Tag Archives: review

Music Video of the Day: Do You? by Rebecca Black (2019, dir by Bia Jurema)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a music video out there for a song called “This is Thanksgiving.”  I was originally going to share it because it’s one of those videos that’s regularly cited as being one of the worst ever made.  However, I changed my mind because a lot of the comments that I saw underneath the video were extremely mean-spirited and seemed to be personally attacking the girl who sang the song, as if it was her fault that some creepy old man wrote a bad song and directed a crappy video.

Anyway, that got me thinking about Rebecca Black, who was the subject of a lot of unfair ridicule over Friday.  The good thing about Rebecca’s story, however, is that she didn’t give up and she’s continued to perform and most of her post-Friday stuff isn’t bad at all.

In fact, here’s the video for Do You?, performed by Rebecca Black.

Enjoy!

Lifetime Film Review: V.C. Andrews’ Pearl in the Mist (dir by David Bercovici-Artieda)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since I kind of enjoyed watching Ruby earlier today, I decided to watch the second film in Lifetime’s Landry family saga, V.C. Andrews’ Pearl In the Mist.

Pearl in the Mist picks up where the first film ended.  The year is 1962 and aspiring artist Ruby (Raechelle Banno) is living in New Orleans and still thinking about the life that she left behind in the Bayou.  Her father (Gil Bellows) is still married to her bitchy stepmother (Lauralee Bell).  Ruby’s twin sister, Giselle (Karina Banno), is still using a wheelchair as a result of a car accident and she’s still angry that Ruby stole away Giselle’s boyfriend, Beau (Ty Wood).  Ruby’s half-brother, Paul (Sam Duke), is still living in the Bayou and is still in love with Ruby, despite the fact that any physical relationship between them would be incestuous.

However, it’s time for Ruby and Giselle to get out of New Orleans.  They’ve been enrolled in a prestigious boarding school.  Giselle is not happy about having to leave home.  Ruby is excited because, goddammit, Ruby’s excited about everything.  At the boarding school, Ruby deals with all sorts of drama.  She befriends a girl who is passing as white.  She inspires a blind pianist.  She flirts with a hunky groundskeeper.  She continues to paint under the tutelage of Miss Stevens (Meaghan Hewitt McDonald).  She does all of this despite the fact that the school’s headmistress (Marilu Henner) hates her because Ruby is from the Bayou and no one trusts “swamp people.”  As the same time, Ruby has to deal with her wicked stepmother and her bitter sister.

I have to admit that, at first, I didn’t think I was going to like Pearl in the Mist, if just because Ruby herself was so perfect that she was kind of annoying.  She never had a bad thought.  She never said a bad word.  She was also so extremely naïve and so endlessly enthusiastic that I could understand why Giselle was so sick of having to deal with her.  Ruby’s innocence made sense in the first film, because Ruby was still adjusting to life in the city.  But, by the time Pearl in the Mist rolls around, there’s really no excuse for Ruby to be so clueless about …. well, everything.

Fortunately, about halfway through, the film started to get interesting.  Bizarre incidents started to pile up.  Characters started to snap at each other in dialogue that was so overwritten and pulpy that it was kind of impossible not to love the sound of it.  The film embraced the melodrama, as I like to say.  It all eventually led to a plot twist involving Giselle that was so insane and so out there that it redeemed the entire film.  Karina Banno appeared to be having a lot of fun being bad as Giselle and it was fun to watch her.  If you’re going to be in a film like this, you always want to play the bad girl.  They always get the best lines.

In the end, Pearl in the Mist was so over-the-top and cheerfully silly that I couldn’t help but enjoy it.  All trips to the Bayou should be as fun.

Lifetime Film Review: V.C. Andrews’ Ruby (dir by Gail Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This time is the 1950s and the place is Louisiana.  Ruby Landry (Raechelle Banno) is a teenage girl who lives in a shack out on the Bayou.  She’s never known her mother.  She’s never known her father.  She does know her Grandmere, Catherine (Naomi Judd), who is a Bayou witch.  

