Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #32: His Double Life (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on July 11, 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 the end of July 11th! Will she make it!? Keep visiting the site to find out!)

(MINOR SPOILERS)

The 32nd film on my DVR was His Double Life, which I recorded off of the Lifetime Movie Network on June 12th.

His Double Life has a plot that will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a Lifetime film. Scarlett (Cristine Prosperi) is still recovering from the trauma of her father’s death in a traffic accident. It doesn’t help that, five years later, her mother, Linda (Emmanuelle Vaugier), has married her father’s former business partner, Greg (Brian Krause). Scarlett doesn’t trust Greg. Admittedly some of that is because she resents Greg trying to take the place of her father but, at the same time, there is definitely something off about Greg. He tries too hard. He never seems to be sincere when he’s being friendly. He practically oozes sleaze.

And yet, somehow, Scarlett seems to be the only person who has any suspicions about Greg. This is a common theme in Lifetime films. Even when someone is obviously up to no good, only one person ever seems to notice. Everyone else just makes excuses for Greg’s behavior. And you know what? That’s actually a lot more plausible than a lot of critics are willing to admit. No one ever wants to admit that their neighbor might be a serial killer.

Or a spy.

Anyway, Scarlett thinks that there’s something wrong with Greg. So, while visiting home from college, Scarlett decides to follow Greg around. She sees Greg with another woman and is convinced that she caught him cheating. However, the next day, the woman turns up dead!

Is Greg a murderer?

Or is he a spy?

You’ll have to watch the movie to find out!

(He’s both.)

His Double Life is an entertaining Lifetime film, with all that implies. However, there are two things that make this Lifetime film especially memorable.

First off, the film ends with a title card that informs us that, ever since the end of the Cold War, the number of Russian spies in the United States has actually increased. “They’re your neighbors. Your friends. YOUR HUSBANDS!” Seriously, it was so melodramatic and silly (and intentionally so, I like to believe) that I couldn’t help but love it.

Add to that, His Double Life continues the trend of former Degrassi cast members showing up in Lifetime movies. Cristine Prosperi is well-remembered for playing, over the course of three seasons, the endearingly quirky Imogen on Degrassi. Scarlett is a bit more conventional than Imogen but Prosperi still does a great job playing her. For that matter, Brian Krause also does a good job as the menacing Greg.

Enjoy His Double Life! Just remember that the person you watch it with could easily be a Russian spy…

2015 in Review: The Best of SyFy

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here we are! It’s the first week of January, 2016 and that means that it is time for me to start listing my favorite movies, books, songs, and TV shows of the previous year! Let’s start things off by taking a look at the best that the SyFy network had to offer in 2015!

Below, you will find my nominees for the best SyFy films and performances of the previous year. The winners are starred and in bold. As you’ll quickly notice, it was a good year for films about sharks. Especially films about zombie sharks!

Best Picture
Lavalantula, produced by Anthony Frankhauser
Night of the Wild, produced by David Michael Latt
Ominous, produced by Peter Sullivan
Sharknado 3, produced by David Michael Latt.
They Found Hell, produced by Anthony Frankhauser
*Zombie Shark, produced by Sam Claitor and Eric Davies.*

Best Director
Nick Lyon for They Found Hell
Mike Mendez for Lavalantula
Eric Red for Night of the Wild
*Misty Talley for Zombie Shark*

Best Actor
*Steve Guttenberg in Lavalantula*
Jason London in Zombie Shark
Barry Watson in Ominous
Ian Ziering in Sharknado 3

Best Actress
Illeana Douglas in Mega Shark vs. Kolossus
Sarah Dugdale in The Hollow
Alexis Peterman in Roboshark
*Cassie Steele in Zombie Shark*

Best Supporting Actor
Tony Almont in Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf
*Robert Englund in Lake Placid vs. Anaconda*
David Hasselhoff in Sharknado 3
Roger J. Timber in Zombie Shark

Best Supporting Actress
Becky Andrews in Zombie Shark
Laura Cayouette in Zombie Shark
*Catherine Oxenberg in Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf*
Annabel Wright in Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

Best Screenplay
*Lavalantula, written by Mike Mendez, Neil Elman and Ashley O’Neil*
Roboshark, written by Jeffrey Lando and Phillip Roth
Sharknado 3, written by Thunder Levin
Zombie Shark, written by Greg Mitchell

Best Cinematography
Lavalantula, Richard J. Vialet.
Ominous, Stuart Brereton.
They Found Hell, Richard J. Vialet.
*Zombie Shark, Matt S. Bell.*

