In 2020’s Killer Prom, Yvonne Zima plays Sienna. Poor Sienna is desperately struggling with her life. She has a cheap apartment that she still can’t really afford. Her mother wants nothing to do with her. She hasn’t had much of a romantic life since missing her high school prom. She’s very jealous of her distant cousin, Hannah (Megan Vincent). Hannah is married to Dr. Tony Wilson (Mark Lutz), a man on whom Sienna has always had a crush. So, Sienna drowns Hannah at the family reunion and then moves to Texas so she can be close to Tony and his family.
Sienna not only wants to marry Tony. She also wants to help Tony’s teenage daughter, Maya (Erica Anderson), have a great prom night! In fact, Sienna has it all perfectly planned out. While Maya is off at prom, Tony will be so moved by his love for Sienna that he’ll ask her to marry him. The only problem is that Maya instantly notices that something is off about Sienna and she really doesn’t want her anywhere near her prom or her date, Jake (Kyle Meagher). Meanwhile, Tony is too busy mourning his wife to fall in love with anyone. And even if Tony was going to fall in love with anyone, it would probably be his assistant, Lauren (Brianna Barnes).
Oh, Sienna hates Lauren. When Lauren shows up at a barbecue, Sienna has to duck into the bathroom so she can ask her reflection, “Who wears a red dress to a barbecue!?” Really, Sienna? Who wears a red dress to a barbecue? I WEAR A RED DRESS TO A BARBECUE! You have a problem with me!? That said, Lauren’s dress is a little bit too expensive for a barbecue. Barbecues can get messy as anyone who has seen that picture of James Talarico sinking his teeth into those ribs can tell you.
Anyway, it’s a Lifetime film so Sienna loses it. She goes from wanting to marry Tony and become Maya’s stepmother to wanting to kill them both and does it pretty quickly. Of course, it’s up to Maya to save the family, even if that means missing her own prom. Don’t count on Tony to do anything. Tony is bizarrely clueless, even though it’s pretty much obvious from the start that Sienna has some issues. Men in Lifetime films never stop to think that the attractive woman who was the last person to see their wife before her mysterious death could possibly be a troublemaker.
I really enjoyed Killer Prom, mostly because I went to prom every year that I was in high school and I had a blast each time. Movies like this pretty much live and die based on how effective the actress playing the psycho is and Yvonne Zima gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as Sienna. She’s just so incredibly excited about the prom! It’s hard not to feel bad for her when it becomes clear that she’s going to end up missing another one.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
First released in 1995, Heat is one of the most influential and best-known films of the past 30 years. It also received absolutely zero Oscar nominations.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that Academy — especially the Academy of the 1990s — didn’t shower the film with nominations. For all of its many strengths, Heat is still a genre piece, an epic three-hour crime film from director Michael Mann. It’s a film about obsessive cops and tightly-wound crooks and it’s based on a made-for-TV movie that Mann directed in the late 80s. While the Academy had given a best picture nomination to The Fugitive just two years before, it still hadn’t fully come around to honoring genre films.
And yet one would think that the film could have at least picked up a nomination for its editing or maybe the sound design that helps to make the film’s signature 8-minute gun battle so unforgettable. (Heat is a film that leaves you feeling as if you’re trapped in the middle of its gunfights, running for cover while the cops and the crooks fire on each other.) The screenplay, featuring the scene where Al Pacino’s intense detective sits down for coffee with Robert De Niro’s career crook, also went unnominated.
Al Pacino was not nominated for playing Vincent Hanna and maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. Pacino yells a lot in this movie. When people talk about Pacino having a reputation for bellowing his lines like a madman, they’re usually thinking about the scene where he confronts a weaselly executive (Hank Azaria) about the affair that he’s having with Charlene (Ashley Judd), the wife of criminal Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer). And yet, I think that Pacino’s performance works in the context of the film and it’s often forgotten that Pacino has quite scenes in Heat as well. Pacino’s intensity provides a contrast to Robert De Niro’s tightly controlled career criminal, Neil McCauley. McCauley has done time in prison and he has no intention of ever going back. But, as he admits during the famous diner scene, being a criminal is the only thing that he knows how to do and it’s also the only thing that he wants to do. (“The action is the juice,” Tom Sizemore says in another scene.) If any two actors deserved a joint Oscar nomination it was Pacino and De Niro. In Heat, they’re the perfect team. Pacino’s flamboyance and De Niro’s tightly-controlled emotions come together to form the heart of the picture.
No one from the film’s supporting cast was nominated either, despite there being a wealth of riches to choose from. Ashley Judd and Val Kilmer come to mind as obvious contenders. Kilmer is amazing in the shoot-out that occurs two hours into the film. Ashley Judd has a killer scene where she helps her husband escape from the police. Beyond Judd and Kilmer, I like the quiet menace of Tom Sizemore’s Michael Cheritto. (Just check out the look he gives to an onlooker who is getting a little bit too curious.) Kevin Gage’s sociopathic Waingro is one of the most loathsome characters to ever show up in a movie. William Fichtner, Jon Voight, Danny Trejo, and Tom Noonan all make a definite impression and add to Michael Mann’s portrait of the Los Angeles underworld. In an early role, Natalie Portman plays Hanna’s neglected stepdaughter and even Amy Brenneman has some good moments as Neil’s unsuspecting girlfriend, the one who Neil claims to be prepared to abandon if he sees “the heat coming.”
I have to mention the performance of Dennis Haysbert as Don Breedan, a man who has just been released from prison and who finds himself working as a cook in a diner. (The owner of the diner is played by Bud Cort.) Haysbert doesn’t have many scenes but he gives a poignant performance as a man struggling not to fall back into his old life of crime and what eventually happens to him still packs an emotional punch. For much of the film’s running time, he’s on the fringes of the story. It’s only by chance that he finds himself suddenly and briefly thrown into the middle of the action.
Heat is the ultimate Michael Mann film, a 3-hour crime epic that is full of amazing action sequences, powerful performances, and a moody atmosphere that leaves the viewer with no doubt that the film is actually about a lot more than just a bunch of crooks and the cops who try to stop them. Hanna and McCauley both live by their own code and are equally obsessed with their work. Their showdown is inevitable and, as directed by Michael Mann, it takes on almost mythological grandeur. The film is a portrait of uncertainty and fear in Los Angeles but it’s also a portrait of two men destined to confront each other. They’re both the best at what they do and, as a result, only one can remain alive at the end of the film.
I rewatched Heat yesterday and I was amazed at how well the film holds up. It’s one of the best-paced three-hour films that I’ve ever seen and that epic gunfight is still powerful and frightening to watch. Like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, it was a 1995 film that deserved more Oscar attention than it received.
Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)
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.
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.
