Documentary Review: Weiner (dir by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg)

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just finished watching Weiner, the new documentary about Anthony Weiner, the very creepy former Congressman from New York.

I know it may seem strange for me, the girl who launches into at least one “I’m sick of hearing about politics” rant a day, to watch Weiner but this documentary has been getting considerable acclaim. In a year when very few Oscar contenders have yet to emerge, Weiner has already been declared by many to the be the front-runner for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. So, really — what choice did I have but to watch?

Then again, even if it wasn’t a potential Oscar contender, I would probably still want to watch Weiner. Anthony Weiner’s story is a fascinatingly awful one and how people react to it seems to largely depend on whether they lean to the right or to the left. To those on the left, Anthony Weiner is almost a tragic figure, a forceful advocate who was undone by his personal weaknesses. To those on the right, Weiner is a symbol of liberal hypocrisy. And, for those in the apathetic middle (like me), he’s a creepy and somewhat pathetic perv who used to serve in Congress and who is now lucky if he can get a cameo in a Sharknado sequel.

Of course, when it comes to Anthony Weiner, the thing that we can all agree on is that, regardless of what happened, it was all his fault. Weiner opens with a montage of Antony Weiner’s rise and fall. We see him screaming on the house floor and taunting Republicans on a news program. We then see him being asked if he posted a picture of his “bulge” on twitter. We watch as Weiner denies posting the picture and then admits to posting the picture. Weiner says he will never resign from Congress. Obama pops up for a second to tell an interviewer that he thinks Weiner should resign. And then, Weiner does resign.

The documentary picks up two years later. Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor of New York and, despite lingering questions about his online activities, Weiner has emerged as the front runner. In fact, Weiner is so confident that he’s going to win the Democratic nomination that he even invites a documentary film crew to follow him during the campaign. It’s obvious that, initially, both Weiner and the documentarian believe that this documentary is going to be a story of redemption.

And so, we follow Weiner as he campaigns. We see his enthusiastic volunteers, all talking about why they want Anthony Weiner to be the next mayor of New York. We meet Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, and we listen as people gush about how close she is to Hillary Clinton. Everything seems to be perfect…

…And then, suddenly, things change. It turns out that Weiner has not stopped his online activities. Instead, it appears that he’s become even more reckless than before. The press discovers that Weiner’s online name was “Carlos Danger.” One of Weiner’s sexting partners, Sydney Leathers, emerges as a celebrity. Thought Huma stands with her husband in public, the documentary cameras catch her in private, often sitting alone and looking like she can’t believe that, out of all the available men in D.C., she ended up married to someone who thought Carlos Danger sounded like a plausible name.

And through it all, Anthony Weiner seems blissfully unaware. He continues to campaign for mayor and cannot seem to understand why people keep asking him about the scandal. He gets angry. He snaps at hecklers. Suddenly, nobody is returning his phone calls. Nobody is taking him seriously as a candidate. And yet, Weiner still seems to be convinced that he’s going to win. One of the documentary’s best scenes takes place on election night, when Weiner watches the results and realizes that, in a matter of days, he’s gone from being the front runner to coming in dead last. Making matters even worse, of course, is that both the press and Sydney Leathers have gathered outside of Weiner’s campaign headquarters, waiting for him and Huma to emerge so that they can literally pounce on them.

It makes for a fascinating documentary, though perhaps not in the way that the documentarians originally intended. As much as the film attempts to paint Weiner as being a tragic character, a talented man brought down by his own mistakes, the real Anthony Weiner comes across as being a shallow narcissist who, through a combination of arrogance and stupidity, actually thought it would be a good idea to have a documentary crew follow him around despite knowing that there was a potential scandal hanging over his head. It makes for a memorable portrait of what happens with ambition meets compulsion.

The film’s getting a lot attention because it provides a behind-the-scenes look at Huma Abedin. With Hillary Clinton pretty much guaranteed to be our next President, Huma is also guaranteed to soon become one of the most powerful people in the country. Unlike Weiner, who sometimes comes across as being almost compulsive in his need to be the center of attention, Huma is a far more reticent figure. Whereas Weiner frequently talks straight to the camera and answers questions from the filmmakers, Huma is usually seen in the background, smiling when Weiner is doing well and glaring when he’s not. There’s not a single scene in the movie where she doesn’t seem to have up her guard but then again, can you blame her? Unlike her husband, Huma instinctively understands that there’s no coming back from being outed as Carlos Danger. When Huma eventually leaves Weiner’s campaign so that she can travel with Hillary Clinton, you feel almost relieved for her. At least she won’t have to put up with Anthony’s bullshit for a while.

Weiner may have originally be envisioned as tale of redemption but instead, it became a story of how a narcissist self-destructed. Whether that narcissist deserves a third or fourth chance to live up to his potential is a question that the audience will have to answer for themselves.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #7: Rolling Thunder (dir by John Flynn)

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m currently in the process of watching the 36 films that I’ve recorded on my DVR since March. Last night, I was extremely excited as I looked up the 7th film on the DVR and I discovered that I was about to watch the 1977 revenge classic, Rolling Thunder!

