Tag Archives: Lifetime

Cleaning Out The DVR: Snowed-Inn Christmas (dir by Gary Yates)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded Snowed-Inn Christmas off of Lifetime on December 16th!)

Oh, Christmas movies on Lifetime!

Seriously, Lifetime totally changes during the Christmas season.  For one month, everything that we normally associate with Lifetime disappears.  Gone are all of the films about being stalked by my doctor or betrayed by my lover or deceived by my house guest.  Suddenly, Eric Roberts is no longer plotting to kill Haylie Duff.  No one’s daughter is getting abducted and sold into slavery.  The houses remain grand and the clothes are still often to die for but, otherwise, Lifetime changes during Christmas.  Suddenly, it’s safe to fall in love with that handsome stranger.  The internet is no longer the root of all evil.  Instead, it’s now become a place where a harried single mother can find a handsome single father and hire him to play Santa Claus at a department store.  Lifetime changes for Christmas and we all love it.

Of course, there’s never anything surprising about Lifetime Christmas movies.  They pretty much all follow the same plot and that’s one reason why we love them.  The holidays can be stressful, especially when you can’t go on twitter without being implored to “take it to the streets.”  Lifetime films (and Hallmark films) provide an escape from all that.  They’re a trip into a much more innocent past.

Take Snowed-Inn Christmas for, example.  That’s not a typo.  While this film does deal with people being snowed in, it also largely takes place in an inn.  The inn is located in Santa Claus, Indiana.  It’s owned by Carol (Belinda Montgomery) and Chris (John B. Lowe).  Yes, they both wear red.  Yes, Chris has a white beard and an infectious laugh.  Did you expect any less?

Evil developers want to tear down the inn.  If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from watching Christmas Lifetime films, it’s that land developers never have the holiday spirit.  They always want to kick people out of their homes right before Christmas.  They always want to build a ski resort or a luxury condo or something.

The only thing that can save the inn is if proof is found that the inn is a historical landmark.  Fortunately, two online journalists, Jenna (Bethany Joy Lenz) and Kevin (Andrew Walker), are staying at the inn.  Kevin is the type of guy who eats a slice of pizza for breakfast.  Jenna uses an electric toothbrush.  That’s really all of the character development that they get but that’s okay.  Walker is handsome.  Lenz is pretty.  Both of them can deliver potentially silly lines with sincerity.  They’re likable and that’s all a film like this really requires.

Anyway, at the start of the film, neither Jenna nor Kevin have the Christmas spirit.  They’re not in love with each other, either.  How much you want to bet that will change as they work to save the inn from being bulldozed?  How much do you want to bet that their burgeoning relationship will be encourages by Carol and Chris, both of whom always have a twinkle in their eye regardless of how close their inn is to being destroyed.

Online, some critics have pointed out that Snowed-Inn Christmas is basically a remake of The Flight Before Christmas.  That may be true but who cares?  All of these Lifetime Christmas films are essentially remakes of each other.  That’s why we love them.  Snowed-Inn Christmas delivers exactly what it needs to deliver.  It’s a silly but sweet little movie.

Lifetime Film Review: Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer (dir by Norman Stone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The latest Lifetime “true crime” movie goes a little something like this:

We start with a clip from a South African news program.  The anchorman talks about how much everyone loves Oscar Pistorius, the man who lost his legs when he was 11 months old and then went to compete in both the Paralympics and the Olympics.  In both his home country and abroad, Oscar is known as the Blade Runner.

Cut to:

Oscar Pistorius (played by Andreas Damm) running across South Africa.  A man in a pickup truck honks at him.  Oscar holds up his hand in greeting.  A group of children stop playing soccer long enough to watch Oscar run by.  No matter what, Oscar never stops running.

Cut to:

Oscar in his kitchen, on the day before Thanksgiving.  A title card tell us that we are seeing “the day before Reeva’s death.”  Reeva Steenkamp (Toni Garrn) is Oscar’s girlfriend and a model.  They talk, they laugh, they make love on a kitchen counter.  It seems like the perfect relationship.

Cut to:

Night.  The outside of Oscar’s house.  There are gunshots.  Reeva screams for help.  Oscar shouts “No!”