Ruby might not know much but she knows how to paint.  One day, the owner of a New Orleans art gallery just happened to be driving by when he spots Catherine selling Ruby’s paintings on the side of the road.  He’s impressed, even though the paintings aren’t really that impressive.  He buys the paintings and then hangs them in his gallery.  Ruby can’t wait until she graduates high school so that she can move to New Orleans with her boyfriend, Paul Tate (Sam Duke).  Except … uh-oh!  Grandmere explains to Ruby that Paul is actually her half-brother so no, they can’t run off together.  That’s incest and that might be okay for the Ozarks but folks in the Bayous got standards.

As long as secrets are being shared, Grandmere also explains that Ruby’s father is a wealthy man named Pierre Dumas (Gil Bellow) and that Ruby actually has a twin sister, who we later learn is named Gisselle (and who is played by Karina Banno, the twin sister of Raechelle Banno).  Having dropped a lot of information on Ruby, Grandmere promptly dies.

Ruby inherits Grandmere’s shack and she still has the money that she made off of her paintings, which means that Ruby is now one of the richest people in the Bayou.  However, her alcoholic grandfather still wants to sell her to a local businessman so Ruby flees the Bayous, heads to New Orleans, and decides to live with Pierre!

Pierre is ecstatic to discover that he has another daughter.  Pierre’s wife (Lauralee Bell) is a bit less excited about it.  And Gisselle claims that she could hardly care less about her Bayou sister.  In fact, it seems like Ruby’s only ally is the housekeeper who, it turns out, knows all of the best voodoo priestesses in New Orleans….

Now, believe it or not, all of that happens within the first 30 minutes of Ruby.  Ruby is not a boring film.  In fact, one could claim that there’s almost too much going on.  No sooner has Ruby moved into the house than she’s hearing mysterious weeping coming from one of the bedrooms.  No sooner has Ruby started high school in New Orleans than she’s being set up for humiliation by her twin sister.  As soon as Ruby draws one of her classmates naked, you know that she’s going to end up in an asylum where a doctor will demand to know if she’s familiar with the term nymphomania.  Ruby is a big and messy film, one that embraces the melodrama with so much enthusiasm that it’s easy to overlook that the film really doesn’t make much sense and that a lot of the plot is dependent upon people not being particularly smart.

Ruby is one of the many recent Lifetime films to be adapted from a V.C. Andrews novel.  Now, of course, V.C. Andrews didn’t have anything to do with writing Ruby.  She died long before the book was written.  Instead, Ruby was written by ghost writer, pretending to be Andrews.  The plot ticks off all of the usual V.C. Andrews tropes with such precision that it’s hard not to be both impressed and amused.  White trash?  Yep.  Incest?  Yep.  Rich relatives?  Yep.  More incest?  Yep.  Big house?  Yep.  Twins?  Yep.  If you made use of a random V.C. Andrews plot generation, it would probably give you something similar to Ruby.

Ruby is silly fun.  It doesn’t reach the heights of Flowers in the Attic films but it’s still better than the films that Lifetime made about the Casteel family.  It was also the first of four films about Ruby and her family.  I’ve got the other three on the DVR and I’ll be watching and hopefully reviewing them before the month ends.

Lifetime Film Review: A Professor’s Vengeance (dir by Danny J. Boyle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When aspiring writer Nicole Atkins (Lindsey Dresbach) returns to graduate school, she assumes that she’ll take a few creative writing courses and that will be it.  Unfortunately, her creative writing professor has come down with a case of mono and his replacement is Daniel Hudson (Ross Jirgl), an arrogant academic with whom Nicole previously had a torrid affair.  At time, of course, Nicole didn’t know that Daniel was married to a veterinarian named Valerie (Crystal Day).

