A Movie A Day #194: Lethal Tender (1996, directed by John Bradshaw)

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Detective David Chase (Jeff Fahey) should not be mistaken for the creator of The Sopranos. Instead, he is an eccentric and tough Chicago policeman, the type of cop who appears to have seen Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon one too many times. His superiors send Detective Chase and his partner to keep an eye on a strike occurring outside of a water purification plant. Chase, however, is less interested in the strike and more interested in hitting on Melissa (Carrie-Ann Moss), who works at the plant.

Before you can say Die Hard All Over Again, a band of terrorists led by Montessi (Kim Coates) seizes control of the plant. Montessi threatens to poison all of Chicago’s drinking water but, what the authorities don’t realize, is that the attack is really just a distraction, designed to keep everyone from noticing Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) and his men running off with a bunch of stolen government bonds. Since Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and even Jean-Claude Van Damme were busy, it is up to Jeff Fahey to save the water, the money, and the day!

A Die Hard rip-off starring Gary Busey, Kim Coates, and Jeff Fahey does not actually have to be any good. All the movie has to do is let those three actors do their thing and it will be watchable. That is certainly the case with Lethal Tender, which is entertaining even if it is, ultimately, just another predictable Die Hard ripoff. Jeff Fahey does okay as the hero but Lethal Tender belongs to the villains. This was made in the days when Gary Busey playing crazy was still enjoyable instead of just sad. Realizing that he was going to have to compete with Busey’s legendary ability to overact, Coates chews every piece of scenery that he can get his hands on. Launching a major terrorist strike to cover up a simple robbery might seem like overkill but watching Busey and Coates compete to see who can steal the most scenes is so much fun that it really doesn’t matter that Chicago’s drinking water might get poisoned as a result of their shenanigans.

For fans of Busey and Coates, Lethal Tender is required viewing. For everyone else, it’s the most successful attempt ever made to transport the plot of Die Hard to a water filtration plant.

Hallmark Review: One Starry Christmas (2014, dir. John Bradshaw)

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Don’t you hate it when you sit down to write about a movie and you have no idea how to start it? That’s when you break out The Ramones and just start it by saying you have no idea how to start it. This movie on the other hand starts when we meet our leading lady named Holly Jensen (Sarah Carter) and her boyfriend named Adam (Paul Popowich). Ah, I knew I recognized Paul Popowich. He was on Degrassi: TNG and that short lived Canadian attempt to create both a new Nancy Drew and a new Hardy Boys TV Show. I think these opening scenes can be best described through these three screenshots.

She is a doctor of astronomy and her Hardy Boy boyfriend is a lawyer. He is going to have to be absent on Christmas because a business opportunity has come up that calls him away to New York. If only he knew he was in a Hallmark movie, then he would have known that is the mark of death for a current boyfriend. Might as well have put up the crown signal to send a message to all men in the area that now is the time to pounce on her. Well, it turns out that her parents are also in New York.

She gets the idea to visit her parents after looking at a picture of herself and Adam on MyBudsBook. It’s obviously the pot smokers version of Facebook. Then she buys bus tickets because the movie works better having her meet Luke (Damon Runyan) there, then on a plane. That, and her character is supposed to be afraid of flying. Hmmm…funny that both the guys she has vying for her heart both had recurring roles on Degrassi: TNG. By the way…

these are some of the best fake Internet screens I have seen this year. I just watched Nightcrawler (2014) and it didn’t even fake the Internet this well.

This is Luke who seems to be talking to me about the boom mic popping into frame in movies. He is a cowboy cause of course he is. He is on his way to a rodeo. At this point, I must admit this was making realize I really should have reviewed Ballad Of A Soldier (1959) for Veteran’s Day.

The bus breaks down and the two of them have a moment. She shares her love of astronomy with him. They have a similar moment later when they talk about Orion. I must say I was disappointed that she didn’t share the origin of Ursa Major with him. That being the story of when Hercules threw a bear into space.