Cut to:

The morning after Reeva’s death and Oscar telling the police how he accidentally killed his girlfriend.

Cut to:

A few months before Reeva’s death.  Reeva tells her mother that she wants to move in with Oscar.

Cut to:

A few more months before Reeva’s death.  Reeva meets Oscar Pistorius and, for Oscar, it’s obsession at first sight.

And so the movie goes from there, hopping back and forth through time and telling the story of Oscar and Reeva’s ill-fated relationship.  Oscar turns out to be jealous and controlling.  Reeva is always a bit too quick to accept the blame for all of Oscar’s tantrums.  Oscar confesses to her that he’s always felt like he’s been alone in the world.  Reeva’s friends tell her that they think Oscar is creepy.  Reeva says that they don’t know him the way that she does.  Reeva mentions that she smoked weed while doing a shoot in Jamaica.  Oscar totally freaks out, as if he simply cannot believe that someone would smoke weed while in Jamaica.  (I mean, wouldn’t it be rude not to?)

And eventually, it all leads to Oscar shooting Reeva and the trial that captivated the world.  Did Oscar intentionally shoot her while in a jealous rage or, as he claimed, did he accidentally shoot her?  The film refuses to give us a definitive answer, leaving it up to the viewer to decide.  That seems to be a bit of a cop-out but then again, that’s the way it usually is with these true crime films.  They never definitely validate one side or the other.  It’s just like how last week’s Robert Durst movie couldn’t come right out and show Durst killing his wife even though everyone knows that’s probably what happened.  Ambiguity can be good but sometimes, you just want the movie to have the courage to offer up an answer.

Anyway, as for the rest of Blade Runner Killer, it was a bit too slow and disjointed to really work.  As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but feel that, unlike the Durst case, there really wasn’t enough to the Pistorius case to justify an entire, 90-minute movie.  Though the script never really dug far beneath the surface, both Andreas Damm and Toni Garrn did a good job as Oscar and Reeva.  Otherwise, this one was pretty forgettable.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Off The Rails (dir by David Jackson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 205 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only two months to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded Off The Rails off of the Lifetime Movie Network on March 26th!)

Oh, poor Nicole (Hannah Barefoot)!

When we first meet her, Nicole is recovering from amnesia.  She knows that she was injured in a catastrophic train derailment.  She knows that she’s married to Mark (Thomas Beaudoin), who seems like the perfect husband.  She knows that her therapist is Dr. Teres (Andrea Cirie).  She knows that she’s oddly obsessed with maps and that she teaches at the local college.  However, she is still not totally sure what her life was like before the accident.  And sometimes, she wonders if she can actually trust Mark.  For instance, she suspects that, while she was in her coma, Mark added onto the deck in the back yard.  Mark swears that it was her idea but why would she want to do that?

Nicole is also convinced that she has never had a Facebook account.  She swears that she’s never been on Twitter.  She doesn’t even know what Instagram is!  “You call me a Luddite!” she says to one of her friends, “I do remember that!”  But, if that’s true, why do all of her friends swear that they’ve talked to her on Facebook?  And why are all sorts of sleazy men approaching her, all claiming that they met her online?

That’s not all Nicole has to worry about.  There’s also the weird visions that she’s having, many of them involving being watched by a menacing-looking raven.  And then there’s the French Canadian photographer (Andreas Damm).  Nicole is not sure who he is but she sure did take a lot of happy pictures with him.  Could it be that she wasn’t as happy in her marriage as both Mark and her therapist insist?

There were some parts of Off The Rails that I really liked.  The story was, at times, genuinely intriguing and I always appreciate it whenever Lifetime films mix a little surrealism in with the melodrama.  The first part of the film does a very good of creating a properly ominous atmosphere and Hannah Barefoot does a good job portraying Nicole’s confusion and paranoia.  Obviously, it demanded a considerable suspension of disbelief to buy into the idea that Nicole could possibly be so ignorant of social media in 2017 but then again, that’s Lifetime for you.  Social media is always the source of all evil in the world of Lifetime.

