4 Shots From 4 Spike Lee Films: Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Oldboy, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus


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

Today is Spike Lee’s 63rd birthday and you know what the means.  It’s time that we honor one of American cinema’s greatest provocateurs with….

4 Shots From 4 Films

Summer of Sam (1999, dir by Spike Lee)

25th Hour (2002, dir by Spike Lee)

Oldboy (2013, dir by Spike Lee)

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014, dir by Spike Lee)

18 Days of Paranoia #6: Scandal Sheet (dir by David Lowell Rich)


“So be it,” journalist Helen Grant dramatically announces as she lifts up her camera and starts snapping pictures of a body in a casket, “I’m …. a ….. WHORE!”

That is just one of the many wonderfully, over-the-top moments that can be found in the 1985 film, Scandal Sheet.  Directed by David Lowell Rich, Scandal Sheet stars Burt Lancaster as Harold Fallen.  If this movie were being made today, Fallen would be in charge of a TMZ-style website.  Since this movie was made in the 80s, Fallen is the publisher and editor of a sleazy tabloid magazine.  He specializes in stories about aliens and ghosts.  When someone brings him in a story about the ghost of Grace Kelly haunting the beaches of Malibu, he announces, “Front page!”  When someone else tells him about a woman who wants to marry a man from outer space but who can’t find anyone to perform the ceremony, Fallen arranges to get the woman a lawyer.

When Fallen isn’t tracking down ghosts and arranging for interplanetary marriages, he’s trying to destroy celebrities.  When the film begins, he’s obsessed with taking down Ben Rowan (Robert Urich).  We’re told that Ben Rowan is one of the world’s top movie star.  (It’s important that we’re told this because there’s nothing about Urich’s bland performance that would lead us to suspect that to be the case.)  Ben’s career is in trouble because he’s got a drinking problem.  He just got out of rehab but no insurance company is willing to insure him.  His wife, Meg North (Lauren Hutton), is demanding that Ben be cast in her latest movie.  Everyone in Hollywood is like, “No way.”

It has the potential to be a big story and Fallen wants to be the first to break it.  But to do so, he’s going to need an inside source.  That’s where Helen Grant (Pamela Reed) comes in.  Helen was Meg’s college roommate and she’s still friends with both her and Ben.  Fallen decides to hire Helen to work for his magazine.  The only problem is that Helen is a serious journalist.  She writes stories about homeless children.  She has no desire to work for a tabloid.

“I’ll pay you more than you’re making right now,” Fallen tells her.

Helen’s not interested.

“I’ll pay you $80,000 a year.”

Helen’s interested.

Against her better judgment, Helen accepts Fallen’s offer.  At first, things seem okay.  She’s a bit annoyed with having to work with a sleazy photographer named Simon (Peter Jurasik, giving a wonderfully reptilian performance) but she’s got a nice house and her son is going to a good school and she gets to use the company credit card and she even gets a housekeeper out of the deal!

Then Fallen tells her that her next assignment is to write about Meg and Ben.  Helen refuses but she soon discovers that Howard Fallen is not an easy person to refuse.  Not when he’s got people watching your every move, along with paying your housekeeper to spy on you.  When her former boss (Max Wright) angrily tells her that no reputable magazine will ever work with her again, Helen is left with only two options: Become a whore or starve.

Scandal Sheet is a lot of fun.  Just the fact that the main bad guy is named Howard Fallen should tell you almost everything you need to know about this movie.  He’s Fallen — as in a fallen angel.  At the end of the movie, he even wears all black with a white tie, which we all know is the typical modern-day costume of demons pretending to be human.  (At one point, Fallen even says that he’s going to make someone an offer that they can’t refuse, giving us all a chance to see what The Godfather would have been like if Burt Lancaster had played Don Vito.)  Lancaster gives a charismatic performance and he’s so effortlessly manipulative that it’s hard not to enjoy watching him, even if he is destroying innocent people.  The rest of the cast is okay.  As I said earlier, Robert Urich was a bit too bland to be a convincing film star but Pamela Reed does a good job of capturing Helen’s struggle to decide whether to side with good or evil and Lauren Hutton tears into the scenery with just the type of ferocity that a film like this requires.  Late in the film, when she spits in Helen’s face, it’s the most dramatic spitting that you’ll probably ever see.

