What Lisa Watched Last Night #202: Erasing His Dark Past (dir by Jared Cohn)

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I turned over to the Lifetime Movie Channel and I watched Erasing His Dark Past.

Why Was I Watching It?

So, October isn’t even over yet and Lifetime has already decided that they’re going to start with the Christmas movies! That’s right — the next two months are just going to be Christmas cheer on my favorite channel! And listen, I love Christmas. You know that about me. I love any holiday that involves me getting presents! But seriously, it’s too soon for the Christmas movies!

So, instead of watching a Christmas movie last night, I switched over the Lifetime Movie Network and I got caught up with Erasing His Dark Past.

(Don’t worry, everyone! The holiday spirit will possess me soon and I’ll happily be watching every Christmas movie on Lifetime!)

What Was It About?

David (Michael Welch) has a dark past and he needs to erase it! What better way to do that than to disappear after a plane crash?

Everyone thinks that David is dead but his wife, Karen (Lauren Fortier), has her doubts. Those doubts turn out to be justified when she discovers that David had all sorts of weird financial stuff going on. By vanishing (or dying or whatever he did), he’s basically left Karen broke and in a lot of trouble. Was David just bad with money or was it all a part of his criminal scheme?

And could it be that David may have had a ….. second family!?

What Worked?

Micheal Welch did a good job as David, I thought. He came across as being sinister enough to fake his own death and charismatic enough to pull it off.

Fans of the classic film To Kill A Mockingbird will want to keep an eye out for Scout herself, Mary Badham, playing a sympathetic bank employee.

What Did Not Work?

There have been several Lifetime films about husbands faking their own death and running off to their second family. In fact, it’s become a bit of cliche that you should never trust a husband in a Lifetime film. Unfortunately, as a result, there was really no shock in discovering that David wasn’t actually dead. We knew it was going to happen as soon as he first appeared. To a certain extent, their predictability is one of the things that make Lifetime films enjoyable but still, it was a little bit to easy to see the direction in which Erasing His Dark Past was heading.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

This was one of those rare films where there really weren’t any “Oh my God! Just like me!” moments. I’ve never been married so I’ve never had to deal with a husband faking his own death and running off with all of my money. I guess I should consider myself lucky in that regard.

Lessons Learned

If there’s no body, there’s no proof.

“All The Boys Love Mandy Lane” AKA All the Bland Love Blandy Lane, Review By Case Wright

Posted on October 1, 2018 by casewright

ATHBLML6

IT’S OCTOBER!!!! WOOHOO!!!! The Most Wonderful Time of The Year!!!!

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane….for some reason. Let’s begin by admitting Amber Heard is pretty, but …. love at first sight obsession?! Word?! Word?! This film was written by Jacob Forman who went on to …. not much. Jacob Forman does have a few recent credits as a special thanks over the last few years, which means he let someone sleep on his couch or something who was making a movie. I wonder if the film deserved to make enough money to afford the futon that he used to get those special thanks. But it’s on Netflix; so, if you’re on an elliptical and have already caught up on your YouTube subscriptions…. I guess this would be a choice that you could make … on purpose.

Jonathan Levine (director 50/50) directed this mess and he’s a very talented director for … Dramatic Comedy and Drama… Horror…not so much. It was one of his first films (2006) and didn’t get a US release until 2013 … for good reason. He’s very good at filming true to life couch conversations, which was certainly evident in 50/50, but in a Horror/Thriller the camera work/direction has to act as another character to pull us into suspense and punch us with payoffs. This piece uses a lot of shaky cam in a 1980s style with artsy cuts that never allow us to feel worried about anyone on-screen. The direction is like someone constantly spilling water on your charcoal as your trying to get the barbecue going.

The exploitation premise is simple enough: A bunch of boys try to corrupt a naive virginal archetype – Mandy Lane (Amber Heard). Mandy is kind of bland and has a friend Emmet who everyone picks on and gets even by somehow convincing a guy to jump off his roof into a pool and he dies. It’s weird.