Best Costume Design
Mega Shark vs. Kolossus
Ominous, Darragh Marmorstein.
*They Found Hell, Irina Kotcheva*
Zombie Shark, Kellye Bond

Best Editing
Lavalantula, Robert Dias and Mike Mendez.
Sharknado 3, Christopher Roth.
They Found Hell, Don Money.
*Zombie Shark, Misty Talley.*

Best Makeup
The Hollow, Joanne Kinchella
*Lake Placid vs. Anaconda, Desislava Alexieva, Ralitsa Roth, Atanas Temnilov*
Ominous
They Found Hell

Best Score
Lavalantula, Chris Ridenhour.
Mega Shark vs. Kolossus, Chris Cano and Chris Ridenhour.
*Roboshark, Claude Foisy*
Sharknado 3, Chris Ridenhour and Chris Cano.

Best Production Design
Lake Placid vs. Anaconda, Borislav Michailovski
*Mega Shark vs. Kolossus, Fernando Valdes*
Ominous, Stephen Hass.
They Found Hell

Best Sound
The Hollow
Night of the Wild
*Sharknado 3*
Zombie Shark

Best Visual Effects
Lavalantula
Roboshark
*Sharknado 3*
Zombie Shark

Congratulations to all the winners! Thank you for keeping us entertained in 2015!

Check out last year’s winners by clicking here! And 2013’s winners by clicking here!

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the best from Lifetime!

Previous Entries In The Best of 2015:

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Flight Before Christmas (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After watching The Spirit of Christmas, it time to continue cleaning out the DVR by watching The Flight Before Christmas. The Flight Before Christmas originally aired on December 5th on the Lifetime network. I was at a Christmas party and I totally missed it.

The Flight Before Christmas is perhaps the epitome of your typical Lifetime holiday movie. Stephanie (Mayim Bialik) has never had much luck in love but things are finally starting to look up! She is planning on moving in with her boyfriend and she has already called her mother and let her know that she won’t be home for Christmas this year. But then Stephanie’s boyfriend shows up and says that he’s changed his mind. Not only will they not be moving in together but he wants to break up as well.

That’s it! Stephanie decides. No more love, no more romance, no more risk of heart-break! And, since she’s not going to be having hot, just-moved-in-together-sex this holiday season, she might as well just go back home to Connecticut. She rushes to the airport and manages to get tickets on a flight back home. Also, at the airport, she meets a jolly fat man with a twinkle in his eye. His name is Noel Nichols (and is played by Bill Murray’s older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray) and … well, if you can’t guess what’s going on with Noel Nichols then you really haven’t seen that many Christmas movies.

Meanwhile, Michael Nolan (Ryan McPartin) is on the same flight as Stephanie. Originally, he had seats in first class but, acting out of holiday generosity, he suddenly decides to switch seats with Noel Nichols! (Are you sensing a pattern here?) Michael ends up sitting right next to Stephanie.

Well, immediately, Michael and Stephanie don’t get along and we all know that means that they’re destined to fall in love. However, Michael is flying to Boston so that he can ask his girlfriend, Courtney (Trilby Glover), to marry him. No, Michael, she’s not right for you!

Fortunately, the plane runs into turbulence and is forced to land at the most romantic place on Earth … Bozeman, Montana. Seeing as how they’re going to be stranded for a day or two, Stephanie finds a room at a local Bed and Breakfast. She manages to get the last available room and then, despite claiming not to like him that much, she invites Michael to share the room with her…

Okay, so you’ve read the plot and you already know what’s going to happen. There’s nothing surprising about The Flight Before Christmas but then again, holiday movies aren’t supposed to be surprising. They’re light-hearted and somewhat silly and hopefully, you’ll feel good after you watch one. The Flight Before Christmas is a sweet film that, for me, didn’t quite work. Try as I might, I simply could not imagine Michael and Stephanie as a couple. However, I did think that Brian Doyle-Murray did a great job as Noel Nichols. If I ever meet Santa, I hope he’s just like Brian Doyle-Murray,

(Incidentally, this film ended with a dedication to Mayim Bialik’s father, Barry, who passed away earlier this year. It was a sweetly sincere moment.)

Hallmark Review: 12 Gifts Of Christmas (2015, dir. Peter Sullivan)

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Wow! It’s been a little over a week since I subjected myself to a Hallmark movie. Well, no time to discuss that because somebody finally got the message there.

Do you see what makes me so happy? Look here.