It’s an awkward situation but Nicole hopes that her previous relationship with Daniel won’t be a factor in the grades that he gives her.  Daniel, meanwhile, seems to be perturbed by the fact that Nicole is getting close to another student, Brandon (Byran Bachman).  When one of Nicole’s papers gets an F, Daniel explains that he actually gave her an A.  Maybe, Daniel suggests, Brandon hacked into the system and changed her grade, all in an effort to make Daniel look bad.

Meanwhile, students are dying.  The police think that the deaths are due to accidental drug overdoses but the viewer knows that there’s a murderer stalking the campus and anyone who has ever had any sort of relationship with Daniel is a potential target!

If this was one of Lifetime’s “Wrong” films, A Professor’s Vengeance would have concluded with Vivica A. Fox showing up at the end and saying, “Looks like you slept with the Wrong Professor” or “You picked the Wrong Major.”  However, it’s not a part of the Wrong series, even if it does have a plot that feels like it would have been perfect for the particular franchise.  Also, like the majority of the Wrong films, A Professor’s Vengeance is a thoroughly fun and enjoyable Lifetime melodrama, full of lies, sex, death, and a smug man who you just can’t wait to see get his comeuppance.  It also has a twist ending and a nicely done dream sequence!  Seriously, what more could you ask for from a film like this?

Ross Jirgl is wonderfully hissable as the smug professor but the film is truly stolen by Crystal Day, playing the professor’s wife.  Day perfectly captures the fury of a woman who is smart enough to know better than to trust her husband and her building anger as it becomes obvious that he’s cheated on her is one of the best parts of the film.  Lindsey Dresbach is a likable heroine and, just as importantly, she’s also believable as someone who could write a short story that someone would actually want to publish.  Meanwhile, Bryan Bachman is very sweet and sympathetic as her well-meaning classmate.  Of course, it’s not a Lifetime film without a skeptical police detective and, in this film, that role is well-played by Kate Dailey.  If I ever committed a crime, I would not want to be questioned by Kate Dailey’s detective.  I would probably start naming names as soon as she shot me that first glare.

I very much enjoyed A Professor’s Vengeance.  It’s exactly the type of film that made me fall in love with Lifetime in the first place.

Lifetime Film Review: A Predator Returns: Stalker’s Prey 3 (dir by Colin Theys)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bruce is back!

Played by Houston Stevenson, Bruce is the character at the center of Lifetime’s Stalker’s Prey trilogy.  Bruce is a handsome, charming young man who loves studying the ocean and who, even more importantly, loves studying sharks.  In fact, sharks tend to follow Bruce wherever he goes.  You have to understand that Bruce is one of those people who has to move around a lot.  He has a bad habit of becoming obsessed with teenage girls and then feeding his romantic rivals to his shark.  Poor Bruce.  If only he had more confidence in himself!  Anyway, you can usually find Bruce hanging out in the marina or near the bay.  Usually, he’ll be using an assumed name but you can always tell that it’s Bruce because he’s the guy who won’t stop talking about how much he loves the water.

A Predator Returns finds Bruce calling himself David and telling everyone that he’s an oceanography students.  He’s living in a deserted lighthouse and seems to be content to spend all of his time feeding his sharks.  However, when he spots a group of teenagers swimming near the lighthouse, everything pretty much goes downhill from there.  After he rescues the teenagers from his sharks, Bruce quickly becomes obsessed with Courtney (Leigha Sinotti).  Courtney is having trouble at home, largely because of her demanding mother and her overprotective father.  Soon, she’s running around with Bruce and staying out until five in the morning.  Courtney’s father takes an automatic dislike to Bruce.  Uh-oh, looks like someone’s about to become shark bait.

Bruce and Courtney’s relationship gets pretty serious.  How serious?  At one point, Bruce shouts, “BRUCE IS GOING TO BE A DADDY!”  Of course, by the time Bruce finds out about that, Courtney has already dumped him because he’s such an obvious psycho.  Bruce is determined to get Courtney back, even if it means framing her for murder.

