Category Archives: Film Review

Cleaning Out The DVR: My Christmas Prince (dir by Sam Irvin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded My Christmas Prince off of Lifetime on December 3rd!)

PRINCE CHARMING IS PRINCE CHEATING!

That’s an actual headline that is seen in My Christmas Prince.  The prince in question is Prince Alexander Theodore William Hendricks (Callum Alexander), who is the next in line to take the throne in some little European country that’s definitely not the UK despite the fact that everyone there speaks with a British accent.

Everyone knows that Alexander as a prince, everyone but his girlfriend, Samantha (Alexis Knapp).  She just thinks he’s a diplomat and technically, he is.  It’s not so much that he lied to her about being royalty.  It’s just that he didn’t tell her the whole truth.  He wants to be judged based on who he is and not his royal heritage.  Of course, by not telling Samantha that he’s a prince, he also hasn’t told her that he will eventually be expected to return home and rule his country.  Samantha has plans of her own, which don’t involve being the Queen of a small European country that is definitely not the UK.  She’s just been hired to design a summer school program for every school in the Bronx!  The children need her!

(Personally, if I had the chance to be the ruler of a small country that pretty much only exists to support its royal family, I would say screw the children and catch the next flight to Monaco.)

Anyway, when Samantha decides to spend her Christmas with her family in Wyoming, Alexander decides to follow.  And no sooner has Alexander stepped into the local diner then a waitress immediately recognizes him as the crown prince of whatever country it is that he is from.  It turns out that she saw pictures of him online, attending a cocktail party with the royal family of Sweden.

(Of course, it wouldn’t be a Lifetime movie if the Internet didn’t somehow threaten to destroy everyone’s happiness.)

Anyway, it takes Samantha a few minutes to get used to the idea that her boyfriend is a royal prince.  Of course, her parents are excited.  The entire state of Wyoming is excited.  But you know who isn’t excited?  Alexander’s mother!  Nope, she is scandalized at the thought of Alexander marrying a common American.  She’d rather Alexander marry a baroness.  Could this possibly lead to a bunch of misunderstandings and unlikely visitors coming to Wyoming?

What do you think?

Every Christmas, it seems like there’s at least a handful of Lifetime and/or Hallmark films that feature obscure European royalty falling in love in small town America.  Once you’ve seen one of these movies, you’ve seen them all.  There’s not a surprising moment to be found nor a disparaging word to be heard in My Christmas Prince, which is a mildly pleasant but eminently forgettable movie.  To be honest, I don’t really demand too much from these movies but My Christmas Prince just didn’t work for me.  For a predictable movie like this to work, there needs to be a real chemistry between the two leads but there really didn’t seem to be much of a spark between Knapp and Alexander.  Much like the movie, they just seemed to be going through the motions.

I’ve often been asked which member of the Royal Family I relate to.  Usually, I say Pippa Middleton but, to be honest, it’s the little girl in the picture below:

A Movie A Day #346: Closet Land (1991, directed by Radha Bharadwaj)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It has been nearly two years since the death of Alan Rickman and it is a loss that film lovers are still feeling today.  When Rickman was with us, it was easy to take him for granted.  It was only after his death that many started to look at the films he made, both the good ones and the bad ones, and realizing just how much Rickman brought to every role he played.

Take Closet Land, for instance.  This was made early in Rickman’s film career.  It is a very theatrical film, all taking place on one set and featuring only two major roles. Madeleine Stowe plays the Victim, a writer of children’s books whose latest autobiographical work deals with a girl who uses her imagination to escape from unhappiness.  Alan Rickman plays the Interrogator, a government functionary who demands that the Victim confess to hiding anti-government propaganda in her books.  When the Victim refuses to sign the confession, the Interrogator continually switches techniques in his attempt to break her, trying everything from physically torturing her to blindfolding her and pretending to be other people to even claiming that he abused her when she was younger.

