October True Crime: She Made Them Do It (dir by Grant Harvey)

Posted on October 4, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 2012’s She Made Them Do It, Sarah Jo Pender (Jenna Dewan) is a student at Purdue University who has a good-for-nothing boyfriend named Rick (Greyston Holt) and two roommates who think nothing using her tuition money to buy drugs. At first, Sarah seems to be frustrated with the losers around her but, after smoking some weed and doing some coke, she’s soon dancing and making out with another woman while Rick plays a video game. (Who among us hasn’t?)

Sarah leaves to get some cigarettes and, when she comes back, she discovers that her roommates have been executed by a shotgun. A shaken Rick explains that an argument over money led to him retrieving the shotgun (one that Sarah bought for him because Rick’s criminal record made it illegal for him to buy a gun) and killing everyone else in the house. At least, that’s what Sarah claims Rick told her. When the police eventually arrest Rick and Sarah, Rick claims that Sarah was the mastermind behind the killings. The prosecution describes Sarah as being a “female Charles Manson” and she’s sentenced to 110 years in prison.

Yikes! That’s a long time! Luckily, the prison is a pretty nice place. Sure, some of the inmates are a little rough and everyone is initially jealous of Sarah’s combination of brains and beauty. But the prison also hosts courtyard dance parties and eventually, Sarah proves herself as a jailhouse lawyer. Much like Hester Prynne, Sarah show herself to be able and hard-working. That said, prison is still prison and soon, Sarah is plotting her escape. Luckily, there’s a smitten prison guard (Nels Lennarson) who is willing to help her out.

The title She Made Them Do It has, of course, a double meaning. During her trial, the prosecution claims that Sarah Jo Pender made Rick murder her roommates. Rick even produces a letter that he claims Sarah wrote to him in which she confessed to being responsible. Even though the letter is itself dismissed as being a forgery, the courts still rule that there is more than enough evidence to argue that Sarah was involved with the murders. However, the title also refers to the fact that everyone in prison seems to be determined to help Sarah. Nearly everyone who she meets after she escapes tries to provide Sarah with some sort of aid. In the end, everyone claims that she made them do it. A few regret helping her but the majority do not.

Because the controversy over Sarah Jo Pender’s conviction is still ongoing, the film tries to play it both ways as far as the question of her guilt is concerned. We see her version of the murder. We see Rick’s version of the murder. In prison, we see her helping the other prisoners. Outside of prison, we watch as she clearly manipulates everyone that she meets. There’s nothing wrong with a little ambiguity but this film takes it so far that Sarah often seems to be a totally different character from scene to scene. Jenna Dewan tries her best and the film’s early scenes definitely capture the sordid atmosphere of trailer park drama but the film’s refusal to take a definite stand on Sarah’s guilt or innocence ultimately makes the story feel shallow. It’s one thing for the prisoners and the guards to feel as if they don’t know what’s going on in Sarah Jo Pender’s head. It’s another thing for the audience to feel that way.

As for the real Sarah Jo Pender, she is still in prison and she still claims to be innocent. She had a lot of supporters. I wouldn’t consider myself to be one of them. I doubt she ‘s a female Charles Manson but I also have a hard time buying her claim that every piece of evidence against her was just a coincidence or a case of bad luck. Unfortunately, some activists are so eager to turn every conviction into a miscarriage of justice that they ignore anything that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. (Call it the Mumia Abu-Jamal effect.) Sarah Jo Pender’s earliest possible relate date is 2054, when she will be 75 years old.

We Watched When Sparks Fly (2014, Dir. by Gary Yates)

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

Growing in the small town of Lakeview, Amy Petersen (Meghan Markle, before she became a part of the Royal Family) helped her family run their fireworks store. She also fell in love with Hank (Christopher Jacot). But she left Hank and her family so that she could go to the big city and try to be a big time print journalist. Now, she’s dating Phil (Lochlyn Munro), who always wears a suit and likes to dine at exclusive French restaurants.

When her editor finds out that Amy is an expert in fireworks, he tells her to go back home for the 4th of July and to write a story about it. Amy’s family is struggling to keep the fireworks business going and when the town announces that it won’t be able to put on a fireworks show on the 4th, it looks like the business is going to close unless Amy can come up with a way to save the day. Amy has another reason for returning to Lakeview. Her best friend Sammie (Kristina Pesic) is getting married and Amy is going to the maid of honor! The only problem is that Sammie is marrying Hank and, as soon as she sees him, Amy starts to wonder if she made the right decision leaving home.

This is a Hallmark film so you already know everything that is going to happen. I watched this movie with my sisters and we spent the entire time wondering when they were finally going to get to the fireworks. It takes nearly the entire movie to reach the 4th and then it ends before the fireworks show even really got going. I was disappointed. I really wanted to watch the sky light up.