And no, Luke never fights eight men, then throws a log into space. He doesn’t need to because she already likes him and it turns out her dad is a big western fan. It also helps that Damon Runyan does a good job of just playing a helluva nice guy. They could have made him a high price lawyer too and we still would have totally bought that she should be with him.

The rest of this movie is a couple scenes where we see the two of them have some quality time, and the rest is poor Adam drowning. Luke even whips out a brother who can sing. Once Luke got the folks at the company party who were hiring Adam to do line dancing, it was all over. Shortly afterwards she breaks up with him, but not after saying she wants something that honestly sounds like quite the tall order even for Luke:

“No, Adam. I want love. Not the comfortable, safe kind. I want extraordinary, passionate, everything in sync love where their touch electrifies your soul. When what you want most in the world is to make them happy.”

Okay Holly, but that is a bit much for this movie. Just saying. Regardless, she should be with the cowboy. And yes, he shows up on a horse and they kiss.

I think this is the third Hallmark movie I’ve seen where the guy shows up at the end on a horse. However, it’s the first one where it makes sense. They set it up nicely, he decides to go after her while he’s at the rodeo, and he’s a cowboy to begin with. It fit much better here than in the other two.

My only real complaint about this movie is why did they bother with the character of Adam? I think this would have been deeper and more moving if she had just got on the bus to visit her family, they meet, and they spend the rest of the movie falling in love. Nice and simple. Sure that would have made it a little tougher on screenwriter Rickie Castaneda, but I think it would have been better that way. He really felt like a third wheel on the movie itself. Still, I enjoyed this one. As always with Hallmark movies, it’s nothing to seek out, but it is a perfectly nice thing to flip on to kill some time around dinner for the holidays.

Seeing as I started this by mentioning The Ramones.

Here’s one for Luke (She’s The One by The Ramones):

Here’s one for Holly (I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Ramones):

And here’s one for poor Adam (Indian Giver by The Ramones):

Hallmark Review: Best Christmas Party Ever (2014, dir. John Bradshaw)

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

I never saw the boom mic drop, nor does this movie have anyone turn invisible. That’s refreshing. However, the title is a little off putting. Not because it’s super generic, but because I already watched a movie called Best Night Ever (2013) earlier this year. My god was that movie bad. So let’s talk about Best Christmas Party Ever.

This is our main character named Jennie Stanton (Torrey DeVitto). She’s a party planner. That kind of seems to be a recurring thing in these Hallmark movies. At least no one gets murdered leading her to try and solve a mystery such as Wedding Planner Mystery (2014) did. That would be another movie this is better than.

So Jennie works for a woman named Petra (Linda Thorson). She is throwing a party to step down as head of this event planning company. I know, you want to throw in a joke here that Diana Rigg is going to take over the company, but no such luck. In fact, she never actually says who is taking over. It’s kind of sorta implied that it’s going to be her out work actor son named Nick Forbes (Steve Lund).

Unless I missed some line where she explicitly says it, she just says she’s stepping down and wants him to work with Jennie to plan the upcoming annual Tyrell Toys party. Whether she makes it explicit or not, Jennie jumps to that conclusion. Now Jennie is kinda like Danica McKellar’s character from Perfect Match (2015). Oddly enough, another Ron Oliver movie this is better than. They both were in this business because they actually had a passion for it. In Jennie’s case, she attended these Tyrell Toys parties as a kid. Also, when her father was out of work, she wished her father would get a job, and Tyrell Toys hired him. In other words, she has personal reasons why she does what she does, and why she especially wants this party to be done right.

Now you’d think he’s going to be a problem and sparring partner throughout for her to wind up with, but not really. He starts off that way, but quickly changes. In fact, I think Jennie sums up his role in the movie quite well.

Although, referring to him as Dr. Feelgood of course made me think of the Mötley Crüe song.

