Lifetime Film Review: The Man In The Window (dir by Richard Switzer)

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After her husband is killed in a car accident, Sarah (Teri Polo) retreats to their gigantic suburban home. She spends her time painting pictures and resisting the efforts of her daughter (Jonetta Kaiser) and her best friend (Jamie-Lynne Sigler) to get her to move on with her life. To me, it seemed pretty obvious that Sarah was deeply depressed and everyone should really have just backed off and let her recover at her own pace. However, in the film, six months have passed since her husband’s death and, in the world of Lifetime, that means that it’s time to get back on the dating scene. Sarah’s daughter assures her that “Dad” would have wanted her to move on.

(Yes, I’m sure that Dad is sitting in the afterlife, thrilled at the idea of his widow finding a new lover less than a year after his death.)

Sarah accompanies her daughter to a speed-dating event. She goes on 20 dates in two hours. 19 of those dates are duds. But the twentieth — oh my God. Jack (Dylan Walsh) is handsome and successful and, as a widower, he understands what Sarah is going through. Even more importantly, Jack has just moved in across the street from Sarah! What a romantic coincidence! Soon, Sarah is falling for Jack and Jack appears to be falling for Sarah.

But then the neighbor turns up dead.

For reasons that aren’t really clear, Sarah doesn’t seem to have really liked Sylvia (Deborah Rennard) that much. Sylvia was nosy, the type of neighbor who stood out on her balcony and kept an eye on what everyone else was doing. Sarah and her daughter referred to Sylvia as being “the neighborhood watch” and they would go out of their way to avoid talking to Sylvia. I think the film means for us to sympathize with Sarah but, seeing as how we only see Sylvia being polite and friendly to Sarah, it’s a bit difficult to really be on Sarah’s side. If anything, in this case, Sarah seems like the bad and judgmental neighbor. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, though. Someone breaks into Sylvia’s house and strangles her. And Sarah comes to suspect that the culprit might have been …. JACK!

This Lifetime movie had a fairly interesting mystery. I will admit that I figured out what was going on long before Sarah did but then again, I’ve probably watched a lot more Lifetime films than she has. The best thing about the film is that everyone lived in an extremely big house. It’s always nice to see that the Lifetime tradition of huge suburban houses is still alive. I also liked the fact that Sarah had enough money that she could deal with her grief by painting for six months. There’s no tragedy so great that it can’t lead to more leisure time.

That said, Sarah was not a particularly likable protagonist. I think if the film had been set a year after her husband’s death, as opposed to just six months, I probably would have had more sympathy for both her and her daughter. As it was, it seemed like Sarah’s daughter was trying to force her mom to move on too quickly and it also seemed like Sarah was constantly allowing herself to be pushed into a situation for which she wasn’t emotionally ready. Jamie-Lynne Sigler’s character was actually far more interesting than Sarah’s. Maybe Sigler and Teri Polo should have switched roles. There’s no way Sigler would have allowed herself to be guilted into speed dating.

Oh well. It may not have been a perfect film but at least the houses were lovely to look at.

When Machine Gun Met Al: Gangster Land (2017, directed by Timothy Woodward, Jr.)

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Chicago in the 1920s. Booze may be illegal but that’s not keeping people from drinking and gangsters from making a killing. When an amateur boxer named Jack McGurn (Sean Faris) joins the mob, he befriend an up-and-coming criminal named Al Capone (Milo Gibson). While Capone rises through the ranks, McGurn is always by his side, usually firing a tommy gun. When Capone finally becomes the boss of Chicago, McGurn becomes his second-in-command and a leading strategist in the war against Capone’s rival, George “Bugs” Moran (Peter Facinelli).

