Tag Archives: Johnathon Schaech

Blue Ridge (2020, directed by Brent Christy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Former Green Beret Justin Wise (Johnathon Schaech) is the new sheriff of the small mountain town of Blue Ridge.  Sheriff Wise is so good at his job that he can just step inside of a gas station and figure out that it’s been robbed just by observing that the millennial behind the counter isn’t look at his phone.  The sheriff has a phone-obsessed millennial daughter (Taegen Burns) and a supportive ex-wife (Sarah Lancaster), who works as a waitress.

He also has a big mystery on his hands when the daughter of Cliff McGrath (Graham Greene) is found murdered.  The McGraths thinks that the Wade family is responsible.  The Wades have a long-standing grievance against the McGraths.  Sheriff Wise and Deputies Dobson (Lara Silva) and Thompson (Ben Esler) have to solve the mystery before a full-out war breaks out in town.

I was not surprised to discover that this was a pilot for television series.  The movie has the homey feel of the type of mystery show that your parents or grandparents would watch every Friday night.  Sherriff Wise may not be as old as my parents but he definitely shares their feelings about phones and trying to understand what’s wrong with the kids today.

It’s an old-fashioned movie but it’s mildly diverting and it does hold your attention.   Johnathon Schaech gives a strong performance as the sheriff who can beat up three people at once but who still gets nervous before asking a woman out on a date.  Graham Greene and Tom Proctor both give good performances as the rival family patriarchs and the mystery takes some interesting turns.  Blue Ridge did a good job of brining its small town setting to life.  Blue Ridge is good enough to be a pleasant afternoon diversion.

#MondayMuggers presents FLIGHT 7500 (2014) starring Leslie Bibb, Ryan Kwanten, and Amy Smart!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday February 17th, we’re watching FLIGHT 7500 starring Leslie Bibb, Ryan Kwanten, Amy Smart, Jamie Chung, Nicky Whelan, and Johnathon Schaech.

FLIGHT 7500 is the story about an airplane that departs the Los Angeles International Airport bound for Tokyo. As the overnight flight makes its way over the Pacific Ocean during its ten-hour course, the passengers encounter what appears to be a supernatural force in the cabin!

Although FLIGHT 7500 was chosen by Sierra, I’m looking forward to watching it for the first time for several reasons:

  1. I’ve always liked Ryan Kwanten as an actor. I first discovered him on the HBO series TRUE BLOOD, and I’ve just always enjoyed seeing him in anything since. And here he plays a character named “Brad” so I’m hoping that he turns out to be a brave hero.
  2. Nicky Whelan from HALL PASS (2011) is in this film. HALL PASS is one of those movies that cracks me up, and I thought Nicky was especially good in it.
  3. Director Takashi Shimizu has made some creepy films in the past, like films in the “JU-ON: THE GRUDGE” series and the regular old “THE GRUDGE” series. The guy seems to have a grudge so I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out in FLIGHT 7500.
  4. I think the plot sounds interesting, so we could be in for a scary good time!

So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch FLIGHT 7500! It’s on Amazon Prime.

I’ve included the trailer for FLIGHT 7500 below:

The Films of 2020: The Night Clerk (dir by Michael Cristofer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Tye Sheridan Is …. THE NIGHT CLERK!”

That’s not how The Night Clerk was advertised, though perhaps it should have been.  This is one of those overheated melodramas that’s so sure that it’s making a bigger statement than it actually is that it becomes somewhat fascinating to watch.  Usually, when we say that a film is fascinating to watch, we mean that it’s either fascinatingly good or fascinatingly bad.  The Night Clerk is fascinatingly middle-of-the-road.  It has opportunities to be good, largely due to the performances of Tye Sheridan and Ana de Armas.  And it has opportunities to be bad, largely due to the direction and script of Michael Cristofer.  Try as it might, the film never becomes truly good and yet it’s never truly bad, either.  It’s just kind of there.

The title character is Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan), a young man who has Asperger’s syndrome and who works as a night desk clerk at a hotel.  He’s hidden cameras all over the hotel, so that he can observe the guests in their rooms.  He even watches the guests when he returns to the home that he shares with his mother, Ethel (Helen Hunt).  That’s undeniably creepy but we’re not supposed to hold that against Bart because he’s only watching the guests so that he can learn how to talk and communicate with other people.

(To be honest, the film is very lucky that Tye Sheridan was available to play Bart.  As written, Bart is not a particularly sympathetic character.  But Sheridan is such a likable actor and has such an appealing screen presence that you’re willing to overlook a lot of narrative inconsistencies where his character is concerned.)

Anyway, Bart ends up taking an interest in a guest named Karen (Jacque Gray) but, when Karen’s murdered, Bart becomes the number one suspect.  Even though Bart knows that Karen was killed by a mysterious man who had a distinctive tattoo, he can’t reveal how he knows that information.  When Bart is assigned to another hotel, he meets Andrea Riviera (Ana de Armas).  Andrea seems to take an interest in Bart but is she sincere or is she somehow involved with the murderer herself?

Do I really need to answer that question for you?