Among those of us who love old grindhouse and exploitation film, Rolling Thunder has achieved legendary status. Based on a script by Paul Schrader (though I should point out that Schrader’s script was rewritten by Heywood Gould and Schrader himself has been very critical of the actual film) and directed by John Flynn, Rolling Thunder is quite literally one of the best revenge films ever made. It’s also a great Texas film, taking place and filmed in San Antonio. Quentin Tarantino has frequently cited Rolling Thunder as being one of his favorite films and he even used the name for his short-lived distribution company, Rolling Thunder Pictures.

Rolling Thunder also has one of the greatest trailers of all time. In fact, if not for the trailer, I probably would never have set the DVR to record it off of Retroplex on March 25th. The Rolling Thunder trailer is included in one of the 42nd Street Forever compilation DVDs and, from the minute I first watched it, I knew that Rolling Thunder was a film that I had to see.

Watch the trailer below:

Everything about that trailer — from the somewhat portentous narration at the beginning to the way that Tommy Lee Jones calmly says, “I’ll get my gear,” at the end, is pure genius.

But what about the film itself? Well, having finally seen the film, I can say that Rolling Thunder is indeed a classic. It’s also one of the most brutal films that I’ve ever seen, containing scenes of truly shocking and jarring violence. In fact, the violence is so shocking that it’s also, at times, rather overwhelming. This is one of those films that you will probably remember as being far more violent than it actually is. Because, while Rolling Thunder features its share of shoot-outs and garbage disposal limb manglings, it’s actually a very deliberately paced character study.

When we first meet Maj. Charles Rane (William Devane), he’s sitting on a plane and looking down on San Antonio. He’s in full military dress uniform. Setting across from him, also in uniform, is John Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones). The year is 1973 and Rane and Vohden have both just spent the past seven years as prisoners in a Vietnamese camp. While they were prisoners, they were tortured every day. Now, they’re returning home and neither one of them is quite sure what’s going to be waiting for them.

Over the imdb, you can find a few complaints from people who feel that Rolling Thunder gets off to a slow start. And it’s true that it takes over 30 minutes to get to the pivotal scene where Maj. Rane loses both his hand and his family. But that deliberate pace is what makes Rolling Thunder more than just a revenge flick with a kickass name. That first half-hour may seem to meander but what it’s actually doing is setting both Rane and Vohden up as strangers in their own country.

The film gets a lot of mileage out of comparing Rane to Vohden. Rane is good with words. When he gets off the plane, he gives a perfect (and perfectly empty) speech about how the whole war experience has made a better American out of him. Rane knows how to fool people but it quickly becomes apparent that, on the inside, Rane feels empty.

Vohden, meanwhile, is not an articulate man. He’s not invited to give a speech when the plane lands. Vohden cannot fake the emotions that he does not feel. At first, Rane and Vohden seem to be complete opposites (and the film wisely contrasts Jones’s trademark taciturn style of acting with Devane’s more expressive technique) but eventually, we learn that they’re actually two sides of the same coin. Both of them have been left empty as a result of their wartime experiences and, in the end, Vohden is the only one who can truly understand what’s going on in Rane’s head while Rane is the only one who can understand Vohden. When Rane needs help getting revenge, Vohden is the one that he turns to. It’s not just because Vohden knows how to kill. It’s also because John Vodhen is literally the only man to whom Charles Rane can relate.

Why does Rane need revenge? After the local bank awards him with 2,000 silver dollars (“One silver dollar for every day you spent in the Hell of Hanoi!,” he is told at the presentation), Rane returns home to discover that a group of men have broken into his house. One of them, known as the Texan (an absolutely chilling performance from James Best), demands that Rane tell them where the silver dollars are hidden. When Rane responds by giving only his name, rank, and serial number, Slim (Luke Askew) reacts by forcing Rane’s arm into the kitchen sink and then turning on the garbage disposal. (A scene was apparently shot that literally showed Rane’s hand getting ripped off by the garbage disposal but it was judged to be too graphic even for this grim little movie.) Even as the disposal mangles Rane’s arm, Rane refuses to tell them where the money is. Instead, he just flashes back to being tortured at the camp and we realize that Rane’s experiences have left him immune to pain.

Of course, the Texan doesn’t realize this. Instead, he glares at Rane and mocks him by declaring him to be “one macho motherfucker.”

When Rane’s wife and son walk in on the men, Slim and the Texan murder them and leave Rane for dead. However, Charles Rane isn’t dead. He survives but he claims that he can’t remember anything about the men who attacked him. It’s only after Rane is released from the hospital and starts to practice firing a shotgun with the hook that has replaced his hand that we realize that Rane does remember. Recruiting a local waitress who also happens to be an amateur beauty queen (Linda Haynes, giving the type of great performance that makes me wonder why I’ve never seen her in any move other than Rolling Thunder) to help, Rane sets out to track down “the men who killed my boy.”