If you’re looking for a historically accurate film about 1920s Chicago, look elsewhere. Today, “Machine Gun” McGurn is best known for being the mastermind behind the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (which, of course, is recreated in Gangster Land) but it’s doubtful that he was ever Capone’s second-in-command. Famed Capone associates like Frank Nitti, Gus Alex, and Murray Humphreys are nowhere to be found in Gangster Land, nor is Eliot Ness. Instead Jason Patric plays the righteous and fictional Detective Reed.

What the film lacks in historical accuracy, it makes up for in gangster action. There’s enough tommy gun action, car chases, and showgirls to keep most gangster film aficionados happy. All of the usual Capone stuff is recreated: Johnny Torrio is assassinated, Dion O’Bannon is killed in his flower shop, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre scandalizes the nation. Though the film never displays anything more than a Wikipedia-level understanding of the prohibition era and there’s not a single gangster cliché that isn’t used, Gangster Land is briskly paced and makes good use of its low-budget. Sean Faris is stiff as McGurn but Milo Gibson (son of Mel) is better than you might expect as Al Capone and the underrated Jason Patric makes the most of his limited screen time. Fans of The Sopranos may want to watch for the chance to see Meadow herself, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, as McGurn’s showgirl wife.

Lifetime Film Review: Mommy, I Didn’t Do It (dir by Richard Gabai)

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If there’s an Eye Rolling Hall of Fame, the recent Lifetime film Mommy, I Didn’t Do It definitely has earned inclusion.

Seriously, this film was full of some championship-level eye rolling. It’s a courtroom drama and a murder mystery. Ellen Plainview (Danica McKellar) is an attorney whose teenager daughter, Julie (Paige Searcy) is on trail for murdering one of her former teachers. When Julie is first arrested, Ellen rolls her eyes. When Ellen visits Julie in jail and explains that they don’t have the money to bail her out, Julie rolls her eyes and sighs. You can just tell she’s thinking, “My God, mom, you’re so lame!” When Detective Hamer (Jaleel White) explains why all the evidence points to Julie, Ellen again rolls her eyes and Detective Hamer counters her by rolling his own eyes. When Ellen approaches the dead man’s wife (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), the wife not only rolls her eyes but narrows them as well.

It gets even better once the trial begins. The prosecutor, Kimberly Bains (Jen Lilley), rolls her eyes whenever Ellen makes an objection. Whenever a witness testifies that Julie was obsessed with the victim, Ellen rolls her eyes and then Julie rolls her eyes at her mother rolling her eyes and then Kimberly rolls her eyes at both of them. When the weird boy who is obsessed with her tries to save Julie by confessing to the murder, the amount of eye rolling probably sets a world record. In the real world, of course, this type of courtroom behavior gets people cited for contempt but, in the world of Lifetime, it’s just the way that people communicate.

Don’t get me wrong. The film itself did not make me roll my eyes. Yes, it was totally implausible and it was full of silly scenes but it’s a Lifetime film. That’s what we expect Lifetime. Even more importantly, that’s what we want from Lifetime. When it comes to a quality Lifetime film, there’s really only two rules: 1) the more ludicrous, the better and 2) the more melodramatic, the more entertaining.

While the film’s story might be ludicrous, the mother-daughter relationship between Ellen and Julie felt very real and both Danica McKellar and Paige Searcy gave sincere and believable performances as mother and daughter, which went a long way towards explaining all the eye rolling. Seriously, when I was Julie Plainview’s age, I rolled my eyes for 24 hours a day and I wasn’t even accused of murder.

Mommy, I Didn’t Do It is actually a sequel to a previous Lifetime movie, The Wrong Woman. In that one, Ellen was wrongly accused of murder and was arrested by the same idiot detective who arrests her daughter in Mommy, I Didn’t Do It. (If nothing else, these two films show how vindictive authority figures can be.) As long as this is going to be a franchise, I’d like to suggest that the next installment could feature Eric Roberts, recreating his role from Stalked By My Doctor and its sequel. Maybe he could treat Julie while Ellen defend him in court.

Seriously, it sounds like a great idea to me.