Film Review: Stalked at 17 (2012, dir. Doug Campbell)


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Between 2009 and 2012, Lifetime must have really decided to get behind this “at 17” series of movies. You’ll notice it’s not just Stalked at 17, but Stalked at 17 TM. This time the opening credits tell us that this movie is “Inspired by True Events.” I guess you can say that when your plot is so vague that it must have happened to somebody somewhere.

The movie begins, and we are introduced to our main character played by Taylor Spreitler. I know her character has a name in the movie, but if the script isn’t going to stop making endless references to the show she was on at the time called Melissa & Joey, then I can call her Lennox.

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That’s a baby monitor that Lennox is listening to. That’s also most likely a future Lifetime movie when they realize that some Internet of Things baby monitors can be used to look inside other people’s homes. That is if they haven’t already. After Lennox goes to use the microwave, she is grabbed by the last 20 minutes or so of the movie before the film cuts to the title card, and it’s one year earlier.

Lennox and her friend are touring a college when we meet our bad guy for the movie on the left.

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It’s also when I realized that the subtitles on the DVD didn’t work and turned on the captions instead. I love that they cast Charles Hittinger as Psycho Dad so he would look really intimidating. It’s probably because if you’ve watched Melissa & Joey, then you know that Taylor Spreitler and vulnerable go together about as much as Bella Thorne and drama.

Psycho Dad invites them to a party, and they of course decide to go. Now, for no good reason whatsoever, a guy wearing a sombrero with a bullseye on his chest.

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We learn some very important information at the frat house. No, not that they decided to make him the one who was adopted by a councilwoman instead of Lennox. It’s that they run a very tight ship after Psycho Dad finds puke on the stairs.

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Now we meet Lennox’s dad played by none other than whitelighter himself Brian Krause.

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I agree, Leo. However, I think Doug Campbell was right to take the title of this movie and start calling the movies “Stalked by”. He’s just jealous because his wife played by Amy Pietz was in Stalked by My Neighbor (2015). This scene exists to tell us that they are having financial difficulties which will play no material role in the film.

Lennox and friend go to the party. As soon as the dialog tells us that Lennox is 16 at present, her and Psycho Dad immediately go upstairs together. After he tells her a sob story, they kiss and it fades to black before going to an establishing shot of her school.

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I hope you like establishing shots of her school because you’ll see them 4-5 times in this movie. Heck, later in the movie you’ll get the exact same shot, but only a minute or so before or after the other shot.

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Thanks to Lennox texting Psycho Dad, we learn that they did it on February 21st exactly because it is their two month anniversary.

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Oh yeah, and his name is Chad. Just like Mister 45 minutes from Accused at 17. Real original there screenwriter Christine Conradt. It looks like Conradt is really passionate about these “at 17” movies seeing as she’s produced five of them. According to her bio on IMDb, she has an “MCJ from Boston University where she focused on cybercrime and juvenile delinquency.” It’s weird that with a focus in cybercrime, she seems to have had nothing to do with Fugitive at 17 (2012) where the girl in question is a hacker.

Now Lennox forgets that this movie is called Stalked at 17 and not Pregnant at 17, but it’s too late. I love how this scene plays out. Lennox is talking to a male friend when she grabs her stomach, and is obviously sick. She makes a mad dash for the bathroom. He quickly follows, but stops at the door, and asks a girl standing nearby to go in to check on her.

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The line actually goes like this: “You really need to find a new friend cause that one out there couldn’t even be bothered to make sure you were okay, and sent me inside instead.”

Meanwhile, the film knows it needs to pad itself out.

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Lennox is at home and finds out she is indeed pregnant. While that is going on, Psycho Chad is buying jewelry online. Back in Lennox’s bedroom, the movie gives us lines that might as well amount to this: “I don’t know if he was wearing a condom. You know what they say? If you look at it, then you go blind. I just had to take his word for it.” Of course Psycho Chad is happy about the news because it means he’ll have a family of his own now with a child who will love him unconditionally.

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Then the two of them go to a restaurant where Psycho Chad blows up at a waiter. That’s basically the rest of the film. Chad gets nuttier, he gets in a fight with Leo, his biological mom he lied about being dead gets out of prison, and they finally get around to where the film started. At least it was fun to see Leo fighting with Psycho Chad along the way.

