Been a couple of months since I did my last Navy Film Review so lets hammer out a short one before dealing with Hallmark’s unleashing of a man named Mr. Darcy.
You may recall that last time we took a look at how to unnecessarily pad out your movie so that by the time the plot you promised happens it’s way too little too late. That being the Greek film Alice In The Navy. This time around we have a short from 1949 made by the United States Navy to try and get sailors to re-enlist after WWII. It’s got everything. Talking animals, green skinned bartenders, and tits. Unfortunately, there is no perky blonde running around in pretty outfits. That is one thing Alice In The Navy did have going for it.
The movie starts off by telling me it is restricted before the fact that it’s a United States Navy Training Film. Then we meet one of the stars of the film. It’s McGinty!
No, not that McGinty. He was still tending bar in 1949. That joke is for you Gary. Our resident Hollywood Snob.
This is just plain old sailor McGinty. We start off by seeing that a sailing life looks rather fun. Although I’m pretty sure this singing sailor was on loan from the Greek navy.
But McGinty is not happy like his fellow sailors.
He wants to be a civilian and make some real dough. They only pay him “90 lousy bucks” in the navy. That’s when the talking seagull shows up of course to tell him he should put that money to good use and get drunk!
By the way, the seagull is voiced by veteran voice actor Daws Butler.
So it’s off to get drunk. That is after sneaking past some S.P. Then he orders a “double zombie and scotch chaser”, but oh no!
It’s either E~3 from E~3: The Extra Testicle (1985) or the Hare Krishna zombie from Dawn Of The Dead (1978). Take your pick.
Now McGinty shares how it really is in the navy. By that I mean that he thinks it’s like being on a slave ship from Ben-Hur (1959) while a guy who sounds like Hitler whips you. Well, one minute you’re a drinking and complaining, then one of those damn dream sequences starts on you.
Hmmm… I see his problem. He should have joined the WAVES. I mean if Cary Grant could be a war bride and Donald O’Connor could join the WACS with a talking mule, then surely this guy could have pulled it off. Of course women were integrated into the regular navy by 1949 so actually I don’t see his problem here.
This is only a dream though, but he’s still in luck because the talking seagull shows up again to magically transport him to civilian life. This is when this recruitment video starts to lose me. The first thing we learn about civilian life is that you have to wake up for work.
As we all know, the navy lets you sleep to your hearts content and simply wake up at any hour you please. He also has to shave because civilian life doesn’t approve of beards unlike the navy. The navy encourages them and later would require it’s female sailors to never shave their legs nor their armpits. All totally true bullshit. Then it’s off to work on a crowded bus.
Okay, I will give them this. Not everyone in the Navy served on a claustrophobic submarine such as in Das Boot (1981). Then he has to clock in because the navy doesn’t keep track of that sort of thing ever.
Now he has to work on an assembly line. Could be worse. Those could be chocolates like Lucy had to deal with. I like the “Positively No Smoking” sign. This part is clearly trying to evoke memories in the sailors watching it of adventures that aren’t like this while apparently also trying to remind them that the navy lets them smoke like chimneys I guess.
Then it’s off to the Cafeteria to wait in line. I’ve never served, but I seriously doubt that lines like this don’t exist on naval vessels.
Now it’s pay day! His paycheck is 300 bucks. Well that is till it’s put through the “Little Gem Deductor”.
Now he gets pulled into an insurance office to discover that it’s going to cost him to retire. Apparently, he could retire for free in the navy. How does that work? The only way that’s actually possible is if by retire they mean a bullet to the head. Regardless, now he has to go shopping.
I like that he goes into all the shops except the one with the big sign that says “Drugs” on it.
After paying rent, it’s back to his room to bitch about civilian life to the talking seagull. By that I mean he threatens to kill the seagull.
But in the dark, the seagull reminds him that he can just re-enlist within 90 days. That’s when the seagull checks off McGinty.
Now McGinty is back swabbing the deck when that damn seagull shows up again. That’s when the seagull drops the bomb on McGinty.
He works for the U.S. Navy! I always knew they were training talking seagulls in secret. Clearly, that’s why it said this video was “Restricted”.
And thus ends this short film with the message “Keep the Fleet to Keep the Peace”. I would love to know how successful this was. I know why they spend their time trying to make civilian life sound terrible because their audience was sailors who already knew how it actually was to serve in the navy at the time. However, notice that they make sure to show this guy being cast out of a family of sailors into a world where he is all alone. I would think that people who were in the navy because of the family and structure were probably already going to re-enlist. As for the one’s for whom family and structure were either not important or already in their civilian life, I can’t see this convincing any of them to stay. It just seems like a video that ultimately isn’t really for anyone. Still, it was fun to watch, and here it is if you want to see it yourself.
It’s not often that I review two movies from two relatively different sources that are both by the same director, but that’s the case this time. David Jackson is also the director who brought the Halloweentown series to an end with Return To Halloweentown. This time he took on something much easier than ripping off Harry Potter with a miscast lead. It’s about a wishing well! Sort of.
The movie begins before the title card appears, and we meet Abby Jansen played by Jadin Gould. She will be your smiling one-dimensional little girl for the movie. I mean your Hallmark Bailee Madison stand-in for the movie. Then we cut to stock footage of New York City before we meet our leading lady named Cynthia Tamerline played by Jordan Ladd.
She works for Celeb magazine where not only is Charles Shaughnessy her boss, but her secretary is Lurch with a nose ring.
Obviously this movie needs to find an excuse to get Cynthia out with the country folk now. That’s why Shaughnessy calls her in and tells her either publish, perish, or become a nanny for my kids. He suggests that she write a story for one of his other magazines called Great Housekeeping. It’s for people who think Good Housekeeping just isn’t good enough. I thought she chose to write about a woman named Angela and her charity to save the vampire flies, but somehow that will cause her to end up in Slow Creek, Illinois to find a celebrity who may have visited their wishing well. But before that, she looks up Angela’s push to save the vampire fly on CelebrityCauses.us. No affiliation with CelebrityCauses.org. This one has Darcy from A Gift Of Miracles writing for it too.
Anyways, she’s off to Slow Creek, Illinois, which is the “Home of the Wishing Well.” Not just any wishing well, but the Wishing Well. That is till the 2011 Canadian film Wishing Well came out to give them some stiff competition for that title.
She arrives at the hotel where she is going to stay and finds that Ernest Borgnine runs the place. Cynthia is in town for a story that she can take back to Celeb magazine…I thought. Regardless, this is where I am obligated to say that these townsfolk are probably hiding a terrible secret about a Muslim American solider who died overseas and whose father was murdered in the town. I mean the movie has Borgnine, it’s a small town, and Cynthia’s last name is Tamerline which is close enough to Cass Timberlane played by Spencer Tracy in the movie of the same name. That meant while watching this movie, I immediately thought of the film Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) which had Tracy and Borgnine in it. Great movie by the way that I simply updated to a modern context. Here’s the trailer.
But onward with this movie now.
Annoying little girl tells us that wishes come true if you believe and make the right wish. Then we find out that not only is the hotel run by someone Retired and Extremely Dangerous, but that the diner is run by ‘Hot Lips’ O’Houlihan (Sally Kellerman).
Now Cynthia visits the local paper and finds out that it’s run by the little girl’s dad played by Jason London.
So this is what happened to Eric Camden’s associate pastor’s twin brother.
Cynthia starts to look into this wishing well of theirs. Turns out it was once a hot attraction, but then this happened.
Don’t you just hate it when your ex shows up and your wish doesn’t come true, but your ex’s does. Now writer Enid Jones had it out for the well.
But this isn’t enough for her so she goes to dig in the archives. Long story short, Ronald Reagan once visited their well back in the 1960’s.
That and a UFO was seen on a farm in Slow Creek. Interesting! What else is interesting is that they didn’t pull this Reagan and a wishing well thing completely out of their ass. Reagan actually did visit a wishing well in Dublin, Ireland back in the 1980s. Hmmm…I guess that means I need to listen to some Irish music while I finish writing this review. Well, Dropkick Murphys (Flannigan’s Ball) is Irish enough for someone who is a quarter Irish and from the Bay Area.
Oh, and since Reagan was mentioned. I guess I need to break out Genesis’ Land Of Confusion as well.
More annoying girl, and then Cynthia wakes up the next day to find out that she is now in the Twilight Zone. She is just somebody who has been hired as a local reporter. She calls up people back in New York City, but they don’t know who she is. She doesn’t try to tell them anything personal that only she would know, but just keeps calling.
This is when you can say the film goes on autopilot. Cynthia becomes more of a fixture in the town and discovers just how important this paper is to its residents. The paper is in trouble and might be bought out soon. The little girl is still annoying. A guy dies and she writes his obituary. Another guy sets his house on fire trying to beat his record for how many of his collectible lighters he can have going at once. I’m not making that up. During the scene where he explains his little game and current record I said to my dad that he didn’t mention this is the third house he’s gone through playing this game. Then she is waking up in bed to a phone call telling her his place is burning down. Of course! She writes an article that moves people about the fire. Finally, the townsfolk watch a meteor storm.
Then this big city guy’s mustache shows up to buy the paper. It’s okay though because it turns out the guy who died left a huge amount of money to the paper in his will. I guess that’s better than the huge wad of cash in a can from Christmas Land.
Now just in case you thought you were finally getting this Twilight Zone like story, she wakes up on a plane back to New York City to receive praise for the story she wrote for the magazine. Yep, makes as much sense as you think it does. By that, I mean very little. She leaves her job at Celeb magazine and goes back to Slow Creek where smiley and her dad know who she is. Then it just ends abruptly.
That’s it! It’s quite lousy. Even my Dad said this was a stinker and he’s usually easy to please with these movies. No reason to waste your time with this. Go watch Bad Day At Black Rock instead.
Since I happened to catch her this way. I’m really sorry Jordan.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to throw a coin in a wishing well because I’m shipping up to Boston to find my wooden leg and I can use all the luck I can get.
Now that’s just Oldboy (2003) crossed with The Lawnmower Man (1992).
With those two movie reference jokes out of the way, let’s talk about these four films before I completely forget them.
Man in Love (2014, dir. Dong-wook Han) – This was a whopper to start with. Let’s look at that poster.
“SHE becomes HIS reason to live”.
At least it’s honest and puts SHE and HIS in all caps.
“HIS FIRST YET LAST ROMANCE”
Yes, because I know that my first romance which occurred in my late 20’s back in 2012 began with me acting like a complete psychopath. Actually, it essentially began when I gave into being hit on for about 8 months or so. Then I largely screwed it up because it was my first, I didn’t know I was transgender, nor that I was a lesbian. There were of course issues on her end too, but I certainly didn’t help. I really should have seen Man in Love first, then that relationship would have lasted a lifetime. Okay, let me lay this out for you.
The movie begins and we are introduced to our main character who is a collection guy for a gangster. He is rather nuts and even drinks gasoline in order to pressure one guy. He then visits a hospital room where we meet our girl. She is there because her father is in a coma. He is there to make sure that she signs a contract to take on the debt her father acquired before ending up in the hospital. He’s rather brutal and makes her sign it. He now immediately begins to stalk her. He goes to his boss and convinces him to give him the contract so that he has control over her. He draws a picture on a piece of paper with boxes on it and tells her that every hour she spends with him will make him fill in one of them. When all the boxes are filled in, then the contract will be void. Now he visits a hooker to ask her if thinking constantly about a person means you’re in love with them. Okay, but it’s not like he’s going to try and have sex with her or insinuate himself into her relationship with her dad or anything, right? During one of these hours he tries to take her to a motel. She just walks away, but the camera pans up to make sure you know it’s a motel. Then he is caught reading to her father at the hospital. After going to bother the hooker some more, he tells her he doesn’t love her. At this point, her dad dies and he either sets up the funeral or just shows up and pretends to be a son-in-law. Either way, she apparently wants him now and they kiss shortly afterwards.