Linda Hayes in Rolling Thunder, giving a great performance in a somewhat underdeveloped role

It’s very telling that Rane continually says that he’s after the men who “killed my boy” but he never mentions his wife. When Rane first arrived home, he had one conversation with his wife. He complained that she had changed her hair and that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Nobody wears them anymore,” She replied before telling him that, during his seven year absence, she had fallen in love with another man, Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll). And, up until she’s murdered by the Texan, that’s the last conversation that we see Rane have with his wife. Rane still lives in the house and he still tries to talk to his son (even though his son seems more comfortable around Cliff than around Rane) but Rane becomes a stranger to his family. While his wife sleeps in the house, Rane insists on staying out in the garage and continuing to go through the daily routine of calisthenics that he used to maintain his sanity while he was a prisoner.

(When Cliff asks Rane what it was like to be tortured, Rane literally forces Cliff to pull back on his arms in the same way that his Vietnamese captors had to. As I watched these scenes, I was reminded that 2008 presidential candidate John McCain cannot lift his arms above his shoulders as a result of the torture he suffered while a POW.)

When Rane goes to El Paso to recruit Vohden for his mission of revenge, we notice that Vohden also appears to be incapable of speaking to his wife. When Vohden leaves, he says goodbye to his father but not his wife. It’s probably not a coincidence that, when Vohden and Rane find Slim and the Texan, they’re at a brothel, a place where men are in charge, women are subservient, and primal needs are satisfied without the risk of emotional attachment. (It’s also probably not a coincidence that Slim is also identified as having recently returned from Vietnam. He complains that, unlike Rane and Vohden, he was never captured by the enemy and, as a result, he didn’t get a parade when he came back home.) Rolling Thunder is a film about emotionally stunted men who are incapable of interacting in any way other than violence. By the end of the film, you’re left wondering whether Rane’s mission was about revenge or about his own need to destroy.

And what an ending! When I say that the violence in Rolling Thunder is overwhelming, I’m talking about two scenes in particular. There’s the scene where Rane loses his hand and watches as The Texan casually executes his wife and son. And then there’s the ending. The final shootout was quick but it was also so brutal that I was literally shaking by the end of it.

(The scenes leading up the final shootout also featured one of the few humorous moments to be found in this otherwise grim film. When Vohden — who is inside the brothel with a prostitute — starts to put his rifle together, the prostitute asks him what he’s doing. “Oh,” Vohden says, in that perfectly weary way that only Tommy Lee Jones can do, “just going to kill a bunch of folks.”)

I mentioned earlier that Paul Schrader is reportedly not a fan of Rolling Thunder. Apparently, in his original script, Charles Rane was portrayed as being a poorly educated racist, a bit of a prototype for the character that Robert De Niro played in Taxi Driver. Ranes’s final rampage was meant to be an example of the war in Vietnam coming home and it was made much clearer that Rane’s violence was as much fueled by his own racism as by a desire for revenge. Schrader has said that his anti-fascist script was turned into a fascist movie.

A scene from Paul Schrader’s original script

With all due respect to Mr. Schrader (who I think is a very underrated filmmaker), Rolling Thunder is anything but a fascist movie. Instead, it’s a brutal and somewhat disturbing character study of a man who will never truly escape the war in which he fought. The fact that Rane is played by super smooth William Devane (as opposed to the redneck that Schrader apparently envisioned) only serves to make the film’s critique of hyper masculinity all the more disturbing. It’s interesting to note that, on their own, Rane and Vohden are never presented as being particularly likable or heroic. Instead, we root for them because the people who have hurt them are even worse.

This was how Schrader envisioned Johnny and Rane.

Though it may be far different from what Paul Schrader originally envisioned, John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder is a film that works on every level. It is both a visceral revenge film and a character study of a disturbed man. It’s a powerful film that will leave you shaken and it’s one that I will probably never erase from my DVR.

There are some movies that you just don’t dare delete.

Rolling Thunder is one of those movies.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #6: Lemora (dir by Richard Blackburn)

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Continuing the process of cleaning out my DVR, I watched an odd little film from 1975 called Lemora. I recorded Lemora on March 25th, when it aired as a part of TCM Underground.

Lemora opens with an odd scene that appears to be set in the 1920s. A man dressed up like a stereotypical movie gangster (think Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar) guns down another man with his tommy gun and then races off in his car. After he crashes, he crawls into a dark forest where he is apparently captured by a mysterious, black-clad woman.

Suddenly, we cut to 13 year-old Lila Lee (Cheryl Smith), singing in church. Lila is blonde, innocent, and has an almost heavenly singing voice. Everyone listens to her with almost worshipful attention. When the Reverend (played by the film’s director, Richard Blackburn) steps up to the pulpit, he announces that he knows what some people are saying about Lila and her father but that she is pure and innocent.

It turns out that the gangster is Lila’s father. Lila hasn’t had much contact with her father. Instead, she has been raised in the church by the Reverend. However, Lila receives a letter from her father. The letter claims that he’s dying and that he wants to see Lila and ask for forgiveness before he passes. The letter also says that her father is in the town of Astaroth.

(You would think that, having been raised in the church, Lila would know that Astaroth is also the name of a legendary demon.)

