Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Run, Lola, Run!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, we’ve got 1998’s Run, Lola, Run!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Run, Lola, Run is available on Prime!  See you there!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

Scottie returns!  Unfortunately, he’s a drunk now.

Episode 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on December 4th, 1985)

It’s another week and another visit to a small town for Jonathan and Mark.

This time, Mark thinks that they are only in town to visit his cousin, Diane (Margie Impert), and her husband, Scottie (James Troesch), the quadriplegic attorney who appeared in a few episodes during the first season.  Mark tells Jonathan that, when he last spoke to Diane, she said that she had something important to talk to him about.  Mark assumes that Diane is pregnant but actually, it turns out that Diane and Scottie’s marriage is in trouble.  Scottie may be an attorney but he has no clients and Diane has gone back to work to help pay the bills.  Feeling like a failure, Scottie has taken to drinking.

While Mark deals with Diane and Scottie, Jonathan has an assignment.  He working as a handyman for Ella McCullough (Barbara Townsend) and her blind daughter, Rachel (Annabella Price).  At first, Rachel is bitter and stand-offish but Jonathan wins her over by encouraging her to leave her little cottage and explore the world.  While relaxing at a nearby creek, Rachel meets a man (Jeff Kober) who is out for a walk.  Rachel tells the man that he startled her and then mentions that the neighborhood kids talk about a monster named Julian.  Julian lives in the woods and drags off bad kids.

“My name’s Clark,” the man lies.

Actually, the man’s name is Julian but you can understand why he might not want to admit that after listening to Rachel describe him as being a monster.  Julian is not a monster, of course.  He’s a sensitive sculptor who just happens to have a very large birthmark covering half of his face and neck.  Having been ridiculed all of his life, Julian lives with his mom (Ann Doran) and rarely talks to anyone.  Still, Julian falls in love with Rachel and Rachel falls in love with …. Clark.

Julian finally finds the strength to visit Rachel at her cottage.  However, when she tells him that she will be having an operation to resort her sight, Clark yells that he’s Julian and then he runs back into the woods.  Rachel chases after him.  When she trips and hits her head on a rock, Julian runs over to her and tries to help.  Unfortunately, that’s when the police arrives and promptly arrest Julian for assault.

Julian’s going to court!  Hey, does anyone know an attorney who needs a shot of confidence and who has a unique understanding of what it’s like to be an outsider?  We’ll find out next week because this is a two-part episode!

Reviewing a two-parter is always difficult.  Tonight’s episode ends with the story nowhere close to being finished.  I can’t judge the overall story but I can say that Jeff Kober gave a touching performance as Julian and he was the best thing about the first part of The Monster.  As for Scottie, he needs to stop blaming everyone else for his own lack of confidence.  Hopefully, that’s a lesson he’ll learn during the second part of this episode.

We’ll find out next week!

The Films of 2024: The Painter (dir by Kimani Ray Smith)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Painter tells the rather predictable story of Peter.

Orphaned by a terrorist attack when he was a child, Peter (Charlie Webber) was raised by a CIA agent named Byrne (Jon Voight).  Realizing that the attack had left Peter with superhearing, Byrne raised Peter to be a CIA assassin.  But after a failed mission led to the shooting his pregnant wife, Elena (Rryla McIntosh), an embittered Peter retired from the agency.  Now, going by the name of Mark, he paints!

Why do retired CIA agents always end up living in a cabin and obsessively pursuing only one hobby?  This feels like the 100th film that I’ve seen about a former assassin living in a cabin.  Some retired agents keep bees.  Some become bricklayers.  Some become painters.  Oddly, none of them seem to become both bricklayers and painters.

Anyway, Peter is happy with his isolated life but then, everything is upended when a 17 year-old girl named Sophia (Madison Bailey) follows him to his cabin and claims to be his daughter.  She says that Elena has vanished and she needs Peter’s help to find her.  Peter insists that his name is Mark until his superhearing picks up the sound of heavily armed men gathering outside of his cabin.

