Film Review: The Weekend Away (dir by Kim Farrant)

Posted on March 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“First time in Croatia?” asks handsome taxi driver Zain (Ziad Bakri).

As soon as Beth (Leighton Meester) answers in the affirmative, we know that she’s in trouble. If you’ve seen enough thrillers, you know that any trip to another country is going to lead to trouble. Beth may think that she’s just going to be spending a week or two with her wild best friend, Kate (Christina Wolfe), but we know that something bad is going to down. And the minute that Kate insists that Beth dress up and go to a club with her, we know that someone is going to end up missing.

The next morning, Beth wakes up with a hangover, a cluttered villa, and an absent best friend. Where is Kate? Kate and Beth were supposed to go on bicycle tour but now, Kate is nowhere to be found! More than one person suggests that maybe she didn’t want to do the whole cycling thing. I don’t blame her. You go, Kate! Don’t let your friend guilt you into doing something that lame!

However, Beth starts to have flashbacks to the night at the bar. It turns out that Beth is almost as much of a lightweight as I am when it comes to drinking because a glass of wine has totally wrecked her memory. When Kate’s landlord mentions that Kate brought two men back to the villa with them, Beth starts to think that something terrible has happened to Kate! The police soon agree with her but they think that Beth is the culprit!

Teaming up with Zain, Beth starts to investigate on her own. Her husband (Luke Norris) is not happy to learn that, while he’s in London with their baby, his wife is running around Croatia with a sensitive and widowed taxi driver, Needless to say, it soon turns out that just about everyone involved has a secret that they’re trying to hide.

The Weekend Away is the latest Netflix original thriller. It starts out on a good note, with Kate and Beth catching up on their lives in Croatia. Leighton Meester and Christina Wolfe are convincing as old friends who have followed different life paths and Croatia itself looks both inviting and ominous at the same time. Unfortunately, once Kate disappears, the film gets a bit uneven and some of the characters do some things that don’t really make sense and the actors themselves sometimes seem to be struggling to find a way to make their dialogue sound credible. The film starts with a lot of promise but the mystery itself turn out to not be as interesting as one might hope. That’s my long-winded way of saying that you’ll figure out what happened long before anyone else in the film does.

Again, it’s an uneven film but I do like to focus on the positive so I will say that the film was nice to look at. The scenes in the club were well-directed and captured both the chaos and the fun of discovering an exciting city for the first time. Leighton Meester and Christina Wolfe were convincing as friends and Luke Norris kept you guessing as Beth’s husband. It’s the Netflix equivalent of fast food. It’s the type of film that you enjoy for what it is and then you forget about it a few hours later.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Judge (dir by David Dobkin)

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hey, everyone!

Remember how, earlier this year, a whole lot of people (like me) figured that The Judge would be a surefire Oscar contender and that Robert Duvall would probably receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor?

At the time, it made perfect sense. After all, in the past, courtroom dramas have occasionally been popular with the Academy and, while we all knew that The Judge probably wouldn’t be a modern-day Anatomy of a Murder, there was still reason to hope that the film would turn out to be a watchable melodrama. Add to that, the movie starred Robert Downey, Jr, an actor who is eventually going to win an Academy Award. Perhaps most importantly, the title character was played by Robert Duvall, one of the best American actors of all time and an actor who, having recently turned 83, might not get many more opportunities to win one final career-honoring Oscar.

It only made sense to assume that The Judge would be a contender.

And then the trailer came out and those of us who know our film history were left a little bit confused. It wasn’t that the trailer was necessarily bad. It was just that it made the film seem rather old-fashioned. It didn’t feel like a trailer for a film that was set to be released in 2014. If anything, it almost felt like a parody, as if it was one of those fake, overly Hollywood trailers that appeared at the beginning of Tropic Thunder. (The fact that the trailer featured Robert Downey, Jr. looking haunted only contributed to this feeling.)

And then the film opened and received reviews that were, at best, respectful and, at worst, scathing. And I quickly revised my Oscar predictions.

Despite the bad reviews and my own suspicion that the film would not be very good, I still wanted to see The Judge. I love melodrama. I love courtroom dramas. Even more importantly, the Roberts are two of my favorite actors. Robert Downey, Jr. is always a lot of fun to watch. Robert Duvall began his career playing Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird and, 52 years later, he’s still a great and uniquely American actor.

So, I saw The Judge this weekend and … well, it’s just a weird movie and not in a good way. Instead, it’s one of those movies where almost everything seems to be so strangely miscalculated that you really can’t imagine how it could have possibly happened. The film runs for nearly two and a half hours, despite only having enough plot for maybe an hour-long pilot for a potential mid-season replacement. The script is amazingly overwritten, full of portentous speeches and clichéd characters. It’s not enough that Robert Downey, Jr. has two brothers that he has to reconnect with while defending their father on a murder charge. Instead, one of the brothers also has to be vaguely developmentally challenged so that he can deliver cute lines that are full of “accidental wisdom.” It’s not enough that Downey reunites with his ex-high school girlfriend (Vera Farmiga, who deserves a better role) but she also has to have a daughter who might be his but could be someone else’s. It’s not enough that Billy Bob Thornton’s prosecuting attorney is slick and cunning but he also has to be a self-righteous crusader who has rather silly personal reasons for wanting to defeat Downey in court. It’s not enough that Downey and Duvall eventually end up yelling their personal grievances each other. Instead, they have to do it while a tornado literally tears through the front yard, the type of directorial choice that is so obvious and heavy-handed that it indicates that director David Dobkin (best known for directing comedies like Wedding Crashers) was desperate to prove that he could be dramatic.

