Check Out Tom Holland and A Lot Of Snow in The Trailer For Edge of Winter

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, Tom Holland — who was definitely one of the high points of Captain America: Civil War — is destined to become a star next year when the new Spider-Man film is released. However, before Holland becomes forever associated with the role previously played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, you can catch him in Edge of Winter!

This thriller is due to be released on August 12th and, considering that it is apparently never going to snow in Texas again, I will definitely see it just for the chance to be reminded of what cold weather is like!

Check out the trailer below:

Frat Bros, Nick Jonas, and James Franco Go Crazy In The Trailer For Goat!

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s FRAT BROS GONE CRAZY! Check out the trailer for the new film, Goat. Not only does it feature Nick Jonas-inspired mayhem but it also has James Franco!

For the record, Goat is not meant to be a Neighbors-style comedy. According to most of the early reviews that I’ve read, it’s actually a pretty dark look at toxic masculinity. While I’m usually not that interested in films about Bros Gone Wild, I will definitely watch it just to see what strange spin James Franco brings to his latest role.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #20: I Didn’t Kill My Sister (dir by Jason Bourque)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June. She’s trying to get it all done by July 10th! Will she make it!? Keep visiting the site to find out!)

“And now, for tonight’s top story, we go to Lois Summer, on assignment in Richardson, Texas.”

“Thank you, Mason. For the past week and a half, one red-haired film critic has been attempting what some people would call the impossible. Lisa Marie Bowman is trying to clean out her DVR by watching the 40 movies that she recorded between March and June. She just finished rewatching the 20th film on her DVR, I Didn’t Kill My Sister.”

“Now, Lois, for our viewers who may not know, what exactly is a DVR?”

“Get with the times, Mason. According to Ms. Bowman, she watched I Didn’t Kill My Sister when it originally premiered on Lifetime. The date was May 14th and she says that she specifically watched the film with her sister, Erin. Ms. Bowman says that both she and her sister enjoyed the film the first that they watched it.”

“Did she say how she felt about the film the second time she saw it…?”

“Dammit, I’m getting there, Mason. Ms. Bowman says that I Didn’t Kill My Sister was just as enjoyable the second time that she watched it. In fact, she said that it is a very entertaining murder mystery, one that almost feels like an old-fashioned whodunit. She described the film as being stylish without being gaudy and melodramatic in the best possible way.”

“Is there really a good way to be melodramatic?”

“According to Ms. Bowman, there is. For the rest of her review, we now go directly to Lisa Marie Bowman…”

Hi, everyone! Lisa here. Anyway, as Lois was just saying, I enjoyed I Didn’t Kill My Sister both times that I watched it. It’s a fun Lifetime murder mystery, one of those things that works best when you just relax, sit back, and let yourself be entertained. If you like Lifetime movies, you’ll like this one!

The film tells the story of two sisters. Carmen Pearson (Gina Holden) is a publicly beloved and privately loathed local celebrity. She co-anchors City View with her husband, Mason (Chris William Martin). She has a beautiful house, a nice pool, and great hair. She also has a rebellious teenage daughter (Sarah Desjardins) and a sister named Heather (Nicholle Tom). Heather would love to have Carmen’s life but, instead, she’s stuck working as her sister’s private assistant.

(One of the best things about the film is the way that it contrasts Carmen’s mansion — complete with luxurious pool — with Heather’s cluttered, one-story house.)

However, Carmen’s life is not perfect. She’s in the middle of a nasty divorce and Mason even seems to be flirting with her sister. When her daughter screams, “I HATE YOU!!!,” she sounds like she actually means it. And, of course, there’s the ambitious reporter (Dominika Jullet) who wants her job and the lawyer (Ona Grauer) who may have an agenda of her own. When Carmen is discovered floating face down in her pool, everyone’s a suspect!

Including Heather!

Heather knows she’s innocent but the detective (Sharon Taylor) in charge of the case seems to feel otherwise. Can Heather solve her sister’s murder before she ends up getting arrested!?

I Didn’t Kill My Sister is a fun, little whodunit. Gina Holden has a lot of fun being bitchy during the first 15 minutes of the film and Chris William Martin is brilliantly sleazy in the role of Mason. Watch it the next time that it’s on and see if you can solve the mystery before Heather does!

Back to you, Lois.

“Back to you, Mason.”

“Thank you, Lois. How much fun is a barrel of monkeys? That’s what a truck driver discovered today while making a delivery to the San Diego Zoo. That story and Newy Scruggs with sports, next…”

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #19: Jack of the Red Hearts (dir by Janet Grillo)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 19th film on my DVR was Jack of The Red Hearts, which I recorded off of the Lifetime Movie Network on April 27th.