Scandal Sheet is an enjoyably over-the-top, anti-press melodrama.  Watch it with someone who you would be willing to sell out for $80,000 a year.

Other Entries In The 18 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Flight That Disappeared
  2. The Humanity Bureau
  3. The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
  4. The Falcon and the Snowman
  5. New World Order

Scenes That We Love: James Bond Meets Honeychile Ryder in Dr. No


Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 84th birthday to Ursula Andress!

Ursula Andress was one of the very first Bond girls, appearing opposite Sean Connery in Dr. No.  Andress played the role of Honeychile Ryder, who was good with a knife and totally willing to trespass on Dr. No.’s beach.  Andress set the standard by which almost all future Bond girls would be judged and the scene where Bond and Ryder first meet remains one of the most famous in the Bond franchise.  It was such a culturally-defining moment in 1962 that it apparently led to rocketing sales of bikinis.  Up until this film came out, bikinis were apparently considered to be too risque to be worn anywhere other than France.

(Personally, I’m thankful that Andress and Dr. No made bikinis popular.  I look good in a bikini and, even if I don’t swim, I do like lying out by the pool and pretending like I’m capable of tanning as opposed to just burning.)

Of course, in the original novel, Honey Ryder is naked (except for a belt and a knife) when Bond first sees her.  Personally, I think that’s a bit much.  I prefer the scene as it plays out in the movie, where everyone is flirtatious and fashionable.

Though Dr. No is best known for turning Sean Connery into a star, it also did wonders for Ursula Andress’s career.  Whereas she had previously been best-known for briefly dating Jams Dean and being married to John Derek, Andress was now an actress who was able to pick her roles and to become financially independent, a development she would later tell the Daily Independent that she owed to “that white bikini.”  Andress also appeared in Playboy several times, even after becoming a star.  When she was asked why, she replied, “Because I’m beautiful,” and I have to say that I absolutely love that answer.

Anyway, from 1962, here’s a scene that we love:

Happy birthday, Ursula Andress!

18 Days of Paranoia #5: New World Order: The End Has Come (dir by Duane McCoy)


Welcome, everyone, to the end of the world (again).  Today, the world ends in the 2013 film, New World Order: The End Has Come!

Demi (Melissa Farley) sits in a park, reading the Bible.  She’s reading the Book of Revelation or, as she calls it, “the scary one.”  As she gets in her car, she calls her friend, Christen (Erin Runbeck) and assures her not to worry.  “I don’t think we’re there yet.”  Then she puts the car in reverse and promptly runs over Jason (Daniel Spaulding).

Fear not!  Jason’s not injured and his career as an exotic dancer (I’m not kidding, it’s a plot point) is not damaged in the least.  In fact, Jason is so enchanted by Demi and her lack of driving skills that soon, they’re a couple!  And, fortunately, Jason has a single friend named Cedric (Will Roberts) so that means that Cirsten doesn’t have to be a third wheel whenever everyone goes out for the night.

Cristen and Demi may be good friends but we quickly discover that there are differences between the two of them.  Cristen doesn’t drink.  Demi gladly accepts a beer when Jason offers it.  Cristen likes to stay home and look after her younger brother.  Demi is all, “So, we’re going to that party, right?”  One thing that both of them do have in common is that, on Sunday morning, they giggle in church and check their messages instead of listening to the preacher.  I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt them….

Flash-forward by a few years or so and — oh no!  The world has totally changed!  Iran briefly conquered Europe and there was a huge war but, fortunately, a man named Aldo DeLuca, not only brokered peace but also come back to life after being shot in the head.  Some people think that Aldo didn’t really come back to life but instead, that his body was possessed by Satan.  Those people are threats to the New World Order and you can tell who they are because they’re the only people who refuse to get NWO tattooed on either their forehead or their hand….

