Category Archives: Film

What Lisa Watched This Morning #204: Your Family Or Your Life (a.k.a. April’s Flowers) (dir by Tom Shell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The morning, I watched the latest Lifetime Movie Network premiere, Your Family Or Your Life!

Why Was I Watching It?

Your Family or Your Life premiered last night on the Lifetime Movie Network but, because it was All Saints’ Day, I spent yesterday with my sisters, singing Shakira songs, not watching anything on television, and basically staying completely offline.  However, I did set the DVR because a non-Christmas related Lifetime premiere is going to be a rarity from now through December.

When I got home this morning, I promptly watched Your Family Or Your Life.

What Was It About?

David Meyer (Alexander Carroll) is a former alcoholic who is now a successful attorney.  His work has led him to discover some illegal shenanigans concerning Erica Hearns (Angelica Bridges).  Hoping to say out of prison, Erica sends Ed (Eric Michael Cole), the world’s most incompetent hitman, to kill David.  Ed manages to make David’s death look like a suicide but David’s widow, Kathy (Jennie Garth) is not convinced.  For that matter, neither is David’s stepdaughter, April (Luca Bella).  Kathy’s best friend, Michelle (Alexandra LeMosle) has some suspicions as well!  Like I said, Ed’s not very good at this.

So now, Ed and Erica have to figure out a way to silence all of the people who don’t think that David committed suicide.  Fortunately, for them, they’ve got an inside player.  Little does April suspect that her boyfriend, Damon (David Gridely), is actually one of Erica’s relatives!

What Worked?

Jennie Garth is just the greatest!  Depending on how old you are, you either know her primarily from Beverly Hills 90210 or What I Like About You.  This film had a 90210-style plot with a What I Like About You attitude and it was fun to watch Garth do things like beat up a burglar with a baseball bat.  Garth brought a lot of energy to her roll.

Angelica Bridges was entertaining as the villain.  Her frustration with Ed was wonderfully performed.  When she realized that Ed had basically screwed up a very simple murder, I think anyone who has ever been a supervisor could relate to her frustration.

The mother-daughter relationship between Kathy and April felt very realistic, especially when it came to Kathy’s immediate dislike of Damon.  That might be because Luca Bella actually is Jennie Garth’s daughter.

What Did Not Work?

I regret that the film made it clear, from the start, that David had been murdered.  I would have preferred a more ambiguous approach, one that left you wondering if David actually had been murdered or if maybe Kathy really was just seeing what she wanted to see.

I also regret that the film did NOT feature the following dialogue:

“Your family or your life!”

“I’m thinking about it!”

“Oh my God!  Just Like Me!” Moments

I also keep a baseball bat near my bedroom door, just in case I ever have to use it.  I don’t think I could wield it as decisively as Jennie Garth does, though.

Lessons Learned

If you’re going to hire a hitman, spend a little extra and get one who is actually good at his job.  Otherwise, things just get too complicated.

Jamie Lee Curtis Tweets A First Look At Halloween Kills!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, everyone, Halloween will soon be over for this year but we’ve got 2020 to look forward to!  That’s one good thing about Halloween.  It may have to end but it always returns, resurrected like an angry ghost or vampire.

Or like Michael Myers!

Yes, that’s right.  Michael is returning next year, in a sequel to David Gordon Green’s Halloween.  David Gordon Green’s Halloween, of course, should not be mistaken for Rob Zombie’s Halloween or any other Halloween that came out after the original.  I swear to God, it’s so hard to keep all of these continuities straight.

Anyway, Halloween Kills is coming out next year and everyone’s really excited, even though Halloween Kills is a TERRIBLE title.  Today, in honor of the holiday, Jamie Lee Curtis tweeted out some first-look footage of the film.  And, because we love all of you and like to share, here it is!

https://twitter.com/jamieleecurtis/status/1189944554369118208

To be honest, there’s not much there so it’s hard to say for sure what to make of this footage.  I will say that this is still far superior to the teaser they released for the next Bond film.

Mac Attack: The Good Son (1993, directed by Joseph Ruben)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“Hey, Mark, don’t fuck with me,” 12 year-old Henry (Macaulay Culkin) says to his cousin Mark (Elijah Wood) in The Good Son‘s signature scene.  But fuck with him Mark does because Mark knows that evil exists and that Henry’s evil.  Henry killed his brother and he tries to kill his sister, Connie (Quinn Culkin), by throwing her onto thin ice.  When Mark, whose mother has recently died, decides that Henry’s mother, Susan (Wendy Crewson), is going to be his new mom, Henry gets jealous and tells Mark that he would rather kill Susan than allow her to have another son.  Eventually, Mark and Henry both end up dangling from a cliff with Susan holding onto them.  Susan has to decide who to save, her evil son or the distant relation that she barely knows.  She makes her choice and the camera lingers on the corpse of the less fortunate child on the rocks below.  For most mothers, it probably wouldn’t even be a difficult decision.  Of course you would save your own child!  But Susan has to think about it.  Maybe she can see the future and knows that Elijah Wood has the Lord of the Rings to look forward to while Macaulay is destined for something much different.