I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised as I watched Jack of the Red Hearts. While it seemed to have a typical Lifetime premise — a runaway fakes her identity and moves in with a troubled family — it didn’t feel like a typical Lifetime film. For one thing, the cast was made up of actors like Soul Surfer‘s AnnaSophia Robb, The Bling Ring‘s Israel Broussard, and the X-Men‘s Famke Janssen. None of these people are exactly big stars but they’re still not Lifetime regulars. While the premise may have been Lifetime-friendly, the portrayal of an 11 year-old autistic girl (played by Taylor Richardson) definitely seemed a bit more realistic than one would usually expect from a made-for-TV movie. Finally, there were more than a few occasions when it was obvious that some of the dialogue had been overdubbed, in order to make the language more appropriate for television.

So, I did some research and I discovered that Jack of the Red Hearts was not originally made for Lifetime. Instead, it’s an indie film that was directed by Janet Grillo and written by Jennifer Deaton, both of whom drew on their own experiences of raising an autistic child. Jack of the Red Hearts did the festival circuit in 2015 and even got a very limited theatrical release back in February.

Jack of the Red Hearts tells the story of Jack (AnnaSophia Robb), an 18 year-old high school drop out who is on probation. When we first meet Jack, she’s helping her younger sister, Coke (Sophia Anna Caruso), break out of foster care. AnnaSophia and Sophia Anna are both totally believable as sisters and their scenes together are so believable that you even forgive the fact that they’re named Jack and Coke. Jack wants to take care of her sister but she’s broke and she’s homeless. In order to rescue Coke from the foster home, Jack has to get a job and enough money to rent an apartment.

And what better way to get a job than by stealing someone else’s identity! After Jack sees some flyers asking “Are you good with children?,” she shows up at the home of Kay (Famke Janssen) and Mark (Scott Cohen). Jack claims that her name is Donna and that she’s the nanny that Kay previously hired over the telephone. Despite having neither training nor a high school degree, Jack is soon taking care of autistic Glory (Taylor Richardson).

Glory is nonverbal and sometimes violent and her family, while loving, struggles to adjust to not only her behavior but also their inability to understand what the world is like for her. (The film occasionally tries to show us the world through Glory’s eyes and it works a lot better than you might expect.) When Jack initially reacts to Glory’s behavior by snapping at her and occasionally getting rough (at one point, she slaps away Glory’s hand when Glory suddenly tries to grab food off her plate), you wince but at the same time, you understand Jack’s frustration. Richardson, who is not autistic in real life, fully commits herself to the role and the film deserves a lot of credit for not sentimentalizing her condition or its effect on her family. Unlike most Lifetime films, this one takes place in a frequently cluttered and chaotic house and Kay is portrayed as literally being on the verge of a neurotic meltdown.

Though it takes a while, Jack starts to care about Glory and finally, she even starts to make some progress with Glory. And again, it should be pointed out that the film does not portray Jack as a miracle worker, though Jack does watch The Miracle Worker on television at one point. The progress is slow but, the film says, it is progress and that’s the important thing. Jack also develops an attraction to Glory’s brother, Robert (Israel Broussard). Robert, however, is the only member of the family to suspect that Jack may not be telling the truth about who she is…

Because Jack of the Red Hearts was on the Lifetime Movie Network, I kept waiting for the scene in which Jack would either seduce Kay’s husband or try to kidnap Glory. Thankfully, that scene never came, though the film still has its share of melodramatic moments. Jack of the Red Hearts is, in many ways, a predictable film but it’s also an achingly sincere film and Robb, Broussard, Janssen, and especially Taylor Richardson all give excellent and empathetic performances.

This is a sweetly well-intentioned and bravely unsentimental film and definitely one to keep an eye out for.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #18: House of Darkness (dir by Patrick DeLuca)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 18th film on the DVR was the Lifetime original movie, House of Darkness.

House of Darkness is a film that asks a question that I’m sure we have all asked ourselves at least once: “What if Lifetime made a horror film? What would that be like?”

Well, apparently, it would be like every single horror film that you’ve ever seen. There is not a single cliché that does not show up in House of Darkness. It starts out with the promise that we are about see a true story and hey, maybe it was! After all, the film reminded me of a lot of other horrors film — Amityville, Paranormal Activity, and others — that were supposedly based on true stories.

