Tag Archives: Lifetime

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

Posted on 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.

Lifetime For October: Killing All My Sisters (dir by Haylie Duff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Killing All My Sisters

Oh no. Should Erin or I be worried?

Fortunately, the sisters in the title of this 2024 Lifetime film are not biological sisters. (Or blood sisters, in tribute to the Halloween season.) They’re sorority sisters. Well—one of them is. Most are just pledges, so they don’t really count yet. Don’t get me wrong: killing sorority sisters is still bad. It is simply not as bad as killing a biological sister. Of course, only one sorority sister actually dies on screen, so “all my sisters” is doing a lot of marketing work. It’s a Lifetime film. It happens.

Emily (Isabella Carlsen) is worried because her roommate, tennis phenom Jenna (Muguet Del Toro), is trying to join the Beta sorority. (“Beta forever!” Is that really a good slogan?) Led by Brittany (Grace Patterson), the house is deeply committed to hazing. Emily refused to join after a trust exercise nearly sent her off the roof of a multi-story building. When Jenna disappears, Emily is convinced Brittany’s ex-boyfriend Spencer (Stephen Gray) abducted her. The police won’t take her seriously because Jenna hasn’t been missing a full 24 hours, so Emily drags her artist mother Allie (Muretta Moss) into the search. Becoming a Beta, it turns out, can be dangerous.

Haylie Duff directed. She has starred in enough Lifetime movies that if this had been made ten years earlier, she probably would have played Emily. I have liked some of her other directing work, but Killing All My Sisters falls curiously flat. Too many scenes meander, as if no one had the nerve to tell Haylie the shot added nothing. In a movie that is supposed to be a race against time and which is supposed to be suspenseful, we get a lot of scenes that don’t actually do anything to tighten the drama. Indeed, the narrative often seems to move at a rather casual pace. We get an entire scene of Emily’s mother flirting with the neighbor. It adds up to nothing. I mean, it’s nice that Mom is still making the effort. Emily’s no longer living at home so why shouldn’t a conversation about landscaping turn into more? The scene itself just sits there.

The mystery is easy to solve. There is a bit where Emily announces she has to look for Jenna and then stands in the middle of campus looking left and right. I have to admit that I laughed out loud before I started narrating: “Is Jenna behind that tree? Maybe she’s coming out of that building?” The bigger problem is that some of the most important events happen off-screen. We had time for Mom hitting on the neighbor. We did not have time to watch a fairly important character wake from a coma and name her attacker.

This movie makes me glad I never joined a sorority. I was invited, same as I was invited to try out for cheerleading in high school. Neither was for me. I like my independence. I like my movie nights.

October True Crime: Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story (dir by Nicole L. Thompson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2004, the body of New Jersey resident Bill McGuire washed up in Virginia. He had been dismembered and his remains had been placed in three different suitcases, all of which someone apparently tried to dispose of by tossing them into the Chesapeake Bay. The subsequent investigation centered on Bill’s wife, Melanie.

The police theorized that Melanie, a nurse at a fertility clinic, was having an affair with a doctor and murdered Bill so that she could end her marriage without losing custody of her kids. Melanie claimed that Bill, a Navy veteran who was a computer programmer at the time of his death, was chronically unfaithful and abusive. She also claimed that he had huge gambling debts and that he had probably been murdered by the mob.

Melanie McGuire went on trial in 2007. At that time, I wasn’t quite the Court TV fiend that I would later become, but I can still remember hearing about the case. The media dubbed Melanie “the Suitcase Killer” and reported on all of the strange things that Melanie had done in the days leading up to Bill’s death. For her part, Melanie had an excuse for every bit of evidence presented against her. For instance, when she was accused of moving Bill’s car, she claimed that it was just a prank that she enjoyed playing on him. When it was pointed out that she had taken a sudden trip to Delaware after the murder, she said she was taking advantage of Delaware’s lack of a sales tax. (That actually makes sense to me. Taxation is theft!)

Did Melanie murder her husband? When it comes to questions like that, it’s always good to remember the wisdom of Occam’s razor. Which possibility makes more sense? Was Bill shot and dismembered by someone who not only had the motive and the opportunity to kill him, but who had also recently traveled to Pennsylvania to buy a gun? Or was Bill murdered by a mysterious gambling syndicate that he had apparently never mentioned to anyone in the past? Personally, I thought Melanie McGuire was obviously guilty. The jury agreed.