Knowing that the Reverend would never allow her to go, Lila sneaks out of the house. She stows away in the back of a couple’s car and listens as the couple gossips about her relationship with the Reverend, suggesting that the Reverend is just waiting for Lila to “turn legal.” After she gets out of the car, she takes a bus the rest of the way to Astaroth. Sitting on the dark bus, just her and the somewhat creepy driver, Lila listens as the driver tells her that the people of Astaroth have a certain look.

When she arrives at Astaroth, Lila finds herself being pursued by seemingly deformed vampires but she’s rescued by the mysterious Lemora (Lesley Gilb). Or is she? Lemora is the same woman who found Lila’s father in the forest and it soon becomes obvious that Lemora has plans for Lila as well…

Meanwhile, the Reverend discovers that Lila has run away and his reaction leads us to suspect that there may have been more than a little bit of truth to the conversation that Lila previously overheard in the car. The Reverend sets out to track down and rescue Lila but, at this point, the viewer trusts him even less than they trust Lemora.

It’s a very strange movie and a difficult one to describe. It’s a movie that creates its own unique and odd reality. Lemora expects the viewer to conform to its style as opposed to conforming to the audience’s expectations. Lemora‘s full name is Lemora: A Child’s Tale Of The Supernatural and it really does play out like a particularly nightmarish fairy tale. Though the film was definitely low-budget, it’s full of strikingly surreal images. The entire movie feels like a dream — everything from the almost campy, gangster-film opening to Lila’s strange journey on the dark bus to Lemora’s hypnotic stare to the sudden and shocking conclusion of the Reverend’s relationship with Lila. The film has one of those endings that forces you to reconsider everything that you previously witnessed.

Much like Messiah of Evil, Lemora is one of those surrealistic and low-budget horror films that almost defies conventional criticism. It’s a surreal dream of dark and disturbing things and one that everyone should see for themselves. You may love it, as I did. You may hate it. But you will never forget it.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #5: We Are Still Here (dir by Ted Geoghegan)

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The fifth film on my DVR was the 2015 haunted house film, We Are Still Here. I recorded We Are Still Here off of the SyFy channel on March 20th. Sad to say, I really can’t remember what I was doing or watching on March 20th while my DVR recorded one of the best horror movies of the previous year. I was probably watching something pn Lifetime. That usually seems to be the case.

But anyway, let’s talk about We Are Still Here.

As a self-professed lover of both horror and old grindhouse exploitation films, there is really no excuse for it to have taken me this long to see We Are Still Here. We Are Still Here is one of those wonderfully low-budget indie films that mixes a traditional genre — in this case, the haunted house film — with a far less traditional view of humanity. With its mix of bump-in-the-dark horror and cynicism about human nature, We Are Still Here feels like a mix of the Coen Brothers and H.P. Lovecraft.

Anne (Barbra Crampton, a veteran of horror films like Castle Freak and You’re Next) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig, who played the mysterious antagonist of Upstream Color) are a married couple who are struggling to deal with tragedy. Their son, Bobby, was recently killed in a car wreck. Anne is trapped in a prison of depression, while Paul just wants to move on with their lives. Hoping that it will help them to forget their sadness, Paul and Anne buy a house in New England.

(New England, not coincidentally, was also the home of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as being the setting for some of his best-remembered stories.)

But, of course, the house proves to be anything but therapeutic. From the minute they move in, Anne is convinced that they are not alone. With every mysterious sound and strange happening within the house, Ann becomes more and more convinced that the spirit of Bobby is with them.

If you’re a horror fan, you will not be surprised to learn that they are not alone. There is a presence in the house but is it Bobby or is it something far more sinister? Shortly after moving in, Anne and Paul meet their new neighbors. As friendly as they may be, there is definitely something off about Dave (Monte Markham) and his wife, Cat (Connie Neer). Dave tells them that the house was originally a funeral home an about how it was owned by the mysterious Dagmar family. The Dagmars were reportedly forced to leave town after it was learned that they were selling the bodies brought to them for burial and burying empty coffins. Could this have anything to do with the strange vibe that Anne and Paul both get from the house?

Despite Paul’s skepticism, Anne invites her friends, May (Lisa Marie) and Jacob (Larry Fessenden), to come for a visit. May and Jacob are both spiritualists and Anne hopes that they can contact Bobby’s spirit. Again, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that they do contact something. The surprise comes from what they contact and what happens as a result.

We Are Still Here is a chilly and dream-like film, one that wisely devotes as much time to creating and maintaining a properly creepy atmosphere as it does to all the expected scare scenes. When the presence in the house is finally revealed, it’s a scary moment but for me, the most haunting scenes in the film are the shots of the snow-covered landscape surrounding the house. The icy roads are as cold and unforgiving and as potentially dangerous as anything that might be living in the old Dagmar house. And, just as the weather cannot be controlled, neither can the paranormal.

We Are Still Here is a deliberately paced film. In fact, it’s probably a bit too deliberate to really be effective when viewed with commercial interruptions. We Are Still Here works because it creates an atmosphere of foreboding and certain doom and it’s hard to maintain an atmosphere when, every 20 minutes or so, the action has to stop for a commercial about Tide pods. To best appreciate this film and what it has to say about loss, faith, and delusion, it’s necessary to watch the story unfold without any pause to the narrative.