Kelly (Sara Fletcher) and Brian (Gunner Wright) are a married couple but they are also a Lifetime couple, which means that their marriage is in trouble! Brian is a carpenter who has a difficult time opening up emotionally. Kelly is a massage therapist, which Brian appears to think is the equivalent of working in a brothel. How bad is their marriage? When Brian sees Kelly wearing sexy lingerie in an effort to liven things up, he responds by going out to the garage.

Fortunately, Brian and Kelly have been seeing a marriage counselor. The counselor suggests that they both start keeping a video diary, which allows the film to occasionally so some found footage shots. (That’s the Paranormal Activity influence.) If the video diaries don’t help, maybe moving to a new house in San Francisco will do the trick!

And you know what? It’s a great house but the owners didn’t want much money for it. It’s almost as if they were trying to get rid of the house. I wonder what that could mean!

Anyway, Kelly and Brian’s daughter is soon wandering around, speaking in a demonic voice while giving everyone Hillary Clinton-style death glares, and encouraging her friends to wander into the basement. Meanwhile, Brian is acting even weirder and suddenly, it’s like he can’t go anywhere without bringing an axe with him!

And then there’s the neighbors. A sexy woman and a superhot man occasionally appear standing in front of the house across the road. The woman smiles at Brian, tempting him to … to do what? I guess that the idea here is to encourage Brian to start doing his Jack Nicholson impersonation but I wasn’t sure. I suspect, to a certain extent, that the ghosts and the evil spirits and whatever the Hell is in the house don’t really have any goals beyond doing the usual horror stuff. They probably said, “Look! A stationary camera! Let’s go knock shit around!”

Anyway, House of Darkness is pretty much just a festival of nonstop clichés and scenes lifted from other horror films. It’s never really scary, largely because it’s a made-for-TV movie and, since it’s Lifetime, you know that it’s not going to be disturbing or graphic like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. Without any intentional humor or unexpected scares, House of Darkness is largely forgettable.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #17: Dying To Be Loved (dir by Paul Shapiro)

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I finished up with The Cheerleader Murders, I rewatched Dying To Be Loved, which premiered on the Lifetime network on April 16th. Dying To Be Loved is also known as A Mother’s Suspicion. I’m really not sure which title I prefer. A Mother’s Suspicion is a little more accurate, as the film is about a mother who is very suspicious of her daughter’s new boyfriend. However, Dying To Be Loved has a little bit more of a snap to it, with the juxtaposition of death and love.

If I seem to be spending a bit too much time on the film’s title, that’s because I have a certain word count that I’m trying to meet but there’s really not that much to say about Dying To Be Loved. It’s a typical example of a genre familiar to all regular Lifetime viewers, the You Should Have Listened To Mom genre of film.

In this case, the mom is Jill Yates (Lindsay Hartley). Jill has a good career, a good house, a good boyfriend (played by Lifetime regular Dan Payne), and good hair. That’s really pretty much all you need to be a success in a Lifetime film. However, she also has an 18 year-old daughter, Emily (Paloma Kwiatkowski). Emily is away at college. She’s alone from home for the first time. She’s also bipolar and Jill fears that Emily is not taking her meds. Jill is even more worried when she meets Emily’s new boyfriend, Gary (Jedidiah Goodacre). Gary is rough and tough and has absolutely terrible table manners. Jill tells Emily that she can do better than Gary so, of course, Emily runs off on a cross-country trip with him.

Soon, Gary is murdering gas station attendants and ranting like a madman. Emily, who is not taking her medication (cue dramatic music), is convinced that she loves Gary. In fact, she is so in love with Gary that she apparently agrees to jump off a bridge with him.

Or does she? No bodies are recovered. Even though everyone tells Jill that she needs to move on, Jill is convinced that her daughter is still out there. With the help of a portly P.I. (Jay Bazeau) and an overly friendly small town cop (James Pizzinato), Jill sets out to find her daughter. One of these two men is connected to Gary. Which one? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out!

Anyway, this is pretty much a standard Lifetime film. Watching it, I couldn’t help but wish that it had been directed by someone like Fred Olen Ray. At the very least, Fred would have played up the film’s melodrama and would have been a bit less earnest in his approach. That said, Lindsay Hartley and Paloma Kwiatkowski are totally believable as mother and daughter. Kwiatkowski, in particular, deserves a lot of credit for giving a believable and multi-faceted performance as the unstable and desperately unhappy Emily. I winced a few times as I recognized bits of 16 year-old me in Emily’s actions. This may be a generic Lifetime film but Hartley and Kwiatkowski really put their hearts into their performances and, for that, they deserve a lot of credit!