In 2022’s Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story, Lifetime tells the story of the ill-fated McGuire marriage. Candice King plays Melanie. Michael Roark plays Bill. Wendie Malick appears as the prosecutor who made the case against Melanie. As is typical of Lifetime true-crime films, it attempts to give equal credence to both sides. As such, Roark plays Bill as a temperamental philanderer, while Candice King plays Melanie as someone who is a bit too quick to smile whenever her story is challenged. Of course, by showing both sides, the film actually reminds us that Melanie’s story never made any sense at all.

If you’re a fan of true crime, the film will hold your interest. That said, it’s also a Lifetime film and, as such, some of the more gruesome details are downplayed. We see a hand in one of the suitcases, but that’s about it. We’re left to imagine what else was stuffed in that Kenneth Cole luggage. Myself, I was left to wonder why you would waste not only one but three suitcases on something like this. That’s another reason why I don’t buy Melanie’s excuse that the Mafia did it. The Mafia would have found a much more efficient way of getting rid of the body.

In the end, the main reason to watch this movie is Wendie Malick’s performance as the prosecutor who is determined not only to get a conviction but to have fun doing it. Seriously, Malick deserved her own spin-off.

As for the real Melanie McGuire, she is currently in prison, but she will not be eligible for parole until she is about 101.

October True Crime: Devil On Campus (dir by Elisabeth Rohm)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember The Vow?

A two-season docuseries that aired on HBO, The Vow featured former members of the NXIVM cult telling their stories and trying to downplay their own involvement in all of the cult’s crimes. In one of the show’s key scenes, former filmmaker and NXIVM follower Mark Vicente angrily exclaimed that anyone could get brainwashed. Anyone could become a member of a cult.

I have never really believed that.

I’ve sat through several documentaries and docudramas about cults. I have listened to countless interviews with disillusioned former members. One thing that has always really stood out to me is that people who get brainwashed and join cults are usually some of the stupidest, flakiest people in the world. Inevitably, they always say they felt they were missing something in their lives and that they needed a greater purpose. And to that, I say, “Big deal.” If something’s missing from your life, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Don’t give up your identity for a commune. Cults seem to appeal to weak-willed people who want to be told that they’re victims first and individuals last.

I found myself thinking about all of this as I watched 2024’s Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story. Based on a true story, Devil on Campus opens in 2010 with Larry Ray (Billy Zane) showing up at his daughter’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College. Larry has just been released from prison, though he claims that he was set up by Rudy Giuliani and former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik. Larry is charismatic and energetic. He has a gift for telling stories that sound like they could potentially be credible as long as you don’t give them too much thought. Larry also has a lot of money and, at the start, he seems to have a generous nature.

Larry is soon living in the dorm room and controlling the lives of both his daughter and her roommates. He can be tough. He can be erratic. But he repeatedly tells all of them that he’s just trying to help them. Larry encourages them to express their emotions and to cry and to have sex with each other. Eventually, he encourages them to live in an off-campus apartment with him, to work (without pay) on his family farm, and finally to work as sex workers. Eventually, some break away from him and some do not. It’s good that some realized the truth, but it’s hard not to be disappointed that it took them so long to do so.

Though a few names have been changed, Devil on Campus sticks close to the facts of the case. The movie works largely due to Billy Zane’s bigger-than-life screen presence. The minute that Zane appears in the film, he dominates every frame. He plays Larry as someone smart enough to know that the way to keep people from questioning you is to just keep talking. Larry instinctively recognizes when someone is too weak-willed or slow-witted to resist being manipulated. Zane’s performance dominates the film. His victims, on the other hand, come across as ciphers, but perhaps that’s a reflection of reality. Regardless of what Mark Vicente claimed in The Vow, not everyone is dumb enough to get brainwashed.

As for the real-life Larry Ray, he’s currently in federal prison. He’s scheduled to be released in 2071, when he will be 111 years old.

Lifetime For October: Nightmare PTA Moms (dir by Dave Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 2022’s Nightmare PTA Moms, Gayle (Brianna Cohen) and Rick (Jonathan Stoddard) have just relocated to Florida.  Rick is the new regional manager for everyone’s favorite chic retail outfit, Jackie Z.  Gayle is looking forward to reopening her bakery, Gayle’s Goodies.  (If there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching Lifetime movies, it’s that there’s apparently nothing easier than opening up a bakery in a new town.)  Gayle and Rick’s teenage daughter, Chloe (Madison Paige), will soon be starting at her new high school.  When Gayle meets PTA president Vanessa VanDeBerg (Alison Filoramo), she’s invited to join.  Gayle accepts.

Gayle has no idea what she’s getting into.

