Tag Archives: Brant Daugherty

I Watched Mingle All The Way

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

On Saturday night, I needed some cheering up so I watched Mingle All The Way on the Hallmark Channel.

Mingle All The Way is a Hallmark Christmas movie, which means that everyone in the movie goes from Grinch to angel in just two hours.  Molly (Jen Lilley) has created an app that pairs professionals together so that they can attend events together without having to worry about it turning into a romance.  Jeff (Brant Daugherty) works in public relations and is a single father.  When Molly allows her co-worker to set up her profile and Jeff lets his sister to do the same thing for him, the end result is that they end up getting paired together.  At first, they don’t like each other, because Molly thinks that Jeff is rude and Jeff thinks that Molly is to wrapped up in her work.  Then, Molly meets Jeff’s daughter and Jeff meets Molly’s family and they all come to loe each other.  It’s a Christmas miracle!

There was nothing surprising about Mingle All The Way but that’s not a problem.  It’s a Christmas Hallmark film so it’s not like I was expecting it to reinvent the wheel or anything like that.  I just wanted it to be a sweet and cute movie about people falling in love during the holidays and that’s what the movie delivered.  Hallmark movies have become as much a part of Christmas as the tree, the stockings, and old St. Nick coming down the chimney.  The holidays can be a difficult time for a lot of people and Hallmark movies like Mingle All The Way are there to provide an escape.  On Hallmark, every gift is perfect, every season is merry and bright, and we all get to experience our ideal Christmas.

As for why I needed to cheered up, it all has to do with baseball.  Ever since Adrian Beltre announced he was retiring, I’ve been feeling down.  If my Rangers couldn’t make it to the World Series with Adrian batting for them, how are they going to do it without him?  All I want for Christmas is a home run hitter who can play third base.  Until that happens, at least I know I can turn over to Hallmark and watch movies like Mingle All The Way.

Catching Up With The Films of 2018: Fifty Shades Freed (dir by James Foley)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Mrs. Grey will see you now.”  (Insert your own eye roll GIF here.)

Occasionally, you see a film and, even though you know you should, you just never get around to reviewing it.  For instance, I saw Fifty Shades Freed when it was originally released in February and then I watched it again when it was released on DVD.  Both times, I thought to myself that I should write down my thoughts on the film, if for no other reason than the fact that I previously reviewed both Fifty Shades of Grey and Fifty Shades Darker for this site.  And yet, I never did.  To be honest, it was difficult to really think of anything to say about this movie that I hadn’t said about the previous two films.

Fifty Shades Freed opens with Christian (Jamie Dornan) and Ana (Dakota Johnson) getting married and going on their honeymoon.  It’s fun!  It’s sexy!  And it’s kinda creepy because, as always, Christian has control issues and he has to have his security team following them all over the place.  Christian freaks out with Ana removes her top on the beach.  Ana gasps at the sights of handcuffs.  There’s one hot sex scene that will temporarily make you forget about the fact that Jamie Dornan doesn’t seem to be that good of an actor.  It’s everything that you’d expect from a Fifty Shades honeymoon.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon ends way too quickly and then we have to deal with the marriage.  On the plus side, marrying Christian Grey means that you get to live in a really nice house and fly around in a private jet.  On the negative side, Christian is still basically an immature douchebag and, now that’s she rich, Ana has become a lot less likable.

Christian freaks out when he discovers that Ana is still using the name “Ana Steele” in her email address.  Ana explains that she’s Ana Steele at work but then, when she meets an architect named Gia Matteo (Arielle Kebbell), Ana tells her to stop flirting with her husband and announces, “You can call me Mrs. Grey!” with all the intensity of Kelly Kapowski announcing that she’s going to prom with Zach Morris on Saved By The Bell.

The marriage continues to play out like a perfume commercial written by Sartre’s bastard child.  Fortunately, there’s a few more sex scenes that are designed to again remind us that a good body can make up for a lack of everything else.  Unfortunately, Ana gets upset when Christian tries to humiliate her for real and a pouty Christian walks out of a shower as soon as Ana steps into it.  Ana is told that she’s pregnant and Christian totally freaks out because he still has all sorts of things that he wants to do with his money.  Christian’s a douchebag but he’s got a good body and he’s like super rich.  Have I already mentioned that?

Anyway, it turns out that Ana is being stalked by her former boss, Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson).  Fortunately, all of the stalking allows Ana and Christian to rediscover their love for each other.  There’s a kidnapping.  There’s a car chase.  There’s a lot of music and a lot of scenes of Dakota Johnson looking confused and Jamie Dornan looking blank.  It’s a Fifty Shades movie.  What else were you expecting?

The usual argument that critics tend to make with the Fifty Shades trilogy is that the movies are terrible but Dakota Johnson does the best that she can with the material.  Actually, both Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are pretty lousy in all three of these films but Ana was at least kind of a sympathetic character in the previous two films.  Unfortunately, Fifty Shades Freed sees Ana and Christian becoming a boring married couple and what little chemistry Dornan and Johnson had in the previous films completely vanishes.  As a result, Ana doesn’t seem like someone lucky enough to have fallen in love with a man who just happens to be super wealthy.  Instead, she just comes across like someone who sold her soul for a private jet.

Fifty Shades Freed is the weakest of the trilogy, done in by the fact that there’s really not much of a story to tell.  Ana and Christian get to live blissfully ever after and it’s always good to see happy mannequins.  I saw this movie with my best friend and we talked through the entire movie and I imagine that’s what we’ll do every time we rewatch it.