So he does what we would all do in his situation of course! He takes her to a stairwell and proceeds to try and sniff her.
She obviously thinks this is weird, but that’s not your cue to stop. Amp that up!
He drops trou and proceeds to try and dry hump her. LOVE!!!
They are together now. This is only about 45 minutes into a 2 hour movie! Let me attempt to lay out how they try to explain all this.
It cuts to two years later and he is in prison where he is released early because he has a terminal illness that will kill him soon which is why they can’t legally hold him apparently.
Oh, you actually thought there would be more to it? Nope! That’s really this movie’s excuse. He has a terminal illness that he doesn’t discover till two years later. The rest plays out like some tragic epic romance with him slipping away till he dies leaving her with his father crying on a bus.
Okay, here’s what I think they were trying to go for here. We meet a man who essentially was born into this lifestyle and like myself has lived such a solitary life that he is very confused about these emotions he is feeling so he acts on them the only way he knows how. Since his life is one of threats and coercion, he uses those thing to keep her in his life. Being such a shut-in emotionally he even does something as strange as sniff her and try to dry hump her in response to something as innocent as a kiss. He entered her life at a time when the most important man in her life was leaving here for good. As strange as it was, through all his crazy attempts to be with her, she can sense genuine feelings behind his actions and acts on her feelings during a vulnerable time in her life. He never really can break from violence both in terms of his life till now, but also in that socialization that would have allowed him to be “normal” was robbed from him. Finding out that he is going to die only drives him further along the downward spiral. In the end, he essentially dies alone, but tells his father to please watch over her.
I really feel that’s what they were going for here, but it doesn’t work. The linchpins in this storyline are his character knowing he had a terminal illness, the movie being far more obvious about his awkwardness that is hiding real feelings for her, and us believing that she would actually fall for him. The character doesn’t know he has a terminal illness until well after he is gotten her. This means the film expects you to project backwards two years in a sense as a partial explanation for his actions. The movie doesn’t make his lack of ability to exist in regular society clear enough for us to see anything but a crazy man doing crazy things that should cause her to run and not result in reward for him. There’s actually a scene with the police where the cop seems to take his side because the contract says she owes him money. Also, there is never a satisfactory explanation for why she falls for all this. Nor is this man ever really admonished for his actions at the beginning of this film.
Throughout this I couldn’t help but think of another film. That film being Joan Micklin Silver’s Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979). That movie covers similar territory, but so much better. It’s a personal favorite of mine. It features actor John Heard back when he was still on track to become a star, but largely wound up as that guy everyone remembers as the father from Home Alone (1990). It’s the story of a man who spends the entire film stalking and insinuating his way into the life of his ex-girlfriend Laura. We get a flashback to when they met at the beginning of the film. He doesn’t threaten her into a relationship. It is love at first sight for him, but he does what a lot of us would do when they notice somebody that catches their eye. They find a reasonable excuse to spend some time around them. You know, like a sane person does. In his case, he moves rather quickly. I won’t get into the details.
As for the stalking, which even involves him entering her house and completely embarrassing himself and her in front of her new man, is never condoned or rewarded. The film takes us through this man’s crisis of losing somebody he deeply cared for and just can’t let go of. We get it, understand, but never are asked to find his behavior acceptable. We also understand why she loved him and why she goes out of her way to try and let him down easy throughout the film. In the end, she doesn’t come back. The ending of the film has him coming around. It finally sinks in that “it’s over”. We see him at his desk when it’s time for work to end. “It’s not that doesn’t still hurt. It’s that you get used to it.” The last scene has him in a park where we see him make a mad sprint before stopping, turning, and freeze framing.
Chilly Scenes of Winter came into my life in the aftermath of losing my first and only romantic interest. I would say I went through a similar crisis and it took several years for it to truly stop being a daily fact of my existence that I lost someone who at least was very special to me. I believe that Man in Love is well meaning, but it never really gels properly. Using Chilly Scenes of Winter again, it originally was titled and released as Head over Heels and had her come back to him. It was changed in 1982 to have the appropriate ending that matched the book it was based on and the title was changed to match that of the book. Man in Love needed that kind of work, but the changes would be more systemic than a simple change of the ending.
Now that I have poured my heart out to you in a sense, let’s move onto three comedies!
My Ordinary Love Story (2014, dir. Kwon Lee) – I actually saw (500) Days of Summer (2009) in theaters back when it came out. I can’t say I ever thought it needed to be taken and add a really dark turn by having Joseph Gordon-Levitt turn out to be a killer. Seriously, it’s like an Italian Comedy in that sense. Don’t know what an Italian Comedy is? Despite it’s name it’s not called that because it’s a comedy made in Italy. They made those before this genre appeared and they made them after it disappeared. These were comedies that would always have something dark or something you would never think to incorporate into a comedy. I love these movies. Here’s an example of what I am talking about.
Seven Beauties (1975) has our lead wind up in a concentration camp during WWII starving trying to seduce the female commandant in order to survive at the end of the movie. He is taken in front of a bunch of his fellow prisoners and handed a gun to execute someone. The man begs him to shoot him because he can’t go on living. He does shoot him. In the end he makes it home alive to his sisters in Italy. He receives a hero’s return. Our lead looks right into the eyes of his love interest he left behind. He knows and tells her that it’s okay she had to prostitute herself while he was gone to survive. He wants to be married. He tells her:
“There isn’t much time to lose. I want children. Many children. 10. 20. It’s a matter of self defense. Many, and they must be very strong. Look at the crowds out there. In a few more years they’ll be murdering each other. Families slaughtered just for an apple. So we must see to it our family is large. That’ll be our defense. Understand?”
It ends with sad piano music, a sad look on his face, and the words “Yes, I’m alive”. I assure you this is a comedy. A very funny one at that. In fact, here it is if you want to watch it. Assuming it is still available. I can’t recommend it more strongly. Warning, it is dubbed into English.
Other prominent examples include Divorce, Italian Style (1961); Seduced and Abandoned (1964); The Birds, The Bees and the Italians (1966); Il Sorpasso (1962); and many others.
With that backstory out of the way, this movie begins and we are introduced to the quirky, totally not Zooey Deschanel, girl named Park Eun-jin. We get a very modern and hipster introduction to her and her previous six relationships. It’s all presented like you are in for a fun 21st century millennial romantic comedy. She obviously feels burned by all these failed romances and she is only in her late 20s. She winds up in the back of a cab with a man. He is rather quite and reserved, but they form a bond. He does seem a little weird, but it’s nothing we take too seriously as something that should be a big red flag for her.
After entering into a relationship with him, he actually largely disappears from the film as it focuses on her becoming more and more obsessed with trying to figure out if he is cheating on her. We figure it will maybe go that he will leave her because she truly has become damaged goods, will turn out to be clean and find this aspect of her enduring, or maybe something in between where he leaves her, but she comes around and returns to him. Nope! She winds up finding a body in a case in his trunk. That’s when the film takes a sudden turn in every sense.
We are now back to the cab ride where he had an odd comment about the driver. It turns out that a cab driver was in some way responsible for the death of his father. His mother was left alone and eventually wound up dead too. I believe she committed suicide or something after being taken advantage by one man after another as she tried to help them scrape by. He grew up with a deep hatred that led him to kill the cab driver and others who had done his mother wrong. But the body was a woman in his car. Turns out that the cab driver had a wife and he only saw his mother in her which eventually led him to kill her too. I guess this is one of those movies that I won’t spoil, but this dark turn has very dark consequences that in some way are a lesson to her not to let any series of bad experiences with men consume her because hatred can fester and transform you in ways you may never be able to return from.
I recommend this as interesting look at what I see as a South Korean version of Italian Comedy. Otherwise, I wouldn’t seek this out.
Marriage Blue (2013, dir. Ji-Yeong Hong) – Phew! With those rather serious films out of the way, we can just talk briefly about a bunch of romantic comedies tossed together with a countdown that appears on screen as the wedding dates for the couples approach. Seriously, that’s it! Next movie.
Just kidding. Let’s talk a little. I am terrible about keeping track of characters and this one introduces a bunch within the first five minutes of the movie. It’s very quick. I remember the older guy who is going to get married to a younger girl from Uzbekistan and has erectial disfunction. I remember the doctor treating him who stabs a guy just off center of his penis. I remember the girl with short hair who is hiding her true identity from her parents and finds any excuse to try and put off the wedding to a really nice quirky guy who loves the hell out of her. There is a baseball player in there somewhere. Oh, and the lady who goes on the tour which causes her to run into the author of a book she’s reading.
The plots are somewhat difficult to follow. Especially for me. It really gives you no time to stop and think. A film like this sinks or floats based on whether you like the characters or not. Largely, I did. The two I remember the most are the guy with erectial disfunction and the quirky guy who has a tacky sense of fashion and loves his rocking chair. The guy with erectial disfuntion never comes across as if he is just marrying a younger woman because she’s hot or anything. We also don’t get the impression that he wants to cure his inability to get it up for him. It comes across like he feels deeply guilty that if he can’t do that, then he won’t be able to live up to his end of the bargain that she more than does for him. Just like a Howard Hawks’ film, as soon as the two of them really trust each other, the problem disappears just like the plot in a Hawks film. The tacky guy just always comes across as someone that is perfect for her and is willing to bend over backwards to try and break through her exterior. An exterior that she ultimately sheds because she isn’t happy hiding her true self. I love when she tells her father. He doesn’t appear to have known in advance like parents in movies seem to when their child tells them they are gay. He is just surprised that she hasn’t brought it up till now, and is a little pissed off that her fiancee knew his own daughter better than him.
You all know how this kind of movie comes to a resolution. If this is your kind of thing, then this really is a perfectly decent entry into the genre.
Moonshine Girls (2015, dir. Kim Ki-Young) – The plot summary on Amazon Prime told me that it was about a girl who keeps showing up drunk at school because she is trying to perfect/rediscover her dead father’s rice wine recipe in order to save her family brewery. Interesting plot, eh?
Well, it does start off with us quickly getting introduced to our leading lady and she is drunk at school alright. We also discover that roaming schoolyard bitch squads are a universal thing. We also find that teenage boys fighting on the playground for no good reason are also a universal thing. Well, that’s not completely fair. The were negotiating who held claim to all the girls in the school and those negotiations fell through. So logically they had to start fighting. This is when we are introduced to a new teacher at the school. By introduced, I mean he tries to break up the fight and gets punched in the face several times till he is on the ground. There’s your setup. Oh, and some of the kids are involved with gangsters. Believe me, that’s a footnote in this movie. The gangsters are the reason why the brewery is in trouble, but it will barely come up in the movie. But you know what does come up a lot? This guy!
No, not the guy on the left. We’ll get to him. I mean the guy on the right. He is apparently from America (a naturalized Korean) as if you can tell from the fact that he couldn’t look more British if he tried. I buy the Korean on the left as being from America more than this guy. I had a British chemistry teacher in college. He was part of a teacher exchange program. This guy could be his long lost brother. Oh, and the actor plays him like a gay stereotype too. I get no impression that he’s supposed to be gay, but that this is how Americans are meant to be portrayed in this film. As weak, meek, and generally will run from actually doing anything useful.
Now for the guy on the left. He is the new teacher at the school. I believe he used to go there when he was a kid and it apparently was a rather prestigious school test score wise at the time. This guy is basically a cross between Mr. Miyagi and the unkillable worker from Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Arsenal (1929). Yeah, this movie definitely has a propaganda feel to it. Wouldn’t get that from the plot summary, but it’s here.