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Lennox, baby, Psycho Chad, and Psycho Mom all end up at a convenience store where things go wrong and Psycho Chad is shot. Then it shows Lennox with the kid, and fades to black. I think this movie has earned the Godfrey Ho red screen end card for how abrupt the ending occurs.

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Thus ends the classic tale of girl meets boy, girl gets herself knocked up, boy turns out to want a family, boy turns out to be crazy, everyone does their best to pad out the film, boy is shot, and the credits role. I have to admit that aside from this and Accused at 17, I have never seen credits that start by referring to the cast as “the players.”

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At least this one had some kind of a story. That’s way more than I can say for Accused at 17. I have Fugitive at 17 coming soon, then that will be my last “at 17” movie for now.

This Eagle Doesn’t Fly: FLAP (Warner Brothers 1970)


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FLAP is an attempt by director Sir Carol Reed to jump on the late 60’s/early70’s “relevance” bandwagon by depicting the modern-day mistreatment of the American Indian. It’s a seriocomic character study that struggles to find it’s identity, and as a result fails at both comedy and drama.

FLAP is Flapping Eagle, an ex-soldier living back on the reservation who’s “pissed off at everybody”. He’s a hard drinking man, as is just about all the Indians here, feeding into the stereotypical “drunken Indian” image. Flap’s had enough of the noise coming from construction workers building a highway project right next to the rez, and causes a fracas between the hardhats and the Indians, damaging a bulldozer in the process. Native Wounded Bear (who has a correspondence school law degree) points out the highway is gong through sacred burial ground, which turns out not to be the case. Everyone’s up in arms, especially local…

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Film Review: Accused at 17 (2009, dir. Doug Campbell)


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I know Lisa would normally be the one to tackle these movies, but she just finished writing 40 reviews in about the span of a month. I think it goes without saying that she probably looks like this right now.

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I also think it goes without saying that shot doesn’t exist in this movie.

Before the title card appears, we are treated to credits over shots that make us think we are about to watch a crime TV Show. I wish. Something might actually happen if that were the case.

Now we cut to five days earlier where we can tell things are going well because the captions tell us so.

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We see some kids at school before we are introduced briefly to Cynthia Gibb at her job. Not sure what she does, and like most things in this movie, I don’t care. We then go back to the school to be introduced to obviously bad girl (Janet Montgomery) and low-rent Miriam McDonald (Stella Maeve) before cutting back to Gibb.

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Some guy shows up to remind us he exists in the movie, but not to me. The school returns so we can meet Chad (Reiley McClendon) and obviously good girl who will be “accused”, even though that barely has anything to do with the movie.

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Chad is here to tell her that she needs to cancel her plans and come to the best party of the year. I know this not only because the movie says so, but because when have you ever watched a movie where it isn’t supposed to be the greatest party of the year?

The guy who decided to exist for a bit brought along a pair of earrings so we can learn that the good girl is named Bianca (Nicole Gale Anderson). Already this movie is full of lies. Nicole Gale Anderson was 18 when she did this movie. She had long passed the age of 17 when you could be accused, stalked, betrayed, missing, pregnant, and become a fugitive all in the same year. It’s a long tradition going back at least as far as 1931 when Marian Marsh was in Under 18. She actually made that one when she was 17-18 years-old. When you turn 18, life just becomes one long snooze fest.

Bad girl shows up to make sure we know she’s very comfortable lying about people or animals dying before we can go to the party. That, and that her mother will totally back her lies up later in the movie. Fortunately, Bianca doesn’t make it to the party so Chad and another girl can have sex in a bathroom.

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The one whose hands those belong to is Dory (Lindsay Taylor). She’s named that because the movie isn’t very well written. Also, her last name in the movie is Holland which goes right along with Cynthia Gibb’s character’s first name Jacqui to create the name of porn/B-Movie star Jacqui Holland. I’ve reviewed several of her films on this site.

All you need to know now is that things don’t go well for Bianca in several ways. Bianca and her friends sit next to a pool in bikinis to talk about boys because they aren’t guys. Otherwise, they would be doing this same scene while playing basketball. We get to see Bianca leave a nice little voicemail for Chad.

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However, that’s not really what sets her off. This is what gets her riled up.

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45 minutes? Chad’s a 10 minute man, 15 at the most. That’s why the girls decide to pick up Dory to take her to where “the hottest frat guys ever” are located.

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Of course by that, they mean the set of Mojave (2015).

