find but it’s there. You just have to be willing to look for it.

The film may be called Christmas Perfection but it’s message is that Christmas and families and friends don’t have to be perfect to be special. And that’s a good message for us all.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: Jingle Belle (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As our longtime readers know, I’ve never been one for false modesty. I know that there are things that I do well and I don’t see any reason not to brag about my natural talents. On occasion, I’ve been told that it can be a little off-putting but so what? As long as its justified, what’s wrong with a little arrogance?

That said, part of knowing what I can do means being honest about what I can’t do. And if there’s any job that I would absolutely suck at, it would be writing advertising jingles. I mean, there’s a reason why none of my poems ever rhyme. Coming up with pithy one-liners that will make you want to “buy! buy! buy!,” just isn’t my specialty. Fortunately, jingles themselves are no longer as important as they were back in the Mad Men era. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of one current jingle and that’s the “Liberty Liberty Liberty Lib-er-ty!” song.

(And everyone hates that!)

Fortunately, Belle Williams (Tatyana Ali), the main protagonist of Jingle Belle, doesn’t have that problem. Long ago, she abandoned New York for Ohio and she’s established herself as one of the best jingle writers around. Unfortunately, it appears that she might be losing that magic touch. As this film begins, she’s suffering from a terrible case of writer’s block. In fact, when the mayor of her hometown calls and asks her to return home and help write the annual Christmas pageant, her initial reaction is to say no. However, her boss (Loretta Devine) insists that Belle take the assignment. Perhaps a trip back home is just what Belle needs to break through her writer’s block.

Belle returns home, planning on helping the town out. What she doesn’t know is that the Christmas pageant is being directed by her ex-boyfriend and former performing partner, Michael Hill (Cornelius Smith, Jr). Can Belle and Michael set aside their differences and their complicated personal history long enough to put on a successful Christmas pageant? And how will Michael the purist react when Belle’s boss tries to turn one of their songs into an advertising jingle?

Of course, you already know the answer to all those questions. Jingle Belle is predictable even by the standards of a Lifetime Christmas movie. As I’ve said quite a bit this month, how much you enjoy this film will depend on how much tolerance you have for Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general. (That’s kind of become my mantra this month.) Anyway, there’s no surprises to be found in this one but Cornelius Smith, Jr. is appropriately charismatic as Michael and the great Loretta Devine mines a lot of humor out of the role of the demanding boss.

The film’s final message is that small towns are better than big cities and you can write jingles anywhere. It’s a nice little message but, then again, it does seem like, if you work in advertising, it would be a good idea to live near the hub of the advertising industry. That said, I’ve never written a jingle in my life so I could be wrong. All I know is that, wherever Belle lives, she’ll come up with something better than the Liberty Mutual jingle and really, that’s the most important thing of all.

Lifetime Christmas Movie Review: A Christmas in Tennessee (dir by Gary Yates)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How do they celebrate Christmas in Tennessee?

With a lot of down home love!

Or, at least, that’s what I learned from watching this Lifetime Christmas movie.

A Christmas In Tennessee is the latest in a long line of Lifetime Christmas movies that make a big deal about where they’re set. In the past, we’ve had Christmas in Mississippi and a Christmas in Vermont and I imagine that, at some point, we’ll have a Kansas Christmas or an Iowa Christmas. The thing that these films always have in common is a strong sense of nostalgia. These are films that tell us, “You can run off to New York, California, or Toronto but your heart will always remain in either the South or one of the smaller New England hamlets.”

In the case of the film, it’s Alison Bennett (Rachel Boston) who attempted to leave town, heading off to the big city so that she could become a big time French pastry shop. However, when she became pregnant, she moved back home and got a job working in her family’s bakery. Now, years later, it appears that the bakery is about to go out of business and her daughter, Olivia, is writing letters to Santa in which she begs Santa for money. Since the town traditionally publishes all letters to Santa in the newspaper, Alison is worried that everyone is going to realize how bad her situation is.

Meanwhile, Matthew (Andrew W. Walker) has come to town. Matthew is charming and handsome and actually rather nice but he works for a real estate developer who wants to buy the town square. Matthew is ambitious. He wants a promotion. The only way he’s going to get it is to get his hands on that property. However, to do that, he has to convince Alison to sign over the land to him. Alison could really use the money but there’s no way that she’s going to betray the town that she calls home. That’s not the way things are done in Tennessee!

And then …. okay, let me stop to catch my breath here. There’s a lot going on in this movie.

*breathes*

Okay …. and then, two mysterious strangers stop by the bakery. One of them has a white beard and a jolly manner. The other is his wife and is played by Caroline Rhea. Olivia takes one look at these two strangers and decides that 1) the man is Santa Claus and 2) Santa loves her mother’s cookies! It’s time to write another letter to Santa.

Well, of course, Olivia’s letter about Santa’s favorite cookies goes viral. (It even appears as a story on “Buzz News.”) So, can Alison use her new found fame to save the town?

A Christmas in Tennessee is okay. How you react to it will probably have a lot to do with how you feel about Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general. If you like them, you’ll like this one. At heart, it’s a sweet movie and both Rachel Boston and Andrew W. Walker give sincere performances. It’s an idealized version of Christmas and who doesn’t love that this time of year?

I look forward to discovering which state we’ll visit next year.