This is another one of those action films where the main character is someone who kills without the slightest hesitation and who has trouble showing his emotions.  Naturally, there’s a conspiracy inside the CIA and this leads to several scenes of people saying stuff like, “Copy that.”  The only fictional character who ever sounded cool saying, “Copy that,” was Kiefer Sutherland on 24.  All the rest of these people are just pretenders.

The Painter is pretty stupid.  It won’t take you long to guess who the main villain is going to turn out to be and it also won’t take you long to guess how the final showdown is going to go.  The action scenes are so haphazardly edited that it’s difficult to keep track of who is actually fighting who and, even if you did know who was fighting who, you wouldn’t really care because none of these people are particularly compelling.

In general, if your main character is going to be remorseless killer, it’s a good idea to cast a charismatic actor in the lead role.  Audiences will forgive a lot as long as their watching someone with a compelling screen presence.  Unfortunately, both Charlie Webber and Madison Bailey give rather bland performances and neither Peter nor Sophia are particularly likable characters.  In particular, Peter drags one innocent computer store owner into his mess and then doesn’t seem to be particularly upset when the poor guy ends up with a bullet in his brain.  It’s one thing to be an assassin.  It’s another thing to be a jerk about it.

On the plus side, Jon Voight is enough of an old pro to understand that this is a movie that does not reward subtlety and he gives a performance that is totally over-the-top but which is also more than appropriate for the material with which he’s working.  (Voight is still a talented actor and it’s a shame that, due to voting for different candidates than the majority of Hollywood, he’s pretty much going to end his career appearing in movies like this.)  As well, Max Montesi gives such a cheerfully bizarre performance as a rival assassin that he actually bring the movie to life whenever he’s on the screen.

Unfortunately, the lunacy of Voight and Montesi is not enough to save The Painter.  At one point, someone dismisses Peter’s paintings as being “derivative.”  They could have been talking about this film as a whole.

Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I was warned about this episode.

Episode 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on October 25th, 1998)

Wow, check out these two douchebags!

On the left, we’ve got Scott, who is supposed to be the studious brother.  On the right, we’ve got Jason, who is supposed to be the cool brother.  It can be difficult to keep the two of them straight, even though they don’t really resemble each other physically.  The problem is that neither really has much of a personality, beyond taking off their shirt and staring at girls.

Their father is going to convention in Las Vegas so he leaves the twins in charge of the restaurant.  Why would he do that?  We’re only three episodes in Malibu, CA but every episode so far has featured these two idiots doing something stupid with the restaurant.  Does the restaurant not have an assistant manager who could run the place?

Before leaving, their father tells Scott and Jason to be sure to feed the fish in the restaurant’s aquarium.  Dumbass Scott (or maybe it was Jason) is so distracted by Samantha and her friends that he accidentally dumps a bunch of bacon bits into the aquarium and kills a goldfish.  Scott and Jason assume that they’ve killed their father’s favorite fish, Goldie.  They’re worried that their father is going to be mad at them.  Personally, I think they should think about the fact that they killed an animal that was depending on them to do the bare minimum to keep it alive.

Maybe they can buy a new fish!  The only problem is that the goldfish was an extremely rare breed and it will cost them $500 to get a new one.  How can they raise $500?  Maybe they should take it out of the restaurant’s cash registers.  Maybe they should pawn some of their expensive belongings.  Maybe they should ask their rich friend Murray for a loan.  Maybe they should just tell their Dad the truth because, sadly, fish do die.  They can leave out the fact that they murdered the fish, if they want.

Instead of doing any of that, they decide to throw a fake beauty contest.

WHAT!?

They’ll charge every one an entry free and advertise the contest as coming with a $500 prize.  But, since Jason, Scott, and Murray will be the judges, they’ll just announce that Sam is the winner and then Sam will give them back the prize.  Seriously, this is the plan they come up with.  Out of everything that they could have done, this is what they do.

Here’s why this is a dumb plan.  To let people know about the fake Miss Malibu contest, they have to print up signs.  They have to find time to hang up the signs around town.  They have to print up entry forms.  In fact, if they’re going to get enough people to enter to raise $500, they’re going to have to print up and copy a lot of entry forms.  They’re going to have to rent out a spot on the beach to hold the contest.  They’re going to have to install a lighting and sound system for the pageant.  It’s going to cost them way more than just $500 to hold a fake beauty contest.  If they have $500 for this, why don’t they have $500 for a new fish?