He hooks up with the girls and winds up getting everyone involved in this noble pursuit this young lady and her two friends have. The movie even reminds us that rice wine is for more than getting wasted. Also, that it’s matter of pride. He goes into Miyagi mode when he trains everyone in martial arts by having them do something that totally is not wax on wax off or jacket on jacket off. Yeah, this guy is apparently a martial artist, rice wine expert, teacher, and a Korean nationalist all rolled into one. At least he’s entertaining. Unlike the British American guy.
There is only one part of this that actually offended me, and it could be the translation along with a bit of misinterpretation. There’s a scene where the girls have an older guy taste their rice wine to test it’s quality for them. He likes it, but he can tell that their “five grains” rice wine really is only 4 grains. Why? Because he can tell that one of the ingredients is not domestic. They never use the word foreign, but it makes me wonder. Was he referring to ingredients from just their region of Korea? Did he mean South Korea as a whole? The way the rest of the film is and that the lead teacher looks like he could be in communist propaganda as a proud communal farm worker, makes me think he meant South Korea as a whole. The speech the girl gives at the end doesn’t help.
I can’t really say this is bad. It’s just a little odd. I really am not 100% positive this is or isn’t propaganda. I guess check it out and tell me what you think. If you dare! Duh, duh, duh!
Oh, and if you are a gamer, you will notice that one of the guys has a hairdo similar to the kid in the game Quest 64. Good thing I wasn’t watching this with my neighbor who I forced to play and beat that game when I was a kid. It would have given him flashbacks. I know I was already having flashbacks to In The Name Of The King 2: Two Worlds (2011) because the Korean superman teacher wears a scarf in numerous scenes. In The Name Of The King 2: Two Worlds had Dolph Lundgren wearing a scarf that he never took off. One final thing, Dolph Lundgren is going to be in a sequel to Kindergarten Cop (1990). Yeah! Let that settle in.
I remember sitting in a theater back in 1995 watching Clueless for the first time. I really enjoyed it and can still enjoy it today. Cher was certainly pampered, rich, and a bit of ditz, but she never lost her lovability. We could always tell there was a smart and wonderful person just underneath her exterior. We understood and believed her transformation from the superficial to the person we could see from the beginning waiting to spring forth from just under her persona. Even in the poor man’s Clueless that came out last fall on Hallmark called Harvest Moon they created a character that we could find endearing on some level. The Sweeter Side of Life does none of these things.
Just before showing that title card we are introduced to our main character named Desiree Harper (Kathryn Morris). We see her turn off her fancy alarm clock with a fancy watch sitting just next to it. Then we see that she not only sleeps with a sleep mask on but a pillow of sorts that wraps around her neck. Something someone uses for pain problems, but here is supposed to show just how rich she is. Then the typical walk-in closet scene happens while a maid cleans the New York City apartment where she lives. But she’s not unlikable enough yet.
That’s why we get this scene with her friends at the gym looking at an overweight woman while debating the maximum weight allowed for wearing latex. This is followed by the shopping montage before she sits down at a lunch with her friends. One of them is seeing a guy named Renaldo who they just found out has three kids and a wife back in Argentina. Another friend says, “Who cares as long as his family stays over there, right?” Our lead who is already unbearable says she’d care. That’s the one hint at this point that there might be a decent person in there. I know I can’t really get across how she manages to be so darn unpleasant already, but take a look at her.
Actress Kathryn Morris may be the nicest person in the world in real life, but her appearance combined with the way she acts in only these first few minutes makes it really hard to warm up to her. She goes home and finds her husband missed their anniversary for a last minute surgery so she gets drunk for the night. Couldn’t care less at this point.
The next morning she finds her husband at the dinner table and we see that they have a giant hand sculpture in the house. That’s interesting. Now we find out that her husband is going to leave her for his 20 year-old acupuncturist Olive. Here’s my requisite joke that he has also been sticking her with a little needle too. Couldn’t let that go. Now we get to the best character of the film.
This is her somewhat slimy, comical, and lovable lawyer. If they could make his character this way, then why couldn’t they write her the same way? He’s here to remind her she signed a prenuptial agreement. The movie will never bring up whether the agreement had anything in it about adultery which is weird. He also reminds the audience that her family bent over backwards to send her to Columbia where she obtained an MBA which she never used. She says that the interview would ask her about job experience and that all she has experience in is shopping. There are jobs where that actually is a skill, but they don’t bring that up even though I have seen a Hallmark movie with a personal shopper (12 Gifts of Christmas). He asks her where the girl he knew in elementary school went. However, he doesn’t give us any details which would have been really important so we could see beyond her nasty exterior.
Now of course her credit card is taken away from her, she gets hit by a car, and she wakes up in New Jersey with her dad. Her family hasn’t changed her room since she was little. That’s nice. Her father even has breakfast ready so what are some of those first words out of her mouth?
Oh, and the fact that the husband said she shouldn’t drink so much dairy before dumping her doesn’t make this line any more digestible. She moans and groans including that she was a good wife. Could have been helpful for us to see something that hinted at her being a good wife. All I saw was body shaming and shopping. She wonders how she is going to support herself. The father reminds her that she knows how to bake. He runs a bakery. Since she hasn’t been shell shocked enough, we need to have her do some deliveries using the local florist’s car. This really only exists so she can meet a love interest. Yes, this movie will ask us to buy that this guy…
should have any reason to want to be with her, despite only being in a couple of scenes together. He’s rich too. Of course their first meeting has her hitting and knocking down his bird house.
I think the screenwriters may have seen Clueless. Here she was looking at someone getting into a chopper and saying she wants the rich life back before hitting the bird’s nest. Love?
She makes it back alive and we get a proper introduction to the florist. She is also a reasonably likable character especially because we find out she’s smart and cultured even when it comes to rap music.
Now we get a weird scene. The movie will never follow this scene up either to really explain it. There’s a black kid who works at the bakery. She catches him presumedly stealing from the register, but covering it up by saying that it has just been popping out on it’s own. This is never followed up on even though he asks if he can take on more duties than just cleaning up and that his family needs the money. Is the film saying he was going to steal and that she is helping him or not? And the fact that someone immediately comes up to the register, the drawer pops open, and he says it’s doing that again and needs to be fixed doesn’t help. Was this supposed to say that Desiree was racist? It doesn’t make sense. Especially when we will see her help a black policewoman by giving her one of her outfits a little later. A character that will come around at the end of the film in a relationship with the lawyer. Honestly, the movie would have made a lot more sense had she ended up with the lawyer who bends over backwards for her and has an affection for her. Also, remember Cher’s father was a lawyer in Clueless. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Anyways, it’s time to learn that Desiree is still stuck up because she wants to straighten her hair? I don’t get that at all. But what I really don’t get is why her hair dryer is shaped like a gun.
Then in case we didn’t know the dad is really supposed to be, dare I say, clueless, he apparently had no idea that some clothes have to be hung to dry and has shrunk one of her dresses. What? He raised her and isn’t gay or anything so he was a married to a woman. Not that there aren’t men’s clothes that aren’t supposed to be put in the dryer as well. It’s just a really stupid scene that just tells us she still hasn’t changed and her dad is supposed to be so different because he is an idiot. Actually, this scene exists just so that the next ridiculous thing can happen on her way to meet with lawyers in the city.
She has to wear the same clothes she wore when she lived with her father back in the 1980s cause she’s wearing the early Madonna clothes. Not funny, and nor did I feel sorry for her when one of her friends brushes her off because of her fall from riches. Oh, and when they have her walking through the crowded sidewalks they do it in slow motion with upbeat I’m going to show them music, but why? She hasn’t changed at all. She shrieked at the reality of having to wear the clothes and just finished complaining about her hair dryer as well as her father’s incompetence. Why use this type of shot that is normally reserved for someone full of confidence? Makes no sense.
Oh, and small complaint, but her former friend tells her the 80’s have come and gone twice after looking at her outfit. Can someone please tell that to all the woman I see with off the one shoulder tops in modern movies? This lady is right. It’s not the 1980s all over again. While we’re here. One of the things that made Clueless so good is that part of Cher’s transformation is to stop seeing and treating her friends as superficial and start to appreciate the good and special things about them. Why is it necessary to lump all her former friends in the trashcan for characters as deep as a puddle who we are supposed to accept as better simply because they live in New Jersey?
She now goes in to meet with her husband’s lawyer and you know why nothing is brought up in her defense? Like the adultery for example. It’s because the lawyer comes in and is stoned after a dental visit. Yep. The only thing of value here is that we find out Olive is pregnant.
After a kitchen accident which isn’t funny, it’s time to insult the black kid who shows up on a pink scooter. He’s wearing pink too. Just in case we thought this was a meaningless little joke it immediately cuts to two guys at the counter where one says to the other “I want the fruity one” to which the other replies “I pointed to it first.” Yeah, that’s great. They do come across as if they are supposed to be a couple. Wouldn’t have been an issue if they hadn’t just harassed the kid about the pink. In fact, it would have made them seem progressive seeing as they don’t seem to have any reaction to these two guys. If you think I might be reading too much into this, then go watch the Hallmark movies Nearlyweds with it’s really gay stereotype hair dresser or Strawberry Summer where the singer has to assure the country folk that he doesn’t come from “those parts” of New York City but “the good parts.”
After people talk behind Desiree’s back, she gives them a piece of her mind, and a nun pops out of nowhere for comedy, the florist sits down with her to have a heart to heart. And by heart to heart, I mean insult her for standing up for herself. She even says that while they may have deserved it, her father certainly didn’t. Oh, that’s nice except nothing she said was directed at her father, he was there to hear their insults, and he doesn’t defend her after she stormed out, but simply asked who’s next. She then insults her for her supposed lousy work ethic. Really? When? When she did her father’s deliveries even though she knew she was out of practice driving or maybe when she tried baking even though she really has no experience in it. That and covering the counter for him. Yes, lousy work ethic indeed. By the way, Desiree still manages to be unlikable even though she doesn’t deserve this from the florist. We also discover that her father’s business isn’t doing so well. She says she had no idea since why would she. The florist tells her because she didn’t even bother asking. Somewhere during this, when even the audience is given no reason to believe his business is in trouble, she was supposed to ask him about it while also dealing with all these other things. I don’t like her, but cut her a little slack for crying out loud.
Now she seems to take an interest in her father’s business. That’s nice, but now bird house boy named Benny/Benoit stops by. We find out that he’s rich. Yep, she’s going to go from a rich guy in the city to a rich guy in the “suburbs”/”country” of New Jersey. During this scene he hands her a check to settle his account for the month. He’s a major chef and the scene leads us to believe he’s buying his stuff from them seeing as he is giving them a check. Why is the father’s business in trouble? Is this meant as a handout? He asks for her phone number here so is he trying to buy her or lure her to him with his money?
I keep bringing these things up because this movie keeps doing stupid things throughout it. She’s still rather insufferable too.
Now out of nowhere she is suddenly making these lovely little pastries that will be called Paddycakes after her father Paddy even though only a few minutes ago she was a disaster in the kitchen. Yes, these paddycakes will be the savior of the bakery. That’s because of this lady.
She is very impressed, and of course will turn out to be a newspaper writer later on.
After stupid dancing and shtick, the lawyer shows up again to remind us he really is the only character we enjoy in this movie. Oh, but before that we need to get in another homophobic bit.
At least the guy says he knows but still likes coffee in a cup like that to which the father responds, “good grief”. The rich guy again shows up to get her phone number and the instant she says he still can’t call her, he just walks away.
When the lawyer shows up, the joint is apparently doing really well now. Those must be some paddycakes. A few scenes, then the article comes out in the newspaper! Just look!