“Wait a minute!” Demi says, as she thinks about everything that’s happened over the past year, “I’ve read this somewhere!”

That’s right, Demi.  You should have paid more attention to the Book of Revelations.  But you didn’t and now, everyone’s getting the mark except for you, Cristen, and a few others.  And, in order to eliminate people who refuse to get themark, the black-clad soldiers of the New World Order are now gunning people down in the streets while the brainwashed, soulless masses cheer.

The majority of this film is told in flashback, while Demi and Cristen are sitting in a prison area.  They’ve been given one final chance to either get the mark and live or to refuse and die.  Can you guess who sacrifices their soul and who willingly gives up their life?  In order to maitainn some suspense, I will not tell you who.  These are the things that I do for you.

Watching New World Order while on lockdown because of the Coronavirus was an interesting experience.  On the one hand, the film’s low budget is obvious in every frame and the acting is particularly amateurish.  (Just check out the scene where the Supreme Chancellor is greeted by a jubilant crowd of about 20 extras.) On the other hand, any movie about a totalitarian state using a crisis to come to power and destroy individual liberty is going to feel oddly compelling if you watch it while the country is literally shut down by government order.  I actually found myself falling under the film’s spell.  Normally, I’d make fun of the cartoonish NWO tattoos but instead, I found myself thinking, “What if they do decide to mark those of us who have been tested negative for Coronavirus in a different way from those who are sick?  And what if they do say that only people with the mark can enter a grocery store or see a movie?  And what if the mark eventually becomes a way of determining not who is healthy but instead of identifying people who never question the government?  What do we do then?”  I felt kind of silly after I wondered all that but …. well, not really.  I imagine that, right now, a lot of people are probably having reactions to films like this that they wouldn’t normally have.

Anyway, as a Christian scare film, New World Order will probably be best appreciated by scared Christians.  As a portrait of a society where people have sacrificed their freedom for a false sense of security, it feels like it could be dangerously prophetic.

Other Entries In The 18 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Flight That Disappeared
  2. The Humanity Bureau
  3. The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
  4. The Falcon and the Snowman

18 Days of Paranoia #4: The Falcon and the Snowman (dir by John Schlesinger)


The 1985 film, The Falcon and the Snowman, tells the story of two friends.  They’re both wealthy.  They’re both a little bit lost, with one of them dropping out the seminary and the other becoming a drug dealer who is successful enough to have a lot of money but inept enough to still be treated like a joke by all of other dealers.

Chris Boyce (Timothy Hutton) is the son of a former FBI agent (Pat Hingle).  He has a tense relationship with his father.  It’s obvious that the two have never really been sure how to talk to each other.  While his father is sure of both himself and his country, Chris is far more sensitive and quick to question.  While his father plays golf and attends outdoor barbecues, Chris becomes an expert in the sport of falconry and spends a lot of time obsessing about the state of the the world.  While his father defends Richard Nixon during the Watergate investigation, Chris sees it as evidence that America is a sick and corrupt country.  Because his father doesn’t want Chris sitting around the house all day, he pulls some strings to get Chris a job working at the “Black Vault,” where Chris will basically have the ability to learn about all sorts of classified stuff.

Daulton Lee (Sean Penn) was Chris’s best friend in school.  Daulton’s entire life revolves around cocaine.  He both sells and uses it.  He’s managed to make a lot of money but his addiction has also left him an erratic mess.  Daulton’s father wants to kick him out of the house.  Daulton’s mother continually babies him.  Chris and Daulton may seem like an odd pair of friends but they’re both wealthy, directionless, and have a difficult time relating to their fathers.  It somehow seems inevitable that these two would end up as partners.

Chris Boyce and Daulton Lee, together …. THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

No, actually, they don’t.  Instead, they end up betraying their country.  (Boooo!  Hiss!  This guy’s a commie, traitor to our nation!)  After Chris discovers that the CIA has been interfering in the elections of America’s allies (in this case, Australia), he decides to give information to the Russians.  Since Daulton already has experience smuggling drugs over the southern border, Boyce asks Lee to contact the KGB the next time that he’s in Mexico.  Despite being a neurotic and paranoid mess, Lee manages to do just that.