Sam is reluctant to go along with the plan so Scott and Jason, as if they weren’t already unlikable enough, lie to her and tell her that their father is a recovering alcoholic and losing the fish will cause him to start drinking and driving again.  Seriously, what the Hell?  Sam agrees to enter the pageant but then the plan hits another snag when Sam has an allergic reaction to her tanning lotion and her face turns orange.  Jason and Scott decide to asks Stads to enter as their ringer.  When Stads says she doesn’t like the way beauty pageants demean women, Scott removes his shirt and shows off his muscles until Stads agrees to help.  Wow, Scott — way to take advantage of the fact that a really nice person has a crush on you.  WHAT A DOUCHEBAG!

Anyway, I feel like I’ve already wasted too much time on this so I’ll cut to the chase.  The pageant does not raise enough money to pay for the new fish but Stads once again demeans herself and pretends to be Jason and Scott’s younger sister when she asks the fish salesman to give them the replacement fish at a lower price.  (Does Stads have any self-respect?)  Scott and Jason put the new fish in the aquarium but then it turns out that Goldie wasn’t the fish that died.  Instead, Goldie is a big gray fish that their father named after Goldie Hawn.

Wow, funny.

You may have guessed I did not care much for this episode.  The main problem is that Jason and Scott are so incredibly unlikable that it’s impossible to root for them.  They did the wrong thing, they exploited their friends, and they didn’t even really seem to appreciate the fact that Stads abandoned her principles to help them out.  Zach Morris and even California Dreams’s Sly Winkle would have at least felt a smidgen of guilt.  But Jason and Scott are just jerks.

Ugh, what a terrible 23-minute viewing experience!

Will next week be better?  Probably not.

Scenes That I Love: Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we celebrate the birthday of Henry Fonda!

Fonda was born 119 years ago today and, over the course of his long career, he was often cast in role the epitomized everything great about America.  It’s rare to find a Henry Fonda film in which he played an out-and-out villain, though he did just that in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West.  (Leone, in fact, cast Fonda as the evil Frank because he knew audiences would be shocked to see Fonda coldly gunning down settlers and their families.)

One of Fonda’s finest films was 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident, in which he played a cowboy who finds himself drafted into joining a posse that ends up hanging three men for the crime of murder and cattle rustling.  The members of the posse (including seven of whom voted against hanging the men) later learn that the men were innocent.  In today’s scene that I love, Henry Fonda reads aloud the letter that one of the men wrote to his wife shortly before he was hung.  This was one of Fonda’s most heartfelt and powerful performances.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Danny Trejo Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Len wishes a happy 80th birthday to the man and the legend, Danny Trejo!  Trejo’s journey from being a gang member to an ex-con to a drug counselor to a pop cultural institution is an inspiring one, all the more so because Danny Trejo is so candid about both his past struggles and his present successes.  

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Danny Trejo Films

Runaway Train (1985, dir by Andrei Konchalovsky, DP: Alan Hume)

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Gideon Porath)

Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)

Machete Kills (2013, dir by Robert Rodriguez, DP: Robert Rodriguez)

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.8 “The Demons”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, Monsters gives us the story of several Arthurs.  Unfortunately, it’s not a very good story.

Episode 2.8 “The Demons”

(Dir by Scott Alexander, originally aired on November 19th, 1989)

On an alien planet, an alchemist named Arturus (Richard Moll) is desperate to get more of something that he calls “Drast.”  He decides that the best way to do this would be to summon a demon and demand that the demon give the Drast to him.  However, when Arturus tries to cast the spell, he makes a mistake and he ends up summoning a human insurance agent named Arthur (Jeff Silverman).  It takes a while but Arthur eventually figures out that he is Arturus’s human equivalent and that “Drast” is actually gold.  Arthur lies and tells Arturus that he has to go back to Earth to get the Drast.