The bakery is so great that it had to repeat “In Flamington New Jersy, life just got sweeter, and it’s all thanks to a little slice of nirvana, called Paddy’s Bakery” three times! But what is the rest of the article here? I’m telling you, Darcy from A Gift Of Miracles is everywhere and she can shapeshift into other people too.
-The “I saw something of my own childhood, albeit a decade’s remove, in Colson Whitehead’s memoir of growing up in the seventies with low-budget, low-esteem science-fiction movies. He writes, ‘If I was lucky, I’d come home from elementary school to find WABC’s…” comes from a New Yorker article written by Richard Brody.
-The “But the bakery swallowed its umbrage long enough to see an upside: it put up signs about Cookiegate, changed its outgoing phone message to mention…” comes from a New York Times article by Michael Barbaro.
The second one makes sense…sort of…since the magazine the article is in is supposed to be The New Yorker.
Now it’s off to dinner with Benny. She even fixed his birdhouse. This is when something weird happens yet again. Her and Benny are going down a hallway to have some privacy when she notices an open door with an office inside. He quickly closes it saying she doesn’t want to look at it which she responds with an odd “okay”. Now we find out for sure he’s single. Then they make out. Now she notices this painting as she is pinned against the wall being kissed.
He says it’s his great uncle. What was all that about? Is this supposed to imply his family was involved with the Nazis via the Vichy regime? I don’t really recognize the uniform. What was the point of the office and painting? It doesn’t make sense and is never brought up again.
After we have a stupid conversation about waiting three days before calling up Benny, the lawyer calls to tell her he has a deal to “franchise the bakery”. The father just sends her. Doesn’t come along at all. I know I can’t possibly get this across, but the movie really hasn’t given us any reason for this. He even corrects her when she says it’s not his bakery, but their bakery. Then doesn’t that mean he should be there even more? I know it’s supposed to show he trusts his daughter, but we don’t have any real reason too as the audience.
Of course big city folks meddling in small businesses are usually portrayed as evil, so she turns down their deal.
You’ll have to take my word for it, but these are the only lines in this that she delivers that are done right. They make sense, we feel that she really believes in what she is saying, and we finally see some believable change in her character. Why couldn’t this have been going on throughout the movie? I don’t get it.
She goes home when the husband shows up. No reason given for why he shows up other than that Olive dumped him and the pregnancy was fake. That’s nice, but the only thing we saw Desiree do prior to being dumped is spend his money in the short time we spent with her prior to the breakup and we could hardly stand her afterwards. Again, it doesn’t make sense. We just are supposed to believe from their really short little exchange that she brought something to the marriage that he would want back. Just a simple scene where we at least see her being used as a trophy wife would have gone a long way.
Obviously she shuts him out, she winds up with Benny, the lawyer shows up with the policewoman from earlier, they dance out the door of the bakery, Desiree and Benny kiss, etc.
This movie sucked. Plain and simple. In the end, she has changed, but it’s too late at that point. Go watch Clueless or Harvest Moon instead.
Now a tribute to the best character in the entire film: the lawyer played by Steve Varnom.
And look at all those American flags!!! Wow! I had no idea that North Bay, Ontario, Canada had a United States appreciation day where they take down all the Canadian flags that normally line the street to put up Old Glory. Actually, the city behind the title card is Littleton, New Hampshire, but the movie was done in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. However, they did take down the Canadian flags that normally line that city’s Main Street. Unfortunately, I don’t know the city they show just before the title card. Only so much I can do.
This time it was really easy to figure out. While they do make sure the license plates are Illinois…
and American flags are even in the windows of motels…
they left plenty of local business names just lying around.
They even directly reference this coffee house and it really exists on 473 Fraser Street North Bay, Ontario.
Figuring out Littleton, New Hampshire goes to the Hunkins & Eaton Insurance Agency, Inc. sign that just barely shows for a second before the camera pans up to the shot at the beginning of this review.
With that out of the way for now. This is Hallmark’s new mystery series. It takes place in the small town of New Chapel, Illinois, which is only about 4,000 km by car from Eden Lake, Minnesota where Hannah Swenson runs her bakery.
It starts off by introducing us to a dead man walking named Elvis. Abby Knight, played by Brooke Shields, once knew the man who has since run on hard times.
After speaking in exposition dialog to introduce us to her, the flower shop called Bloomers, and her employee, Brooke sits down to have a talk with her daughter. A daughter who, I kid you not, is attending Mills College. Mills College which, according to Brooke’s flower shop friend, is “far enough away to live on campus, but close enough for Mom to drop in.” I had no idea Mills College had moved from the Bay Area to near Illinois, Ontario, Canada.
Oh, and just in case we thought she was on vacation and not in the middle of classes.
This scene only exists to tell us that Brooke used to be a lawyer, but stopped when her husband died and opened a flower shop instead because “none of it just seemed as important.” In other words, her husband died so that the character will be able to be a detective and Beth Davenport from The Rockford Files at the same time. Works out because her neighbor Marco Salvare, played by Brennan Elliott, shows up next at the flower shop. He owns a bar and was a PI. Oh, and Brooke’s car got hit by another car that may have been involved with the murder that happens soon.
And by soon, I mean now. Someone turns up dead at the Canadian American flag waving motel, Elvis is a suspect, and Brooke and Brennan are on the case. Not for any real good reason. They are really just busy body snoops, which is one of the reasons I kind of like this series already. Normally that would drive me nuts, but it makes them made for each other in this series. I liked that.
With Brooke on the case, she goes on her iPad to read a screenshot of a newspaper article about the murder, which apparently took place on November 2nd, 2016.
Then she goes to the family album of her photos on the iPad where we see a picture of her husband who may have died the day before during a fishing trip. Either that or she only got around to importing her family photos onto her tablet the day before on November 1st, 2016.
Next we are introduced to this series’ version of Norman from Murder, She Baked, but he barely exists in this movie. Then there’s a little girl talk back at the flower shop that I’m pretty sure has no customers that come into it. This is followed by a scene where Brooke sits down with a woman who wants a divorce so that we make sure we still remember she was a lawyer. Oh, and something plot related about a Green Thumb Nursery. I couldn’t care less about the plot because just like watching The Big Sleep (1946), you are watching for the Brooke and Brennan back and forth, not the plot. Also, Beau Bridges is in this as a sounding board and in case we need more exposition. Whatever is needed, you can count on Beau. I mean the man got the scroll weapon and he almost beat mega turtle at the end of level three in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES back in 1989. He can do anything.
Time to hit the “Internet” running locally at file:///C:/Users/Mike/Desktop/sc20-Chicago-GreenTumb/results1.html AKA ExploreNet to look up the Green Thumb Nursery.
The local URL’s keep popping up in the lower left hand corner as a tooltip while she continues to browse the local filesystem for info on the nursery. I wonder who this Mike is? Did she take actor Michael Vincent Dagostino’s laptop? He plays a detective in the movie.
Anyhow, after Brooke reminds us again she was once a lawyer, she walks pass some street signs to make sure we know this shot took place at the intersection of McIntyre Street and Plouffle Street.
Then Brooke and Brennan visit the Green Thumb Nursery to forward the plot and have some more back and forth. Might as well mention now that Brooke has some weird pseudo-feminist lines in this. You know those lines somebody who thinks they are a feminist, but really are just looking for any excuse to pick a fight over say. There’s only a couple of them, but it’s kind of weird. Maybe she can argue with Calista Flockhart about the semantics of calling her Supergirl.
Now they go on a stakeout! By that I mean they have some humorous lines and talk in exposition dialog. Who cares! All you need to know is that with a little more work they could be fun as a mystery solving couple in this franchise. And no, despite being written by Gary Goldstein, there will be no mention of Brooke’s feet. More plot and dead flowers left for Brooke, then finally Elvis is charged with second degree murder.
Plot, plot, plot. Nursery looks awfully shady and we know that’s where the mystery is going to lead us. Now Brooke and Flower Shop Norman take a trip to Partners Billards & Bowling Center on 361 Main St East.
After more talking between characters, an inspector shows up and shuts down Brooke’s flower shop. Now it’s personal! I know this because I have almost run out of screenshots. Luckily, I have two more funny things to show before I close up this review. Also, Elvis is found hung dead in his cell. Winding down now.
At the nursery, Brooke noticed that one of the guys carried a gun. She asked him why and he gave a lame answer. No joke, I immediately said to my Dad that he should have said that they carry rare orchids and people try to steal them. So of course she figures out that an orchid bulb is hidden inside a pot of Mum flowers. Yep. This is also when Hallmark popped up to tell us that if we don’t like this series then not to worry cause it can go the way of Wedding Planner Mystery if necessary.
And now the final goof, and it’s a whopper. She goes online to read an article about expensive orchids. Take a good look.
“U.S. inspectors broke the Kolopaking case in 1993, when they discovered he had sent 60 boxes of rare orchids into the United States via the West Coast clearinghouse for international mail in Oakland.”
“Fisher said the biggest threat to orchids is loss of habitat: Each year, millions of acres of rain forest, where billions of orchids live, are cut or burned down for mining, timber, farming and development.
He added that orchids taken from the wild are now growing in greenhouses and new plants including hybrids are made from them. ‘There are a lot of species in greenhouses that don’t exist in the wild any more due to habitat loss.’
Law enforcement officials insist that smuggling can hasten the death of a species. They contend that over-collection often takes place when a rare orchid’s habitat is nearly destroyed.”
I think Brooke Shields should contact Brooke Burns of the SFPD. Her and The Gourmet Detective should get right on this. This clearly means that Darcy from A Gift Of Miracles who plagiarized her PhD research pitch from an actual WWF report was writing under the pseudonym of Samson O’Doyle three years before the events of that film.
Obviously Brooke does figure it all out and brings the criminals to justice. The mystery is okay at best. It’s not too difficult to follow. Take the fact that the majority of this review is made up of jokes to tell you how enthralling the plot is. There’s a fair amount of setup here so don’t expect to escape a lot of those types of scenes and the exposition dialog that comes with them. The promise here is the stuff between Brooke Shields and Brennan Elliott. I really have a feeling this one is heading for the same bin as My Gal Sunday, Wedding Planner Mystery, and The Mystery Cruise, but if not, then I hope they really polish up the dialog and just drop the unnecessary extra guy. That kind of works on Murder, She Baked, but here I didn’t feel it added anything. Just have Abby and Marco hook up so we can enjoy them being screwball comedy murder mystery solvers. Otherwise, I am not looking forward to a poor man’s Murder, She Baked with touches of The Gourmet Detective.
I doubt that people who read my Late Night Cable reviews are the same people who read my Hallmark reviews, but there’s a connection here. There’s an actor named Frankie Cullen who is in a bunch of the movies that wind up on late night cable. The thing is he’s too good for those movies. He really isn’t a bad actor at all and usually raises the quality of the movie by being in them. June in January is the second Hallmark movie i’ve seen with actor Wes Brown and he also raises the quality of the movie just by being in it. I also saw him in Love Under The Stars where he always conveyed a deep sadness and concern for his daughter simply without saying a word. In fact, his words were usually upbeat, but he always made sure we knew what was going on underneath without spelling it out for us. He does that kind of thing in this movie too. Just like Frankie Cullen, Wes Brown is too good for these movies in my opinion.
This is also the second film i’ve seen with actress Brooke D’Orsay and she is pretty good here too just like she was in How To Fall In Love. She is possibly one of the few actors i’ve seen on Hallmark that can play against type. She naturally fits the irresponsible ditz, but is good enough to convincingly play other characters despite what her appearance tells us she should be. How To Fall In Love was also directed by Mark Griffiths.
With that out of the way, we start off the movie with D’Orsay and Brown getting ready to go somewhere seeing as they are dressing up. They are doing it in two different places. And as usual the woman in the movie tries on several dresses and always goes with a dress I don’t like.