Of course, as Chris soon comes to discover, betraying your country while working with a greedy drug addict is not as easy as it seems.  While Chris wants to eventually get out of the treason game, marry his girlfriend (Lori Singer), and finish up college, Daulton wants to be James Bond.  The Russians, meanwhile, soon grow tired of having to deal with Lee and start pressuring Chris to deal with them directly….

And it all goes even further downhill from there.

Based on a true story, The Falcon and the Snowman tells the story of how two seemingly very different young men managed to basically ruin their lives.  Boyce’s naive idealism and Lee’s drug-fueled greed briefly makes them a powerful duo but they both quickly discover that betraying your country isn’t as a simple as they assumed.  For one thing, once you’ve done it once, it’s impossible to go back to your normal life.  As played by Hutton and Penn, Chris and Daulton are two very interesting characters.  Boyce is full of righteous indignation and sees himself as being a hero but the film hints that he’s mostly just pissed off at his Dad for never understanding him or caring that much about falconry.  Daulton, meanwhile, is a lunatic but he seems to be aware that he’s a lunatic and that makes his oddly likable.  At times, it seems like even he can’t believe that Chris was stupid enough to depend on him.  The film provides a convincing portrait of two men who, because of several impulsive decisions, find themselves in over their heads with no possibility of escape.

The Falcon and the Snowman is an entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking time capsule of a different age.  If the film took place in 2020, Daulton would be hanging out with the Kardashians and Chris would probably be too busy working for the Warren campaign to spy for America’s enemies.  If only the two of them had been born a few decades later, all of this could have been of avoided.

Previous Entries In The 18 Days of Paranoia:

  1. The Flight That Disappeared
  2. The Humanity Bureau
  3. The Privates Files Of J. Edgar Hoover

18 Days of Paranoia #3: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (dir by Larry Cohen)


The 1977 film, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, opens in 1972.

J. Edgar Hoover, the much-feared and long-serving director of the FBI, has just been found dead at his home and it seems like the entire city of Washington, D.C. is scrambling.  Not only are people jockeying for Hoover’s job but they’re also wondering what might be found in his secret files.  As quickly becomes apparent, Hoover had a file on everyone.  While Presidents lauded him and the press portrayed him as hero, Hoover spent nearly 50 years building up a surveillance state.  Hoover said it was to fight criminals and subversives but mostly, it was just to hold onto his own power.  Even President Nixon is heard, in the Oval Office, ordering his men to get those files.

Hoover may have known everyone’s secrets but, the film suggests, very few people knew his.  The film is narrated by a former FBI agent named Dwight Webb (Rip Torn).  Dwight talks about how he was kicked out of the FBI because it was discovered that he not only smoked but that he was having an adulterous affair with a secretary.  “You know how Hoover was about that sex stuff,” he says, his tone suggesting that there’s more to the story than just Hoover being a bit of a puritan.

We flash back to the 1920s.  We see a young Hoover (James Wainwright) as a part of the infamous Palmer Raids, an early effort by the Justice Department to track down and deport communist subversives.  Though Hoover disagrees with the legality of the Palmer Raids, he still plays his part and that loyalty is enough to eventually get him appointed, at the age of 29, to be the head of the agency that would eventually become the FBI.  Hoover may start out as a relatively idealistic man but it doesn’t take long for the fame and the power to go to his head.

Hoover (now played by Broderick Crawford) serves a number of Presidents, each one worse the one who proceeded him.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Howard Da Silva) is an avuncular despot while the Kennedy brothers (William Jordan as John and Michael Parks as Bobby) are two rich brats who think that they can control Hoover but who soon discover that Hoover is far more clever than they realize.  Hoover finds himself a man out-of-place in the 60s and the 70s,  Suddenly, he’s no longer everyone’s hero and people are starting to view the FBI as being not a force for law enforcement but instead an instrument of oppression.