Fortunately, this intelligent and well-acted horror film is currently available on Netflix, where it can be viewed without commercial interruption! If you’re a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to watch.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #4: The Talk of the Town (dir by George Stevens)

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The fourth film on my DVR was the 1942 film, The Talk of the Town. The Talk of The Town originally aired on TCM on March 20th and I recorded it because it was a best picture nominee. As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, it’s long been a goal of mine to watch and review every single film nominated for Oscar’s top prize.

The Talk of The Town is an odd little hybrid of comedy, melodrama, and a civics lecture. Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman) is a brilliant attorney and legal professor. He’s been shortlisted for the Supreme Court and he’s also a widely read author. In fact, he’s even rented a house for the summer, so that he may work on a book. The owner of the house — teacher Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur) — will also be acting as his secretary.

As well-read as Prof. Lightcap may be, he’s also rather stuffy and out-of-touch with what’s going on outside of the world of academia. He knows how the law should work but he has little understanding of how the law actually does work. Fortunately, he gets a lesson in reality when he arrives at the house and eventually meets the gardener, Joseph (Cary Grant). Joseph turns out to be surprisingly intelligent and very passionate about politics. Lightcap and Joseph have many debates about whether or not the American legal system actually protects the working man.

What Lightcap doesn’t know is that Joseph is actually Leopold Dilg. Leopold is a labor activist, the type who you always see in old documentaries, standing on a street corner and preaching about unions. Leopold is also a fugitive. He was accused of setting fire to a mill, a fire that apparently led to the death of the foreman. Despite the fact that he loudly proclaimed his innocence, Leopold was arrested and prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty. Convinced that he would never get a fair trial, Leopold escaped from jail and fled to Nora’s house.

Nora and Leopold went to school together. They love each other, even though circumstances — mostly his political activism — conspired to keep them apart. When Lightcap moves into the house, Nora and Leopold’s attorney, Sam (Edgar Buchanan), hope that they can convince him to take on Leopold’s case. However, they also have to not only convince Leopold to reveal his true identity but also convince Lightcap to put his supreme court appointment at risk by defending a politically unpopular defendant. Their solution is to trick Lightcap into falling in love with Nora and then convince him to take on the case for her.

However, Nora soons finds herself falling in love with Lightcap for real. Who will she choose in the end? Cary Grant or Ronald Colman? Today, it seems like a pretty easy decision but apparently, in 1942, Columbia Pictures actually shot two different endings for the movie.

The Talk of The Town is an odd little movie. For the most part, it’s a drama. But it also has plenty of comedic elements, mostly dealing with the attempts to keep Leopold’s identity a secret. In the end, it’s a little bit too preachy to really work as either a drama or a comedy. That said, I still liked The Talk Of The Town because it made a strong case for the importance of due process, which is a concept that a lot of people take for granted.

(At the same time, The Talk of the Town was made in 1942 so you never have any doubt that Lightcap’s belief in the American legal system will eventually be vindicated. With America having just entered World War II, 1942 was not a time for cynicism. If Talk of the Town has been made in the 30s, it probably would have been a very different movie.)

Probably the best thing about Talk of the Town is the cast. It may not be a great film but, when you’ve got Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in a scene together, it almost doesn’t matter.

The Talk of the Town was nominated for best picture but it lost to Mrs. Miniver.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #3: Mommy’s Little Girl (dir by Curtis Crawford)

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I finished up The Other Wife, I continued to clean out my DVR by rewatching Mommy’s Little Girl.

Mommy’s Little Girl, was premiered on Lifetime on March 19th, is a crazy little kid movie. How crazy? Well, the film is also known as Mommy’s Little Murderer and for good reason! Speaking for myself, I always enjoy a good crazy kid movie because this entire genre is built around an uncomfortable truth: Children are creepy! They’ve got those squeaky voices and they’re always staring and they don’t have a filter so you never know what they’re going to say to you. Even worse, it’s somehow considered socially unacceptable to snap at a stranger’s child, even if it’s obvious that stranger has no idea how to raise their children.

Plus, you have to consider that every serial killer was a child at some point. If a child did decide to kill you, he’d probably get away with it. You wouldn’t think to be cautious if you were alone with him because everyone assumes that children always have the best intentions. No investigator would give serious consideration to the possibility that you were murdered by a child. Even if the kid was arrested, he’d only be charged as a minor. He would ultimately end up with a clean record while you just ended up as some sort of dumbass ghost haunting the landfill where he dumped your body.

Seriously, people need to think about this stuff before they deal with children.

Consider Sadie Connell (Emma Hentschel), the title character of Mommy’s Little Girl. Sadie is only 11 years old and, as cute and innocent-looking as she may be, when we first meet her, she’s already killed at least one person. She arranged for her abusive grandfather to take a nasty tumble down a flight of stairs. In fact, not only did she kill her grandfather but she also stole his lighter. She claims that it’s a magic lighter and, despite being a non-smoker, Sadie finds many uses for that flame. For instance, she can use the lighter to threaten her dolls. And when a classmate bullies her, she uses the lighter to punish his prized action figures.