The Good Son caused a lot of controversy when it came out in 1993, not because it was about a murderous child but because that murderous child was played by the then-biggest star in America.  How would people who loved watching Macaulay seriously injure two burglars react to watching Macaulay kill people?  The movie actually did well at the box office but it also revealed that the Macaulay Culkin was a limited actor.  Elijah Wood was a good actor but Mark still comes across like a little creep.  Trying to steal his cousin’s mother?  What did he think was going to happen?

Finally, The Good Son was written by Ian McEwan, of all people.  In McEwan’s defense, he only wrote the first draft and that was long before Macaulay Culkin was miscast as Henry.  Apparnetly, Macaulay’s father and manager, Kit Culkin, demanded that his son be cast as a psycho murderer before he would allow Maccaulay to appear in Home Alone 2.  I guess Kit thought making his son look evil would be a good career movie.  If only someone had been willing to say, “Hey, Kit Culkin, don’t fuck with the movie.”

International Horror Film Review: Haxan (dir by Benjamin Christensen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s always interesting to watch Haxan with someone who has never seen it before.

Because this Swedish film was made in 1920 and released in 1922, it’s a silent film.  Because it’s sold as being a documentary, it can be a bit of a hard sell among people who 1) hate to read subtitles and 2) instantly recoil at the idea of watching anything might be a educational.  Even the fact that the film is subtitled “Witchcraft Through The Ages” might not be enough to get some people to set aside their prejudices.

So, what you do is you beg.  You offer to give them popcorn and a Coke if they watch the movie.  You stretch out on the couch, arch an eyebrow and suggest that there might be another reward waiting for them at the end of the film.  You do whatever you have to do and you get them to watch.

Now admittedly, the first part of Haxan does come across as being a bit slow.  The intertitles, which explain that this film was made to examine witchcraft throughout the ages, can come across as being a bit dry.  The numerous scenes about how people used to think that the universe revolved around the Earth and that stars were merely lights hanging in the sky goes on for quite some time.  Personally, I like these scenes.  I enjoy the fact that director Benjamin Christensen actually uses a pointer, as if he’s a lecturer at a university.  But they’re not for everyone.

But here’s the thing, skeptical viewers: KEEP WATCHING!

Because eventually, the film moves on from discussing ancient and medieval astronomy and it starts to discussing why people used to believe in witches and how witchcraft used to be punished and suddenly …. OH MY GOD, IS THAT THE DEVIL BURSTING UP OUT OF NOWHERE!?  Yes, it is.  And yes, that woman is buying a love potion and that monk has become possessed and that witch is flying through the air!

Haxan is an interestingly constructed film.  At the start of the film, it proudly declares itself to be the work of a skeptic.  Haxan is a film that, in its own scholarly way, ridicules superstition.  Those who once believed in witchcraft are compared to those who once believed that the world was flat and that the stars revolved around the Earth.  And yet, the film’s greatest moments are the ones that feature scenes of witches and the devil.  I don’t think this is accidental.  Instead, I think that Benjamin Christensen understood what D.W. Griffith, Ceceil B. DeMille, and Roger Corman understood.  Audiences may want to pat themselves on the back for being pure or rational or whatever but, at the same time, they also want that taste of sin and the indulgence of superstition.  Haxan makes the argument for science but not before indulging in some old time religion.

And it’s a lot of fun.  Haxan is such a visually striking film with it’s taunting devils and its flying witches that one can hardly be shocked that it was initially banned in many countries and, even when it was released, it was often in a heavily censored form.  Watching the film, you can also understand why it influenced future horror directors.  The images are frequently the stuff of nightmares and the fact that the images are silent just makes them all the more ominous.

Haxan is definitely a film that every horror fan needs to see.  Luckily, there’s a Criterion edition for that!  Oh Criterion.  What would we do without you?

Horror Film Review: Cujo (dir by Lewis Teague)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cujo is a such a depressing movie that I can barely stand to watch it.

Cujo, of course, is the 1983 film adaptation of the book by Stephen King.  The book is about a dog that not only gets bit by a rabid bat but also gets possessed by the spirit of Frank Dodd, the serial killer who played a major role in The Dead Zone.  The film abandons the subplot about Frank Dodd and, instead, it just deals with a rabid dog that kills a lot of people and who eventually traps Donna Trentonn (Dee Wallace) and her young son, Tad (Danny Pintauro), is a car for several days.

I have to admit that I’m really not the sort of person who should be watching a film like Cujo in the first place.  When I was growing up, I was terrified of dogs.  According to my family, I was bitten by one when I was just three years old, not that I have any memory of that actually happening.  So, up until I was 18, I couldn’t handle being around them.  Whenever I would walk home from school, I would run across the street if I heard a dog barking at me from behind a fence.  If I was out with my family and I saw a dog approaching, I would hide behind the nearest big person.