In which case, she probably shouldn’t eat that hot dog. Who knows what could be in there.

This guy is her problem. He works at Tyrell Toys. They are romantically involved, but not much of anything is made of that. He just basically gets that look on his face more and more as he realizes her vision for the party is totally different from his. You see, the guy who used to own Tyrell Toys sold the company and now the party is supposed to be a more private company party rather than being a more charitable public outgoing type of thing.

The rest of the film can be summed up like this. As Jennie continues to try and maintain her vision for the party, the business guy keeps pushing it off the rails while Nick keeps popping in to try and keep her on track. Ultimately, she follows her heart even after Tyrell Toys fires her. She goes to the former owner and decides to throw the party anyways with his support. However, Petra gets wind of it, which leads to…

product placement. They have a nice long shot of her taking off her glasses and setting them next to that case to make sure you see the name Visionworks. At least it didn’t come at the emotional climax like it did in Always And Forever (2009) where he opens the ring box to make sure we get a nice clear shot of the name Kay Jewelers when he proposes to her. Petra of course backs her decision to throw this party the way Jennie wants to. She wanted to be let in on it, rather than having to find out from somebody else.

There are a couple little subplots, and a few other characters, but they don’t really matter. The party goes off well. The business guy’s superior catches wind of it and attends. You can see above that he thinks this was a pretty neat tradition that shouldn’t have been tossed aside. Then Jennie and Nick kiss while a ballerina waitress stands behind them.

This one wasn’t perfect, but definitely one of the better Hallmark Christmas movies I’ve watched so far.

Of course, since it is a Hallmark movie, there is something a little humorous to look for.

Notice the game on the screen behind her. It’s not that it just looks really cheaply slapped together, but that they still make games that look like they were drawn in MS Paint in reality.

Hallmark Review: Christmas Magic (2011, dir. John Bradshaw)

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

I wanted to like this movie. I kind of do, but it’s really bogged down with problems. Let’s talk about it.

That woman is Carrie Blackford played by Lindy Booth and if there’s one thing I can’t complain about in this movie, it’s her looks. She’s quite an attractive woman in this movie. In fact, the whole movie is rather attractive. By and large, it looks good from the actors to the sets. It just has a litany of other problems.

Carrie is at a gas station where she meets the attendant named Henry (Derek McGrath). Henry is a nice guy. She of course gives the Hallmark standard speech about how she doesn’t like Christmas. Henry is nice and just tells her that she should be careful on the dangerous roads and should stay off her cellphone while driving. This is where the movie goofs a little. The whole movie is supposed to take place in New York City, but they make the mistake of showing her cellphone screen.

Rogers is a Canadian cellphone company. It’s a really stupid little mistake that could have been solved so easily. Make the call to the phone. Take a screenshot of it coming in as it is shown above. Edit the image so that the provider is missing. Then for the shot in the movie, have her look down at the screenshot on her phone. Problem solved.

Well, since she obviously did use her cellphone against Henry’s advice, she gets into a car accident. This is where I have to give the movie major credit. I have had issues with my cable signal tiling over the years, but I never thought of actually sticking it in the movie as sort of a replacement for tilting the camera to tell us something is off.

Actually, it was just a weird quirk that occurred at the beginning of this movie. When I watch these I have it playing on the TV for my Dad to watch while I stream it to my iPad where I can take screenshots, and I keep the two in sync. For some reason it decided to tile like crazy only on my iPad mostly at this exact moment in the movie. Odd. Anyways, just before she dies she was having a little argument with a business rival named Lynette (Tricia Braun).

Course Henry turns out to be an angel and now she is too. He even has an assignment all ready for her. She is to go help this guy whose restaurant is having trouble. Given that she was an event planner in real life, it makes sense that she would have some experience that could prove useful. Of course there’s a few conditions. The only one that really is important is that she can’t have contact with anyone from when she was alive. Keep that in mind because that’s where one of the problems with the film is.