I know what you really want to know, though. How was the performance of the Duchess of Sussex? It’s hard to really Meghan Markle’s performance because Amy isn’t that likable of a character. It’s hard to really cheer for someone who would ruin their best friend’s wedding just because they dated the groom in high school. Everyone in the film is very forgiving of Amy, no matter how self-asborbed she is. Even Phil is strangely unbothered by her being in love with someone else. Almost the entire film is just Amy and Hank being the two most self-centered people in the world and no one holding it against them. As for Meghan Markle’s performance, the best description that I can come up with is boring.

I was disappointed with When Sparks Fly. At least I know that, later tonight, I’ll get to watch a full fireworks show.

The Unnominated #13: Heat (dir by Michael Mann)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

First released in 1995, Heat is one of the most influential and best-known films of the past 30 years. It also received absolutely zero Oscar nominations.

Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that Academy — especially the Academy of the 1990s — didn’t shower the film with nominations. For all of its many strengths, Heat is still a genre piece, an epic three-hour crime film from director Michael Mann. It’s a film about obsessive cops and tightly-wound crooks and it’s based on a made-for-TV movie that Mann directed in the late 80s. While the Academy had given a best picture nomination to The Fugitive just two years before, it still hadn’t fully come around to honoring genre films.

And yet one would think that the film could have at least picked up a nomination for its editing or maybe the sound design that helps to make the film’s signature 8-minute gun battle so unforgettable. (Heat is a film that leaves you feeling as if you’re trapped in the middle of its gunfights, running for cover while the cops and the crooks fire on each other.) The screenplay, featuring the scene where Al Pacino’s intense detective sits down for coffee with Robert De Niro’s career crook, also went unnominated.

Al Pacino was not nominated for playing Vincent Hanna and maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. Pacino yells a lot in this movie. When people talk about Pacino having a reputation for bellowing his lines like a madman, they’re usually thinking about the scene where he confronts a weaselly executive (Hank Azaria) about the affair that he’s having with Charlene (Ashley Judd), the wife of criminal Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer). And yet, I think that Pacino’s performance works in the context of the film and it’s often forgotten that Pacino has quite scenes in Heat as well. Pacino’s intensity provides a contrast to Robert De Niro’s tightly controlled career criminal, Neil McCauley. McCauley has done time in prison and he has no intention of ever going back. But, as he admits during the famous diner scene, being a criminal is the only thing that he knows how to do and it’s also the only thing that he wants to do. (“The action is the juice,” Tom Sizemore says in another scene.) If any two actors deserved a joint Oscar nomination it was Pacino and De Niro. In Heat, they’re the perfect team. Pacino’s flamboyance and De Niro’s tightly-controlled emotions come together to form the heart of the picture.

No one from the film’s supporting cast was nominated either, despite there being a wealth of riches to choose from. Ashley Judd and Val Kilmer come to mind as obvious contenders. Kilmer is amazing in the shoot-out that occurs two hours into the film. Ashley Judd has a killer scene where she helps her husband escape from the police. Beyond Judd and Kilmer, I like the quiet menace of Tom Sizemore’s Michael Cheritto. (Just check out the look he gives to an onlooker who is getting a little bit too curious.) Kevin Gage’s sociopathic Waingro is one of the most loathsome characters to ever show up in a movie. William Fichtner, Jon Voight, Danny Trejo, and Tom Noonan all make a definite impression and add to Michael Mann’s portrait of the Los Angeles underworld. In an early role, Natalie Portman plays Hanna’s neglected stepdaughter and even Amy Brenneman has some good moments as Neil’s unsuspecting girlfriend, the one who Neil claims to be prepared to abandon if he sees “the heat coming.”

I have to mention the performance of Dennis Haysbert as Don Breedan, a man who has just been released from prison and who finds himself working as a cook in a diner. (The owner of the diner is played by Bud Cort.) Haysbert doesn’t have many scenes but he gives a poignant performance as a man struggling not to fall back into his old life of crime and what eventually happens to him still packs an emotional punch. For much of the film’s running time, he’s on the fringes of the story. It’s only by chance that he finds himself suddenly and briefly thrown into the middle of the action.

Heat is the ultimate Michael Mann film, a 3-hour crime epic that is full of amazing action sequences, powerful performances, and a moody atmosphere that leaves the viewer with no doubt that the film is actually about a lot more than just a bunch of crooks and the cops who try to stop them. Hanna and McCauley both live by their own code and are equally obsessed with their work. Their showdown is inevitable and, as directed by Michael Mann, it takes on almost mythological grandeur. The film is a portrait of uncertainty and fear in Los Angeles but it’s also a portrait of two men destined to confront each other. They’re both the best at what they do and, as a result, only one can remain alive at the end of the film.

I rewatched Heat yesterday and I was amazed at how well the film holds up. It’s one of the best-paced three-hour films that I’ve ever seen and that epic gunfight is still powerful and frightening to watch. Like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, it was a 1995 film that deserved more Oscar attention than it received.