There are many problems with Closet Land but Alan Rickman’s performance is not one of them.  Rickman is hypnotically malevolent as the otherwise cultured Interrogator and the most fascinating part of the movie is watching him switch back and forth from being a harried bureaucrat just doing his job and a manipulative sociopath who views the Victim’s sanity as a trophy for him to claim.  Closet Land is too stagey and heavy-handed to be effective but Rickman’s performance reminds us of what a great actor we lost when we lost Alan Rickman.

A Movie A Day #345: A Band Called Death (2012, directed by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A band called Death was one of the best bands that most people have never heard of.  Formed in the early 70s by three brothers in Detroit, Death produced some of the most incendiary music ever recorded.  They played fast and they played loud.  They were punk before punk even existed.  At a time when most black musicians were defined by the smooth Motown style, Death created their own unique sound.  Led by a visionary named David Hackney, Death were trailblazers and, as so often happens with trailblazers, they would not receive the recognition that they deserved until several years after Death performed for the last time.

A Band Called Death tells not only their story but also the story of how this band was eventually rediscovered.  Through extensive and insightful interviews with the surviving members of Death, A Band Called Death works as not just a history of the band but also as a tribute to three brothers who always had each other’s back.  Though he passed away in 2000 and never received his due while alive, the film is dominated by David Hackney.  It was David’s idea to name the band Death, not for shock value but instead to express his own deeply spiritual outlook.  To an extent, it was David’s refusal to compromise on the name that kept Death from receiving the attention that it deserved.  (He even turned down a record deal with Clive Davis when Davis requested a name change.)  Today, of course, no one would be shocked by a band with a name like “Death.”  Instead, they would just be shocked by the band’s ferocious power of the band’s music and lyrics.

A Band Called Death is a powerful and touching documentary about the power of music and family.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Snowed-Inn Christmas (dir by Gary Yates)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded Snowed-Inn Christmas off of Lifetime on December 16th!)

Oh, Christmas movies on Lifetime!

Seriously, Lifetime totally changes during the Christmas season.  For one month, everything that we normally associate with Lifetime disappears.  Gone are all of the films about being stalked by my doctor or betrayed by my lover or deceived by my house guest.  Suddenly, Eric Roberts is no longer plotting to kill Haylie Duff.  No one’s daughter is getting abducted and sold into slavery.  The houses remain grand and the clothes are still often to die for but, otherwise, Lifetime changes during Christmas.  Suddenly, it’s safe to fall in love with that handsome stranger.  The internet is no longer the root of all evil.  Instead, it’s now become a place where a harried single mother can find a handsome single father and hire him to play Santa Claus at a department store.  Lifetime changes for Christmas and we all love it.

Of course, there’s never anything surprising about Lifetime Christmas movies.  They pretty much all follow the same plot and that’s one reason why we love them.  The holidays can be stressful, especially when you can’t go on twitter without being implored to “take it to the streets.”  Lifetime films (and Hallmark films) provide an escape from all that.  They’re a trip into a much more innocent past.

Take Snowed-Inn Christmas for, example.  That’s not a typo.  While this film does deal with people being snowed in, it also largely takes place in an inn.  The inn is located in Santa Claus, Indiana.  It’s owned by Carol (Belinda Montgomery) and Chris (John B. Lowe).  Yes, they both wear red.  Yes, Chris has a white beard and an infectious laugh.  Did you expect any less?

Evil developers want to tear down the inn.  If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from watching Christmas Lifetime films, it’s that land developers never have the holiday spirit.  They always want to kick people out of their homes right before Christmas.  They always want to build a ski resort or a luxury condo or something.

The only thing that can save the inn is if proof is found that the inn is a historical landmark.  Fortunately, two online journalists, Jenna (Bethany Joy Lenz) and Kevin (Andrew Walker), are staying at the inn.  Kevin is the type of guy who eats a slice of pizza for breakfast.  Jenna uses an electric toothbrush.  That’s really all of the character development that they get but that’s okay.  Walker is handsome.  Lenz is pretty.  Both of them can deliver potentially silly lines with sincerity.  They’re likable and that’s all a film like this really requires.