Through it all, Hoover remains an enigma.  He demands a lot of from his agents but he resents them if they’re too successful.  Melvin Purvis (Michael Sacks) might find fame for leading the manhunt that took down Dillinger but he’s driven to suicide by Hoover’s cruel treatment.  Unlike Clint Eastwood’s film about Hoover, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover suggests that Hoover was not gay but that instead, that he was so repressed that he was essentially asexual.  When one woman throws herself at him, he accuses her of being a subversive and demands to know how anyone could find him attractive.  He’s closest to his mother and when she dies, he shuts off his emotions.  His own power, for better and worse, becomes the one thing that he loves.  He’s married to the FBI and he often behaves like an abusive spouse.

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is an interesting film.  It’s an attempt to do a huge American epic on a less than epic budget.  At the start of the film, the low budget is undeniably distracting.  The 1920s are essentially represented by a back lot and two old cars.  The scenes of the FBI dealing with gangsters like Dillinger and Creepy Karpis feel awkward and slapdash.  But, as the film’s timeline gets closer to what was then the modern era, the film’s story tightens up and so does Larry Cohen’s direction.  (One get the feeling that Cohen was, perhaps understandably, more interested in the Hoover of the 60s and the 70s than the Hoover of the 20s and 30s.  There’s a sharpness to the second half of the movie that is just missing from the first half.)  Broderick Crawford gives a chilling performance as a man who is determined to hold onto his power, just for the sake of having it.  The scenes were Hoover and Bobby Kennedy snap at each other have a charge that’s missing from the first half of the film.  Michael Parks does a great job portraying RFK as basically being a spoiled jerk while Crawford seems to relish the chance to play up the resentful, bitter old man aspects of Hoover’s personality.  The film ultimately suggests that whether the audience previously admired RFK or whether they previously admired Hoover, they were all essentially duped.

Though the film never quite overcomes the limits of its low budget, it works well as a secret history of the United States.  In 1977, it undoubtedly took guts to make a film that portrayed Roosevelt and Kennedy as being as bad as Nixon and Johnson.  (It would probably even take guts today.  One need only rewatch something like The Butler or Hyde Park on Hudson to see the ludicrous lengths Hollywood will go to idealize presidents like Kennedy and dictators like FDR.)  While this film certainly doesn’t defend J. Edgar Hoover’s excesses, it often suggests that the president he served under were just as bad, if not even worse.  In the end, it becomes a portrait of not only how power corrupts but also why things don’t change, regardless of who is nominally in charge.  In the end the film’s villain is not J. Edgar Hoover.  Instead, the film’s villain is the system that created and then enabled him.  The man may be dead but the system remains.

Previous entries in the 18 Days of Paranoia:

  1. The Flight That Disappeared
  2. The Humanity Bureau

 

What Lisa Watched Last Night #208: Into The Arms Of Danger (dir by Jeff Hare)


Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime premiere, Into the Arms of Danger!

Why Was I Watching?

The obvious answer is that I was watching it because it was on Lifetime.  However, I was also watching because I absolutely loved the title.  Into the Arms of Danger is just so wonderfully overdramatic that there was no way I could resist it.

What Was It About?

Basically, it’s a Lifetime version of the classic 1980 grindhouse film, Mother’s Day.  Two weird brothers pretend to be EMTs and kidnap young women, forcing them to go home and pretend to be a member of their family.  They do it all to keep their crazy mother (Cathy Moriarty) happy.

In this film, their latest victim is Jenny (AlexAnn Hopkins), who is kidnapped after she wrecks her car and makes the mistake of calling 911.  (The brothers basically intercept 911 calls, which was kind of weird.)  Jenny just wanted to go to college and get away from her overprotective mother, Laura (Laurie Fortier).  Instead, she’s now being held prisoner and is forced to wear an explosive ankle bracelet.  It kind of sucks.

Laura knows that her daughter has been kidnapped but she can’t get the police to take her seriously.  They think that Jenny has either just run away or maybe she’s gotten involved with drugs.  Either way, they’re attitude is, “Don’t bother us with their domestic problems.”  So, it’s up to Laura to figure out what has happened to her daughter and to rescue her from the …. ARMS OF DANGER!