Yes, the screens are inconsistent, but they actually thought to do something to hide the Canadian cellphone provider’s name! Finally! All the screens I saw either fudged it or switched the phone into airplane mode. I’m just so happy because so many of these movies throw stock footage and all sorts of things in to totally make it look like the United States only to show a cellphone screen that says Rodgers or Fido. That’s not to say this movie doesn’t have goofs, cause it does, but it’s refreshing to not see this goof repeated.

That’s our girl Anna Parisi played by Katrina Law. She’s an artist who can’t find anyone to really give her a break in the business.

That’s our guy Marc Rehnquist played by Aaron O’Connell. And ah…

rest in peace red bluetooth headset from How To Fall In Love.

Oh, and let’s take another look at Anna cause…

while I know she doesn’t wear that triangle necklace in every scene of this movie till she gets a new necklace from him, it sure felt like it. I’m just going to assume that the Satanists from Crackdown Mission (1988) were involved here somehow.

That, and now that I’ve seen 8 of his 9 movies, I am a believer that Pierre Kirby should be spliced into every movie.

Okay, they meet at a bakery briefly and she gives him some tips on ordering off the menu cupcakes. Then we find out that he works at an advertising firm. Lot of stuff goes on in that office of his. At one point he gets up and buttons his jacket, only to sit down again, then it cuts, and it’s unbuttoned again. His office also goes from having one monitor to having two. Don’t know what that’s all about. But I do know that he really shouldn’t be worried about hiring her as a personal shopper because clearly…

these enormous Christmas lights are out to destroy New York City. He hires her as a personal shopper after she uses Thurbble to look up what a personal shopper is and put herself out there via a business card at the bakery.

Must say this is a big step up from the screens in Strawberry Summer. However, I love that apparently personal shoppers in the United States typically only have clients from Miami. Otherwise, they normally work for people from Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia.

Okay, I could keep making jokes cause there isn’t much to talk about here, so let’s just cut through this thing. He hires her as a personal shopper because he’s too busy to buy gifts for his friends. After she does get a gift for a friend of his that he didn’t ask her to, but his friend loves, he starts to give her free reign. That plot really doesn’t play into this much. It’s just a foot in the door for them to spend the rest of the film together. Well, that is till he uses a special painting she made in order to sell his ad campaign. She overreacts, comes to her senses, and they live happily ever after! Well, there is this at the end.

That’s supposed to have been painted by Anna. Am I the only one who looks at that and thinks they took a picture, passed it through a Photoshop filter, and then had it printed onto a canvas?

Is it worth seeing?

Well, Candace Cameron Bure seemed to like it when the credits started, but I didn’t bring up Crackdown Mission and Pierre Kirby simply as a joke. Most of the Pierre Kirby movies were made by a director named Godfrey Ho. He would take old, unfinished, or unreleased movies from Asia, then shoot a little footage with caucasian actors. Afterwards, he would clumsily splice the footage together to make a new movie. One of these is a movie called Thunder Of Gigantic Serpent (1988). The original Taiwanese movie was called King Of Snake (1984). I’ve seen both of them. King Of Snake is a generic Japanese style monster movie. It needed the addition of a Pierre Kirby to make it memorable and give it some life. That’s this movie. It needed the Hallmark equivalent. By that I mean an actor like Kavan Smith or Kellie Martin. Either one of them would have spiced this otherwise perfectly fine, but dull movie up. It’s nothing to seek out, but it’s not one to avoid either. Plus, it’s got that unintentionally funny factor going for it.

Adventures in Cleaning Out The DVR: Ominous (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I finished writing my review of Lavalantula, it was time to bitch about my sprained foot to anyone who would listen. After that, it was time to have dinner and then it was time to lay on the couch and try to get some rest and finally, after all that, I got back to the task of cleaning out my DVR. The film that I ended up watching was Ominous, a SyFy film which was originally broadcast on October 10th.

Ominous opens with recovering alcoholic Michael Young (played by Barry Watson) putting his car into reverse and promptly running over his six year-old son, Jacob (Gavin Lewis). Michael and his wife, Rachel (Esme Bianco), rush Jacob to the hospital but it’s too late. Jacob dies. Later, as they’re driving back from the funeral, Rachel demands to know if Michael was drunk when he ran over Jacob. Michael says that he wasn’t drinking and that it was just an accident and then, as if to prove that he really is the worst driver in the world, Michael promptly runs over a dog.

When they arrive home, a man is waiting for them. Known only as The Stranger (and played, in properly sinister style, by Mark Lindsay Chapman), the man says that he can bring Jacob back to life. All Michael and Rachel have to do is dig up their son and bring his body back to the house. And then, to prove his point, the Stranger brings the dog back to life.