Oh, and that’s her mom who was frozen in the picture by evil witches and can only be released when her daughter has the perfect wedding. Just kidding, it’s her dead mom who will be a guiding spirit for D’Orsay through voiceover and flashbacks. Now D’Orsay and Brown go to a party and D’Orsay feels out of place because these are upper-crust people and she’s just a lowly nurse practitioner. Those non practitioner nurses are even worse. They just always sat around doing nothing on ER all the time. Someone actually left a review on IMDb complaining how this film bashes nurse practitioners and more specifically regular nurses even though the villains of the movie say it, but she stands up for herself and we see her helping people in her job.
This is when a Hallmark banner popped up to tell me they have a cannibalism related Valentine’s Day movie coming in February.
Should be more interesting than The Cabin (2011) which I did watch, but since it didn’t have the Hallmark seal on it before the title card, among other things, I don’t think it is a real Hallmark movie and won’t be reviewing it. Also, it was pretty lousy and felt edited.
Anyways, we now meet Brown’s parents.
That’s Marilu Henner who will be our Jaclyn Smith from Bridal Wave for this film. D’Orsay is always nervous around her because she feels like she’s always “auditioning for her.”
Meanwhile, this guy is eating a pizza in a bedroom.
Back at the party, we meet the bitch played by Chelsea Hobbs.
She just by coincidence also played the bitch in The Nine Lives Of Christmas. Yes, that is the best word to use. Even my Mom who has become rather conservative about cursing as of late started referring to her as such near the end of the film.
The Nine Lives Of Christmas (2014, dir. Mark Jean)
Also by coincidence, this movie was shot in Fort Langley, British Columbia, Canada just like The Nine Lives Of Christmas. I know that because of this shot.
What’s hilarious is that if you go to Google Maps Street View right now that building has a big Canadian flag hanging from it.
Anyways, after D’Orsay squats…
she pulls out a book complete with her dream wedding flowers in it and a flashback to her talking with her mother. Then D’Orsay comes out to show her father herself wearing her mother’s wedding dress. This is probably as good a time as any to tell you that the father’s are both really decent guys in this movie.
Then we cut to D’Orsay at work to see just how damn incompetent nurse practitioners are when she is able to help a man who turns out to have Seasonal Affective Disorder without having to consult a doctor. Totally useless I tell you.
After a few things that are just there to remind us of the importance of their wedding, Brown drops a bomb on D’Orsay. He tells her that he’s actually named Luke McDonald and is a member of an anti-vampire church.
Actually he’s there to tell her that since her character’s name is June and the film is called June in January, they are going to have to move to Cleveland for a new job he just received and have the wedding now in January. Why they couldn’t move to Cleveland and still have the wedding in June, I have no idea. Luckily, this is not a Hallmark movie that sends the message that her having her dream wedding is more important than marrying someone she loves. That’s extremely refreshing.
Meanwhile, the bitch has been assigned by Marilu Henner to do something about the upcoming wedding. Got to admit, I really thought she was Brown’s sister until late in the movie where she states she is just a friend of the family and works for Henner at her “design” business. Then Brown and D’Orsay check out some of the worst places possible to hold a reception…
before settling on having the ceremony at Marilu Henner’s place. I say both reception and ceremony in there because while we do see the ceremony at the house in the end, but the places they visit look like where you would hold a reception so I’m not really sure.
Now it’s time to go back to find out that D’Orsay somehow, i’m sure by complete luck, cured the poor guy who was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Believe it or not, that is one of those things that is terrible to have, but is surprisingly easy to fix. Simply having a special light bulb shine on you for a certain amount of time each day stops it. Rather remarkable. He will actually repay her by saving the day at the end of the film.
Oh, and it’s discovering I have taken screenshots like this that make writing these reviews for you worth it.
No idea what was going on here.
At this point, the film kind of goes on autopilot. You have D’Orsay starting to panic, but quickly realizing that it’s marrying someone she loves that makes the wedding special. Her mother even left a note after her death for D’Orsay to make sure she remembers that. The fathers do there part to comfort D’Orsay and bring Henner down to Earth. Oh, and this happens.
During this scene the bitch tries one last attempt to ruin the marriage by telling Brown that she has a crush on him. Look at Brown’s face. Without saying a word he could have simply gotten up and left and we would have completely understood his feelings on what she was saying. Surprise followed by disgust followed by sheer amazement that she would actually stoop this low. I’m surprised they actually had him say anything. Brown is good enough with his acting to convey everything with his face and body language. And a prenup gets thrown in at the last minute, but that goes nowhere just like any of the normal Hallmark speed bumps which just lead the characters to a better understanding of their love for each other rather than stupid panic.
But the bitch has one last trick up her sleeve after being fired by Henner. She tells the revered that the wedding is off so he won’t show up for the ceremony. However…
that guy who D’Orsay cured by pure chance has a friend who can marry them and they live happily ever after.
My summary thoughts on the movie are as these: It’s one of the best Hallmark movies i’ve watched especially considering it’s just about a rushed wedding, Wes Brown is a good actor, D’Orsay is no slouch herself, nurse practitioners and regular nurses deserve a lot of respect, and I carried that one joke on way too long.
Note: I’m aware that the IMDb reviewer’s main point was that the film can appear like it’s saying you have to be a nurse practitioner instead of a regular nurse in order to be taken seriously. I get the same impression from people when I tell them i’m transgender, but not on hormones so I can understand why it bothered her. My jokes still stand though because my point is that it’s ridiculous to look down on nurses as if they aren’t to be taken seriously and the film never really does that.
Secret Travel (2013, dir. Park Chang-Jin) – The plot of this film is that a guy starts a suicide club after a female prostitute gets into his cab who is obviously very depressed. Based on that plot would you think this movie is a comedy? Would you think that by looking at that poster? This movie also goes under the title Secret Confessions. Either title tell you it’s a comedy? Only the third title called Wish Taxi betrays that this might be a comedy. No wonder it also uses this as it’s poster.
Now that tells you it’s a comedy! The best way I can give you a feel for it is to take Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and cross it with The Breakfast Club (1985). The guy meets the girl in his cab and decides a way to get close to her is take up her apparent interest in killing herself. Rather morbid. He puts up a post online and two other girls along with her show up. There’s the perky one who is pictured on the right of that poster. The prostitute in the middle who is in the middle as far as depression goes. Then there’s the girl on the far left who in the movie you can tell is actually in danger of offing herself. The idea is that they are going to fulfill their bucket lists before killing themselves together. Again, rather morbid, but it all plays out like a comedy. I would compare it to the film The Bucket List, but I haven’t seen that one yet and it really is like a bunch of kids taking a day off of school who would normally not hang out together, but then get to know each other by having a good time in the city, thus becoming life long friends. In other words, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off crossed with The Breakfast Club.
Overall, I enjoyed it. I’ve said it several times already, but it is kind of morbid considering it’s a suicide club and all. Also, they all end up having sex with him. That’s really not much of a spoiler. One could read a little too much into it and think that having sex with him solves their problems. It really doesn’t. You can also look at it as a guy who gets sex by preying on three emotionally disturbed girls. I think that’s not giving the girls enough credit. He never really takes advantage and they all know what they are doing. It’s easier to argue that The Twilight Saga is about a pedophile considering the entire story can be stripped to a 100+ year old man who gets into a relationship with a teenage girl and freezes her at a young age.
I recommend this one.
One Thing She Doesn’t Have (2014, dir. Yu Jeong-Hwan) – This one on the other hand, I can’t recommend. The one thing this film doesn’t have is focus. One minute it wants to be a screwball comedy. Then it’s 8 1/2 (1963). Then it’s Soapdish (1991). Next it’s All About Eve (1950). Next it’s trying to be clever about how sex tapes affect the careers of actors. The cult of celebrity. It’s all over the place. Speaking of Soapdish.
The movie is about an actress whose career is on the downswing. Nobody is taking her seriously. On the other hand, you have a director who is also not doing so good. He is going to do a, what I thought was a movie, but it turns out to be a play. A rather racey play that has pole dancing in it. The actress’ production company encourages her to do it so she does…sort of. Do I have to tell you she’s a total diva? Well, she is. The film is about this play coming together, her using a body double for the pole dancing stuff, and a scandal. I think it fancies itself to be insightful and clever, but it isn’t. It’s all over the place.
Case in point, early in the movie the actress and a friend all but date rape the director to take pictures of him in sexual positions while he is heavily drugged so she can get her way. That is played as if it’s all light and funny. However, later in the film a sex tape gets out of the actress, which the director had nothing to do with, but it’s suddenly something we are supposed to take very seriously. It’s fake too by the way while the pictures are very real. So, the all but date rape is perfectly fine, but this sex tape of someone who is already doing a play where she is pole dancing almost entirely naked is supposed to be meaningful and tragic? Sorry, it doesn’t work. Yes, I know they try to explain this away with her little tale about her early acting career, but I’m sorry, swap the genders of that drugging and people would scream bloody murder. When you can swap gender and suddenly you feel repulsed, then it wasn’t right in the first place.
I don’t recommend this one.
Kiss Me, Kill Me (2009, dir. Yang Jon-Hyeon) – First things first. I can’t possibly be the only one who looks at that poster and thinks of the game Lethal Enforcers with the pink gun.
Well, with that out of the way. Ever wanted to see Branded To Kill (1967) sorta reworked into a romance between a hitman and a suicidal woman? Neither did I, but that’s essentially what you have here. For those of you who haven’t seen Branded To Kill, then stop reading this and go watch it. You’re in for a bizarre treat. Oh, and here’s the trailer for Branded To Kill which will explain nothing…
because you can’t really make a trailer to Branded To Kill that explains it. I can barely explain it and I’ve seen it. Also, you have probably seen it referenced in other movies. From something like Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai (1999) to that really short-lived trans woman British contract killer TV show Hit & Miss. Yep, Chloë Sevigny with a penis. That’s something that exists in that show. I mean they actually show it several times. What also exists in both that movie, that TV show, and this movie are direct references to the famous butterfly sniper rifle scene. In Branded To Kill the lead played by Jô Shishido misses his target because a butterfly lands on his rifle. In this movie, it’s a leaf that happens to pass in front of the lead’s scope. This causes him to screw up a hit.
The movie starts out by introducing us to the suicidal girl as we see her jump onto the tracks while an oncoming subway train approaches. She lands on the tracks next to the tracks that the train is on before getting up and running away. Comedy? Anyways, she winds up at the scene where the hit is going to go down. There is actually a funny moment here when our contract killer goes to setup his gun on top of a building and notices a police sniper already there on the neighboring roof. The two just kind of acknowledge each other, then our killer goes somewhere else to setup. The girl happens to be there, but he doesn’t really meet her yet.
He’s then hired to kill a guy who is just going to be lying in his bed sleeping. Of course it turns out it’s her and she has hired him to kill her. He doesn’t do it though recognizing she’s suicidal and that’s not his thing. This is when he becomes romantically linked with her by basically just moving in with her. He still is going around killing, but he’s now sort of living with her and I believe his mother too. It reminded me of when the #1 Yakuza killer moves in with the lead in Branded To Kill. There’s even a shot of them just both sitting looking dead at some park like I remember the two killers doing on a couch in Branded To Kill.
Oh, and yes, I know him being hired to kill a woman could also be a reference to Murder By Contract (1958). So here’s that trailer too. Worth seeing even if the ending of the film is disappointing.