Unfortunately, there’s a twist at the end of Off The Rails that simply does not work and it actually cheapens the film a bit.  I understand that it’s a Lifetime film and that, therefore, things can never end on too dark of a note but, in this case, the movie’s story demanded and deserved an ending that was just a bit more bittersweet.

Still, I’d recommend Off the Rails.  Up until that final shot, it’s a nicely done Lifetime mystery.  You’ll probably figure out the solution early but it’s still entertainingly melodramatic and just weird enough to be worthwhile.

 

Cleaning Out The DVR: Secrets In Suburbia (dir by Damian Romay)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 205 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only two months to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded Secrets in Suburbia off of Lifetime on April 15th!)

Welcome to the Hell that is Lifetime suburbia!

Seriously, whenever you come across a Lifetime movie that has the word “suburbia” in the title, you know exactly what you’re getting: nice houses, nice clothes, beautiful people, adulterous affairs, and usually a little bit of murder.  Secrets in Suburbia features all of that and it’s an enjoyably over the top little movie.

We open with a nice house in a nice neighborhood on a nice night.  A party’s being thrown.  It’s a divorce party!  (Divorce parties, by the way, are super fun!  I’ve been encouraging all of my married friends to get divorced, just so we can all get together for the party afterward.)  The recently divorced wife gives a long and sarcastic speech.  Suddenly, her ex-husband shows up.  He’s waving a gun and rambling incoherently.  Then he shoots himself, which totally ruins the party.

(Choice dialogue: “I don’t need a dead body in my house!”)

We return to the party four more times over the course of the film, each time from the perspective of a different character and each time, we learn a little bit more about what happened on that night.  It’s a nicely done technique, one that forces us to pay close attention to the action unfolding on screen.  It certainly adds a layer of narrative complexity that one might not usually expect to find in a Lifetime film.

The majority of the film deals with Gloria (Brianna Brown) and her husband, Phil (Joe Williamson).  Gloria has a nice house, nice children, and a nice dog.  Phil has a lot of charm and a massive chip on his shoulder about the fact that, unlike most of his friends and neighbors, he wasn’t born rich.  Phil, it quickly turns out, has more than a little trouble being a faithful husband.  No need to be shocked by that.  It’s Lifetime and it’s suburbia.

One day, Gloria comes home to discover that her dog has been poisoned.  While she rushes the dog to the vet, she gets into a serious car accident.  It’s hard not to notice that, underneath all of his charm, Phil doesn’t seem to be that concerned about his wife.  Maybe it’s the fact that he keeps ignoring the doctor’s advice.  Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t seem to care about the dead dog.  Or maybe it has something to do with the antifreeze that he keeps putting in her drinks…

This is a movie that’s all about revenge, especially after Gloria learns that Phil has been cheating with her friends.  To be honest, the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Things get pretty crazy towards the end of the film.  That’s not a complaint, of course.  In general, the more melodramatic and crazy a movie like this gets, the better.  Secrets in Suburbia goes totally batshit crazy, which is exactly what it needed to do.  It’s all terrifically entertaining and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

Cleaning Out the DVR: The Wrong Crush (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently in the process of cleaning out her DVR!  It’s going to take a while because Lisa has over 200 things recorded.  However, one thing is for sure: it’s all getting erased on January 15th.  Will Lisa be able to watch everything before doomsday?  Keep checking here to find out!  She recorded The Wrong Crush off of Lifetime on July 2nd!)

The mistakes of the past.  Can we overcome them?  Can we forgive ourselves?  Can we convince others to forgive us?  Can we ever recover or are we destined to be forever punished?

These are some of the questions asked in The Wrong Crush.  Veteran Lifetime viewers will, of course, immediately recognize that this is one of the many “wrong” films that David DeCoteau has directed for Lifetime.  There’s also The Wrong Roommate, The Wrong Student, and The Wrong Child.  Myself, I always look forward to the latest “Wrong” film because they’re usually enjoyably (and intentionally) melodramatic and, as a director, DeCoteau always seems to have a sense of humor about going through all the of the required Lifetime “beats.”  At times, the characters in these films almost seem to be aware that they’re appearing in a Lifetime film.  Also, DeCoteau always seems to film in the nicest houses in Canada.  One of the fun things about watching a Lifetime film is getting to see where everyone lives and the Wrong films always seem to take place in the right homes.