Anyway, at the start of the film, neither Jenna nor Kevin have the Christmas spirit.  They’re not in love with each other, either.  How much you want to bet that will change as they work to save the inn from being bulldozed?  How much do you want to bet that their burgeoning relationship will be encourages by Carol and Chris, both of whom always have a twinkle in their eye regardless of how close their inn is to being destroyed.

Online, some critics have pointed out that Snowed-Inn Christmas is basically a remake of The Flight Before Christmas.  That may be true but who cares?  All of these Lifetime Christmas films are essentially remakes of each other.  That’s why we love them.  Snowed-Inn Christmas delivers exactly what it needs to deliver.  It’s a silly but sweet little movie.

A Movie A Day #344: Skyscraper (1996, directed by Raymond Martino)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If you want to see a movie about somone trapped in a skyscraper and battling terrorists, the obvious solution is to watch Die Hard.  After all, it’s always a good time to watch Die Hard.

If for some reason you cannot watch Die Hard, then I recommend trying Die Hard 2.

If Die Hard 2 is not available, I guess you could watch something like Skyscraper.

Skyscraper is a by-the-numbers remake of Die Hard, except that the Bruce Willis role is now played by Anna Nicole Smith.  Anna Nicole is a helicopter pilot who is hired by a group of strange men to give them an aerial tour of the city.  What Anna Nicole does not realize is that these men are all terrorists and she is flying them to the skyscraper that they are planning on taking over.  Unlike Bruce, Anna Nicole does not get to say much during this movie.  She doesn’t get to say “Yippie ki yay, motherfucker,” or anything else that might liven things up.  Instead, she takes a shower, has one lame sex scene, and then spends the rest of the movie crawling through air ducts and shooting terrorists.  The few times that she does have to actually speak, she is about as convincing as you would expect Anna Nicole Smith to be in the role of a tough action heroine.  At one point, Anne Nicole responds to the main terrorist’s florid soliloquy by telling him that he is quoting Shakespeare and she delivers the line in such a way that you are left with little doubt that, until she showed up on the set that day, Anna Nicole Smith had never heard of this Shakespeare dude.

On second thought, if Die Hard is not available, do not watch Skyscraper.  Stare at a wall for a few hours.  Protect your brain cells.  Skyscraper is one to avoid.  If you have to resort to a Die Hard rip-off, watch Shannon Tweed and Andrew “Dice” Clay in No Contest instead.

Here Are The Semi-Finalists For The Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The big shock?  The inclusion of Netflix’s Bright.  Over on AwardsWatch, Erik Anderson speculates this could mean that the Academy is warming up to Netflix.  If that’s the case, it’s certainly good news for Mudbound.

“Bright”
“Darkest Hour”
“Ghost in the Shell”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”
“I, Tonya”
“Victoria & Abdul”
“Wonder”

A Movie A Day #343: Looker (1981, directed by Michael Crichton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Someone is murdering models and trying to frame Larry Roberts (Albert Finney), a plastic surgeon.  Larry suspects that the actual murderer is somehow involved with the Digital Matrix research firm, a shadowy organization that is headed by James Coburn and Leigh Taylor Young.  Digital Matrix has developed a new technique where they digitally scan a model’s body and then generate a 3-D duplicate that can be used in commercials and on film.  The real-life models stand to make a fortune from the royalties, assuming that they are physically perfect and they do not end up getting murdered immediately after being scanned.  Larry’s girlfriend, Cindy (Susan Dey), is just the latest model to have been scanned and now Larry suspects that she might be targeted for death as well.

When I was growing up, Looker was one of those movies that always seemed to be on HBO.  I don’t know why this box office bomb was so popular on cable but I do remember seeing it several times.  I guarantee you that anyone who has ever came across this movie on HBO in the 80s and 90s will remember it.  They might not remember the title but they will remember that the bad guys used light guns that would cause people to briefly go into a catatonic state.  Everyone who has ever seen this movie remembers the model standing frozen in the doorway of her apartment.