Film Review: Suicide Note (dir by Jake Helgren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(While this review is meant to be a rather breezy look at a minor Lifetime movie, it’s totally possible that you may have come across this review because you’re feeling suicidal yourself.  Maybe you googled, “suicide note.”  Please, if that is the case, consider calling the following numbers: Call 24/7: 800-SUICIDE (784-2433) 800-273-TALK (8255) Text Telephone 800-799-4TTY (4889) Trans Lifeline 877-565-8860.)

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On Saturday night, I watched and live tweeted the latest Lifetime original film.  Unfortunately, I ran into a small problem.  The title of the movie was The Suicide Note and, as a result, I ended up posting a few hundred tweets with the hashtag #SuicideNote.  Apparently, some people were not aware that I was watching a Lifetime film and they actually thought I was spending two hours tweeting out an actual suicide note.  One tweet in particular seemed to worry people:

Well, allow me to assure everyone: I was just talking about the movie.  Adam is a character in the movie and he’s played by Stephen Colletti.  Adam is a pre-med student with a temper.  When his girlfriend, Emma (Kristen Ray), plunges to her death from the rooftop of her dorm, Adam is an immediate suspect.  And why not?  Before Emma died, she was seen having a drunken argument with Adam.  A later search of Emma’s phone reveals threatening text messages from Adam.  Adam is the logical suspect, except for the fact that Emma left behind a suicide note.

What does the note read?

The note reads, “I was not murdered so please don’t suspect my boyfriend.”

No, actually, it doesn’t.  Instead it says, “I’m sorry, please forgive me,” or words to that effect.  Nobody is sure whether or not the handwriting on the note is Emma’s but, since it’s the only evidence that the police have, they decided that Emma must have committed suicide.

However, Emma’s roommate, Molly (Kirby Bliss Blanton), doesn’t believe that Emma committed suicide.  That’s because Molly once tried to kill herself and didn’t see any signs that Emma was suicidal.  With the help of her painter boyfriend, Brady (Brant Daugherty), and her sarcastic best friend, Irene (Lexi Giovagnoli), Molly sets out to solve the crime.  At first, she suspects that Adam is the murderer but this is Lifetime and that solution is way too easy.  As Molly investigates, she discovers that there are all sorts of secrets waiting to be uncovered.

Suicide Note is pretty much a standard Lifetime mystery.  It takes place on one of those Lifetime movie college campuses where there’s only ten students and they all keep running into each other.  Molly also has a mentor, a professor played by Gabrielle Carteris (who, my friend Holly tells me, was on the original 90210.)  My favorite scene was when Molly and Brady were walking across campus, just to be confronted by a jogging and shirtless Adam.  Adam yells that he didn’t kill Emma and then Prof. 90210 shows up and snaps, “GO TO CLASS!”  I wanted Adam to ask whether or not he could at least go get a shirt before going to class but instead, he just jogged off.

One of the things that I did like about The Suicide Note is that it featured some genuinely creepy dream sequences.  Molly has several dreams where she sees Emma’s ghost and several other unsettling things.  The dreams are all very well-shot and brings a jolt of life to the film.

As I said before, Suicide Note is pretty much your typical Lifetime affair.  If you’re not into Lifetime, the film will probably seem pretty silly to you.  But, if you are into Lifetime, you’ll appreciate Suicide Note for what it is.  Just be careful about hashtagging the title.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #138: UnGodly Acts (directed by Carl Bessai)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime original film, UnGodly Acts.

UnGodly Acts

Why Was I Watching It?

Because it was on Lifetime, of course!

What Was It About?

Outside of a farmhouse in Georgia, Melissa (Megan Park) has been discovered dead.  At first, it looks like she committed suicide but then a bearded guy named Adam (Iain Belcher) announces that he killed her.  It turns out that not only is Adam a schizophrenic who hears voices but he’s also the member of a fundamentalist religious cult.  The head of the cult is the clean-cut Daniel (Brant Daugherty).  Daniel has teeth that are so white that he can probably hypnotize people just by smiling at them.  Another interesting fact about Daniel?  He was married to Melissa, which didn’t prevent him from having sex with the other men in the cult.

Through flashbacks, we discover how Daniel first recruited his cult.  We see how Melissa arranged for Daniel to perform an exorcism on Adam and “cure” him of the voices in his head.  We watch as Daniel becomes more and more domineering and Melissa finds herself becoming disillusioned with him.

What Worked?

UnGodly Acts was a gorgeous film to look at.  British Columbia stood in for Georgia and it looked absolutely beautiful!  Cult life is definitely not for me but I was impressed with how neat and impeccably decorated the inside of that farmhouse was.  I give the cult mad respect for its housekeeping skills.

Brant Daugherty was appropriately charismatic as Daniel, though the film was ultimately stolen by the wonderfully jumpy Iain Belcher.  That said, my favorite character was Matt, who was played by Aidan Khan and who has a truly legendary mustache.

What Did Not Work?

The film was a bit overdirected.  I’m as big a fan of dutch angles as anyone but, after a while, it got all too predictable and I was just like, “Oh, someone’s being interrogated.  Time for the camera to start tilting again.”

It was a strange viewing experience, to be honest.  It was a good film but it was never truly memorable.  It was just missing something.  Add to that, the film ended without definitely solving its main mystery and, needless to say, that was more than frustrating.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

For once, there were none.  I was surprised.  Maybe I would have related to the film more if I was a protestant.  Who knows?

Lessons Learned

Just because you’re in a cult, doesn’t mean you can’t keep a clean house.