Val’s Movie Roundup #8: Hallmark Edition

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

The Magic of Ordinary Days (2005) – Okay, pro tip for watching Hallmark movies. Do not watch Hallmark Hall of Fame movies on Hallmark. These were specially made TV Movies that had higher production values and unusual runtimes for TV Movies. Unfortunately, Hallmark is editing them down to make them shorter. I didn’t realize that when I watched this so it was probably not the ideal viewing experience. I did notice it when I tried to watch Follow The Stars Home (2001). If that thing wasn’t edited, then it’s one of the worst put together films I’ve attempted to watch in a while. I stopped pretty quickly. I’m going to get it on DVD so I’ll find out for sure. As for this movie, the version I watched on Hallmark gets sidetracked too much with a plot involving Japanese internment camps. It should have remained focused on the couple played by Keri Russell and Skeet Ulrich. I have a feeling that problem doesn’t disappear with a greater running time. Keri Russell plays a woman pregnant out of wedlock who is married off to Ulrich that lives in the country. It takes place in the 1940’s. It’s decent. The higher production values shine through. This is not a standard Hallmark TV movie. It’s kind of night and day in that sense. The only other problem I noticed was that Russell has a little too much of a modern look, but far from Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai (2003). Ulrich blends in pretty well except at one point. Late in the film they put him in a plaid shirt and suddenly there’s 90’s Skeet Ulrich. See this one uncut.

Lies Between Friends (2010) – I’m going to cut the crap here. You see that thing in the picture above. That awful looking wig on Gabrielle Anwar’s head will drive you mad! It is terribly artificial looking. And it’s onscreen almost the entire film. What were they thinking!!! It is so distracting that you just can’t pay attention. And this is a murder mystery mind you. Just wow! Also, I found Gabrielle Anwar’s performance to have as much depth as a puddle. But it’s the wig that single-handedly ruins the movie. You’d think someone would have noticed. Even if Anwar had a bald head, then it would have been better to write that into the character rather than having that phenomenon of fakery on display. For masochists only.

Class (2010) – The plot and characters are extremely predictable. You know exactly what is going to happen from the get go. Nothing is surprising in the slightest. This movie is about a guy who is assigned by a professor at law school to help a young single mother who is having trouble. Do I have to say more? Of course not. The real problem is the casting. Not Catherine Mary Stewart. I could watch her sit in a chair reading and would be happy. Okay, I have a crush on her still after all these years. The leading actors are the problem. She looks like the Tiffani-Amber Thiessen from Beverly Hills, 90210 type, which doesn’t fit her character. He also looks like he could have been on that show. He would have played the frat boy that even Ian Ziering’s character would have found contemptible. Again, doesn’t fit his character. Neither acts well enough to pull off not instantly looking the part. It just doesn’t work.

The Mystery Cruise (2013) – Over the weekend I played through River City Ransom on NES with a friend. It’s basically an RPG version of Double Dragon. If you double tap left or right, then you’ll run in that direction. When your attack gets greater, then you can come to a new screen, run, and in an instant put an enemy to the ground. The start of this movie is like being on the receiving end of that punch. Honestly, it’s like you came back from commercial in the middle of a TV show except it’s the beginning of the movie. Talk about cut to the chase. In fact, it does start at the end of a chase. Sadly, this is the best part of the movie. It’s zany and stupid. Then the movie spells out that it’s supposed to start a new TV series. Then it shows exactly why that never panned out. This is an example of messy writing and editing. You jump around from conversation to conversation, but it’s like the glue and the transitions are missing. It’s about two ladies, one of which wants to start a detective agency with the other, who go on a mystery cruise. Everyone plays a part and someone has to figure out who the murderer is. Of course reality comes in the form of a lady who is really trying to kill her husband. If you must watch something that has “The Mystery Cruise” in it, then you’re better off watching a Let’s Play of Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise. Out of these four movies, definitely go with The Magic of Ordinary Days, but an unedited version.

All Hail Slade Craven! A Look At Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Jedadiah Leland

Slade Craven, the hero of Turbulence 3

The first Turbulence was a 1997 box office flop that starred Lauren Holly as a flight attendant who must defeat Ray Liotta and land an airplane. Turbulence 2 was a 1999 direct-to-video release that starred Craig Sheffer as an engineer who must defeat a terrorist and land an airplane. 2001’s Turbulence 3 reuses the special effects footage from the first Turbulence and features Craig Sheffer in a different role but otherwise, it is a completely unrelated to the first two films. This time, John Mann plays a rock star who must defeat a terrorist and land an airplane.

Slade Craven is a death rocker who, with his white makeup and his long black hair, is an obvious stand-in for Marilyn Manson. Like Marilyn in his prime, Slade Craven is a controversial artist whose music is critical of religion. Unlike Marilyn Manson (whose video for Sweet Things Are Made Of This still has the power to shock), the one Slade Craven music video that we see mostly features Slade stumbling around a high school basement and petting a dog. Marilyn Manson sang about the beautiful people. Slade Craven’s biggest hit is Love Gun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksv1cjtLwzI

Slade Craven has announced his retirement. His final concert, complete with pyrotechnics and a working electric chair, will be held on an airplane, while the plane is flying from California to Canada. Only 40 of his most devoted fans will be allowed on the plane but “10 million people” will be watching via the miracle of the Internet. (Everything about the internet was still exotic in 2001.)

This is what a hacker looked like in 2001.