Especially when compared to Stalker’s Prey and A Predator’s Obsession, there isn’t much shark action in A Predator Returns.  The shark’s do much an appearance, of course and they do eat a few unfortunate victims.  But, compared to the previous films, they still don’t play a huge role in the story.  That was a bit disappointing, as the sharks really were the main attractions in the previous two Stalker’s Prey films.  You really can’t introduce sharks and then just kind of push them to the side.  It’s the rule of Chekhov’s Shark.  If you introduce a shark during act one, it’s going to have to eat at least a dozen people by the end of act three.

That said, Huston Stevenson really dug into the role of crazy Bruce and he was well-matched by Leigha Sinotti as Courtney.  The film was full of winking references to Jaws and a host of other horror films and it’s impossible not to enjoy a film that’s so clearly in on the joke.  Director Colin Theys keeps the action moving quickly and the movie ends a nicely ambiguous note, one that suggests that the story may not be quite over.  If there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching these films, it’s that sharks have 9 lives and, for that matter, so does Bruce!

Lifetime Film Review: A Mother’s Lie (dir by Stefan Brogren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Even the best of families have secrets.

Unfortunately, the family at the center of A Mother’s Lie is hardly one of the best.  Sure, they’re wealthy.  And sure, they’ve got several very nice and very big homes.  But matriarch Joyce (Sonja Smits) is a little bit …. well, unhinged.  She was shocked when her teenage daughter, Katherine (Alex Paxton-Beesley) got pregnant.  Joyce demanded that Katherine not tell her boyfriend, Chuck (Gabriel Venneri).  Instead, Katherine went into hiding for 9 months.  When Katherine gave birth, Joyce told her that the baby was stillborn.

Now, 20 years later, Katherine and Chuck are married and they’re raising a daughter, Haley ( Zoe Sarantakis). Katherine has never told Chuck about their first child and Katherine feels guilty about that.  When Haley is diagnosed with leukemia and her parents are told that she’ll die without a bone marrow transplant, Katherine can’t help but wish that their first daughter had lived.  After all, she would be the perfect donor!

Well, it turns out that Joyce wasn’t being honest when she said that the first baby was stillborn.  The baby was born alive and was put up for adoption, without Katherine’s knowledge.  Libby (Madelyn Keys) was adopted by a poor but good family.  She’s now attending college and dreaming of going to medical school.  But how will she be able to pay for it!?

One day, Libby receives an offer from a mysterious benefactor.  All Libby has to do is agree to donate some bone marrow to a young girl and Libby will receive more than enough money to pay for medical school!  She’ll even be allowed to recuperate in an isolated and mysterious mansion!  The only condition is that Libby has to remain anonymous and she can’t have contact with the girl’s family.  Of course, Libby agrees!

Yay!  Haley’ going to live!  Libby’s going to be rich!  And the family secrets are going to remain hidden!  Except …. well, as I said, Joyce is a little bit unhinged, to the extent that she’s willing to kill anyone who might reveal the secret of what happened the night that Katherine gave birth to Libby.  It quickly becomes obvious that Libby is going to be lucky to escape from the mansion with her life….

A Mother’s Lie is an enjoyably gothic Lifetime film, the movie equivalent of one of those old paperback books that always featured a nervous-looking woman standing in front of a shadowy mansion.  It even features a sinister housekeeper (played well by Louise Kerr), who will do anything to help Joyce keep her secrets!  It’s all appropriately melodramatic and the film is made with enough self-awareness that it never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously.  It’s an entertaining Lifetime film, pure and simple.

It’s also a very Canadian film.  From the minute I saw Libby casually walking down a snow-covered path on her way to class, I knew that this was a film that made north of the border.  That’s not a complaint, of course.  Many of the best Lifetime film were made in Canada and I always enjoy spotting former Degrassi actors.  And while this film’s cast may not have featured any Degrassi grads, A Mother’s Life was directed by Stefan Brogren, who played Mr. Simpson on that venerable show.  He does a good job of keeping the action moving and maintaining a properly gothic atmosphere.  It’s an enjoyable 90 minutes.