Once he returns to Earth, Arthur decides to cast his own spell and summon a demon to help him break free from Arturus.  Since Arthur uses the same spell the Arturus used, he makes the same mistake and he ends up summoning Arturo (Eddie Deezen), a nerdy, red-skinned, dog-faced creature from another dimension who, it turns out, is just as obsessed with insurance as Arthur is.  Arthur sends Arturo to take care of Arturus, which Arturo does.  For some reason, Arturo taking care of Arturus largely takes place off-screen.  Having the main villain thwarted off-screen really does leave one wondering just what exactly the point of the story was in the first place.

Most of the previous episodes of Monsters had elements of humor to them.  This is the first episode to actually be a straight-out comedy and it doesn’t work at all.  Richard Moll and especially Eddie Deezen do manage to be amusing but the majority of the episode is centered around Jeff Silverman’s Arthur.  Silverman spends a lot of time frantically running around his house and yelling.  It gets to be a bit annoying.  The episode is so determined to convince you that it’s hysterically funny that it ends up beating the audience over the head with every punchline and basically begging the viewer to laugh.  There’s a desperation to the show’s humor and it quickly wears out its welcome.  Even potentially interesting ideas — like both Arturus and Arthur screwing up the same spell in the same way — ultimately fall flat.  Watching this episode, I was very much aware of the feeling of wanting to like what I was seeing considerably more than I actually did.

As I mentioned earlier, Eddie Deezen is really the only consistently funny thing about this episode.  The combination of his nerdiness and his fearsome appearance made me laugh more than I was expecting.  Sadly, I know Eddie Deezen has recently had to deal with some pretty serious health issues.  I’m hoping the best for him.

Next week’s episode will hopefully be a bit better.

The Films of 2024: Wanted Man (dir by Dolph Lundgren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Johansen (Dolph Lundgren) is a San Diego cop who remains on the force despite the fact that most of his old friends and former partners have retired.  When he’s filmed beating up a Mexican man on the highway, he becomes the latest target of the Defund The Police movement.  It doesn’t matter that the man was a human trafficker who was driving truck full of kidnapped women.  Johansen has become an embarrassment.

Normally, you would think this would lead to Johansen being fired or, at the very least, suspended.  Instead, his bosses decide to send him to Mexico to escort two prisoners back to the United States.  Rosa (Christina Villa) and Leticia (Daniela Soto-Brenner) are two sex workers who witnessed the murder of a group of DEA agents.  Their testimony could be key to identifying the killers.  Despite his friend and former partner, Brynner (Kelsey Grammer), telling him that he should just retire rather than allow the police department to continually push him around, Johansen heads down to Mexico.

It turns out that bringing the women back to the United States is not going to be easy.  A roadside ambush leaves Leticia dead and Johansen severely wounded.  Though Rosa’s initial instinct is to abandon Johansen in the desert, she eventually takes him to the home of her cousin, a police officer named Miguel (Rocko Reyes).  As Johansen recovers, he discovers that the people who want Rosa dead are not going to give up and that he cannot trust anyone.

Let’s give some credit where credit is due.  Dolph Lundgren knows how to direct an efficient B-movie.  He has an adequate visual eye, he makes good use of the arid desert setting, and he gets believable performances out of the majority of his cast.  Christina Villa especially does a good job as the tough but ultimately kind-hearted Rosa.  The movie has a bit more going on underneath the surface than the typical B-action film.  Johansen is forced to reconsider his own prejudices while the film’s villains argue that they were forced into their actions by a society that refuses to take care of those who are expected to risk their lives to protect the status quo.  It’s not a dumb movie, though it does feature a lot of characters doing rather dumb things and the big twist demands that the viewer accept one too many coincidences.

Lundgren not only directed but co-wrote the script.  Apparently, he first came up with the idea of the film in 2006.  Interestingly, it’s obvious that the film went into production when Defund The Police was still a strong and powerful political movement and the film itself ultimately suggests that the police should be, if not defunded, at least massively reformed.  Of course, by the time the film was released in January, the Defund movement was considerably less powerful and was being blamed for the sharp increase in crime across the nation.  Chants of “Defund the police” have been replaced by cries of “Fund the police, for the love of God!”  That’s the danger which trying to make a film with a political subtext in an age with a 24-hour news cycle.  What was popular when a film goes into production will often be a spent force by the time the film actually gets released.