On the ground, hacker Nick Watts (Craig Sheffer) is illegally watching the concert when FBI agent Kate Hayden (Gabriella Anwar) shows up to arrest him. However, before Kate can put on the handcuffs, they notice that something strange is happening on the plane. Someone has just murdered the band’s manager and has locked Slade in the first class restroom. A man disguised to look like Slade shoots a co-pilot and announces that he’s going to crash the plane into a cursed cemetery in an area of East Kansas that is so unholy that “even the pope refuses to fly over it.” The crash will not only be seen by the 10 million people watching on the internet but it will also unleash Satan into the world.

With the help of Nick and Kate, Slade frees himself from his restraints and becomes a hilariously unlikely action hero. Not only does Slade have to defeat his doppelgänger and the other Satanists on the plane but, after the remaining pilot (Rutger Hauer!) is revealed to be a part of the conspiracy, Slade has to land the plane on his own. Luckily, Nick has an old NES flight simulator that he can use to help talk Slade down. “We’re all going to rock and roll!” Slade tells the passengers as he pulls on the throttle. Meanwhile, on the ground, Kate rewards Nick by handcuffing him and then walking towards the bedroom while unbuttoning her blouse. Nick hops after her.

Also, on the ground, Joe Mantegna plays an FBI agent. All of the scenes with Mantegna take place in two locations, suggesting that Mantegna filmed all of his scenes in a day or two. Turbulence 3 proves that it is impossible to hear Mantegna’s voice without picturing Fat Tony.

Of all the films about heavy metal singers fighting terrorists and landing airplanes, Turbulence 3 might be the best. All credit belongs to John Mann’s Slade Craven who rocks every day, parties every night, and beats up terrorists all of the time. Slade Craven proves the nobody saved the world like a shock rocker. Sadly, there has never been a Turbulence 4. I would love to see the further adventures of Slade Craven.

Back to School #48: Scent of a Woman (dir by Martin Brest)

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Along with my current series of 80 Back to School reviews (48 down, 32 to go!), another one of my long time goals has been to watch and review every single film to ever be nominated for the best picture. So, imagine how happy I was to discover that by watching the 1992 film Scent of a Woman, I could make progress towards completing two goals at once! Not only was Scent of A Woman nominated for best picture of the year (losing to Unforgiven) but it also features a major subplot about life and discipline at an exclusive New England prep school! Even better, it’s been showing up on Showtime fairly regularly for the past month or so.

“Wow,” I thought as my boyfriend and I sat down to watch this movie, “could life get any easier? Or better?”

And then we watched the film.

You know how occasionally you watch a film just because you’ve heard that it was nominated (or perhaps even won) an Oscar or because it has an oddly high rating over at the imdb or maybe because someone said, “Roger Ebert loved this film so, if you don’t watch and love it, that means that, by that standard of the current online film community, you really don’t love movies?” And then you watch the movie and you’re just like, “What the Hell?”

Well, that was kind of my reaction to Scent of a Woman.

Look, the film’s not all bad. It has a few good performances. It looks great. It’s certainly better than Gigli, the film that director Martin Brest is perhaps best remembered for. It features a great scene where Al Pacino (playing a blind man) dances the tango with a woman that he’s just met. (Then again, I have a notorious weakness for dance scenes…) It’s not so much that the film is bad as much as it’s just that the movie itself is not particularly good.

Charlie Simms (Chris O’Donnell) is a scholarship student at an exclusive prep school in Massachusetts. Much like Brendan Fraser in School Ties, 1992’s other prep school melodrama, Charlie is a poor kid attending the school on a scholarship. While his rich friends prepare to go home for the Thanksgiving weekend, Charlie knows that there’s no way that he can afford to fly back to Oregon. In order to raise the money so that he can at least go back home for Christmas (how poor is this kid’s family!?), Charlie gets a temporary job for the weekend. His job? To look after Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino), who is blind and yells a lot.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, Frank convinces Charlie to drive him to New York and they have all of the adventures that usually happen whenever a naive teenager spends the weekend with a suicidal blind man. Frank bellows a lot and tells about how, through his sense of smell, he can always tell when there’s a beautiful woman nearby. Frank also yells a lot. Did I already mention that? Because, seriously, he yells a lot.

Charlie has other problems than just Frank. It seems that a rather mild prank was pulled on the headmaster (James Rebhorn) of Charlie’s school. As a result, a bucket of paint was poured down on both the headmaster and his new car! Now, the headmaster is looking for those responsible. He just needs two witnesses. He’s already gotten one student to confess. And now, he’s blackmailing Charlie with a letter of recommendation to Harvard. All Charlie has to do is name names and his future is set…

Will Charlie name names and sacrifice his honor just to get into a college that could assure him a great life? Or will Frank convince Charlie that honor is the only thing that matters? And finally, will the film end with a big hearing in front of the entire school in which the headmaster attempts to badger Charlie, just to be interrupted by a sudden appearance from bellowing Frank Slade?

Will it!?

You can probably already guess and, since we have a no spoiler policy here at the Lens, I’ll just assume that you guessed right. (Or you could just look at the picture at the top of this review…)

The prep school subplot pretty much just adds to the film’s already excessive running time. But it is interesting to watch because the other student — the one who names names — is played by a very young Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Or as he’s credited here, Philip S. Hoffman.) This was one of Hoffman’s first screen roles and he gives a memorable performance as an unlikable character. If you were to have seen Scent of a Woman in 1992, you would not have guessed that Philip Seymour Hoffman would eventually be an Oscar winner but you would know that he was a very talented character actor.

Otherwise, Scent of a Woman is a fairly forgettable movie. If I hadn’t known ahead of time that it was nominated for best picture, I never would have been able to guess. I’m not enough of an expert to be able to name every good 1992 film that was not nominated to make room for Scent of a Woman but I imagine that when that year’s Oscar nominations were announced, there were quite a few people left scratching their heads.