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Sadly, Oscar Isaac is not there to greet them dressed as Antonio das Mortes. This makes Dory think something is up. She’s right. Dory punches Bianca to make sure she has a bruise on her forehead before she leaves the scene. Then obviously bad girl bashes Dory’s head in with a rock. That’s one Dead Dory.

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I did forget one thing. On the way over, Dory made sure to leave a hair clip in the car to be used later in the movie.

In between Bianca leaving and Dory’s head getting hit by a rock, Bianca made sure to stop by a gas station so that someone will have seen her. It matters greatly to the plot, and by that I mean next to nothing. A plot I guarantee won’t matter to you if you watch Accused at 17. Things, stuff, and then we are introduced to our buddy cops.

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They are clearly the best because they pay attention to every detail. In 2009, nobody was saying “Mackin'” anymore. That’s why they have a discussion as to whether they say “cuttin'”, “tappin’ it”, “hittin’ it”,  or “hookin’ up”. They question Chad and we find out they actually aren’t the best cops around.

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Officers, come on? Chad doesn’t seem like the type of guy who goes out to a Saturday Night Fish Fry.

However, I do believe that Chad is the kind of guy who takes Louis Jordan’s advice and when Bianca calls to ask if he’s alone, he tells her “no, I got three girls with me.”

Now they turn their attention to Bianca because the stuff in between the interrogations is really boring, so we need to keep moving along. There is a lot of padding in this movie. However, I have to give Janet Montgomery credit. She does a pretty good job of playing the evil girl. I also have to give the movie credit for how funny it was to see Bianca drive back to the scene of the head bashing the next day and call out Dory’s name as if she is just hiding somewhere. Just when the cop may actually be getting to something with his line of questioning, Cynthia Gibb interrupts to remind him that they still have about half a movie left to go so he better leave.

Now a couple of extras they gave hiking equipment find the body. Blah, blah, blah, and confrontation with evil girl’s mom.

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The gist of it is that Barbara Niven can play a lesbian in one movie, a nice mom in a Hallmark murder mystery series, and do roles like this. She’s very versatile. Nothing really of consequence happens here except evil girl and evil mom lie because otherwise how are they going to get away with calling this movie “Accused at 17.”

Well, finally the trip to the gas station earlier and the hair clip left in the car pay off when the cops notice there are only about 30 minutes left in the movie.

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They arrest her, so they can finally say with confidence that the title isn’t false advertising. More things happen, but it all amounts to Gibb and Bianca trying to prove her innocence till it’s time for bad girl to confront that other girl who only exists to be killed off.

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She apparently needs an inhaler, so evil girl takes it away and sprays all the puffs out of it. No big loss. Again, more stuff happens that is of no real consequence until bad girl pulls a gun on her father.

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Dad stops her, and everything is good again. That is except for Dory having had her head smashed in and that other girl having suffocated to death. None of that matters because Bianca puts on the earrings I mentioned earlier. The point of that is the guy who barely existed at the beginning of the film is Gibb’s new boyfriend/dad for Bianca so putting them on means she has accepted him.

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This movie was terrible. I’m pretty sure more happened in Superdragon vs. Superman. The movies Stalked at 17 and and Betrayed at 17 arrived today. I’m so grateful that Lisa already reviewed Betrayed at 17 back in 2011. That means I only have to watch it, and not attempt to write about it.

Cleaning Out the DVR Pt 8: All-Star Comedy Break


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Tonight I’ll be watching the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, but for those of you non-baseball fans, here’s a look at five funny films from the 1930’s & 40’s:

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IT’S A GIFT (Paramount 1934, D: Norman Z. McLeod) The Great Man himself, W.C. Fields , works his magic in this delightfully demented domestic comedy about hen pecked grocer Harold Bissonette, who dreams of owning an orange grove in California. His wife (Kathleen Howard) is a domineering battle-axe, his kid (Tommy Bupp) an obnoxious, roller skating brat, and daughter Mildred (Jean Rouveral) doesn’t want to leave her “true love”. This sets the stage for some of Fields’ funniest surrealistic scenes, including his grocery store being demolished by blind Mr. Mickle and perennial nemesis Baby Leroy; poor W.C. trying to get some sleep on the porch while being constantly disturbed by noisy neighbors, a wayward coconut, a man looking for “Carl LeFong”, and…