Over the course of the movie, Sadie commits a few more murders. She pushes people off cliffs. She poisons their food. At one point, she even places her hands over one unfortunate victim’s mouth and helps to suffocate her. Sadie is definitely a little bit psycho and yet, as a viewer, I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her. Both her grandparents treated her so badly that you can’t blame Sadie for being a little bit bitter. As for her classmate with his precious action figures — well, nobody likes a bully.

At the start of the film, Sadie is finally reunited with her mother, Theresa (Fiona Gubelmann), who has issues of her own when Sadie was born and, as a result, allowed her daughter to be raised by her parents. However, Theresa now has her life together and is ready to raise her daughter! Sadie is so excited to finally have a family but she’s also extremely paranoid of losing that family. Some of the film’s best scenes come when Sadie fears that she’s about to be rejected and sent back to her grandmother. Sadie never becomes a one-dimensional villain. The end result is a Lifetime film that actually makes you think.

Keep an eye out for Mommy’s Little Girl!

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #2: The Other Wife (dir by Nick Lyon)

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, after I watched the 18th season premiere of Big Brother (that’s right, I love reality TV almost as much as I love Italian horror films, almost being the word to remember), I continued to clean out the DVR by watching The Other Wife.

The Other Wife, which premiered on the Lifetime Movie Network on March 13th, is another thriller from our friends at The Asylum. The film opens on a fairly suspenseful note, with Kate Jennings (Kimberly Hewes) preparing to take a shower when she heard someone walking around her house. At first, she assumes that it’s her husband, Billy (George Stumpf). However, she then gets a text from Billy informing her that he’s on his way.

And seriously, that is such a HOLY SHIT moment that it carries the first hour of the entire film. Seriously, there is nothing scarier than suddenly realizing that you are not only not alone but that you have no idea who the other person is. That’s the type of nightmare fuel that gives birth to grisly urban legends!

Kate looks around the house and suddenly spots a hulking, bald man (Nick Principe) searching Billy’s office. Though Kate doesn’t know it, that bald man is named Ed Warwick and he’s very dangerous. He chases her through the house until she can call the police and he leaves her so terrified that she doesn’t even notice that he somehow knows her first name.

When the police arrive, they accidentally arrest Billy and Ed escapes. After getting things sorted out with the cops, Billy assures Kate that Ed was just a random burglar and that everything will be okay. But, if that’s true, why does Kate come home the next day to discover that Billy has hung himself?

With her husband dead, Kate’s seemingly perfect life falls apart. She discovers that Billy was in debt when he died and her credit has been destroyed. Even worse, she discovers that Billy was apparently seeing a woman named Deb (Tonya Key).

In many ways, Deb is Kate’s exact opposite. Kate is polite and refined. Deb is the type who will stand outside and scream at a delivery driver. Kate has been unable to get pregnant. Deb is pregnant. In fact, it would seem that the only thing that Deb and Kate have in common is that they were both married to Billy.

That’s right — Billy was a bigamist! He was also a bigamist who owed a lot of money to the mob. The mob has hired Ed to get their money. Ed delivers an ultimatum to both Billy’s wives. If he doesn’t get the money that Billy owed, Ed will murder Deb and frame Kate. From totally different world and linked only by their husband’s treachery, Deb and Kate will have to work together to get out of this mess.

There’s a great moment in The Other Wife where a police detective is talking to Deb and Kate. “Mrs. Jennings,” the detective said. Both Deb and Kate looked up at the same time and say, “yes?” In many ways, that scene epitomizes The Other Wife. Despite the announcement, during the opening credits, that what we’re watching is based on a true story, The Other Wife is not a movie that is meant to be taken all that seriously. The Other Wife is silly entertainment in the style of most Asylum films, featuring a likable cast and an enjoyably melodramatic storyline. Tonya Key especially seems to be having fun in the role of the outspoken Deb. That said, the real star of the film is Nick Principe, who is thoroughly menacing as the psycho hit man.

The Other Wife was directed by Nick Lyon, who also did the enjoyably pulpy They Found Hell. He does a good job here of keeping the action moving and encouraging the audience not to worry too much about any holes in the plot.

All in all, it’s another enjoyable melodrama from The Asylum!

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #1: The Stepchild (dir by Roma Roth)

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Two weeks ago, I finally finished my Fabulous Forties series of reviews! Yay!

I was so excited and I could not wait until I could move onto the Nifty Fifties box set from Mill Creek. However, before doing that, I decided to check the status of my DVR and guess what?

I discovered that I only had 10 hours of space left!

Basically, stating in March, I recorded so many movies that I am now nearly out of space. So, before I do anything else, it’s time for me to, once again, clean out the DVR! I have 36 films to watch and review before I can truly declare that my DVR has been cleaned out. Fortunately, I’ve recorded a good variety of films — everything from Lifetime movies to horror films to Oscar nominees. Watching and reviews all of them should be fun!