Anyway, in this one, Victoria Konefal plays Amelia.  A few years ago, Amelia did nothing but party and drink.  But then, after a car crash claimed the life of her best friend, Amelia straightened out her life.  Though she’s still on probation and her own mother (Lesli Kay) doesn’t seem to want to have much to do with her, Amelia is doing her best not to fall back into her old ways.  She doesn’t drink.  She goes to therapy, even though she rarely agrees with what her therapist has to say.  She’s channeled her anger into running and now, she’s the star of her high school’s track team.  It even appears that she might set a few records before the year is over.

She’s even got a boyfriend.  Well, kinda.  Scott (Pedro Correa) is nice and super supportive but he only moved to town a year ago so he doesn’t know all of the details about Amelia’s former life.  He’s heard rumors but he doesn’t know that she’s on probation or that some people still blame her for the death of her friend.  Whenever he starts to get too close, Amelia pushes him away.

Plus, there’s a new guy at school!  Jake (Ricardo Hoyos) is handsome, charming, and polite.  And, like Amelia, he’s got some secrets in his past.  He was kicked out of military school, for one thing.  Soon, Jake and Amelia are growing close.  Scott may not like it but Scott should be more concerned with the drugs that Jake’s hidden in his locker.  See, Jake has an agenda of his own.  He also has a really big knife that he’s not afraid to use…

For the most part, The Wrong Crush is an enjoyable Lifetime melodrama but Amelia’s strained relationship with her mother and her struggle to forgive herself serve to give this film a little more emotional resonance than the other Wrong films.  Victoria Konefal and Lesli Kay both gave good performances and Ricardo Hoyos really threw himself into the role of Jake.  Those who know Hoyos best for playing sweet-but-stupid Zig on Degrassi will be in for a surprise when they watch The Wrong Crush.

Lifetime Film Review: The Lost Wife of Robert Durst (dir by Yves Simoneau)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s Lifetime premiere was The Lost Wife of Robert Durst, the latest of many films to deal with the 1982 disappearance of Kathie Durst and the subsequent activities of her husband, millionaire weirdo Robert Durst.

The disappearance of Kathie Durst is an intriguing cold case.  Robert Durst was a member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in New York.  Many have speculated that may be why Durst was never charged with anything, despite the fact that everyone was convinced that he was responsible for her disappearance.  (Others have pointed out that most of the evidence against Durst was circumstantial and that Kathie’s body has never been found.)  Durst, himself, appears to have spent the last few decades as something of a millionaire hobo.  His best friend, Susan Berman, was murdered in 2000.  (Berman provided Durst with an alibi for the night of Kathie’s disappearance.)  Durst himself eventually turned up in Galveston, where he attempted to disguise himself as a woman and was eventually arrested for murdering his neighbor, Morris Black.  Durst was acquitted in that case.  All Good Things, a feature film starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, led to resurgence of interest in the case of Kathie’s disappearance.  It also led to a HBO documentary series, called The Jinx.  In an act that was either extremely cocky or extremely self-destructive, Durst agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, implicated himself in all three of the murders that he was suspected of committing, and was subsequently charged with murdering Susan Berman.

It’s one of those stories that, when you hear the details, you can hardly believe is true.  It has everything: love, greed, sex, jealousy, politics, the mafia, and several unsolved murders.  It’s not surprising that there’s been several movies and TV shows based on the Durst case.  The problem that every new film faces is what can it add to the story that we haven’t already seen.  The Lost Wife of Robert Durst is relatively well-made but there’s really nothing here that you couldn’t find in All Good Things or The Jinx.  This is like the Wikipedia version of Durst case.  It gives you all the details without going into too much depth about any of it.