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4 Shots From 4 Films: Le viol du vampire, Les démoniaques, Lèvres de sang, La nuit des horloges


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

4 Shots From 4 Films

Le viol du vampire (1968, dir by Jean Rollin)

Le viol du vampire (1968, dir by Jean Rollin)

Les démoniaques (1974, dir by Jean Rollin)

Les démoniaques (1974, dir by Jean Rollin)

Lèvres de sang (1975, dir by Jean Rollin)

Lèvres de sang (1975, dir by Jean Rollin)

La nuit des horloges (2007, dir by Jean Rollin)

La nuit des horloges (2007, dir by Jean Rollin)

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #40: The Wrong Child (dir by David DeCoteau)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Well, I guess she did since this is the 40th review!!!  YAY!)

The Wrong Child

Finally, we have reached the end.  Two and a half weeks ago, I started the process of reviewing all forty of the films that I recorded between the start of March and the end of June.  It hasn’t always been easy, within the two and a half week time frame that I set for myself, to watch and review all of these films but I’ve managed to do it.  As soon as I publish the review that you’re reading right now, I will be able to say that I have officially cleaned out my DVR.

So, what was the final film waiting to be watched on my DVR?  It was The Wrong Child, which originally aired on June 26th on the Lifetime channel.

In The Wrong Child, Vivica A. Fox plays Renee.  Like many Lifetime heroines, Renee would appear to have it all.  She has money, glamour, a teenage daughter, and a tragic backstory.  (Her first husband was killed several years ago in a traffic accident.)  She also has a wonderful house, which regular Lifetime viewers might recognize as being the same house from The Wrong Roommate.  She has recently remarried.  Her new husband is Charles (Gary Daniels), an architect who may or may not have a few secrets of his own lurking in the past.

One day, Andrew (Robbie Davidson) shows up at the house.  Andrew is a handsome and apparently normal teenager.  He explains that his mother has recently died of stomach cancer but, before she passed, she informed him that Charles is his father.  Charles is skeptical but Renee and her daughter welcome Andrew into the family.

Of course, it turns out that Charles was correct to be suspicious.  Andrew is a sociopath, the type of guy who takes pictures of strangers while they’re out jogging and who also is totally willing to murder anyone who might have any evidence that his name is not actually Andrew.  Andrew may be crazy but he has a very specific reason for tracking down Charles and his new family.

The Wrong Child is a pretty standard Lifetime B-movie but director David DeCoteau always brings a certain flair to even the most predictable of thrillers.  You know that Andrew is crazy as soon as you see him but Robbie Davidson still gives a really good and rather chilling performance.

Add to that, there’s the house!  I loved the house when it appeared in The Wrong Roommate and I loved it even more in The Wrong Child.  Here’s hoping that the house appears in another wrong film soon!

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Well, that’s it!  Two and a half week and 40 movies later, I have now officially cleaned out my DVR!  Now, I can get to work on filling it up again!

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #39: Full Out (dir by Sean Cisterna)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

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The 39th film on my DVR was Full Out, which aired on Lifetime immediately after Center Stage: On Pointe.  

I enjoyed Full Out when it first aired and I enjoyed it even more when I watched it a second time.  It’s a truly enjoyable and inspiring dance film and it’s one of the best films to have appeared on Lifetime this year.  Not only is it wonderful to watch but it’s a Canadian film, which is always a good thing.  It features not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Degrassi actors!

Full Out tells a true story and what a story it is!  Ariana Berlin (Anna Golja) is a talented gymnast who is bound for Olympic glory when she and her mother (Ramona Milano) are involved in a devastating traffic accident.  While Ariana survives the accident, she spends five days in a coma.  When she awakens, she discovers that she has two broken legs, two collapsed lungs, a broken wrist, a broken collarbone, and several cracks ribs.  A metal rod has been placed in her leg and her doctors tell her that she’ll never compete again.

At first, Ariana is bitter.  Not only does she miss the Olympics but she also has to watch as her best friend (played by Sarah Fisher) goes in her place and wins a silver medal.  Ariana lashes out at her friends and her family.  Everyone is prepared to give up on her, except for her physical therapist, Michelle (Asha Bromfield).  Michelle teaches Ariana hip hop dance and introduces Ariana to her dance troupe.  Through dance, Ariana starts to gain back her confidence.  Michelle eventually asks Araina to coach the dancers for an upcoming audition to join a famous dance team.