Ultimately, the movie has a neat setup, and I kind of like the actor playing the contract killer, but then it just settles into a soap opera. And yes, I’m well aware that soap operas are uber popular in South Korea. If I had forgotten, then the next film I’ll talk about sure reminded me of that fact. I didn’t like it. I kind of wish they had just gone all out and simply remade Branded To Kill. Oldboy (2003) proved the Koreans have what it takes to remake something so bat shit crazy. Unfortunately, after watching the movie I couldn’t satisfy my Jô Shishido fix since I don’t own any of his films. So I had to settle for the final scene from A Colt Is My Passport (1967). Enjoy!
Love Me Not (2006, dir. Cheol-ha Lee) – It doesn’t look like Amazon Prime is going to let me out of South Korea anytime soon. This makes 6 of them in a row. This one is a straight up Old Hollywood 1950’s weepie. Even has sections with strong use of color that you would expect from a Douglas Sirk movie. Although, the main guy also wears an all white suit at times during some scenes with strong use of color so for all I know that was a reference to Tokyo Drifter (1966). Might as well have two movies in a row that reference a Seijun Suzuki film. Also, this one appears to reference Citizen Kane. I actually took a couple of screenshots here.
The plot here is that they needed an excuse to have a conman spend time with a blind woman who can appear as if she has just lost her sight even though she lost it a long time ago. To do this, they have a guy that suddenly needs massive amounts of money to pay back a debt he owes. He is going to go and pose as the blind woman’s long lost brother in order to get her inheritance since her father recently passed away. We get her acting as if she just went blind because the movie tells us she never left the house after losing her sight. That is until he shows up, then it’s time for the two to go out on the town so we can see her acting pathetic and him growing to love her.
There is seriously nothing else to this. This would have made a perfectly okay 1950s Hollywood romance film. Maybe Cary Grant or Robert Mitchum as the conman and maybe Ingrid Bergman as the blind woman. Actually, Audrey Hepburn is probably a better choice seeing as she was awesome playing blind in Wait Until Dark (1967). That or I needed an excuse to include the trailer for Wait Until Dark here.
I only recommend seeing Love Me Not if you know that Old Hollywood weepies really are your thing, and even more so if you already know the two leading actors: Geun-young Moon and Ju-hyuk Kim. If so, I can tell you that you will most likely enjoy this movie. It’s average, but I didn’t enjoy it because I am really not the intended audience.
And here’s some scenes from Wait Until Dark because I can. You’re welcome! Call it adding a “Scenes That I Love” section to a “Roundup” post.
I know he probably didn’t, but seeing as Ron Oliver and David S. Cass Sr. have seen some of my reviews of their Hallmark films, I am going to just assume director Kristoffer Tabori read my reviews of Love On The Air and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery. I say this because he fixed the problems with the way he shot those two films, but still kept some of the style he seems to be going for with his recent Hallmark movies. He still has a fondness for mirrors.
Still doing some framing.
The obstructionist stuff in front of the camera is drastically reduced. I’d say it’s only there when it actually does add something to the shot like these parts.
Thankfully, there was no repeat of the blinded by the light shot from Love On The Air and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery. The good framing and composition in depth are used sparingly. It’s not something that seems to have been just thrown into every shot like it was before. That alone makes this way better than the previous Murder, She Baked film. I honestly don’t know why Tabori chose to do it this way this time, but I want to thank him for it.
The movie starts off with Hannah (Alison Sweeney) discovering a body in a kitchen after a little film noir voiceover from her. I liked that it chose to open up that way. Then it cuts to a title card telling us: “Two Days Earlier”. This is when the movie reintroduces us to Hannah, the bakery, and the town of Eden Lake. Do I even have to say it anymore? Yes? Okay. And by Eden Lake, they mean Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. I know this because of this shot.
However, kudos to the production crew for knowing this shot of her cellphone would be onscreen for an extended period of time so they simply removed the SIM card.
Of course, the rest of the time it’s just Minnesota license plates where the film is supposed to take place.
A competing bakery has opened up across the street and is run by Melanie and her sister Vanessa both played by actress Michelle Harrison.
Vanessa
Melanie
I thought the two sisters looked awfully similar to each other while watching it, but I wasn’t sure they were supposed to be twins. I don’t think the film ever says they are twins. I think they had the same actress play both sisters for the convenience of the murder mystery plot. Can’t give away too much, but having the same actress play both sisters makes it easier to swallow the resolution of the mystery. However, it is a little confusing and provides a red herring that I’m not sure they were going for. Melanie is the one who is murdered. Since both sisters are played by the same actress it’s perfectly reasonable for the viewer to think that the one sister killed the other and swapped places with her. Especially since they don’t seem to like each other. Not sure if that was something the filmmakers intended or not. Something tells me they did though because the reason Melanie has her hair up in that shot above like her sister is because Hannah puts it up that way under the guise of protecting it while she bakes.
For reasons that don’t matter, Melanie and Hannah end up in a cook off to see who can bake the best Peach Cobbler. It doesn’t even matter who wins either. All that matters is that Hannah discovers Melanie doesn’t know how to bake because she bought her Peach Cobbler at a store. This is how the film gets Hannah to know Melanie as Hannah tries to teach her how to bake and introduces us to Melanie’s mean sister Vanessa. She’s nasty. Then Melanie dies.
Now here’s something I didn’t notice in the previous film, but it sure was an issue for me this time around. Both this and the previous film have Mike played by Cameron Mathison and Norman played by Gabriel Hogan in them. The problem is that both actors bare a strong resemblance to each other in this movie. I kept confusing the two of them. It really doesn’t affect the movie, but it was part of my experience watching it, so I am passing it on.
Gabriel Hogan
Cameron Mathison
With Melanie dead, Hannah, her mom, and her sister, AKA The Blonde Brigade, begin to work towards solving the mystery. Or better put, Hannah works towards solving the mystery while the other two blondes are around playing their roles in the story. One of the episodes of Murder, She Wrote that I remember the most is when Jessica Fletcher was really suspected as the murderer. That happens here to Hannah. Something else that I know everyone who has watched Murder, She Wrote thinks is that if Jessica comes to town, then RUN!!!! When Hannah discovers the body it’s:
And this isn’t all there is. Hallmark is well aware that people know they film a lot of this stuff in Canada. I mean it’s spelled out all over the credits for crying out loud. However, it wasn’t until this film that I actually saw them make a joke about it.
In that scene, she tries to tell Hannah to make a run for it by going to Canada. Of course the in-joke is that they are already in Canada.
There are also some well done computer screens and Tabori reuses the technique of overlaying some of the computer stuff onto the shot like he did in Love On The Air.
It’s nice, modern, and has the effect of showing both what’s important on the screen and the character’s reaction to it in the same shot. That helps to keep us engaged rather than having things broken with every cut from the screen to the character and back again.
I also appreciated the scene near the end where Hannah, then Norman, try to social engineer some information out of some people. For me it harkens back to movies like Sneakers (1992) and WarGames (1983), but since this is a murder mystery. It also made me think of The Rockford Files. Rockford socially engineered people all the time and in some episodes even carried around a little printing press to make fake business cards. It’s no wonder that even Kevin Mitnick mentioned The Rockford Files in his autobiography. She also does some dumpster diving.
So with all that babble out of the way, you are probably wondering if the mystery is any good. I could reasonably follow it which is a good thing. However, a section of it is quite obvious. The fact that the other part may be obscured from you till the end doesn’t change that you think you have figured it out from the start, and you basically have. Nevertheless, this installment has changed my opinion on this particular Hallmark mystery franchise. I could go for another one. Even Alison Sweeney who I felt didn’t pull off playing the good character in the previous films finally seemed to settle into the role. That may just be me or that I’ve seen her play the same role three times now, but her performance worked for me. I’d say give this one a shot, but for all the other things I mentioned aside from how well crafted the mystery itself is.
I know everyone has been dying for me to do another one of those movie roundup things I used to do. And by everyone, I mean no one. Well, this is gonna be sort of like that again. Late last year I decided to conduct a little experiment. On Amazon Prime you can go to a section marked “Customers Also Watched”. In there is exactly what you think. I thought it might be interesting to pick a movie, then when I finish it, take the first recommendation in that section and keep repeating this until I run out of recommendations. Basically traversing a probabilistic graph like an ant algorithm except there may be no end point and since it’s just me, there’s no convergence on a path. It’s just me following the probabilistic graph generated by what other customers picked to watch after they watched something else. I started on December 18th, 2015. Since I can’t always get around to doing full reviews of things, I thought it would be fun to give you occasional updates with little reviews of each of these films. And boy are there some strange ones. This is going to be a big one with 34 films I’ve watched so far. I’ll try to do these in shorter amounts in the future. We’ll see how long I can keep this up. I will keep poster art out here because of the enormous number of films in this one. Here we go!
Seduction: The Cruel Woman (1985, dir. Monika Treut & Elfi Mikesch) – Last year I watched a film called Female Misbehavior (1992) by Monika Treut. She is a German director who, at least in the 1980s, made really bizarre arty sex movies. This was no exception. While I did enjoy Female Misbehavior quite a bit, this was just weird. But kind of weird in a good way. It follows a woman who runs a place that caters to people’s fetishes. That’s really it. There’s not much to say in retrospect except to make sure you are in that experimental arty mood if you are going to sit down and watch this. If you are, then you could possibly enjoy it. I kind of did.
Satan’s Slave (1976, dir. Norman J. Warren) – This one just wasn’t any good. It was a 1970s British horror film that reminded me of the awful Virgin Witch (1972). It was just plain boring. A girl goes and stays in a house with family and gets caught up in a cult. Or at least that’s the plot summary. It’s just boring stuff that tries to build an atmosphere and has a few “scary” sequences. Not worth your time.
Cruel Passion (1977, dir. Chris Boger) – This in an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine. Unfortunately, it’s almost as boring as actually reading the original book. The general story is about a girl who is cast out and goes from place to place being taken advantage of sexually. So wait, that means Lars Von Trier got Dogville from Justine and Nymphomaniac from Anita: Swedish Nymphet (1973). Interesting. Far more interesting than this lousy sexploitation movie. She really doesn’t do a whole lot of wandering. She really isn’t taken advantage of that much either. At least it knew how to end itself properly. By that I mean it had her killed off. You are better off with Justine de Sade from 1972 instead.
Her and She and Him (1970, dir. Max Pécas) – This is one of those movies put out by Audubon Films. They brought a lot of foreign sex related films to the U.S. and dubbed them. This was one of them. It’s actually pretty offensive. A naive exchange student from Sweden shows up in Paris and winds up in a screwed up lesbian relationship with an older woman. Meanwhile, a young man is in a messed up gay relationship. Both the lesbian and the gay guy are portrayed as damaged or just plain weird. Of course the two young people end up together and say some stupid things to imply that being straight is normal, but we should still feel sorry for the homosexuals. Do I even have to say skip this one? Oh, except there is one funny goof in this movie. The young girl goes down on the older lady who is standing in a well lit room. Yet, her lower half must be in a different place cause it’s like nighttime down there.
Virgin Machine (1988, dir. Monika Treut) – This movie is about a German woman who becomes fascinated by sexual things outside the perceived “norms”. As a result, she ultimately winds up in San Francisco. It’s arty for sure, but you can still kind of follow along here. There is the scene where the male impersonator simulates ejaculation with a beer bottle. However, the only thing really worth seeing here are the few scenes with Susie Sexpert/Susie Bright. I didn’t know who she was, but she’s apparently well known in my neck of the woods. You can find her online. She has been known as the “Pauline Kael of Porn”. People probably know her best as playing Jesse in the Wachowski’s movie Bound (1996) as well as being a technical advisor on the film. The few scenes with her are rather interesting. I could have watched a whole movie where the lead character just talked to her. Too bad she doesn’t.