Under the velvet glove of Vanessa, the PTA has become a cult.  No husbands are allowed at the after-meeting parties.  They would ruin the mood as Vanessa hands out tequila shots and invites a male stripper into the house.  Don’t tell, Vanessa orders, largely so she can seek revenge against anyone who does tell.  Vanessa enjoys being PTA president and she’s not going to let anyone take that joy away from her.  Of course, the only reason that Vanessa is president is because the woman who actually won the election, Lexie Wilson, supposedly committed suicide a month after his victory.  And then Vanessa’s husband mysteriously fell to his death.  “Vanessa doesn’t like to talk about that,” another member of the PTA warns Gayle.

Meanwhile, Chloe has befriended Vanessa’s daughter, Serena (Gracie Silva).  Yay!  Whenever you’re starting a new chapter in your life — whether it’s a new school or a new job — you should always befriend the most popular people around.  However, Serena is soon taking advantage of Chloe’s friendship.  Serena insists that Chloe use her Jackie Z discount card to pay for Serena’s purchases.  Serena also steals a pair of sunglasses.  I don’t really blame Serena.  Those sunglasses were pretty cute.

Soon, Gayle is asking questions about all of the deaths surrounding the PTA and Vanessa is vamping it up whenever she stops by Jackie Z.  Gayle worries that Rick is going to cheat.  Rick worries that Gayle is going to get hurt if she doesn’t stop poking around the PTA.  Chloe worries that she’s going to be friendless.  The only person who doesn’t seem to be all that worried is Vanessa.  That’s what makes her a great character.  As played by Alison Filoramo, Vanessa is an unapologetic manipulator.  She’s the epitome of the mean girl grown up, delivering every passive aggressive line with just the right amount of snarky menace.  It’s not just that Vanessa’s bad.  It’s that she has so much fun being bad.  Gayle may be the hero but Vanessa is the character that most viewers are going to enjoy watching.

Nightmare PTA Moms is a delight, an unapologetically over-the-top film that is fully willing to embrace the melodrama.  That said, there’s definitely an element of truth to the film’s portrayal of self-important, self-absorbed, affluent people who have joined the PTA not because they care about their children’s education but instead because they just love to wield even the smallest amout of power.  As campy as the film may have been, it worked because there was just enough reality to make the film relatable.  After living through the COVID lockdowns, it’s not longer a shock to see a movie about an entitled sociopath who thinks that she has the right to tell other people what to do, what to think and what to say.

In the end, the nightmare becomes reality.

 

Lifetime For October: The Perfect Boss (dir by Curtis Crawford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some people just aren’t good at murdering people.

Consider Cameron Finney.  In 2013’s The Perfect Boss, Cameron (Linden Ashby) is a vice president of a pharmaceutical firm and the lover of Jessica Slate (Jamie Luner), who has just been hired to fast-track the FDA approval of a new drug called Ezapine.  When Jessica and Cameron learn that one of their own researchers, Dan Renfro (Gary Hudson), is suggesting that Ezapine might not be as safe as the company claims, they decide to take matters into their own hands and murder Dan.  By this point, in the film, it’s been established that Jessica has a history of killing people.  She smothered her abusive stepfather.  She drowned her own mother.  Jessica has committed multiple murders and she’s still gone on to have a successful business career.  She obviously knows how to get away with killing someone.  But, for some reason, Cameron is the one who kills Dan.

From the start, it’s pretty obvious that Cameron has no idea how to pull this sort of thing off.  For one thing, he follows Dan around in a rental car.  For another thing, he fails to notice that there’s a witness watching him while he attacks Dan.  And, finally, Cameron makes the rookie mistake of logging into Dan’s work computer without checking to see if anyone has installed tracking software on it.  All of this allows Dan’s teenage daughter, Renee (Ashley Leggat), to investigate her father’s murder.

I liked Renee.  She hasn’t even graduated from high school and she’s already solving murders.  That was always my fantasy in high school.  I wanted to investigate and solve a crime and prove to the police and all of the adults that I was more responsible and clever than they gave me credit for.  Unfortunately, there weren’t any juicy local crimes for me to solve, other than figuring out who broke into our house one night.  I didn’t really work hard to solve that crime because that crime actually freaked me out.  (I slept with a golf club for months afterwards.)  Instead, I tried to figure out what happened to D.B. Cooper.  Unfortunately, it was kind of hard to investigate that from a Texas high school.

So, Renee accomplishes something that I never did.  She solves the crime!  But really, it’s not a hard crime to solve because Cameron was such an incompetent murderer.  That said, I liked the fact that it gave Renee a chance to win her mother’s respect.  At the start of the movie, Renee was getting yelled at for parking her car in a tow-away zone and always dressing in black and, by the end of it, she was graduating high school and realizing that she didn’t always have to paint her nails black.  I could relate to Renee.