In fact, Ariana has become so confident that she feels ready to return to gymnastics.  She is accepted at UCLA, where her coach is the demanding Valorie Kondos Field (Jennifer Beals).  However, Ariana struggles to balance both gymnastics and dance.  Can she have both or will she be forced to make a difficult choice?

Full Out is an incredibly positive and likable film, one that made me feel good both times that I watched it.  The acting is wonderful, the story is inspiring, and the dancing is pure joy.  Watch this when you’re in a bad mood or when you’re feeling hopeless and it will immediately cheer you up, I promise!

As I’ve mentioned a few times in the past, this has been a good year for Degrassi actors appearing in Lifetime films.  Full Out sets some sort of record by featuring four Degrassi actors!  Sarah Fletcher (who played conflicted Christian Becky Baker on Degrassi and also starred in The Stepchild) plays Ariana’s best friend and occasional rival.  Jake Epstein, who played bipolar musician/photographer Craig Manning on Degrassi, appears as one of Ariana’s coaches.  Ramona Milano, who played Drew and Adam’s mom on Degrassi, plays Ariana’s mom.  (Interestingly enough, on Degrassi, Sarah Fletcher’s Becky was a potential girlfriend to both Drew and Adam.)  And finally, Anna Golja, who plays bitchy Zoe on Degrassi, gives a great and empathetic performance as Ariana Berlin.

In fact, everyone is great in Full Out.  WAY TO GO, CANADA!

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #38: Center Stage: On Pointe (dir by Director X)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

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The 38th film on my DVR was Center Stage: On Pointe, which premiered on Lifetime on June 25th.

Center Stage: On Pointe is the third film in the Center Stage series.  The first film, which was released in 2000, is one of those films that, at the time, you pretty much had to see if you were into ballet.  The second film, Center Stage: Turn It Up, aired on the Oxygen Network in 2008 and laid much of the groundwork for what happens in On Pointe.

At the start of On Pointe, Jonathan Reeves (Peter Gallagher), the head of the American Ballet Academy, has a problem.  The Academy is still doing great work but it’s not bringing in much money.  Unfortunately, the ABA has developed a reputation for being stodgy.  It needs to be shaken up.  It needs new dancers who are going to challenge the teachers even as the teachers challenge them.  Over the objections of just about everyone else at the ABA, Reeves decides that it’s time to bring modern dancers into the Academy.

Reeves and his choreographers (including Kenny Wormald’s Tommy Anderson, the male lead from Turn It Up) set out to recruit dancers to compete at a camp where the winners will be invited to join the Academy.  Among those dancers: Bella Parker (Nicole Munoz).  Bella is the younger sister of Kate Parker (Rachele Brooke Smith), whose story was previously told in Turn It Up.  Seeking to escape from her famous sister’s shadow, Bella auditions under a false name.  However, everyone immediately knows who she is.  It’s not easy being Kate Parker’s sister.

The camp turns out to be absolutely beautiful (even if it did remind me a bit of Camp Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th) but the dance world is a competitive and often unforgiving one.  Not only is there tension between the ballet students and the modern dancers (and that tension is one of the most realistic aspects of the film) but one of the instructors appears to be obsessed with trying to destroy Bella.  Will Bella and her fellow dancers survive the grueling camp?  Will Bella ever escape her sister’s shadow?  And will the ABA manage to change with the times?

You already know the answers.  There’s not a surprising moment to be found in Center Stage: On Pointe but the film is well-shot, the music is great, and the dancing is amazing.  Yes, some of the performances could be better but when you’ve got dancers who can move as well as the ones in this cast, it really doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the greatest actors in the world.  This is a dance movie, after all.  The dance scenes are amazing and that’s what is important.

(By the way, fans of Dance Moms may be interested to know that Chloe Lukasiak has a small role in Center Stage: On Pointe.  And, though she may no longer be a member of ALDC, she’s still a great dancer.)

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #37: All This And Heaven Too (dir by Anatole Litvak)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

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The 37th film on my DVR was the 1940 film, All This, And Heaven Too.  It originally aired on June 21st on TCM.

All This, and Heaven Too is one of the many melodramatic historical romances in which Bette Davis appeared in the late 30s and early 40s.  These films usually featured Bette as a strong-willed woman who was often condemned for not conforming to the rules of society.  Typically, she would end up falling in love with a man who society said she could not have.  Bette almost always seemed to end up alone, which I guess was the way women who thought for themselves were punished back then.