So, of course, Michael and Rachel go out to the cemetery and dig up Jacob. They bring him back to the house. The next morning, Jacob is suddenly alive. Yay! Of course, Jacob promptly re-kills the dog, which is our first clue that Jacob is not quite himself.

We then jump forward a few months. The Youngs have moved to a new town and appear to be living as normal a life as you can when your six year-old son is demon-possessed hellspawn. (Actually, he’s the Antichrist and don’t even pretend like that was a spoiler.) Michael fears his son, especially after Jacob has a seizure in church and causes a priest to burst into flames. Rachel continues to make excuses for her son, even when he does stuff like summon a sudden dust storm that manages to kill everyone on a playground.

There’s a scene early on in the film in which Jacob asks his mother if they can get a cat.

“I don’t think so,” Rachel replies, “Daddy’s allergic.”

“What about when Daddy’s dead?” Jacob cheerfully asks.

That scene pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Ominous. This is an unapologetically over-the-top demon child film, one that doesn’t make much sense but which is never boring. It’s easy to recognize which films are being ripped off — The Omen, The Visitor, The Birds — but the film is so shameless in its thievery that it’s easy to be forgiving. Is Ominous a rip-off or an homage? How about both?

Barry Watson actually does a pretty good job as a recovering alcoholic and his performance is reminiscent of some of Patrick Muldoon’s better work. Mark Lindsay Chapman is properly intimidating as the Stranger. Full of gore, melodrama, metaphysical posturing, and children with creepy demon eyes, Ominous is more entertaining than you might expect.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #124: Kidnapped: The Hannah Anderson Story (dir by Peter Sullivan)

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime original movie, Kidnapped: The Hannah Anderson Story!

Why Was I Watching It?

The most obvious answer is because it was on Lifetime. As y’all know, I love Lifetime movies, especially when they’re based on a “true” crime story.

As well, I am among those who, since 2013, have been fascinated and frustrated with the twists and turns of the Hannah Anderson kidnapping case. Hannah was a 16 year-old cheerleader who was kidnapped by a family friend, James DiMaggio. DiMaggio also murdered Hannah’s mother and younger brother. When Hannah was finally found and rescued by the FBI, many questioned whether Hannah had been DiMaggio’s victim or his accomplice.

I can still remember when questions were first raised over Hannah’s role in DiMaggio’s crimes. It seemed like everyone had an opinion. There were some days when I felt like Hannah had to be innocent and then there were other days when I thought the exact opposite. Nearly two years later and I still go back-and-forth. That’s the main reason I wanted to see Kidnapped. I wanted to see whether this would be the film that would finally convince me one way or the other.

What Was It About?

The film begins with the FBI rescuing 16 year-old kidnapping victim Hannah Anderson (Jessica Amlee) and killing her kidnapper, Jim DiMaggio (Scott Patterson). A traumatized Hannah returns home but soon discovers that some, in the media, are claiming that she collaborated with Jim to murder her mother and younger brother. Hannah goes on a talk show to tell her side of the story.

What Worked?

Scott Patterson and Jessica Amlee gave good performances as Jim and Hannah. Amlee was sympathetic throughout. Patterson was properly creepy.

What Did Not Work?

The main reason that this case captured everyone’s imagination was because of the ambiguity of it all. Nobody was quite sure how they felt about Hannah Anderson and, especially in the early days of the investigation, Hannah’s behavior gave a lot of people reason to feel uneasy about her story. And while that’s probably not fair (who knows how any of us would act in a similar situation), it’s still the reason why people continue to debate the specifics of the Hannah Anderson kidnapping to this day.

Unfortunately, none of that ambiguity was present in the film. The only voice heard is Hannah’s and those who had doubts about Hannah’s story are dismissed as being trolls and bullies. In the process, a multi-layered mystery is reduced to just being the latest anti-bullying PSA. Kidnapped: The Hannah Anderson Story had all the elements necessary to be a truly intriguing and potentially unsettling film but, in the end, it’s just a standard Lifetime movie.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

Considering the subject matter, I’d just as soon say that there were no “Oh my God! Just like me!” moments. However, that’s not quite true. There were times that I cringed at the flashbacks to Hannah and Jim’s relationship before the kidnapping, because, when I was that age, I did have some similar relationships that, in retrospect, were more than a little bit creepy. In particular, the scene where 40ish Jim says that he wishes he could “date” the 16 year-old Hannah brought back some less than fond memories.

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate the power of narrative ambiguity.