(For those keeping count, that’s 17 reviews down and 23 more to go!)

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #16: The Cheerleader Murders (dir by David Jackson)

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 16th film on my DVR was The Cheerleader Murders and what can I say other than, “Yay!” No, no — it’s not that I dislike cheerleaders. While I did frequently turn down the chance to become a cheerleader while I was in high school, that was solely because my sister, our own Dazzling Erin, was already a cheerleader and I was going through one of my “I want to be known for being myself” phases. No, I was excited about rewatching The Cheerleader Murders because I remembered that this was one of the best films to ever premiere on Lifetime!

As I started to watch The Cheerleader Murders, I found myself wondering whether it would stand up to a second viewing.

Well, it more than stood up. If anything, The Cheerleader Murders is even better the second time around!

The Cheerleader Murders plays out like an odd combination of YA fiction and disturbing horror. The film opens with a few scenes of disaster and what’s interesting is that, while all of the scenes are tragic, they’re also darkly humorous. We see a car full of cheerleaders and jocks crash, killing everyone inside. We see the prom king and queen falling to their death while trying to get the perfect selfie. As these disasters play out, we hear our narrator, Ellie (Samantha Boscarino), explaining that her hometown is cursed. It’s all so cheerfully morbid that, from the minute it began, I was in love with this film.

What’s that? Oh, you don’t believe that Ellie and her town are cursed? Well, just consider this. When Ellie was thirteen, her older sister broke up with her boyfriend. So the boyfriend broke into the house, killed her sister, and then shot Ellie’s father as Ellie watched!

THAT’S A CURSE RIGHT THERE!

Jump forward three years later. Ellie is now a 16 year-old cheerleader. She’s popular and she’s also a good student. Though you have to wonder about the standards of her high school because she goes to one of those Lifetime high schools where no one ever has to actually go to class or anything like that. Instead, everyone hangs out at the lockers and gossips. Even better, if you do go to class, you can apparently just walk out whenever you want. This happens several times during this film and we never actually hear a teacher say anything like, “Wait! You can’t just stand up and walk out of class just because your friend is motioning to you from the hallway!”

Ellie has everything but she’s still convinced that she’s cursed. If she’s not cursed then how do you explain the mysterious disappearance of two her fellow cheerleaders? Admittedly, one of the cheerleaders is found rather quickly. Or, I should say, her bloody, severed foot is found rather quickly. Someone spots it off the side of the road. (The camera zooms in on the big toe so that we can see the heart that she painted on her the nail. That’s the type of cheerfully over-the-top film that The Cheerleader Murders is.) The other cheerleader eventually shows up in orange grove, being chased by a masked man with a huge knife.

Like any good YA heroine, Ellie is determined to solve the mystery. Fortunately, she has help. Her dead father shows up occasionally and offers up cryptic advice. Ellie also has frequent dreams, some of which are rather dark and disturbing by Lifetime standards.

The more that Ellie digs into the mystery, the more obvious it becomes that she knows absolutely no one who isn’t sleazy or insane. Who killed the cheerleaders? Was it the school weirdo or the two jealous nerds who are always gossiping about the dead? Maybe it was the coach, who was apparently having an affair with both a cheerleader and Ellie’s favorite teacher. Or perhaps that teacher got jealous and decided to seek revenge! And, come to think of it, Ellie’s boyfriend seems like he might have some issues too. And, of course, there’s Ellie. Who is to say that the curse hasn’t driven her insane? It’s hard not to notice that, whenever the killer strikes, Ellie is usually riding her bicycle right past the crime scene.

One of the more interesting things about the film is that no one else at the high school seems to be that upset over the dead cheerleaders. The school year goes on. The remaining cheerleaders continue to cheer at all the football games and, with the exception of Ellie, nobody even seems to shed a single tear over all the teenagers dying in town. Along with the ghosts and the nightmares and the constant shots of Ellie intensely riding her bicycle from crime scene to crime scene, all of this conspires to give The Cheerleader Murders an oddly surreal feel.

The Cheerleader Murders is one of my favorite Lifetime film because it literally has no boundaries. There is no moment too over-the-top that this film cannot find an excuse to include it. The acting is good, the horror (and there is horror) is effective, and the mystery is cheerfully ludicrous. Make sure you catch The Cheerleader Murders the next time it’s on Lifetime because seriously, this film is a classic!

(By the way, I made Erin watch The Cheerleader Murders with me when it originally aired. She said it was actually a pretty accurate portrayal of the life of a cheerleader, except for the murders.)