Much like the similarly bad Love and Other Drugs, The Judge is one of those films that tries so hard to be all things to all viewers that it’s ultimately just a huge mess. Is it a murder mystery? If so, you have to wonder why we learn so little about the case against Duvall’s judge. Is it a romantic comedy about Robert Downey, Jr. returning to his small hometown and rediscovering what’s important in life? If so, you have to wish that the town had a little bit more character beyond just being a standard Hollywood version of what middle America is like. Is it a family drama? Well, then it would be nice to know more about the family dynamic beyond the fact that Duvall was stern, Downey was rebellious, and Vincent D’Onofrio is stuck playing the brother who never got to leave home. It’s a comedy with few laughs and a drama with few tears and ultimately, The Judge just does not work.

However, both of the Roberts give pretty good performances. That’s what makes The Judge truly frustrating. Duvall and Downey both do such good work but the material ultimately not only lets them down but lets the audiences down as well.

Oh well.

What Lisa Watched Last Night: The Haunting of Sorority Row (dir by Bert Kish)

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Friday night, after we saw the movie Hanna, a friend Jeff and I returned back to my house and retreated to my bedroom where he eventually fell asleep and I tried to sleep. Insomnia, however, won out and I ended up watching a Lifetime horror movie called The Haunting on Sorority Row.

Why Was I Watching It?

I couldn’t get to sleep. Poor me. So, I turned on the TV, checked out what was on the DVR, and as soon as I saw The Haunting of Sorority Row, I knew what I had to do. Somehow, I forgot that, regardless of how low I turned down the sound the last time I was watching it, whenever I turn on my TV, the volume is always reset to full blast. So, as soon as I hit play, the TV literally thundered to life and woke up not only Jeff but probably the rest of the neighborhood as well.

As I frantically turned down the volume, Jeff sat up in bed and asked, “What’s this?”

“It’s a movie,” I said, “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep.”

“I bet it’s a horror film,” he said.

“Yeah,” I nodded. Then I looked over my shoulder, gave him my wicked little smile (well, I like to think of it as being my wicked little smile), and I added, “It’s a Lifetime horror film.”

“Oh,” he replied, sounding much less enthusiastic.

Anyway, The Haunting of Sorority Row put him back to sleep in about five minutes. Me, I still haven’t slept which is why I’m still sitting here in my beloved Pirates t-shirt while Jeff peacefully sleeps behind me. Maybe after I finish writing this, I’ll give sleep another chance.

What’s The Movie About?

It’s about a haunting on sorority row. More specifically, it’s about a really angry ghost who is determined to kill the four sorority sisters who are hiding a secret. Their ringleader is Leslie who is played by an actress named Lisa Marie Caruk. And that’s a great name. Anyway, Blair Waldorf herself, Leighton Meester, is also pledging this haunted sorority and she is determined to set things right.

What Worked?

Oh, this is a Lifetime Movie so everything worked. I mean, you know what you’re getting with Lifetime and part of the reason why we love Lifetime movies is because they’re all exactly the same. The perfect Lifetime Movie is the epitome of a stupid movie that can be best enjoyed by intelligent women with a healthy sense of the absurd. I’d like to think that I qualify on all three of those.

That said, there were a few things that worked even if you decided to ignore the fact that they were found in a Lifetime film. Not surprisingly, the nearly-all female cast was a lot more likable and their roles were a bit more developed than you’d expect to find in a horror film. Leighton Meester is probably one of the most underrated actresses working right now and she does a great job playing the film’s “final girl” while Lisa Marie Caruk has a lot of fun playing the bullying head of the Sorority.

Another thing that worked here was the great pleasure that I got out of imagining how many of you guys rented this film thinking it was a typical, Dead Women In Lingerie Slasher Film just to discover that it was instead a Lifetime movie.

What Didn’t Work?

This film works pretty well as a Lifetime movie but it totally sucks as a horror film. A lot of this is due to the fact that this is a TV movie which pretty much means that it can’t really show anything that would scare us.