She is assigned to Scott Walker played by Paul McGillion of Stargate: Atlantis fame. And this is where the film shows that yes, she’s beautiful and so are the sets even if they don’t really make sense.

Somebody is a fan of Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974), and that person is me, because this restaurant made me think of the bar from that movie.

By the way, if you haven’t seen Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, then stop reading this review right now and go watch it. It’s one of my all time favorite movies and I almost came to tears just capturing those two screenshots.

Back to this movie. You see the size of the restaurant. Realistically this set can’t hold more than a couple of customers. Also, he says the regulars keep him afloat, but you will only see a couple of people actually eat at his place. Luckily, they kind of work around it. It still is a sign that this was done on the cheap.

Of course he has a daughter from a previous marriage, and that wife is dead. I was quite surprised that the daughter wasn’t played by Sierra McCormick. This actress certainly made me think of her, appearance wise. Scott agrees to let her help promote his business and help with his kid in the process. Where does she go since she can’t go home. It never says. She just leaves and sometimes goes to talk with Henry. Although, she does spot her father on the street and hides. I’ll come back to him at the end of this movie.

Oh, and the daughter some how knows she is a real angel. It happens really fast as if she has been around for a long time, but they just met. Also, they never explain this. All they had to do was throw in a couple of lines where Carrie asks Henry how she knows and Henry responds that it has something to do with the innocence of children. Hey, it worked to explain how children could see Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap no matter whose aura surrounded him, so why not here?

Well, the reason his restaurant isn’t doing well is because his food isn’t very good. Apparently, he took over from someone else and promised the regulars he wouldn’t change the menu. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad cook, but he’s afraid to try something new since the regulars are the few customers that keep him in business and they are adamant about sticking with what they like.

Luckily, there’s a local guy who looks crazy in that screenshot giving an art exhibit. Carrie goes to see him. This scene seems to come out of nowhere and goes on for quite a while before it ties itself back into the actual plot of the film. She convinces him that, among other things, he needs a caterer.

The event goes well and that’s Lynette from the beginning of the movie. Now I know what you’re thinking. This means that Carrie now has competition for the heart of Scott and someone she’s not allowed to come in contact with. So of course Henry comes to have a conversation with her about it.

Well, you’d think Henry has come to have a conversation with her about not coming into contact with Lynette, but he hasn’t. It doesn’t make any sense, but he’s there to remind her that she can’t come in contact with her father. A guy who has barely been in the movie and will hardly be in the movie at all. This conversation just comes out of nowhere. But then just to confuse matters more, it’s immediately followed by a scene where Lynette shows up at the restaurant forcing Carrie to duck out. After Carrie and Henry have a little heart to heart, this happens.

This is Scott singing and playing a piano. He is badly dubbed here and it comes around to bite this film in the butt at the end. I don’t know why they had to dub him. Even if he has a terrible voice I can fix that without dubbing him. During this scene Carrie comes up behind him and they talk a little about him giving up playing. All they had to do was have her say he sounded great to her. He says he knows he sounds bad, but that his wife would always say what she said, and he can tell she means it just like his wife did. Then he doesn’t have to be dubbed for the final scene of this movie because it’s not whether he sounds good to the viewer, but that it establishes a connection he had with his wife, and now has with Carrie. The movie winds down pretty quick now. It turns out Carrie isn’t dead, but in a coma. She has a chance to come back and Scott goes to her side.

He goes to her side, sings badly dubbed, she wakes up, and that’s the end. However, this is when the father shows back up. He barely is onscreen for a couple of minutes and only has a couple of lines, but he delivers a more genuine performance without saying a word then I see in most of these Hallmark movies. I didn’t think this guy was in the credits, but for some reason he is credited as a character named Jefferson. I don’t remember him having a name in the movie. The actor’s name is Don Allison. He appears to be some sort of character actor. He nearly saves this ending scene that is largely ruined by the totally unnecessary and bad dubbing.