Scenes That I Love: The Frisbee Scene From Hard Ticket To Hawaii

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, since I’m off work for the week, I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse and I saw The Purge: Election Day.

The Alamo always shows old film clips and trailers before the main feature and seriously, it’s the best pre-show in town. That’s why you should always arrive 30 minutes before your film starts! Unfortunately, I was running late so I arrived with only five minutes to spare.

So, I only got to see one film clip before the movie but what a clip! I watched this clip and I laughed so hard that I knew that I simply had to share it with our readers here on the Shattered Lens. Here it is: the frisbee scene from Hard Ticket To Hawaii.

From now on, whenever a stranger yells out that I have a nice ass, I’m going to look over my shoulder at them, smile, and say, “So do you, pilgrim!”

(For the record, I have never seen Hard Ticket To Hawaii and I tracked down this scene by going to YouTube and doing a search for “frisbee scene.” That said, I have since learned that it’s an Andy Sidaris film and I’m pretty sure that Arleigh has mentioned being an Andy Sidaris fan.)

6 Patriotic Trailers

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi everyone!

Happy Independence Day and welcome to a special edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers!

In honor of this day, here are 6 trailers that are so patriotic, they’ll make our American readers reconsider their earlier decision to move to Canada!

1) Red Dawn (1984)

2) Invasion USA (1952)

3) Invasion USA (1985)

4) The Delta Force (1986)

5) American Anthem (1986)

6) The Green Berets (1968)

So, what does everyone think after watching these six trailers…

Oh, stop it.

(Just kidding — love you, Canada! Love you too, America!)

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #15: Stranger In The House (dir by Allan Harmon)

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 15th film on my DVR was Stranger In The House, which premiered on the Lifetime Movie Network on April 10th.

Stranger In The House opens with a stab at relevance by including news reports of Wall Street bailouts and footage of Occupy protesters running around in their Guy Fawkes masks. (Though I’m sure they would probably call them V For Vendetta masks.) I have to admit that, when I first saw that footage, I was worried. I didn’t know if I could particularly take a Lifetime version of The Big Short.

Fortunately, the rest of the film has nothing to do with any of that. Instead, it’s a rather enjoyable and somewhat over-the-top Lifetime melodrama, one that makes no pretense of providing anything other than wonderfully sordid entertainment.

Super-rich businessman Wayne (John Novak) has been crippled in a car crash and, now confined to a wheelchair, he goes out of his way to make everyone else miserable. He’s nearly impossible to live with and his daughter and chief caretaker, Jade (Emmanuelle Vaugier), desperately needs a vacation from him. On top of that, she’s just married the handsome but somewhat mysterious Marco (Matthew McCaull) and they want to take their honeymoon. So, jade hires a caretaker to look after Wayne while they’re gone.

At first, Wayne doesn’t much like his caretaker. Sure, Samantha (Jordana Largy) may be attractive and enthusiastic but she’s into stuff like yoga and Wayne’s too cantankerous for all that. However, we then get a five-minute montage in which we see Wayne slowly start to lower his defenses. Soon, he and Samantha are smiling and laughing and kissing. When Jade and Marco return, they are shocked by just how close Wayne and Samantha have become…

Then Wayne mentions that he and Samantha have gotten married and all Hell breaks loose.

Jade is convinced that Samantha only married Wayne for his money and she grows even more frustrated when Marco suggests that maybe she should give Samantha a chance. Wayne certainly appears to be happy and he’s even washing his hair again! But then one day, Wayne is found dead at the bottom of a cliff and it turns out that he’s left all of his money to Samantha!

Jade believes that Samantha murdered Wayne. It doesn’t help that Samantha isn’t acting like a grieving widow. Instead, she’s laughing and drinking and constantly complaining about having to wear black all the time. If that’s not strange enough, Samantha and Marco seem to have suddenly grown very close.

How close?

Close enough that they’re ducking into a bedrooms and broom closets so that they can make out…

And that all happens in the first forty minutes! Now, I’m not going to spoil the rest of the movie but I will say that this is one of those Lifetime movies where things just keep getting stranger and stranger. In fact, it’s almost ludicrous how melodramatic things get but that’s why it’s fun! This is one of those films that is so over-the-top and fun that you would have to be a real killjoy to complain about whether or not it actually makes any sense.

After all, logic really isn’t the point here. Stranger In The House is all about style and that’s something that it definitely has. This is a sleek, fun melodrama and one for which I would suggest keeping an eye out.