So, let’s get started! Because you know what? If I don’t hurry up and get this done, my DVR’s going to start automatically deleting my older recordings. And that means that I’m running the risk of losing not only Jesus Christ Superstar, Bend It Like Beckham, and American Anthem but the final six episodes of Saved By The Bell: The College Years as well!

The first film that I watched was The Stepchild, which premiered on Lifetime on March 12th!

As you probably tell from the picture above, The Stepchild is a movie about secrets, lies, murder, tears, and possible insanity. In short, it has everything that we have come to expect from a Lifetime movie! Even better, it has a Degrassi connection. (Degrassi, as our regular readers should be aware at this point, is my favorite Canadian TV show.) The Stepchild stars Sarah Fisher, who played a somewhat unbalanced Christian named Becky Baker on Degrassi. Becky was perhaps one of the most annoying characters in the history of Degrassi but Sarah Fisher always did a good job playing her and she does a pretty good job in The Stepchild as well.

The Stepchild opens with Ashley (played by Fisher) in a mental hospital. She spends her time talking to her therapist and occasionally having brightly-lit flashbacks to the night that she found her father’s dead body and dropped — in a slow motion, naturally enough — a snow globe on the floor. Not only is Ashley shaken over the demise of her father, but she also fears that she may have inherited her dead mother’s schizophrenia. And again, it bears repeating that Sarah Fisher does a really good job in the role of Ashley, making her a character whose outward fragility disguises more inner strength than even she realizes that she possesses.

When Ashley is finally released from the hospital, she goes to live with her stepmother, Beth (Lauren Holly). Ashley is upset because it’s obvious that, in just the short time after her father’s death, Beth has rather quickly moved on to a new man, John (Paul Johansson). John was Ashley’s father’s business partner and, like Ashley, we are immediately suspicious of him. This is largely because he’s played by Paul Johansson and anyone who has ever seen One Tree Hill knows better than to trust any character played by Paul Johansson.

Ashley is convinced that John or someone else murdered her father. But did he? Or could it be that Ashley is having another nervous breakdown? (It’s a testament to Sarah Fisher’s performance that, even though the answer is obvious, the viewer still is never totally sure.) With the help of her boyfriend, Michael (Keenan Tracy), Ashley attempts to solve the mystery.

There’s nothing really original about The Stepchild. If you’ve ever seen a Lifetime film before, you’ll be able to guess what’s going to happen. That said, their inherent predictability is part of the appeal of Lifetime films in general and The Stepchild is an entertaining-enough diversion. Lauren Holly and Sarah Fisher both do good with their ambiguous characterizations and Paul Johansson always does a good job when he’s playing a jerk. The film has a few nicely shot dream sequences and, as we all know, dream sequences are always fun!

The Stepchild may not be a classic but it’s a perfectly enjoyable way to waste two hours.

(For those keeping track of my progress in cleaning out the DVR, that’s one down and thirty-five to go!)

Film Review: Mother, May I Sleep With Danger (dir by Melanie Aitkenhead)

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier tonight, I turned over to Lifetime and I watched the much hyped remake of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? Having watched, what can I say about it?

*sigh*

Seriously, I had such high hopes. My hopes for this film were almost as high as I was the day I graduated from high school. That’s pretty freaking high!

And really, can you blame me? First off, the film was a remake of one of my favorite Lifetime films. And, while I usually hate remakes, the original Mother, May I Sleep With Danger was so over-the-top and melodramatic that it practically demanded a Deadly Adoption-style remake. The idea of mixing the original’s stalker plot with lesbian vampires just sounded so promising! And, on top of that, James Franco was involved!

Up until I saw the movie tonight, I was under the assumption that James Franco would actually be directing the remake. Well, he didn’t. Mother, May I Sleep With Danger was directed by Melanie Aitkenhead and, considering that this was her feature debut, she actually did a pretty good job. The film is full of atmospheric shots and Aitkenhead gets a surprising amount of mileage out of simply showing the movie’s vampires moving across the screen in slow motion.

Instead of direcing, James Franco served as executive producer and is credited with coming up with the film’s “original story.” (The actual screenplay is credited to Amber Coney, who also plays one of the vampires.) Franco also plays a theater professor who directs a production of Macbeth. In his production, Macbeth is played by a woman and you know what? That’s a great idea! In fact, there were times that I found myself thinking that, if I had to choose between watching Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? and James Franco’s Macbeth, I would definitely pick Macbeth.

As for the rest of the film — well, it actually has absolutely nothing in common with the original Mother, May I Sleep With Danger. The original film’s stars — Tori Spelling and Ivan Sergei — both show up in different roles but it would have been a lot more interesting if they had been playing the same roles. What if Sergei’s psycho stalker actually didn’t drown at the end of the original and ended up teaching a college class on Victorian literature? And what if his favorite student just happened to be the daughter of his former obsession (played, of course, by Tori Spelling)? That would have been interesting! Instead, Sergei is playing just any professor and Spelling is playing just any mother.