As often happens in Lifetime movies, the main character’s boyfriend is a eunuch. In this one, we’re asked to believe that an 18 year-old boy would refuse to have premarital sex with Leighton Meester. Yeah, right. Because boys have so much self-control…

Finally, this is another one of those films that suffers from having a final twist that’s so obvious that most viewers will figure it out before the movie even begins. Yes, it’s that obvious.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

There’s a scene in which one of the unfortunately sorority sisters ends up getting trapped in the shower and scalded to death by hot water. This is scene vaguely disturbed me because 1) I’m claustrophobic, 2) I have a fear of scalding water, and 3) I’ve actually managed to get trapped in a shower before and I had to scream and scream until someone heard me, ran into the bathroom, and told me that I needed to pull (as opposed to pushing) the shower door in order to open it. Of course, my hands and arms were too busy trying to cover up me for me to take his advice on the door. So, I said. “Thank you. sir,” and then waited until he left.

Otherwise, it was hard for me to relate to this film because I never pledged nor did I ever want to pledge a sorority in college. I was actually invited to do so by one of them but, at the time, I said, “No, that’s way too bourgeois for me.”

“Bourgeois?” she replied, confused.

Lessons Learned

I definitely did the right thing by never joining a sorority.

Lisa Marie Does The Roommate (dir. by Christian E. Christiansen)

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Because of all the snow and ice that hit Dallas earlier this month, I’ve been running a week behind when it comes to going to the movies. For instance, I was planning on seeing The Roommate when it first opened but, because of the weather, I didn’t get a chance to see it until this previous Saturday. I ended up seeing the movie at the AMC Valley with Jeff, my sister Erin, my friend Evelyn and her boyfriend Steven, Evelyn’s younger sister Emma, and finally Katrina, who works with my sister Erin.

Now, you may be asking — why were so many people required just for me to see one movie? Well, The Roommate didn’t look like a film to be seen alone. It looked like a film that was meant to be seen in a group of people. The Roommate looked like the type of campy, silly little film that demanded some audience participation. At least, that’s what it looked like. However, as we watched the movie, it quickly became apparent that this film was neither campy nor silly. Instead, it was just — well, it was just there.

In the Roommate, Minka Kelly plays a poor girl from Iowa who leaves home to attend college in California. She’s a design major or something like that though she’s going to one of those movie colleges that is exclusively populated by models and where you’re only actually require to attend one class (and that class, of course, is taught by Billy Zane). Anyway, Kelly has been randomy assigned a roommate and it turns out to be Leighton Meester. Kelly and Meester hit it off but it quickly becomes evident that Meester has some issues. Soon, she’s stalking all of Kelly’s other friends, cutting herself to get attention, and eventually revealing herself to be a comic book super villain. Kelly, for her part, refuses to accept that Meester’s crazy until after the first murder has been committed and yet no one really gets upset at her for that. Seriously, couldn’t one person have said, “You know, if you hadn’t been such a clueless idiot, a lot of trouble could have been avoided.”

It’s a sad fact of life that most movies are rather forgettable. Who hasn’t had the experience of sitting through a movie and then realizing, a few hours later, that you really can’t remember much about what you’ve just seen? A similar thing happened to me when I saw The Roommate except, as opposed to forgetting about it after I saw it, I actually forgot about it while I was watching. After about half-an-hour into the film, we all stopped paying attention and instead, me, Erin, Emma, and Evelyn started to whisper about old episodes of The O.C. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer while Jeff and Steve started to talk about sports and Katrina ended up spending the whole movie flirting with the guy sitting behind us (which I don’t think his girlfriend appreciated since she kept going “shhhhhhh!” in this really annoying, obnoxious way). Every once in a while, I would look up at the screen and think to myself, “Oh yeah, there’s a movie playing” but, quite frankly, I never saw anything on-screen that would justify making any more than a minimum effort to pay attention. That’s just the type of film The Roommate is. It takes the old Radiohead song about no surprises, please to heart.

What makes this disappointing is that, concept-wise, the movie has potential. Everyone has had that one friend that has turned out to be just a little bit too clingy for comfort. Most of us have had more than a few. As well, your first few semesters of college are supposed to be all about figuring out who you really are. Are you gay, straight, or somewhere in between? Are you a good girl or are you a bad girl? Are you a rebel or are you a conformist? At least that’s how I remember my first semester of college and, for me, my randomly-selected roommate was the key to answering so many of those questions. I imagine that’s the way it is for a lot of people. The best horror often has some sort of tenuous connection with reality so The Roommate had a chance to be, at the very least, a fun little B-movie.

Unfortunately, effective horror also requires a willingness to risk alienating the audience and The Roommate is too concerned with maintaining its PG-13 rating to take that risk. That PG-13 rating means, in short, no nudity, no blood, and no darkness. Instead of truly exploring the premise for all that its worth, The Roommate is more concerned with being safe for tweens and teenagers. That was the majority of the audience when we saw the film and seeing how much they appeared to be enjoying the film made me feel really, really old. Of course, to be honest, I probably would have enjoyed the movie to if I was only 15 years old and I’d never actually seen a good horror movie before.

However, no film is totally useless and The Roommate did inspire me to start concealing a pocket knife underneath the clasp of my bra, like Leighton Meester does in this movie. That may be the best development in self-defense since I finally figured out how to use pepper spray without spraying it in my face.