Music Video of the Day: Jeff Goldblum by Mattiel (2021, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who else could inspire such loyalty?

Actually, though, the song itself isn’t about Jeff Goldblum.  It’s about about someone who is a “little like a younger Jeff Goldblum.”  The video, however, is all about Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.

Enjoy!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 11/14/21 — 11/20/21

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s that time again.  Here’s some thoughts on what I watched over the past seven days:

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

Finally!  It was time for the long-distance duck to fly from France to London, carrying with it the plans for the German invasion of England.  Unfortunately, the duck itself really didn’t feel like flying, which led to Rene and Edith having to chase it around the courtyard while Michelle and the two airmen watched from a balcony above.  Meanwhile, everyone was trying to figure out what to do with the forged money that Rene stole from the bank.  It was a funny episode.  I relate to Michelle.

Baywatch Hawaii (Prime)

I had a really tough day on Tuesday so I decided to unwind and calm myself down by continuing my binge of the first season of Baywatch Hawaii.  This, of course, was the sequel to Baywatch, in which the Hoff moved to Hawaii and helped to train a new group of lifeguards.

I started things off with watching the 9th episode of the series, which was called The Hunt.  It featured Jessie investigating a case of shark poaching and Jason trying to come to terms with his Hawaiian heritage.  In the end, the poaches were defeated, Jessie was rescued after her jet ski sank, and Jason proved himself to be worthy of the islands by having some sort of weird mind-meld with a shark.  “The shark is my brother,” Jason explained.  Yay!  Incidentally, the poacher’s boat was named “All She Rote,” which was kind of clever.  This was followed by a treasure hunt episode, where the lifeguards mistakenly believed that they had found a long-lost treasure.  I’m pretty sure this was a remake an old Baywatch episode, with gold instead of doubloons.

Cold Case (Weekday, Afternoons, Start TV)

On Tuesday’s episode, Lily and the gang investigated the 1967 murder of a brush salesman.  Speaking of brushes, Lily could have used one because her hair was a mess.  I will never understand why Lily never did anything about that.

Court Cam (Wednesday, A&E)

A&E always airs several episodes of Court Cam on Wednesday and they do tend to blend together.  For some reason, this week, there were a lot of clips of defendants cussing out their judges.  That’s never a good courtroom strategy.  One fellow got 360 days for contempt of court, though it was later reduced to 90 days.  Ironically, he only served 5 days for the crime that he was initially charged with.  Seriously, be polite when talking to a judge.

Crossing Jordan (Weekday Afternoons, Start TV)

I watched two episodes on Tuesday.  Jordan was cranky while Bugs was again being targeted by bigots and Homeland Security.  That was pretty much the plot of every single episode of Crossing Jordan, yet somehow everyone on the show always acted as if the same thing didn’t keep happening over and over again.

Dexter: New Blood (Sunday Night, Showtime)

I wrote about the latest episode of Dexter here!

Fear The Walking Dead (Sunday Night, AMC)

I wrote about the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead here!

Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Monday Morning, BBC America)

I watched two of my favorite episodes on Monday morning, Mr. Pither’s Cycling Tour and The Ministry of Silly Walks.  I especially love Mr. Pither, if just because Michael Palin did such a wonderful job playing the well-meaning but utterly clueless cyclist.  “My lack of God, it’s Trotsky!”

Open All Hours (Sunday Night, PBS)

Arkwright cheated his customers by pretending to be blind.  Granville took a heap of abuse.  They both attempted to provide better customer service at their little shop.  It didn’t go well.

Shipping Wars (Tuesday Morning, A&E)

It amazes me that everyone who ever appeared on this show — whether they were a regular or just a customer — was a complete and total jerk.  I watched several episodes of Tuesday morning and I can’t think of one episode that featured anyone who was the least bit likable.

Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)

I wrote about Survivor here!

Three’s Company (Weekday Afternoons, Antenna TV)

I watched two episodes on Tuesday.  Believe it or not, both of them revolved around simple misunderstandings that could have been solved in a matter of minutes if all of the characters on the show weren’t so stupid.

The Walking Dead: The World Beyond (Sunday Night, AMC)

I think what’s frustrating about this show is that it works best when it focuses on the teens growing up in a world where society has collapsed but, for some reason, the show keeps getting sidetracked with all of the adults.  I don’t care about the adults but sometimes, the majority of the show seems to be made up of scenes of them sitting around and having hushed conversations.  It gets boring!

Yes, Minister (PBS, Monday Morning)

I rewatched the episode where Jim becomes Prime Minister.  Yay, Jim!

TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead 7.5 “Til Death” (dir by Lennie James)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I can still remember when Fear the Walking Dead first started back in 2015.

The premise, as you may remember, was that the show was going to take place in the “world of The Walking Dead” but that it was going to deal with an entirely new group of characters and follow them through the early days of the zombie apocalypse.  Would there be crossovers with the main show?  While AMC refused to rule them out, it was also said that the world of the Walking Dead was so compelling and fully realized that there really was no real need to bring over Rick, Darryl, Morgan, or anyone else from the original show.  In fact, since Fear the Walking Dead was a prequel, it really wouldn’t make any sense to have any of the original show’s characters show up for anything more than a winking cameo.  Instead, audiences would be thrilled with the new cast of doctors, drug addicts, and city planners.

Well, that didn’t quite work out.  It turned out that audiences didn’t really respond to the entirely new cast and so almost all of them were killed off, Lennie James switched from the main show to the spinoff, and, from season 4 on, Fear the Walking Dead became the Morgan show.

And I’m really not complaining.  I tried to watch the early seasons of Fear The Walking Dead and I was so bored that I gave up on the show fairly quickly.  However, I’ve been mostly entertained by the seventh and final season of Fear The Walking Dead.  Yes, there have been a few pacing issues but, at this point, that’s something that anyone who has ever watched more than a handful of episodes of The Walking Dead and its spin-offs should be used to.  But still, I enjoy Fear the Walking Dead‘s rather surreal landscape.  Colman Domingo’s wonderfully weird performance is always entertaining to watch.  I’m even somewhat interested in discovering who Padre is, even though I know the character probably won’t live up to all the hype.  At this point, unless he turns out to be Rick, there’s no way Padre can meet the expectations that have been set for him.

Last Sunday, Dwight and Sherry joined the search for Padre.  Like Morgan, Dwight and Sherry were originally on The Walking Dead.  Dwight was one of Negan’s lieutenants.  Sherry was his wife.  Now, they’re “ethical outlaws,” riding across the radioactive landscape of Texas and protecting those in need.  During the latest episode, Strand tried to get Dwight and Sherry to join his organization and Dwight was certainly tempted.  But, in the end, they did the right thing and helped a woman named Mickey find and put down her reanimated husband.  They then teamed up with the Stalkers to continue their search for Padre …. okay, so the plot summary sounds a little absurd and, to be honest, the idea of Dwight and Sherry calling themselves the Dark Horses and fighting for the bullied is a little absurd.  But, and this is the secret as to why Fear the Walking Dead‘s final season has been so enjoyable, the show seems to be aware of how absurd it all is.  Whereas The Walking Dead would have taken the whole “ethical outlaw” thing way too seriously, Fear the Walking Dead is willing to have fun with it all.

And this Sunday’s episode was a fun one.  Apparently, with The Walking Dead and its two spin-offs coming to a close with the end of their current seasons, AMC is planning on keeping the franchie alive with an anthology series.  Hopefully, the Dark Horses will appear in more than a few episodes.  As much as I disliked them on The Walking Dead, Dwight and Sherry are a blast on Fear the Waling Dead.  Dark Horses forever!