Of course, one of the main questions about this case is whether Robert Durst is mentally ill or if he’s just extremely clever.  Those that claim that Durst is crazy tend to point out that he saw his mother commit suicide when he was a young boy, that he has a habit of muttering to himself, and that he lives like a hermit despite all of his money.  Those who claim that Durst is actually very clever and in total control of all of his actions point out that all of Durst’s alleged crimes required extensive planning and that, in The Jinx, he was caught saying, “What the Hell did I do?  Killed them all, of course.”  That would seem to indicate that Durst is fully aware of whatever he may have done.  The question of Durst’s sanity is not a minor one.  In some states, it would be the difference between life in prison and execution.

The Lost Wife of Robert Durst attempts to have it both ways.  As played by Daniel Gillies, Durst is obviously unstable yet clearly calculating at the same time.  In fact, I would argue that, from a purely dramatic point of view, Gillies plays Durst as being a little too obviously unstable.  You find yourself wondering why Kathie (played by Katharine McPhee) would have ever agreed to go out with him in the first place, much less marry him.  As played by McPhee, Kathie is almost as hard to read as Durst.  Even in the scenes depicting the early days of Durst marriage, the lack of chemistry between Gillies and McPhee is a problem.  I spent most of the film wishing that it would dig a little bit deeper into the case.  Then again, considering that Durst has yet to be convicted on any charges, I suppose there’s only so much that the movie could suggest.  (All Good Things changed everyone’s names, which gave it at least a little bit of freedom to speculate.)

That said, the Robert Durst story is such a strange one that, flaws and all, The Lost Wife of Robert Durst is watchable.  It’s a good enough introduction to the case, if you’re looking for one.  Ultimately, though, All Good Things remains the Durst film to watch.

 

Cleaning Out The DVR: Killer Mom (dir by Christine Conradt)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently in the process of cleaning out her DVR!  It’s going to take a while because Lisa has over 200 things recorded.  However, one thing is for sure: it’s all getting erased on January 15th.  Will Lisa be able to watch everything before doomsday?  Keep checking here to find out!  She recorded Killer Mom off of Lifetime on April 15th!)

Poor Jessica (played by Karen Cliche)!

Nothing’s going right for her.  First off, her husband has been arrested and charged with one of those financial crimes that rich men always seem to be committing in Lifetime movies.  She’s had to move in with her best friend, which is good because her friend keeps her supplied with wine and sympathy but bad because her friend’s house is not quite as nice as the house that she used to live in.  When she does go out of town, she’s so broke that she can’t even afford to stay in a nice hotel.  She has to rip open her blouse and threaten to accuse the manager of raping her just to get a good room!

However, there is a light on the horizon.  14 years earlier, as the result of an affair with a married man, Jessica had a daughter named Allison.  Jessica gave Allison up and Allison was raised by her father and his wife.  The wife died a few years previously and, just a few days ago, the father was killed in a plane crash!  That means that the now 14 year-old Allison (Maddy Martin) stands to inherit millions!

After showing up at the funeral and introducing herself, Jessica starts to work her way into Allison’s life.  Allison’s half-sister, Sydni (Kirby Bliss Blanton) automatically suspects that Jessica is only interested in the money.  For that matter, so does just about everyone else in the world.  No one trusts Jessica but Allison.  And Allison is so happy to finally be reunited with her biological mother that no one has the courage to tell her about their suspicions.

That doesn’t stop people from trying to investigate Jessica’s past, however.  Of course, that’s always a mistake in a Lifetime movie.  Trying to investigate anything is usually a good way to end up either getting framed or murdered.  For instance, Aaron Martin (Brad Long) makes it clear that he doesn’t trust Jessica and suddenly, his computer is full of child porn!  Is Aaron a perv or did Jessica use her magic internet powers to hack his computer?  (Take a guess.)  The housekeeper doesn’t trust Jessica and suddenly, her mother is attacked by an intruder.  Sydni thinks that Jessica is plotting something and … oh my God!  Suddenly, there are drugs in her car!

As I’ve said before, the more batshit crazy a Lifetime film is, the more likely it’s going to be a success.  Killer Mom is totally and completely over the top, full of nonstop plotting, snarky commentary, and — most importantly — really beautiful houses.  Nobody lives in a messy house in a Lifetime film!  Karen Cliche totally embraces the role of femme fatale, giving a performance that suggests that Jessica is almost as amused by her schemes as we are.  All in all, Killer Mom is good melodramatic fun.