The majority of the film deals with Spelling’s daughter, Leah (Leila George), attempting to work up the courage to tell her mom that 1) she’s a lesbian and 2) she has a new girlfriend, named Pearl (Emily Meade). What Leah doesn’t know is that Pearl is actually a vampire and is being pressured by her blood-sucking friends to turn Leah into a vampire too. As well, nerdy and creepy Bob (Nick Eversman) has an unrequited crush on Leah. When Bob discovers that Leah has a girlfriend, he starts plotting to break them up.

And there’s a lot that I liked about Mother, May I Sleep With Danger. I liked that the film, unlike a few other Lifetime films that I’ve seen, was unapologetic about being sex positive. I liked that the film presented an unambigiously positive portrayal of a same-sex couple. I liked that the vampires were all stylish and enjoyed hanging out in cemeteries. The film’s best scenes featured the vampires infiltrating frat parties and feeding on the date rapists within. These were hugely satisfying scenes and I would have been happy if the entire movie had just been scene after scene of vampires attacking Brock Turner.

But despite all that worked about the movie, Mother, May I Sleep With Danger left me feeling disappointed. After all the hype and the raised expectations and the commercials promising us a masterpiece from “the twisted mind of James Franco,” there was really no way not to be disappointed by the final product. Unlike last year’s A Deadly Adoption, Mother, May I Sleep With Danger never managed to establish a consistent tone. It didn’t seem to be sure whether it wanted to be a comedy, a drama, a horror film, or an elaborate send-up of the Lifetime aesthetic. Whereas A Deadly Adoption was clearly a labor of snarky love, I couldn’t help but feel that Mother, May I Sleep With Danger had probably been made by people who don’t particularly like Lifetime films. As such, it worked as neither an homage nor a parody. Instead, it was just another movie about vampires and not a particularly original one at that.

And, hey, I like movies about vampires! I’ve seen a few hundred of them. I’ve certainly seen enough to know that Mother, May I Sleep With Danger didn’t bring anything new to the genre.

That said, I still love James Franco! Seriously, how can’t I?

What Lisa Watched Last Night #152: Killing Mommy (dir by Curtis Crawford and Anthony Lefrense)

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I gathered together with my three older sisters and I tried to make them watch Killing Mommy on Lifetime! They all abandoned me after thirty minutes but I stayed for the entire film.

Why Was I Watching It?

There is nary a better thing on a Saturday night than @LisaMarieBowman live tweeting @lifetimetv movies. Tonight is #KillingMommy!

— Erik Anderson (@awards_watch) June 12, 2016

(Awwwwww! That is one of the greatest tweets in which I’ve ever been mentioned! Everyone please be sure to check out Awards Watch!)

What Was It Aboot?

Killing Mommy was the latest in a long line of Canadian-produced Lifetime thrillers. It tells the story of two twin sisters! Deb has dark hair, a tattoo, and a bad attitude. She’s a recovering drug addict and she divides her time between having anonymous sex and going to jail. Julianne has red hair and is about to graduate from college. She is always smiling and she’s always spending money!

When Deb and Julianne were younger, their father died when a car mysteriously fell on top of him. Now, their mom — who runs a charity of some sort — is on the verge of remarrying. Deb is upset. Julianne is supportive. Soon, someone with dark hair is attempting to kill mom. Is it Deb or is it just Julianne wearing a Deb wig?

What Worked, eh?

Killing Mommy was one of those films that got better the longer it lasted. During the first hour, I thought it was way too slow and awkwardly acted. But, during the second hour, the film got enjoyably weird and over-the-top. It’s as if, during the 2nd half of the movie, the filmmakers suddenly realized that they just had to stop pretending like the movie would ever make any sense. They decided to embrace the melodrama and good for them!

What Did Not Work, eh?

The second hour of Killing Mommy is a lot of fun but that first hour — oh my God. See, the main problem with having a great second hour is that you have to get through the first hour to reach it and, if you first hour moves too slowly or features some less than impressive acting, you’re increasing the chances that viewers will never make it to that second hour. The first hour of Killing Mommy was a real struggle to get through. If you look at my twitter timeline, you’ll see that I tweeted a hundred times more during the second hour than the first hour.

Some of the acting, especially during that first hour, left a lot to be desired. I think I may have compared some of the performances to the acting that you typically find in one of those “You got insurance? With your health problems?!” MetLife insurance commercials. However, I now think that some of what seemed like bad acting may have instead just been foreshadowing of the film’s 2nd hour twist.

Speaking of twists, there’s a flashback where a man working on a car yells at his daughter so much that she finally gets so annoyed that she lowers the car down on top of him. (That’s not really a spoiler because what happened is pretty obvious from the minute the car crushing is first mention, especially if you’ve ever seen a Lifetime movie before.) Anyway, I started giggling during that scene and I’m not sure if I was supposed to.

“OMG! Just like me!” Moments, for sure

Julianne has red hair and she loves to shop! How could I not relate to her?

On the other hand, Deb often wears black and has a sarcastic attitude. How could I not relate to her, as well?

Seriously, other than all the murders, this whole movie had me going, “Oh my God! Just like me!” over and over again.

Lessons Learned

I love, Canada!