That said, the true star here is Jamie Luner.  Luner was a mainstay in Lifetime films like this and she gives one of her best performances as the cheerfully sociopathic Jessica.  I was a bit disappointed that there was never a direct confrontation between Jessica and Renee but at least we got plenty of scenes of Jessica scheming and subtly threatening people not to cross her.  Cameron may have been an imperfect murderer but Jessica was truly the perfect boss.

Lifetime Film Review: Danger on Party Island (dir by Danny J. Boyle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My best friend Evelyn and I have a long-standing pact.  If either one of us dies mysteriously or suddenly disappears, the surviving friend will investigate the crime and bring those responsible to justice.

It’s the type of pact that you make when you realize how much your best friend actually means to you.  Fortunately, I’ve never had to keep up my end of the pact because nothing has happened to my best friend.  The truth of the matter is that it seems like it would actually be very difficult to independently solve a crime.  I know that a lot of people thought that Michelle McNamara did that when she investigated the Golden State Killer but, if you actually read I’ll Be Gone In The Dark and then research the actual facts of the case, you can’t help but notice that all of McNamara’s theories were wrong.  It’s not easy investigating a crime without a crime lab or a search warrant or the power to arrest people.  There’s a reason why most crimes are solved by detectives and not by well-meaning civilians.  Add to that, with my ADHD, there’s no way I’d be able to keep track of whatever clues I did find.  Seriously, I fear that I would be useless in that situation.

If only life were a Lifetime movie!

In 2o24’s Danger of Party Island, Mel Dale (Lindsey Dresbach) is a lawyer who is stunned to learn that her carefree sister, Georgia (Andrea Prevatt), has apparently washed up dead on the island of Fang Key.  While her anxious mother waits for word in the States, Mel heads down to Fang Key and tries to figure what could have led to her sister’s death.  The local police suggests that Georgia was on drugs and trying to cliff dive.  Mel says that Georgia never drank or used drugs.  (Why would you go to a “party island” if you didn’t drink or use drugs?)  The police say that Mel should just go home and let them handle it.  Mel says that she has to discover the truth.  The police mention that Georgia’s best friend is missing too.  Around this time, Mel finally figures out that the police aren’t going to be much help.

Mel’s investigation leads her to darkest corners of a party island.  She befriends hunky club owner Jever (James Bobo), despite everyone telling her that Jever is actually bad news.  She comes to suspect that Georgia might not even be dead.  This suspicion seems to be confirmed when Georgia suddenly starts posting cheerful videos to her social media accounts.  Again, everyone tells Mel that she should just go home but Mel is convinced that someone is holding Georgia against her will.  Meanwhile, Mel and Georgia’s mother keeps threatening to come to the island and take over the investigation herself.

The cool thing about Danger on Party Island is that all Mel really needs to launch an investigation is a lap top and a good search engine.  That certainly gave me some hope because, if I ever do have to solve a crime, I know all of the best search engines.  The other good thing about Danger on Party Island is that the island was really pretty.  This was a film where the plot was so-so but the scenery was lovely. Director Danny J. Boyle did a good job of contrasting the beauty of the island with the darkness of some of the things going in the shadows.

I just wish that the film had been a little bit more fun.  This is a film that did indeed embrace the melodrama but I still found myself wishing that it had embraced it even more.  Instead, the film’s big finale felt anti-climatic and things just never got as over-the-top as they should have.  Danger On Party Island had a beautiful island but it still needed to be more of a party.

In the end, this Lifetime film held my attention.  It didn’t quite live up to the melodramatic promise of its name but at least it suggested that solving a crime isn’t as hard as it looks.

I can only hope!

Lifetime Film Review: Everyone Has Something To Hide (dir by Sean Cisterna)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Years ago, Kathy Waters (Emily Alatalo) escaped from her abusive husband, taking her young son Noah with her.  Now, Noah (Sam Ashe Arnold) is a senior in high school and a talented composer.  The school band even plays one of his compositions at a football game and everyone in the stands applaud.  It reminded of those old episodes of Degrassi where Marco would write some overwrought performance piece and all the students would respond by going, “Yeah, Marco!”

Unfortunately, Kathy and Noah are not getting along as well as they used to.  They’re fighting and arguing constantly.  Kathy is overprotective.  Noah is …. well, Noah’s kind of a creep.  Noah is always complaining about how his former best friend Ethan is now more popular than he is.  (Ethan plays football.  Noah …. composes orchestrual music.  You do the math.)  Ethan is  mad because Noah is now going out with Ethan’s ex-girlfriend, Maddie (Tori Barban).  At one point, Tori has to duck into a bathroom so she can throw up.  This is a Lifetime film and that means you don’t throw up unless you’re pregnant and trying to keep it a secret.