And again, the film is lucky that Ana de Arams was available to play Andrea because Andrea is another character who wouldn’t be particularly sympathetic if she had been played by a less appealing performer.  The film can never seem to make up its mind whether she’s a calculating femme fatale or a naive victim and it’s somewhat amazing that de Amas is able to give a good performance considering how badly Andrea is written.

The Night Clerk is one of those films that holds your interest while you watch it but it tends to fade from the memory as soon as it ends.  Sheridan and de Armas are appealing actors but the film’s central mystery isn’t a particularly interesting one.  When the mystery is finally solved, I was so underwhelmed that I kept waiting for another twist to suddenly pop up.  Surely, I kept saying, it can’t be that simple.  But yes, it is.  Though the hotels are impressively trashy, the film itself has a rather flat, uninteresting look and director Michael Cristofer never really brings the story together.  It’s a mess of a film but it does work as a testament to the talents of Tye Sheridan and Ana de Armas.

4 Film Reviews: Bridge To Silence, The Chocolate War, Kiss The Bride, Wedding Daze

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last week, I watched six films on This TV.

Which TV?  No, This TV!  It’s one of my favorite channels.  It’s not just that they show a lot of movies.  It’s also that they frequently show movies that are new to me.  For instance, last week, This TV introduced me to both Prison Planet and Cherry 2000.

Here are four other films, two good and two not so good, that This TV introduced to me last week.

First up, we have 1989’s Bridge to Silence.

Directed by Karen Arthur, Bridge To Silence was a made-for-TV movie.  Lee Remick plays Marge Duffield, who has a strained relationship with her deaf daughter, Peggy (Marlee Matlin).  After Peggy’s husband is killed in a traffic accident, Peggy has a nervous breakdown.  Marge and her husband, Al (Josef Sommer) take care of Peggy’s daughter, Lisa, while Peggy is recovering.  However, even as Peggy gets better, Marge still doesn’t feel that she can raise her daughter so Marge files a lawsuit to be named Lisa’s legal guardian.  While all of this is going on, Peggy is starring in a college production of The Glass Menagerie and pursuing a tentative romance with the play’s director (Michael O’Keefe).

Bridge to Silence is one of those overwritten but heartfelt melodramas that just doesn’t work.  With the exception of Marlee Matlin, the cast struggles with the overwrought script.  (Michael O’Keefe, in particular, appears to be miserable.)  The film’s biggest mistake is that it relies too much on that production of The Glass Menagerie, which is Tennessee Williams’s worst play and tends to be annoying even when it’s merely used as a plot device.  There’s only so many times that you can hear the play’s director refer to Peggy as being “Blue Roses” before you just want rip your hair out.

Far more enjoyable was 1988’s The Chocolate War.

Directed by Keith Gordon, The Chocolate War is a satirical look at conformity, popularity, rebellion, and chocolate at a Catholic boys school.  After the manipulative Brother Leon accidentally purchases too much chocolate for the school’s annual sale, he appeals to one of his students, Archie Costello (Wallace Langham), to help him make the money back.  Archie, who is just as manipulative as Leon, is the leader of a secret society known as the Vigils.  However, Archie and Leon’s attempt to manipulate the students runs into a roadblack when a new student, Jerry Renault (Illan Mitchell-Smith) refuses to sell any chocolates at all.  From there, things get progressively more complicated as Archie tries to break Jerry, Jerry continues to stand up for his freedom, and Leon … well, who knows what Leon is thinking?

The Chocolate War was an enjoyable and stylish film, one that featured a great soundtrack and a subtext about rebellion and conformity that still feels relevant.  John Glover and Wallace Langham both gave great performances as two master manipulators.

I also enjoyed the 2002 film, Kiss The Bride.

Kiss The Bride tells the story of a big Italian family, four sisters, and a wedding.  Everyone brings their own personal drama to the big day but ultimately, what matters is that family sticks together.  Directed by Vanessa Parise, Kiss The Bride featured believable and naturalistic performances from Amanda Detmer, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Brooke Langton, Monet Mazur, and Parise herself.

I have to admit that one reason why I liked this film is because it was about a big Italian family and it featured four sisters.  I’m the youngest of four sisters and, watching the film, I was reminded of my own big Irish-Italian family.  The movie just got everything right.

And then finally, there was 2006’s Wedding Daze.

Wedding Daze is a romantic “comedy.”  Anderson (Jason Biggs) asks his girlfriend to marry him, just to have her drop dead from shock.  Anderson’s best friend is afraid that Anderson will never get over his dead girlfriend and begs Anderson to not give up on love.  Anderson attempts to humor his friend by asking a complete stranger, a waitress named Katie (Isla Fisher), to marry him.  To everyone’s shock, Katie says yes.

From the get go, there are some obvious problems with this film’s problem.  Even if you accept that idea that Katie would say yes to Anderson, you also have to be willing to accept the idea that Anderson wouldn’t just say, “No, I was just joking.”  That said, the idea does have some comic potential.  You could imagine an actor like Cary Grant doing wonders with this premise in the 30s.  Unfortunately, Jason Biggs is no Cary Grant and the film’s director, comedian Michael Ian Black, is no Leo McCarey.  In the end, the entire film is such a misjudged failure that you can’t help but feel that Anderson’s ex was lucky to die before getting too involved in any of it.