Film Review: Flint (dir by Bruce Beresford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Undoubtedly, there’s a great and important film waiting to be made about the Flint water crisis.  Unfortunately, the new Lifetime film Flint is not it.

As I watched Flint last night, it occurred to me that it’s been a while since the Flint water crisis made the national news.  For a few weeks in 2016, it was all anyone was talking about but then the governor of Michigan announced that he wouldn’t be running for President and the media promptly deserted Flint.  I think most people in the country assumed that Flint now magically had clean water.  In reality, Flint hasn’t had reliably clean water since 2014.  Earlier this year, it was announced that Flint’s water quality has returned to acceptable levels but residents were still advised not to use it until all of Flint’s water pipes had been replaced.  When one looks at the coverage that the crisis has received, one gets the feeling that the media stopped caring once it became apparent there wasn’t going to be an easy and quick solution.

That’s the thing with this crisis.  There is no easy way to resolve it and it’s not a happy story.  Even when all of the pipes are finally replaced (which will be 2020 at the earliest), it’s not going to be a happy ending as much as it’s just going to be an ending.  The citizens of a city were poisoned because a bunch of civil servants wanted to save money.  There’s no way to spin that into a positive.  Even if the people of Flint are no longer drinking contaminated water, that doesn’t change the fact that they once did and no one in power seemed to care until they had no choice but to pretend to be outraged.

Flint is a well-meaning film but it’s immediately handicapped by the fact that it’s a Lifetime film and, therefore, has to take a Lifetime approach to the material. which means that things have to end positively.  The film does a good job of showing brown water running out of taps and detailing why clean water is a necessity.  And the film also deserves some credit for including a note informing us that the pipes in Flint are still in the process of being replaced and that the citizens are still being told either use filters or bottled water.  But, too often, the film turns what should have been a modern-day horror story into a simplistic story of “you go girl!” activism.  When the film should be angry, it’s merely annoyed.  When the film should be furious about the present, it’s too busy being optimistic about the future.  Instead of really exploring what led to the crisis in the first place, the focus of the film is on city council meetings and the cartoonishly slick mayor getting voted out of office.  “Yay!” the movie seems to proclaim, “Sucks about the poisoned water but at least everyone got to bond and now we have proof that democracy works and the government really does care!”

(There’s even two scenes where a city councilman tells the activists to keep fighting, the movie’s way of saying, “See!  Not all politicians are bad!”)

Oh well.  I don’t want to be too critical because, while the movie may have been strictly by-the-numbers, it at least tried to remind people about what’s going on in Flint.  That’s certainly more than the national media’s doing these days.

Cleaning out the DVR: My Daughter Is Missing (dir by Tamar Halpern)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is not just watching horror movies!  She is also trying to clean out her DVR!  She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st!  Will she make it?  Keep checking here to find out!  She recorded My Daughter Is Missing off of Lifetime on June 25th!)

My Daughter Is Missing and Liam Neeson is nowhere to be seen!

Fortunately, Sara (Miranda Raison) was in Belgrade when her daughter was kidnapped by a Serbian human trafficking ring.  Even more importantly, Sara is a former computer hacker and, in the world of Lifetime, there is literally nothing that the internet cannot do.

Need to view the security footage of your daughter being kidnapped from the club?

Use the internet!

Need to find out who is behind human trafficking in Eastern Europe?

Use the internet!

Need to figure out who you can trust or who you can’t?

The internet will explain all!

The other thing about Lifetime films is that mom will always be proven right.  Sara told her daughter to be careful.  Her daughter wasn’t and now, she’s about to be sold to the highest bidder.  Sara told the cops that her daughter had been kidnapped.  The cops didn’t believe her and now Sara’s going to find the proof on her own.  Fortunately, she knows how to use a computer and, as we’ve already established, computers are magic.

To be honest, Sara really should have been named “Mary Sue” because she is one of the biggest Mary Sues that I’ve ever seen on Lifetime.  Not only does she have a tragic and dramatic backstory but the main theme of the movie appears to be that everyone in the entire world is stupid except for Sara.  Whenever Sara uses the internet to prove everyone wrong, you can be sure that at least one person is going to say, “No one should ever have doubted you, Sara.”