The Immoral One (1980, dir. Claude Mulot) – My advice here is to simply not watch it on Amazon Prime. They edited it heavily. Shouldn’t surprise me I guess since it’s made by the director of the porn film Pussy Talk (1975). It’s about a woman who is in a car accident that recovers from her amnesia by listening to audio tapes. It’s just a thin excuse to show her as a call girl going to her clients. Unfortunately, the second anything starts it just cuts away to the next non-sex scene. It’s really abrupt like you’ve just come to the end of a Godfrey Ho movie. And it’s a real shame to cause the lead actress is very pretty and the movie is well shot. The sex scenes are probably very well done, but you won’t see them on Amazon Prime. Too bad. Also, a little strange considering I believe Her and She and Him had hardcore penetration in one scene. Whatever.
Sexus (1965, dir. José Bénazéraf) – Oh, god! This was terrible. It’s one of those movies where seriously nothing happens. I think Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967) had more action than this. A girl gets kidnapped and she kind of falls in love with her captors and things fall apart. It’s the worst kind of foreign arthouse garbage. Just stay away from this thing. I really can’t stand Godard. I’m really not even a fan of his first film Breathless. Take Breathless and remove anything enjoyable about it and make it about a kidnapping. That’s this movie.
The Lickerish Quartet (1970, dir. Radley Metzger) – I like my review on Letterboxd: “That was an artsy and pretentious mess.” Yes, it is. It’s about two older people and young man who watch porn films together. Then they go to a carnival and bring a woman back who they think was in a movie they watched. What follows is a film really wanting to be something akin to Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961). A lot of arty stuff and a lot of stuff that just screams: “You wouldn’t understand if I told you” nonsense. It even tries to get really meta about it all at the end. Don’t bother with this. Go watch Last Year at Marienbad instead. It’s wonderful!
Sweet Ecstasy (1962, dir.Max Pécas) – Back to Max again. This time he brought along Elke Sommer to be in a film that wants to be something akin to Antonioni’s films with Monica Vitti. Except it’s stupid bad foreign upper class stuff that you saw a lot during this period. My biggest problem with this movie, other than that it sucked, is the burning boat scene. There’s a part where the adult children are on a boat having some sort of auction where they have Elke Sommer tied up. The boat catches on fire and they all flee onto lifeboats. They then realize they left Elke behind and rescue her. Afterwards, they try to punish the guy who accidentally set the boat on fire. They make him do stupid childish things. It’s dumb. But what pisses me off is that while people are fleeing the room where Elke is we can clearly see her tied, not gagged, but not screaming for help. Sorry, but once you see it, then you just keep yelling at the screen that it was your own damn fault for letting them tie you up and then saying nothing as the room burned. Regardless, more worthless foreign stuff.
The Curious Female (1970, dir. Paul Rapp) – It took ten of these, but I finally hit one I would recommend. This movie takes place in the future where apparently a master computer rules over everything. However, instead of making everyone “moral”, it makes them all orgy bisexual loving folks. Some of them gather in a place where they can watch old movies that show how people used to live. It’s certainly is weird. They only watch two films. The first is a silent movie where a vacuum salesman shows up and gets screwed by the lady of the house. Then they watch some movie called The Three Virgins. That makes up the rest of the film. It cutting between the film and the folks in the room watching it, who by the way, are also actors within the film they are watching. The Three Virgins thing revolves around a computer dating business and what happens when a guy comes in looking for a virgin. There’s only two things I really want to mention here. One, is the black lesbian character named Pearl. I watched several lesbian movies directed by women at the beginning of last year from the past 10 years or so and this was a much better character. The movies I watched were like Loving Annabelle (2006) or Bloomington (2010). They quickly turned into basically softcore porn, tried to make lesbianism as forbidden as possible, and just wouldn’t stop to let us actually get to know them a little. Pearl is just a girl who figures out that she’s still a virgin at her age because she likes girls instead. That’s it! We get to know her a bit and she just discovers that about herself. Nice, simple, and positive. Then there’s the extremely over the top gay guy who comes into the computer dating place. He’s an odd duck. He’s every stereotype you can think of, but at the same time he stands up for himself and doesn’t take anyone’s crap. He’s interesting. Oh, also we find out that 13 year old girls are taken to the “elderly gentleman” to lose their virginity in the future. Yes, just the girls. It never says where the guys are taken though and they obviously don’t keep their virginity in the future either. I recommend this one.
Days of Sin and Nights of Nymphomania (1963, dir. Poul Nyrup) – This is just an odd sit. It’s a Danish movie that was again brought over by Audubon Films which means more sex stuff. It’s basically a house party with mostly naked women doing whatever it is they were doing in front of the camera. But then near the end it just seems to turn on a dime into a heist movie that ends with a guy killing a girl, I think, and getting arrested. Some of the stuff with the girls is kind of pretty, but there’s just no reason to subject yourself to this.
Chain Gang Women (1971, dir. Lee Frost) – Spoiler alert! There are no chain gang women in chain gang women. It goes for awhile like a gritty look at men on a chain gang before finally letting a couple of them escape. Then they run into two women. One is attached to one of the guys, but the other rapes her. Then they run into a very young girl who is married to a much older man. They sort of take advantage, sort of go to rescue her, but the old man kills them both and keeps the girl. Just a pointless sexploitation film with a title as accurate as 1,000 Convicts And A Woman.
Savage Abduction (1973, dir. John Lawrence) – This one actually goes under three titles: The Bloody Slaying of Sarah Ridelander, Cycle Psycho, and Savage Abduction. Well, Sarah Ridelander is killed at the beginning, but that death is hardly important enough to be called a “Bloody Slaying” or be in the title. Cycle Psycho at least alludes to the fact that a motorcycle gang is in this, but they are hardly psychos. Strangely, Savage Abduction is the most accurate title. The movie is about a crazy guy who blackmails another guy into getting two young girls for him. He does this because he murders the man’s wife at his request. A motorcycle gang with the word “savage” in their names do the abducting. And by abducting I mean simply pick up two stupid young girls who thought hitching a ride with random motorcyclists was a good idea. The rest of the film is just killing time till it decides it has enough minutes in the runtime to have what little climax it has in store for the audience play out. After Savage Island (1985), I’m beginning to think Fred and Ben Savage are the only good things with “savage” in them.
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967, dir. Harald Reinl) – More like dangle Christopher Lee in our face, take him away, then bring him back for the end. This was pretty bad. Most of the movie you follow two guys and two girls on their way to some castle. The girls basically overreact in fear to everything. However, the guys underreact to everything just running towards the obvious danger. What a waste of time. Making it in the first place, and then me watching it.
Sacred Flesh (2000, dir. Nigel Wingrove) – Wanna watch nuns have sex with each other while the Mother Superior argues with Mary Magdalene? No? Neither did I. This is just nunsploitation that tries to give itself some meaning with the Mother Superior/Mary Magdalene stuff. If I want something in that vein, then that’s what Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) is for. Seriously, go watch it now. It even looks like it’s available on Amazon now. In the past you had to track down a copy online because the film was being sat on by the studio to a ridiculous degree. Skip Sacred Flesh.
Primitive London (1965, dir. Arnold L. Miller) – And by Primitive London, they mean heavy cynicism and a bunch of stripping. It’s a Mondo movie. Nothing ridiculous like the pond scene from Brutes and Savages (1978) or anything like that. The most interesting things are probably the stripper running from club to club to make money and when they talk to Mods and Rockers. Can’t think of a good stripper movie to recommend really, but as for Mods and Rockers, see Quadrophenia (1979) for the Mods and Rocker (1972) for the Rockers. I’m not sure if it’s become easier to find Rocker now years after I tracked down a copy, but it’s worth it. If memory serves, the movie is easy to find, but English subtitles for the German aren’t. Still worth it. This movie is okay. Nothing to seek out.
The Wild Women of Wongo(1958, dir. James L. Wolcott) – There’s a hell of a title for what is a really boring movie. I know I say boring a lot, but that’s because I never took the SATs. Yeah, sure, that’s a good enough excuse for me. I could explain the plot, but there’s no point. It’s just a 1950s primitive exploitation film that is just some nonsense some people thought up to have some attractive women run around in small outfits and that’s it. No reason to watch this at all.
Bad Girls From Mars (1990, dir. Fred Olen Ray) – Ah, good old Fred Olen Ray. This film tries to be meta about the production of a movie because it’s cheap and that way it doesn’t have to build many sets until it settles on an ending that was already tired even before Sleepaway Camp (1983). And I haven’t even seen that movie yet. I’ll get to it eventually along with Fatal Games (1984), but it’s just a slight twist on the ending of Friday the 13th (1980) because Girls Nite Out (1982) already proved that having it be the mother again was done for. I know I’m getting to be a broken record here, but no. Skip it!
The Nude Set (1957, dir. Pierre Foucaud) – Also called The Fast Set and Mademoiselle Strip-tease. Just a whole lot of stripping. Another primitive exploitation film from overseas. These movies are such a waste of time. I can’t even tell you how unbearable some of them are. However, there is something weird that happens near the end of this film. Up until it happens, the movie is just about a girl and some friends visiting strip clubs. Then seemingly out of nowhere a dream sequence happens that looks like it’s straight out of Fred and Ginger 1930s musical. No joke. And it isn’t even clear that it’s a dream at first either. Then the movie just crashes into it’s ending. Onward! Unfortunately, it’s to more stripping.
Lap Dancing (1995, dir. Mike Sedan) – Think this might have been rushed into production to capitalize on Showgirls (1995)? You’re probably right. Especially when one of the guys even bares a resemblance to Kyle MacLachlan. It’s not good, but at least it didn’t hinge it’s success entirely on a single performance that didn’t hold up like Verhoeven’s film did. As you can tell, I’m not one of those revisionist critics who wants to turn Showgirls and Starship Troopers (1997) into misunderstood masterpieces. They’re both garbage. At least Starship Troopers is entertaining garbage and you can tell yourself Verhoeven was trying to make the whole film like it was a piece of propaganda from the fascist regime within the film. However, you’re better off exploring other Verhoeven films such as Soldier of Orange (1977) or Turkish Delight (1971) that he made before coming to the states. Even Black Book (2006) with its spaghetti western archetypes is more worth your time. As for Lap Dancing, it’s kind of bi-polar. Most of the time it’s just stripping, but then it will suddenly go into full on sentimental mode complete with sad music. It’s about a girl who comes to Hollywood looking for fame and ends up at a strip club that looks like the night club from Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994). Or at least it did for me. Skip! And apparently, I can’t stop referencing other movies. I think it’s a disease.
From The Head (2011, dir. George Griffith) – Want to see a film that will probably make my gems list at the end of 2016 now? See From The Head. It’s an indie film that takes place entirely inside the men’s restroom at a strip club. The main character is a bathroom attendant. People come in and go out delivering there bits (literally and figuratively). It does start to drag a bit, but it still pulls through. I like when they had the women’s restroom break and the ladies just used the men’s and neither the guys nor the girls really seemed to care one bit about using the same bathroom. As they shouldn’t. But then they take that away by having their bathroom fixed. Honestly, I think it needed that to liven things up more, but like I said, it still pulls through. The lead, played by the director, is interesting, and it’s a job I don’t think I’ve ever seen given the attention of a full movie. Worth seeing.
Las Vegas Story (2015, dir.Byron Q.) – There really isn’t anything to say about this. A lady with kids is a prostitute in Las Vegas and we just see her go about her stuff as she moves towards trying to open a male escort business. That’s really it. The only thing I remember of interest is that apparently a girl playing the slots was acting too suspicious as a prostitute on the casino floor to the lead actress by simply playing the slots, but later she and a friend will just go right up to a lady at a bar to try and sell her on buying an escort from them. Didn’t get that. This is one of those that I can’t recommend, but I can see other people getting more out of this than I did.