Kathy is a real estate agent.  That’s not a surprise as selling houses is right up there with owning a bakery or being a mommy vlogger as far as careers in Lifetime movies are concerned.  One morning, she gets a notification that someone has entered one of the empty houses that she’s selling.  Going to the house, she discovers the remains of a wild party.  She also finds Ethan dead in a nearby shed.

Noah becomes the number one suspect.  Soon, someone is spray-painting “MURDERER” across the front door of Kathy’s house.  Kathy’s friends are refusing to talk to her.  Detective Summers (Puja Uppal) is asking questions.  Noah claims that he’s innocent but even Kathy begins to have her doubts after she discovers just how angry Noah can get.  Noah’s father was abusivie.  Did Noah inherit the violence gene?

As I mentioned earlier, Noah is kind of a creep and it is easy to imagine circumstances in which he could be guilty.  The fact that Lifetime has lately featured several films featuring violent teenage boys also might lead one to suspect that Noah’s the killer.  Well, fear not.  This is a traditional Lifetime film and that means that Noah is not the murderer.  Instead, he’s just an obnoxious teenager who needs to treat his mom with more respect.  I will not spoil the movie by revealing the identity of the killer.  That said, you should be able to guess who it is because there’s not that many people in the movie.

“Everyone Has Something To Hide!” the title announces and, as far as this film is concerned, I guess that’s true.  Considering that Noah’s a musician, they could have made just a few adjustments to the script and called this movie While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  As for the film itself, it suffers from a lack of likable characters.  (When I say that Noah’s a creep, I mean he is really a creep!)  But the film does deserve credit for fully embracing the melodrama.  The film has it’s flaws but it still held my attention for 88 minutes.

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

Posted on 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.

 

Lifetime Film Review: Murder In Music City (dir by Dave Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The music industry!  It’s murder!

And if you have any doubt about whether or not that statement is true, just consider the recent Lifetime film, Murder In Music City.

Jimmy Stone (Ty Trumbo) is a handsome young singer/songwriter who is trying to make it big in Nashville.  When we first see him, he’s taking a shower because this is a movie that knows what its audience wants.  Jimmy then sits down and works on a song that he’s been writing about a woman named Stephanie.  It sounds …. well, actually it sounds terrible.  But it’s terrible in that way that gets stuck in your head, kind of like that “Take Me To Church” song by Hozier.  Hey, Jimmy might have a hit on his hands!  Unfortunately, Jimmy is then beaten death with a guitar.

Because Jimmy was a guest of country superstar Aiblene Tucker (Deena Dill), she is arrested for his murder.  Abilene’s estranged daughter, Caroline (Madison Crawford), comes to Nashville to try to prove that her mother is innocent.  Caroline’s investigation leads her to everyone from one of Abilene’s ex-husbands to the president of Abilene’s fan club.  It turns out that Abilene always had a lot of people around her and they all had a motive for killing Jimmy.  Working with Abilene is Jimmy’s brother, Kyle (Brigdon York).  Abilene starts to fall for Kyle but it turns out that Kyle has some secrets of his own.

This film features an unusual twist on the typical Lifetime plot by having someone get arrested for the murder about halfway through the film.  With the real murderer apparently in jail, Abilene is free to resume her life and prepare for her comeback special.  However, Caroline comes to suspect that perhaps the wrong person was arrested and that the real murderer is still out there.  It all leads to secrets being revealed and songs being sung.  There’s a lot of songs sung in this film.  Perhaps too many, to be absolutely honest.

Despite not being a country music fan, I have to say that I absolutely loved Murder In Music City.  It was a film that cheerfully embraced the melodrama and celebrated all the excess that went along with it.  It was the type of fun, “I don’t believe that just happened” film that used to dominate the Lifetime airwaves.  This is one of those films where you don’t really worry too much about narrative logic or whether or not all of the clues really add up.  Instead, you just enjoy the ride.  And it is a very enjoyable ride.  There’s nothing more fun that watching someone have to both solve a murder mystery and deal with an egocentric parent.

In the role of the self-absorbed Abilene, Deena Dill gives a wonderful performance.  She’s not going to let a little thing like being accused of murder get in the way of her lavish lifestyle and her upcoming show.  Deena Dill plays Abilene as a force of nature and she brings a lot of humor to the role.  Also giving a good performance is Madison Crawford, who is very likable and relatable as Caroline.  You can see how having a mother like Abilene has shaped her but you also see the inner strength that has allowed Caroline to build a life of her own.

A terrifically entertaining film, Murder In Music City is what Lifetime should be all about!