After the pool incident, Emmet is a pariah. Mandy, on the other hand, is apparently the paragon of the feminine ideal because every man within 100 miles will give up his eternal soul for a tryst with her. She agrees to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of dudes and girls who are equally boring. They arrive at the ranch and there’s a ranch hand on the property who is supposedly a Gulf War veteran even though he’s 27 and not in his later 40s. Sigh. Mandy Lane and all the other girls are obviously smitten with the ranch hand and why not….the ranch hand defies time and math itself!!! As the song goes, every girl crazy for a …. man who defies the space-time-continuum! [Sung as ZZ Top] The ranch hand is bored with the teens and returns to his home sweet shed.

Later, the teens start doing a ton of drugs and booze and Emmet or someone (dun dun dun) arrives and starts murdering everyone. They are pretty gruesome deaths and it does border on torture porn at one point, which makes sense because it was written around 2004/2005 when Hostel was all the rage. Even though people aren’t returning, all of the guys continue to try to make out with Mandy in the creepiest ways possible. Mandy Lane has 20 lines of very bland dialogue total in the film and there is a slight twist at the end that fails to thrill.

What bugged me about this film is that horror is always treated as the Red-Headed Stepchild of film. Everybody seems to think the genre is easy to write and do and this film is proof that both of those assumptions are false. First, you need to at least have some sympathy for the people getting killed. Second, you need to explain in someway at the halfway why they don’t just leave. In this film, it’s not clear why the dudes want Mandy to stay at the halfway point of the film when it’s clear that she’s not interested in any of them. Third, the camera work and direction to pull you into the house and into the story to ratchet up tension; otherwise, it’s just boring.

I’m glad that Jonathan Levine found his voice soon after this. Amber Heard did a fair enough performance for what she had to work with. There was good performance by Melissa Price, but from IMDB, it appears that this film probably tanked her career. In any case, I’m crazy excited that October is here!!!

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Bachelor Next Door (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on January 5, 2018 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 182 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 The Bachelor Next Door off of Lifetime Move Network on December 2nd, 2017!)

It’s time for yet another Lifetime film featuring Haylie Duff as a woman being menaced by a neighbor!

In this one, Haylie plays Alex. Alex is a painter who lives with her boyfriend, Gavin (Stephen Bruns). Alex hasn’t found much success as a painter but, fortunately, Gavin has one of those financial jobs where he spends all of his time talking about when the markets in London close. So, even though Alex hasn’t sold a painting in forever, she still gets to live in a really big and pretty house.

But then one day, that house nearly burns down! Fortunately, the new neighbor, Donnie (Michael Welch), just happens to notice that a fire has broken out in the kitchen so he runs over and he saves the day. Or, at the very least, Donnie claims that he just happened to notice the fire. Donnie seems to have some issues. He’s way too nice and way too quick to want to help out around Gavin and Alex’s house. Plus, sometimes he goes back to his own house and he throws a screaming fit. Again, Donnie would appear to have some issues. Still, Alex goes ahead and sets Donnie up with her sister, Sage (Brittany Underwood).

And for a while, it seems like everything’s just perfect. Sage and Donnie make for a really cute couple. Or at least they do until Donnie accidentally calls Sage by her sister’s name. Uh oh!

Meanwhile, Gavin keeps asking Alex to marry him and Alex keeps saying no. Alex says that she’s worried that, if she gets married, she’ll become complacent and boring and she’ll lose her edge as an artist. I have to say that this part of the movie was handled very well. Alex and Gavin seemed like a “real” couple and Haylie did a good job capturing all of Alex’s fears about commitment. I could relate to Alex and, as a result, I was more emotionally invested in her story than I am in the typical Lifetime movie.

Anyway, Gavin refuses to give up. He keeps asking her to marry him and when Alex finally says yes, everyone’s overjoyed. Except for Donnie…

And why should Donnie care? It all goes back to something that happened years ago. Donnie is not as much of a stranger as everyone initially thinks that he is…

The Bachelor Next Door was actually pretty good. I’ve gotten to the point where I really look forward to these Haylie-Duff-In-Danger Lifetime films. Haylie always does a really good job in these movies and, in The Bachelor Next Door, she ably supported by Michael Welch, Steve Bruns, and Brittany Underwood. The Bachelor Next Door has suspense, flashbacks, a great ending, and two great houses. What more could you ask for?