(My favorite part of the movie is when Sara tracks down the web site for the auction and all the “hackers” standing behind her gasp in amazement and say stuff like, “She’s on the dark web.”)

Anyway, this movie was shot on location in Belgrade.  That does add a little authenticity to the film, though it doesn’t last long.  There’s a line towards the end of the film, where a sympathetic character points out that there’s more to Belgrade than just political corruption and sex rings.  That was nice of him to say because, otherwise, the movie probably isn’t going to do much for the tourism industry.

I ended up throwing a high heel in the direction of the TV while I was watching My Daughter Is Missing.  That’s my favorite way of expressing displeasure.  I guess the plot of My Daughter Is Missing would be intriguing if I had never seen Taken but I have seen Taken and this movie was a pure substitute.  Not only is the plot predictable but Sara is literally too perfect.  It’s hard not to get annoyed with her — and only her — being right all the time while every other person in the movie was portrayed as being either evil or willfully ignorant.  By the end of the movie, I was expecting someone to declare, “You’re the best mom ever!”

I should admit, however, that the movie didn’t go that far.  Maybe they’re saving it for the sequel.

 

Cleaning Out The DVR: One Small Indiscretion (dir by Lauro Chartrand)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is not just watching horror movies!  She is also trying to clean out her DVR!  She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st!  Will she make it?  Keep checking here to find out!  She recorded One Small Indiscretion off of Lifetime Movie Network on September 2nd!)

I learned a few things from watching One Small Indiscretion.

First off, and most importantly, I learned that there is no such thing as a “small” indiscretion.  In this film, Caroline (Ashley Winters) has a brief affair while separated from her husband, Sam (Cru Ennis).  When Caroline and Sam get back together, she tries to forget that the whole thing even happened.  Six years later, Caroline tells her best friend that she isn’t even sure what eventually became of her former lover.  However, we know that he ended up killing both himself and his alcoholic wife.  For Caroline, it was a small indiscretion but, for a little girl named Elle, it was a tragedy that took away her parents.

Secondly, if you work hard and marry well, you can eventually live in a really big house that has a pool, a jacuzzi, and a guest house.  However, if you work too hard, all of the romance will go out of your marriage and soon, you won’t even be using the pool after a couple of years.

Third, if you own a guest house, you are required by the laws of plot contrivance to rent it out.

Fourth, if you do rent out your guest house, there’s a good chance that it will lead to someone from the past tracking you down.  In this case, it’s Elle (Tiera Skovbye).  Elle is now 21 years old and eager to avenge the death of her parents but destroying Caroline’s life.  Though she may be young, Elle is already an evil genius.

Actually, I guess it’s debatable as to whether or not Elle is that smart.  It’s entirely possible that Elle only seems smart because everyone else in the movie is incredibly stupid.  From the minute Elle moves into that guest house, she’s manipulating and seducing.  She’s taking naked midnight swims.  She’s encouraging Caroline and Sam’s son, Logan (Johnny Visotcky), to skip college.  She doesn’t make much of an effort to hide what she’s trying to do and yet, Caroline soon decides that Elle is going to be her new BFF.  It’s actually kind of hard not to be on Elle’s side.  Elle’s methods may be extreme and she does get more and more psycho as the movie unfolds but Caroline and Sam are so bourgeois that it’s difficult to have much sympathy for them.  Add to that, Elle’s an artist.  She draws.  If you side with the non-artists over the the artist, that means you’re doing life wrong.

But back to what I learned from One Small Indiscretion:

Fifth, it’s not that difficult to bug a house.

Sixth, search engines are like magic.

Seventh, it’s easy to knock people out.

Eighth, Canada is a beautiful country.

Anyway, One Small Indiscretion is a thoroughly predictable Lifetime film.  The best role in these films is always the psycho and Tiera Skovbye plays Elle as if even she can’t believe how stupid everyone else in the film is.  Elle is having so much fun being evil that you can’t help but be happy that she received the opportunity.  She may be the villain but you’ll totally be Team Elle when you watch One Small Indiscretion.