As for the movie itself, the guns are cool and so is the scene where Susan Dey gets scanned but otherwise, Looker is not very good.  Michael Crichton later said that he had conflicts with Warner Bros during the editing of Looker and, as a result, there were some important scenes that did not make it into the final cut.  For instance, it is never really explained why the models are being killed.  Albert Finney was in one of his periodic career slumps when he starred as Larry and he looks uncomfortable going through the motions of being an action star.  Two years after Looker came out, Finney’s career would be reinvigorated when he received an Oscar nomination for The Dresser and three years later, he would give his career best performance in Under the Volcano.

As it typical of Michael Crichton’s work, Looker was ahead of its time in predicting the use of CGI in media but otherwise, it’s nothing special.  If you want to see a good Crichton-directed film, stick with Westworld and The Great Train Robbery.

Killer Christmas: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (ABC-TV Movie 1972)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

Four daughters reunite at the old family homestead during Christmas to visit their estranged, dying father. Sounds like the perfect recipe for one of those sticky-sweet Hallmark movies, right? Wrong, my little elves! HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, originally broadcast as part of ABC-TV’s “Movie of the Week” series (1969-1975) is part proto-slasher, part psycho-biddie shocker, and a whole lot of fun! It plays kind of like a 70’s exploitation film, only with a high-powered cast that includes Sally Field, Eleanor Parker, Julie Harris , and Walter Brennan, a script by Joseph (PSYCHO) Stefano, and direction courtesy of John Llwellyn Moxey (HORROR HOTEL, THE NIGHT STALKER).

Rich old Benjamin Morgan (Brennan) has summoned his daughters home on a dark and stormy Christmas Eve, claiming his second wife Elizabeth (Harris) is slowly poisoning him to death. Elizabeth was once ‘suspected’ of poisoning her first husband (though never proven) and spent some time…

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I watched A Christmas Story Live!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Last night, while I was wrapping presents, I watched A Christmas Story Live! on Fox.

I was worried about whether or not I would be able to enjoy the Live version.  Like all good people, I love the original movie.  If you have ever wondered who actually spends 24 hours watching A Christmas Story on Christmas, it’s usually me.  It’s the perfect holiday movie, a sweet and loving tribute to both Christmas and family.  The Live version, which was based on the Broadway version of the original film, had a lot to live up to.

It got off to a bad start, with Bebe Rexha performing a song called Count on Christmas while people in pink bunny suits jumped around behind her.  At first, I thought I was watching the worst Old Navy commercial of all time.  The sound was wonky during Rexha’s performance and what could be heard was extremely auto-tuned.

Once the actual show started, the first thing I noticed was that A Christmas Story Live was using the Stars Hollow set from Gilmore Girls.  There’s nothing wrong with that because I loved Gilmore Girls but I still kept expecting to see Lorelai and Luke arguing about whether Ralphie was going to shoot his eye out.  The second thing I noticed was Matthew Broderick walking around the set, playing the role of the adult Ralphie and providing the narration.  That took a while get used to, just because Broderick looked so sad and sometimes, it was hard not to think of him being a ghost, materializing around town and remembering what it was like to be alive.

A Christmas Story Live! lasted three hours, which was an hour too long.  One of the best things about A Christmas Story is that it tells a very simple story that everyone can relate to so it felt strange to see it as a big musical production.  But it got better as it went along.  I really didn’t feel like I’d be able to keep going after the first hour but I stuck with it and during the second and third hours, the show’s energy really picked up, Broderick stopped looking so sad, and I started to really enjoy it.  Maybe someone was backstage reading the comments on twitter because something changed between the first and second hours.

For me, the highlights where Jane Krakowski’s performance as the teacher, Maya Rudolph’s performance as the mother, Anna Gasteyer performing the Hanukkah song, and David Alan Grier as the drunk Santa Claus.  I also liked Chris Diamantopoulos as the “Old Man,” even if nothing can compete with Darren McGavin’s performance in the original film.  I was also really impressed with all the child performers in the show, especially Andy Walken who played Ralphie.

It wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful.  Mostly, it just reminded me how much I love the original film and how I can’t wait to watch it this Christmas!