Film Review: Boy Meets Girl (2014, dir. Eric Schaeffer)

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Ricky (Michelle Hendley)

This movie popped up on my radar earlier this year and I made the mistake of thinking they had hired a genetic girl (GG) to play the role of the trans woman named Ricky. I was informed that they had actually gotten the real deal. That’s always nice. I don’t mind when it’s a cisgender man because we call that acting. However, when it’s a GG, it’s kind of the transgender equivalent of blackface. Just without malicious intent.

Now the movie is on Netflix, both DVD and streaming, so I took a look. I had heard that it was a romantic comedy type movie and that was all I knew. The movie is just that. It’s a familiar formula that we’ve all seen before. Two friends who should be lovers, but don’t realize it till one of them has a failed relationship with someone else. The difference is that the girl is transgender and the failed relationship is with another girl.

A girl named Francesca comes in to a coffee shop and makes the worst faux pas ever. She thinks she’s ordering at Starbucks.

Francesca (Alexandra Turshen)

This Isn’t Starbucks

Ricky’s friend Robby, played by Michael Welch, can see the attraction a mile away. Of course, we can see that Robby should be with Ricky a mile away.

The two start hanging out together and Ricky tells her she’s trans. Francesca doesn’t really care. Francesca is engaged to a soldier in Afghanistan but despite this fact, the two form a sexual relationship.

While all this is going on, we keep cutting back to a video Ricky made as a kid about being trans and how that affected her relationship with her mother who is long gone. We also get a great flashback to when she, Robby, and some friends were surprised by a flasher as kids during Halloween.

Trick or Treat? Trick!

There honestly isn’t a whole lot to say about the story that wouldn’t be just telling you the whole plot. The only things that remain are the transgender issues. For some bizarre reason the four reviews in the Metascore section of IMDb are divided heavily across gender lines. The male ones are 90 and 100, but the two female one’s are 50’s. Maybe it’s just the scoring of their reviews that’s screwy. Reading the extracts of their reviews, the guys seen to be seeing more than there is and the girls seem to let the problems cloud their judgement. Let’s take a quick look at the big positive and the big negative.

The big positive is normalcy. I haven’t seen a whole lot of transgender movies, but when I do, they tend to be tragedy (Boys Don’t Cry), I’m artsy and tackled a difficult topic so please give me awards (Laurence Anyways), documentaries (Red Without Blue and Mr. Angel), or a movie like Tomboy and Ma Vie En Rose. This is just a romantic comedy that happens to have a transgender character in it. It’s important that more films that bring being transgender into the mainstream get made. I’ll see The Danish Girl, but I’d like 10 Boy Meets Girl to be made for every movie like Beautiful Boxer.

The big negative is education. It’s 2015 and even an LGBTIQ positive documentary from 2013 (Camp Beaverton: Meet The Beavers) used the word transgendered. We live in a world where people are still ignorant enough that explaining is kind of necessary. It does detract from the characters and story. I wish that Ricky’s YouTube channel could have been something other than fashion (female stereotype), but I also understand why she absolutely couldn’t be a gamer. Putting aside copyright issues, that is still such a strong male stereotype that it would have sent an unintended message of a boy who is a female impersonator rather than the real deal. I wish director Eric Schaeffer could have taken a leap of faith in these areas like he did by having her with both a girl and a boy sexually, but I understand why he didn’t. Still, she could have done cooking.

I certainly don’t speak for the transgender community. I speak for myself. I would say check it out. It’s not going to make any lists of the best movies of 2014/2015, but it’s a good start.

Ricky and Robby

Note: When the letter comes, and you will know it when you see it, pause the movie, since it goes away quickly, and actually read it. It’s a humorous goof the movie made.