What Worked?

AlexAnn Hopkins and Laurie Fortier were believable as mother and daughter.  You believed that they not only cared about each other but that they also frequently got annoyed with each other.  That’s the secret to realistically portraying a mother/daughter relationship on film.  You have to capture both the love and the annoyance.

Cathy Moriarty gave a good performance as the demented mother.  For film buffs, Moriarty is a bit of a legendary figure.  She made her film debut in Raging Bull and received an Oscar nomination. She was incredible in Raging Bull and still is a great actress.  Unfortunately, shortly after making her debut, Moriarty was in a serious car accident and spent several years recovering.  As a result, when she returned to films, she rarely got the type of huge roles that she undoubtedly deserved.  She’s still one of those actresses who, when you see her name in the credits, you know that she’s going to give a good performance.

In fact, the whole crazy family dynamic was well-done.  They reminded me a bit of the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, just with less blood and cannibalism.

What Did Not Work?

Usually, I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to Lifetime films.  I mean, we don’t watch these films because we’re expecting them to be a 100% realistic.  But the whole thing with the brothers pretending to be EMTs was just a bit too much for me to buy.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

More like, “Oh my God!  Just like my mom!” moments.  As soon as Laura jumped in her car and drove all the way out to a party just to keep Jenny from accepting help from a strange boy, I was like, “Oh my God, I know just how Jenny feels!”  Myself, I would always very dramatically roll my eyes and go, “Mom!” whenever stuff like that happened.  Looking back, my mom was usually right, though.

Lessons Learned

If you wreck your car, never call 911.

18 Days of Paranoia #2: The Humanity Bureau (dir by Rob W. King)


Welcome to the future!  It sucks!

The 2017 film, The Humanity Bureau, takes place in a dystopian future where the government is not to be trusted and bureaucracy ruins everyone’s lives.  It’s kind of like the present except that it’s taking place in the future and Nicolas Cage works for the government.  (Of course, for all I know, Nicolas Cage might work for the government in the real world, as well.  I mean, it just kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?)

Anyway, the idea here is that, in the near future, America is out of resources.  Some of its due to climate change and some of its due to a war and apparently, there was a plague as well.  Because things got so bad, people gave up their personal freedom and basically decided to surrender control of their lives to the government.  The government responded by creating The Humanity Bureau.  The Humanity Bureau decides whether or not you’re a worthwhile part of society or if you’re just a drain on what little resources the nation has left.  If you’re not found to be an “efficient” human being, you’re deported to a city called New Eden where everyone assumes that you learn how to become more efficient or, at the very least, how to not be a burden on society.  The truth, of course, is far different.

Noah Kross (Nicolas Cage) is an agent of The Humanity Bureau.  His bosses worry that Noah might have too much real humanity to be an efficient agent.  After all, he drives an old car and he often talks about his childhood memories of going out to the lake and fishing.  Of course, when we first meet Noah, he’s busy gunning down an old alcoholic who refuses to go to New Eden so he seems pretty efficient to us.

When Noah is assigned to investigate a single mother named Rachel (Sarah Lind) and her son, Lukas (Jakob Davies), it becomes obvious that their case is personal to Noah.  Even though he’s supposed to immediately deport them, he allows them to have an extra day of freedom so that Lukas can sing Amazing Grace at a school recital.  (The kids perform in front of a gigantic American flag, just in case you’re missing the symbolism.)  When another agent (Hugh Dillon) shows up and demands to know what the hold up is, Noah, Rachel, and Lukas go on the run.  It turns out that both Noah and Rachel have a secret agenda of their own….

When you hear that a film takes place in a dystopia and that it stars Nicolas Cage, that probably creates a certain set of expectations in your head.  Unfortunately, Cage is oddly subdued for the majority of the film so those looking for a full scale Nic Cage freak-out are probably going to be disappointed.  While the film’s story has the potential to be interesting, the film never really take full advantage of just how weird things could potentially get.  This is one of those films where you know it’s the future because everyone’s in the desert.