Birthday (2009, dir. James Harkness) – This on the other hand. I can’t see getting anything out of this rambling nonsense. It’s one of those movies that feels like you are sitting in a college liberal arts class where people who have no idea what they are talking about say things they think are profound in the hopes somebody will be impressed. The only difference is it’s a brothel with David Lynch lighting and the prostitutes are the ones talking. Yep. Boring as it sounds. I love when people call something like this a meditation on something. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen that done. This isn’t it.
The Case Of Unfaithful Klara (2009, dir. Roberto Faenza) – A guy hires a private investigator to follow around his girlfriend. The guy basically strings him along under the pretense of protecting his client from being hurt which has ties to his own personal life. Nope! Nope! Nope! Boring! I didn’t care about any of this.
Extase (2009, dir. Cheyenne Carron) – Speaking of not caring about any of this. I didn’t care about this either. It’s once again people yacking in a room with artsy shots and sets. This time it has to do with God. Wow! What a surprise there. This is just one of those short indie arty modeled on good foreign films films that I think is made by a director to simply try things out and hopefully go on to make something better, less derivative, more coherent, and original. However, her other films look like they are just taking the sex and religion thing and running with it. Next!
A Swedish Midsummer Sex Comedy (2009, dir. Ian McCrudden) – Oh, boy! You mean I get to watch several storylines between several people play out at a party where Luke Perry is brought in so people will go see the movie and the characters keep switching from Swedish to English and back? Wow! Don’t sign me up. This is one of those movies that you would have expected Hugh Grant to be in back in the early 1990s like Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994). People have some issues, they come out at a party, and things resolve. I don’t know what to say about this movie except that it’s so not worth your time.
Camembert Rose (2009, dir. Barnabás Tóth) – It’s an indie coming of age story from Hungary that’s reasonably good. Nothing amazing here. A kid who wants to see the world has a bit of a nutty dad who still loves the hell out of him. He leaves and goes somewhere else for awhile, then returns home. Not great, but I kind of enjoyed this one.
Please, Please Me! (2009, dir. Emmanuel Mouret) – Wanna see a modern day French director desperately try to make his own Jacques Tati film and fail? I know you don’t, so skip this. It has a stupid beginning and a stupid ending with mostly a party sequence in between that acts like a really lame and childish version of the restaurant scene from Tati’s Playtime (1967). Just go watch a Tati film instead. There’s no reason to settle for this.
Strange Fits Of Passion (1999, dir. Elise McCredie) – I’ve heard the mermaids singing, and they are trying to tell us to stay away from Strange Fits Of Passion. It’s about a girl who you will spend the entire film screaming at to please let her get laid already so she can calm down. She even has two gay friends who can see her festering and having the female equivalent of blue balls, but do nothing about it. I wanted to step into the film and punch them in the crotch. I know very few people will get the reference at the beginning of this, so go watch the movie I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing (1987) instead of this movie. So much indie! So much indie! My head is going to explode and dancing suns are going to pop out!
Summer Vacation (2012, dir. Tal Granit & Sharon Maymon) – Luckily, the next film was not only a short, but decent too. It’s from Israel and is about a family who is on vacation when the father runs into a former male lover. Not sure if he’s supposed to be gay or bi, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a nice little film that shows the father’s struggle. Nothing more, nothing less.
Cold Blooded (2007, dir. Sylvie Verheyde) – Back to France for more indie. This movie is supposed to be about a messed up girl and a former soldier, but it’s mainly about the soldier. The stuff with her wasn’t really anything I thought was worthwhile. I could have really just done with a movie about the soldier dealing not only with his past, but his present demons. The lead actor kind of made me think of a French Benicio Del Toro. A definite skip, but I liked the actor and wouldn’t mind seeing him in something else.
Enthralled (2014, dir. Chip Tsao) – This is when Amazon Prime launched me into Asia and I’m still stuck there. This comes to us from Hong Kong. It’s supposed to be about some guys who were friends as kids, then we see them as adults, but if I hadn’t read the plot summary then I wouldn’t have made the connection. As for the dialog and the message, it felt like they kept taking a brick and bashing it into my head to drive home its points. The only thing noteworthy here is that a guy sleeps with both the mother and her son.
Desire (2002, dir. Eung-soo Kim) – Wanna watch a movie about lifeless, soulless, and loveless characters made by a director in love with Zhangke Jia, Robert Bresson, and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman? If you said yes, then what the hell is wrong with you? This is one of those movies I thought was going to kill me. The only film I can think of that it really reminded me of was Bresson’s The Devil, Probably (1977), but that’s probably just because everything happens with such lifeless acting that Bresson was known for. Heck maybe Marguerite Duras’ India Song (1975) is a more appropriate film to think of based on Desire. I didn’t like either of those movies and they are still better options than Desire. It’s just several people who walk through a series of loveless stuff and empty moments that aren’t what anyone would call life.
Origin Of Monogamy (2013, dir. Min Kyeol) – Sticking with South Korea like Desire, this one was actually not in IMDb at the time. Amazon Prime seems to have a lot of Korean cinema in it, but the titles are alternate and usually not in IMDb. Oh, and of course they don’t subtitle the credits. Heck, even a Korean director quote tweeted me on Twitter, then went on to say that Amazon Prime basically makes Korean cinema more accessible outside of South Korea than it is within the country itself. As for this movie, oh god! The movie begins with a therapist seeing a doctor who tests people for deadly diseases such as AIDS. During the session it comes out that she is manipulating results to make it look like certain men have AIDS which causes them to kill themselves. I’m sure there was more stuff I was supposed to pick up on, but I got stuck on that and that it seemed all the Korean girls wore way too much makeup and lipstick combined with really short dresses. I believe it ends with her deliberately infecting a guy with AIDS so that he will be stuck marrying her. It ends with them in front of a grave stone dressed for a wedding with him looking half dead. I guess that’s where this title comes from. It also goes under the title Sins Of A Marriage.
I got through it! I promise I will try to do this in smaller chunks in the future. Should be interesting to see how long Amazon Prime is going to keep me in South Korea adding these unIMDBd movies into their database.
I hate Hallmark movies like this one. I say that because it really gives me nothing to talk about. The kid not wanting his room painted pink? Nothing really there. The throwing like a girl line? Nothing there either cause they tie that to the mother and the fact that she just isn’t very good at baseball having not really played it. Well, there is the stupid cutaways to her job that are there just to tell us that she isn’t supporting herself on sunshine and air. While they are stupid, at least they are there. The only legitimate issue I have is with the ending. Oh, well. Let’s take a quick walk through this thing. It’s not like the Hallmark gods are going to strike me down for writing a short review. And by Hallmark gods, I mean Michelle who I am surprised hasn’t been leaving me comments on every post asking where my review of A Christmas Detour is.
The title card showed Stefanie Powers who plays the grandmother in this movie. That’s Lori Loughlin of course who is looking in a box to prepare for her role in the Garage Sale Mystery movies. Actually, her and her son have just moved from Iowa to California because dad basically just left and lives in Florida now. He will hardly be mentioned and spoiler alert, will not show up near the end of the film to provide a last minute speed bump. And take a look at this!
They actually bothered to have Loughlin’s car have an Iowa license plate! The rest of the cars have California license plates as they should, but hers doesn’t because she just moved there from Iowa.
Shortly after they arrive, we are introduced to the love interest.
That’s Sgt. Vince (Johnny Messner). He starts the film off being stationed in Bosnia. He is a loner and once had a woman in his life, but she just couldn’t handle being married to a soldier. He’s not angry about it or anything stupid like that. He understands. That’s one of the really nice things about this film. They really cut out most, if not all of the bullshit that you usually expect in a Hallmark movie.
This is Loughlin’s son Jared (Charles Henry Wyson) looking like he wonders what a “Lotter” is. I’m sure the deaf and people who are hard of hearing who watched this were wondering what was being said a lot of the time. The deal is that his teacher wants the class to write letters to soldiers in Bosnia. Of course the kid is given the responsibility of writing to Sgt. Vince. Then of course Sgt. Vince comes home in short order and is stationed at a base very close to Loughlin and Jared. Then of course he shows up at their door.
It’s okay though because while Loughlin has the screen door closed she looks like this.
But as soon as she opens the screen door she looks like this.
I guess I did have some snark and jokes in me. That’ll happen after you sit through the first hour of Mockingjay, Part I, then come back to write the rest of your review. However, I’m very sorry, but I couldn’t find the clip from My Cousin Vinny (1992) on YouTube. So you’ll have to settle for me saying she only had the screen obscuring her vision of him and no dirty window, trees, with all those leaves on them, and seven bushes. I’m really sorry. YouTube failed me.
Anyways, in no time he’s helping the kid to learn to play baseball. Although, I seriously wonder what someone who can’t hear thought of this shot.
Back on the base, Vince’s friends couldn’t be happier for him. In fact, he has such a reputation that as soon as they find out he is supposed to be at the kid’s baseball game, hiding behind a piece of paper doesn’t protect him.
Oh, then the biological dad calls. Do you care? Cause the movie certainly didn’t. And thank you for not caring movie. I am so sick of Hallmark movies that suddenly bring back old flames just to create friction we know is ultimately meaningless. This movie really doesn’t bother with that nonsense.
At this point, the son kind of steps out of the picture. He does it willingly to make sure his mom and Vince spend some quality time together. He still tags along like when they go camping in the Ecuadorian jungle from The Wish List
No joke. That movie had one of it’s characters being driven in a jeep through bushes that were clearly in a Los Angeles area park and called it the Ecuadorian jungle. Looking back at my old review for that movie, I have no idea why I didn’t mention that.
Well, this is as good a time as any. While I know Lori Loughlin was 46 here, I still think she looks better than the 20 something actresses they usually get on Hallmark. Vince certainly likes what he sees.
I’d say this is when the film gets serious. He is going to ship out again. He really likes Loughlin and the kid. Also, Loughlin doesn’t like just working in drafting. She wants to be an architect. She even applies to go back to college to become an architect. They at first agree to separate, but quickly realize that’s just not going to work for them at this point. Now I am going to tell you the ending here because it’s where I have my real issue with the film.
He ships out. He’s still with Loughlin and the kid, but he leaves to go where he’s told to go by the army. I really did like that in Love in Paradise Luke Perry didn’t just up and quit acting. I also liked that the couple in Lead With Your Heart came to a real adult compromise. However here, his dialogue leads me to believe that he would really prefer quitting the army and being a stay at home dad. He talks about how baseball was a real passion for him, but it fell through. He talks about how architecture is a real passion for her. And it was clear as day to me that he would gladly spend his days taking care of Jared. Maybe he has a required enlistment time, but if they brought it up they certainly didn’t drive it home. They were shooting for making the film about a solider without a family pick up a family so he’s not really alone overseas. Heck, the original title for this movie was A Soldier’s Love Story, which clearly foreshadows this ending. It just wasn’t satisfying for me and didn’t jive with the material that winds down the film.
Now, all that said, this is definitely one of the better Hallmark movies out there. All of the four main characters have real parts which isn’t usual. Usually the kid would be non-existent or one dimensional. Also, Stefanie Powers would have been useless. Here she isn’t in a whole lot of the film, but when she is, she’s there for a reason. It’s not like Falling In Love With The Girl Next Door where I felt like they completely wasted Bruce Boxleitner and Shelley Long. I didn’t even bring up Vince’s friend on the base who is also good and serves the same purpose as Powers, but for Vince. There’s not really any forced Hallmark cliche stuff. It’s standard stuff, but isn’t “Oh, come on!” type stuff. Etc, etc, etc. Long story short, I still recommend this one despite my issue with the ending.
Since I have it and all. Here’s Loughlin judging me for reviewing this before her new Garage Sale Mystery movie.
Through the Shattered Lens 