In this one, Bette plays Henriette Deluzy, a French woman who ends up in America in the 1850s.  When she shows up to start teaching at a private, all-girls school, her students immediately start gossiping about her.  It seems that Henriette was at the center of some sort of European scandal and everyone is speculating about what happened.  Finally, at the start of class, Henriette tells her students that she’s going to tell them the true story of what happened back in France.

It turns out that Henriette was a governess.  She took care of the four children of the Duc de Praslin (Charles Boyer) and his wife, the Duchesse (Barbara O’Neil).  The Duchesse was mentally unstable and soon came to suspect that her husband had fallen in love with Henriette.  Though she may have been insane, it turned out that the Duchesse was correct.  When the Duchesse fired Henriette and then lied to her husband about it, the Duc flew into a rage and murdered his wife.

Under the laws of the time, the Duc could only be judged by his fellow noblemen.  He was told that if he simply confessed and said that Henriette was the one who drove him to commit the murder, he would be set free.  (As opposed to the characters that Bette Davis played in The Letter and The Little Foxes, Henriette was totally innocent.)  Would the Duc confess and allow Henriette to be blamed or would he deny his love for her and sacrifice his life as a result?

All This, And Heaven Too is a rather slow movie and it’s hard not to be disappointed that Henriette is such a boring character.  She’s so innocent and victimized that the role almost seems like a waste of Bette Davis’s talents.  A big production that featured lavish (though black-and-white) recreations of 19th Century France, All This, And Heaven Too was probably a big deal for contemporary audiences and, if you’re a Bette Davis or Charles Boyer completist, you might enjoy it.  But otherwise, it’s really nothing special.

All This, And Heaven Too was among the 10 films nominated for Best Picture of 1940.  However, it lost to Rebecca.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #36: Killer Assistant (dir by Danny J. Boyle)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

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The 36th film on my DVR was Killer Assistant (also known as simply The Assistant.)

Killer Assistant originally aired on Lifetime on June 20th and it won major points from me just because of the title.  Though often underappreciated, administrative assistants are the glue that hold most offices together.  If there were no administrative assistants, the entire world would literally stop spinning so I’m always happy whenever I see a movie in which the assistants finally get their revenge.

The assistant of the title is … well, he claims his name is David (Brando Eaton).  That’s not his real name, of course.  And he’s really not from a small town in upstate New York despite what he tells everyone.  He may be a shady character who stole someone else’s identity but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a good assistant!  He especially proves to be invaluable to Suzanne Austin (Arianne Zucker), an editor at a fashion magazine.  As Suzanne struggles to put together the magazine’s 50th anniversary edition (all the while being watched by her boss, who bare a probably not coincidental resemblance to Anna Wintour), David proves to be a great source of ideas.  When Suzanne thinks that she’s seen her husband (George Stults) cheating on her, David proves to be a great source of comfort.

Which is another way of saying that they end up having a one night stand.  How passionate do things get?  So passionate that the sex scene is actually shown in slow motion.  (You know that Lifetime is getting serious when they start using the slow mo.)  However, the next morning, Suzanne announces that the previous night was a “mistake” and tells David that he is fired.

David, however, has other ideas.  After all, he already went through the trouble of attacking one of Suzanne’s other assistants just to make sure that he’d be able to keep his job.  David tells Suzanne that he’s not going anywhere.  He’s going to continue to answer the phones for her and schedule meetings for her.  And if she has a problem with that, he’ll just show everyone the little film that he made of the two of them during the previous night.

So, Suzanne is stuck with David.  And David is now flirting with her rebellious teenage daughter, Calista (Natalie Lander).

Anyway, Killer Assistant is rather ludicrous but I enjoyed it because 1) it was about a crazy administrative assistant and 2) it took place at a fashion magazine and was, therefore, full of bitchy dialogue.  Plus, Brando Eaton did a really good job in the role of David.  He was just so clean-cut, helpful, and cheerful, no matter what terrible things he was plotting.  As I watched the film, I found myself imagining a possible spin-off in which Suzanne is a guest judge on Project Runway and David blackmails her into praising the ugliest dress.  It was fun!

(For those keeping track of my efforts to clean out my DVR, that’s 36 films down and 4 to go!)