I really can’t recommend this movie for the reasons I mentioned, and others I didn’t. I really wanted to like this, but it’s bogged down by so many problems. Won’t kill ya, but I don’t recommend it.

Val’s Movie Roundup #4: Hallmark Edition

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Recipe For Love (2014) – The movie begins with Lauren (Danielle Panabaker) as a kid writing a food blog about cafeteria food. She is told that’s a no no by the school. Then we jump ahead to when she’s an adult working in a kitchen. Suddenly, an opportunity falls into her lap. She is asked to ghostwrite a cook book for a television chef named Dexter Durant (Shawn Roberts). At first there is a little friction, but it doesn’t last long. The two open up to each other pretty quickly. We see behind the facade Dexter puts on for the audience and Lauren genuinely wants to make this cookbook happen. It’s not like this is a story about a woman whose voice is hidden behind a man’s. And it’s not about tearing down this fake personality to see Dexter fall from grace or watch him give up this thing he was only doing for fame. They work together, fall for each other, and both come out of the process better then when they began it. They both still love cooking and want to continue to do so with each other. I really liked that she wasn’t bashing against a wall that finally comes down in the end. Both of them begin to deal with each other as real people early on. I liked this Hallmark movie better than most I have seen.

Catch A Christmas Star (2013) – I swear if it isn’t a dog movie, it’s a bible movie, otherwise it’s a Christmas movie. In fact, director John Bradshaw has made eight of them. This film introduces us to a family that has a little girl who likes a singer named Nikki (Shannon Elizabeth). She shows up at a record signing and wouldn’t you know it, turns out Nikki knows her Dad from the past. There’s no sense in spelling out the rest of the plot because you already know it. I didn’t like this one. I didn’t feel any chemistry. Shannon Elizabeth doesn’t act well. She certainly can’t sing. And while she is probably the nicest and sweetest person I could ever meet in real life, she looks like a plastic doll to me in this movie. I just couldn’t push past that. I’ve only seen four Hallmark Christmas movies, but I would go with A Royal Christmas (2014) instead.

My Boyfriends’ Dogs (2014) – This year I replaced my desktop PC with a Mac. I kind of regret the choice of going with a Mac because the software is lousy. The hardware is giving me some problems too. But I’m going off on a tangent. My point is that while the computers have given out over the years, the monitors still work fine. As a result, I have the monitor that comes with the all in one Mac and two monitors from previous computers attached for a three monitor setup. This movie is like that. It follows Bailey (Erika Christensen) as she goes from one boyfriend to another, picking up their dogs along the way. It’s actually quite funny to see two of them show up on her doorstep with a dog for her to adopt. At the center of this series of dates is the guy at the pet shop cast because we can instantly tell he’s a good guy. Now all of this is told in flashback. At the beginning of the movie, Bailey wanders into a cafe wearing a wedding dress where she recounts her story to a some guy and Joyce Dewitt of Three’s Company fame. Turns out the final boyfriend almost became her husband before she ran out, dogs and all. I won’t spoil the ending, but it will have you yelling, “Oh, come on!” This one’s okay, but Recipe For Love is the best of the four in this roundup.

For Better or for Worse (2014) – This one is a Romeo and Juliet style story. You have the mother who does weddings. You have a father who does divorces. Their children decide to come together, become vegans, and organic farmers. Obviously, that doesn’t go to well with the parents. What follows is the parents getting closer while trying to drive the kids away, only to figure out that as weird as it seems, the kids are actually pretty happy together. The two parents also turn out to be happy as well with each other. Wait, I just realized something. I know it’s a little wishy washy, up for argument, and they did it in Clueless, but that smells a little like incest. A little weird for a Hallmark movie. Oh well, is it worth your time? You can do worse. It’s a decent 90 minutes or so without commercials. I wouldn’t seek it out, but if it’s on, then just enjoy it to pass the time.