That said, the idea of a major crisis leading to people voluntarily giving up their freedom to the state is not a particularly far-fetched one.  As I sit here writing this, a lot of people are using the panic over the coronavirus pandemic to promote their own totalitarian political vision and what’s sad is that a lot of frightened citizens are just scared enough to probably more receptive to all of that authoritarian BS than they would be under normal circumstances.  The Humanity Bureau takes place in a world where enough people have voluntarily surrendered their free will that the government can basically get away with punishing anyone who dares to think differently.  The Humanity Bureau is often an amateurish film but, when it comes to portraying how an authoritarian state could come to power and would that would mean for those who refuse to conform, it gets things exactly right.

Previous entries in the 18 Days Of Paranoia:

  1. The Flight That Disappeared

 

What Lisa Watched Last Night #207: The Black Widow Killer (dir by Adrian Langley)


Last night, I turned over to Lifetime and I watched the latest “premiere,” The Black Widow Killer!

Why Was I Watching It?

I was hoping it would be about Natasha Romanoff and her life before she joined the Avengers.  It turned out I was wrong though I’m sure that the possibility of confusion was one reason why Lifetime scheduled this film for last night.  You may have noticed that I earlier said that this movie was a “premiere” as opposed to just a premiere.  That’s because The Black Widow Killer originally aired in Canada in 2018.  It subsequently played on both French and Spanish TV before Lifetime decided to air it here in the States.  I’m sure that Lifetime’s decision was influenced by the title and the possibility that people would tune in to see Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh battling the latest addition to the MCU’s gallery of rogues.

That said, the main reason that I watched it was because it was on Lifetime!  Seriously, I love that network.  Have you noticed?

What’s It About?

Secrets, lies, death, and murder.  There’s a killer in town and all of the victims knew each other in high school and were involved in a gruesome car accident back in the day.  Is the killer seeking revenge or is there another motive?  By the end of the movie, who will still be alive and what will be left of them?

What Worked?

I liked the cinematography.  The film took place in one of those small towns where it’s constantly snowing and the film manages to make white ground and frozen breath look really ominous.  I was not surprised to discover that the director is also a very experienced cinematographer because the film looked great.

I liked some of the performances.  (Some is the word to remember.)  Morgan Kohan and Bradley Hamilton did good work as the children of two potential victims.  Luigi Saracino was also well-cast as the most obvious suspect.  (Of course, you know what they say about obvious suspects….)

What Did Not Work?

So, if you’re going to make a movie about a bunch of people being targeted by a serial killer, it might help if at least some of the potential victims were likable.  In this case, though, absolutely none of them were.  Even the film’s main character, Judy Dwyer (played by Erin Karpluk), refused to really take any responsibility for her part in covering up the auto accident.  When we first meet Judy, she’s whining about her husband not serving her divorce papers in person.  Then, about halfway through the film, she starts whining about being targeted by someone whose life she helped ruin.  You start to wonder if the other victims are really being murdered or if Judy’s just talking them to death.

This isn’t really the filmmaker’s fault but the description for the film in the guide basically gave away the identity of the murderer.  As a result, it’s hard for me to say how suspenseful the film is because I already knew who the murderer was going to be.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

I have red hair and so did Judy’s daughter!  Sorry, that’s about all I can come up with as far as this movie’s concerned.

Lessons Learned

Take responsibility for your mistakes or you might get in trouble 25 years later.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special David Cronenberg Edition


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

Today, we wish a happy birthday to one of the greatest Canadian filmmakers of all time, David Cronenberg!  Cronenberg is not only one of the best directors to come out of Canada but he’s also a favorite of those of us here at the Shattered Lens as well.  Just check out Arleigh’s review of Eastern Promises, for example.

In honor of a great artists’s birthday, here are….

4 Shots From 4 David Cronenberg Films

The Brood (1979, dir by David Cronenberg)

Scanners (1981, dir by David Cronenberg)

Videodrome (1983, dir by David Cronenberg)

existenz (1999, dir by David Cronenberg)