I did have one good experience with a big dog when I was about ten years old.  My family was up at the lake and this big, black dog started following us around and it was so friendly that I couldn’t help but relax around it.  My mom was like, “See, Lisa Marie, not all dogs are bad.”  We went to get lunch, leaving the dog behind.  When we returned, the dog was there.  He was excited to see my mom.  He was excited to my aunt.  He was excited to see my sisters.  Then, he took one look at me and started to growl.  I was frozen in fear, just standing there as the dog slowly stood up.  My mom immediately stood in front of me, trying to block the dog’s view while I ran back to car.  Of course, that didn’t work.  The dog started barking and then took off running after me.  His owners then showed up and grabbed the dog just as it was about to lunge at me and then they didn’t even bother to apologize!  Instead, they told some story about how some other girl had thrown a rock at the dog and, as a result, the dog always growled at “little girls.”  They acted like it was no big deal.  (My aunt later told me that she had to grab my mom’s hand to keep her from slapping the dog’s owner when they tried to blame me for what happened.)  For months afterwards, I had nightmares about that dog.

Fortunately, enough time has passed that I’m no longer petrified in fear of dogs though they still make pretty damn nervous.  That said, Cujo, with its growling and killer dog, is exactly the type of film that’s designed to prey on my deepest fears.  And yes, the movie does scare me but I have to admit that I don’t really care much about the people who get killed by Cujo.  Instead …. I feel bad for Cujo.  Yes, even though Cujo scares me to death and I’m not a dog person in general, this movie depresses me specifically because of what happens to the dog.

When we first see him, Cujo is happily chasing a rabbit.  When he gets bitten by a rabid bat, he whimpers a little and I have to say that it breaks my heart to hear it.  I mean, Cujo is just such a cute dog!  And, to be honest, he seems like the type of big dog who maybe could have convinced me that not all dogs are bad.  (There’s a part of me that really wishes that I could relax and love dogs as much as everyone else does.)  But then he gets bitten by that bat and poor Cujo!  Rabies is a terrible disease.

Cujo is a good, straight-forward horror film, one that gets the job done without all of the padding and blather that you sometimes have to deal with when it comes to Stephen King film adaptations.   (Thankfully, nobody casually talks about Shawshank Prison or taking a trip to Derry or any of that other nonsense that seems to come up in most King films.)  Dee Wallace gives a good performance as Donna Trenton, who is trapped in the car and desperate to save her child.  King has said that he felt Wallace deserved an Oscar nomination for her performance and he’s probably right

But my God, I just cannot watch this movie without crying afterwards.  I just feel so bad for that dog.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Escape Room, Happy Death Day 2U, Midsommar, Us

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 lets the visuals do the talking!

This October, we’re using 4 Shots From 4 Films to look at some of the best years that horror has to offer!

4 Shots From 4 2019 Films

Escape Room (2019, dir by Adam Robitel)

Happy Death Day 2U (2019, dir by Christopher Landon)

Midsommar (2019, dir by Ari Aster)

Us (2019, dir by Jordan Peele)

 

 

Halloween 2018, Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

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Happy Halloween!!!  I have reviewed A LOT of Halloween movies! They’re pretty… pretty good  This one’s good,  This one’s not bad this one’s probably my best. This Halloween movie was …. well … fine.  There’s a spectrum of Halloween franchise films. Some are amazing, some are epically terrible, and some are fine.  Not terrible, just ok.  This is in the meh category, but like much of life itself- kinda dull and disappointing as you slowly degrade towards the infinite.

Michael in an insane asylum and about to be transferred….again, but to make it different this time annoying podcasters interview him first.  So…. it’s kinda new? But really, this guy escapes custody more than El Chapo, but they keep moving him around movie after movie after movie. I know that this movie is supposed to disregard all the ones after the first one, but that really is just an excuse to recycle the old tropes.  I wish they’d taken another route like they did in H20, which is still amazing and holds up really well.

The big change is that Laurie Strode has been waiting for Michael’s inevitable escape.  She turned her home in a fortress with all kinds of booby traps.  She has an arsenal that my grandma would’ve been proud to see.  Unfortunately, it drove Laurie to raise her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) like a special forces recruit and always afraid and a quasi-prisoner.  Karen, now an adult with a family of her own, wants nothing to do with her gung ho mom, but her Karen’s daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) wants the family to reunite by inviting her to mom to dinner and it goes…yikes.

The unsung character of the movie that provides the only comic relief was Karen’s husband Ray (Toby Huss) who got not a tear from anyone when Michael made short work of him.  Really, no one cared at all about the dad getting killed, not the wife or the daughter; only Michael seemed to care and he murdered the guy.  Poor dads, we’re just cast aside like old meat- no one cares.

The movie have A LOT of bad decisions; if bad boxers lead with their chins, these guys led with their necks.  I guess that’s why it was tough for me to feel sympathetic for the victims because they were so dumb that I figured something else would’ve gotten these walking Darwin Awards: stopping on railroad tracks, taking a selfie in a lion enclosure at a zoo, or getting eaten by a Labrador Retriever…somehow.

In any case, I would get this on netflix; it was …fine.

 

Horror on the Lens: Night of the Living Dead (dir by George Romero)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Halloween everyone!

Well, as another horrorthon draws to a close, it’s time for another Shattered Lens tradition!  Every Halloween, we share one of the greatest and most iconic horror films ever made.  For your Halloween enjoyment, here is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead!

(Be sure to read Arleigh’s equally famous review!)