As for Wanted Man, it’s an efficient B-movie that gets the job done.  If nothing else, the sight of Dolph Lundgren and Kelsey Grammer playing best friends is just weird enough to keep things watchable.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.16 “Gopher’s Bride/Love with a Married Man/Not Tonight, Jack!”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week’s cruise did not make me want to set course for adventure.

Episode 4.16 “Gopher’s Bride/Love with a Married Man/Not Tonight, Jack!”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 24th, 1981)

This week’s episode is all about cabins.

For instance, Jack Clayton (Patrick Wayne) invited his girlfriend of four weeks, Helen Mann (Trish Stewart), to join him on the cruise without telling her that they would be sharing a cabin.  Sorry, Jack — Helen doesn’t go for that sort of thing!  Jack is kicked out and spends most of the cruise trying to find some place else to sleep.  (He also ends up awkwardly lugging his suitcase around with him.)  Eventually, Helen gets some romantic advice from Julie (always a mistake) and decides that it’s not fair to kick Jack out of the cabin that he paid for.  She tells him that he can stay in the cabin.  Jack’s like, “Finally, let’s get it on!”  No, Jack, Helen doesn’t go for that.  Instead, she plans on sleeping outdoors for the rest of the cruise!

The two of them work it out eventually.  When Jack objects to Helen sleeping outside, even if it means Jack would again have to find someplace else to go, Helen realizes that he actually does care about her and he’s not just interested in sex.  They leave the boat together, with Helen promising that she and Jack will always sleep in the same bed from now on.  I give their relationship another two weeks or so.

Meanwhile, Kay Tindal (Susan Oliver) wants Ned Beacham (Paul Burke) to come visit her cabin and Ned is sorely tempted because his wife, Margo (Dana Wynter), is such a workaholic.  Fortunately, Ned and Margo’s 24th anniversary falls right in the middle of the cruise and it causes Ned to realize that he still loves Margo and it causes Margo to realize that she spends too much time worrying about her career.  Ned and Margo leave the ship together while Kay can only watch from the staircase.  Ha!  Take that, homewrecker!

Finally, Gopher risks his job so that Nicole (Marie Laurin) can stay in his cabin.  Nicole is Gopher’s pen pal from Quebec.  (Actually, she was writing to Doc and Isaac who, for reasons that are never made clear, signed Gopher’s name to all of the letters.)  When Nicole shows up on the boat, Gopher takes one look at her and says that she can stay with him.  Of course, it’s against ship regulations for passengers to stay with crewmembers so, in order to keep Captain Stubing from finding out, Gopher tells him that Nicole is a new maid.  Gopher ends up doing all of Nicole’s work and Nicole ends up meeting and getting engaged to a passenger named Frank (Paul Gale).  Sorry, Gopher!

This was a pretty forgettable episode and it was a bit hard to sympathize with any of the passengers.  Jack was a cad.  Helen was a prude.  Kay was a homewrecker.  Ned was a wimp.  Margo was cold.  Nicole was so self-centered that she didn’t even notice that Gopher was killing himself with extra work to keep her from getting kicked off the boat.  I wouldn’t want to be on a cruise with any of these people.

On a slightly positive note, Captain Stubing did ask Vicki if she had done her homework so I now definitely know that Vicki has a tutor and is getting an education while living on the boat.  At least I don’t have to worry about that anymore!

Scenes That I Love: Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright in Shadow of a Doubt

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this date in 1905, the great actor Joseph Cotten was born in Petersburg, Virginia.  A longtime friend and collaborator of Orson Welles, Cotten was one of the most dependable leading men of the 40s and 50s, an actor with the charisma of star and the talent of an artist.

Today’s scene that I love comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt, and it features Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten.  Wright plays Charlie.  Cotten plays her beloved uncle, who is also named Charlie and who might very well be a serial killer.  In this scene, Uncle Charlie drags his niece to a seedy bar, where he confesses that, as she earlier deduced, he is a suspect in a murder investigation.  With a mixture of charm and intimidating, Charlie tries to convince his niece to keep his secret to herself.