Mind Over Murder

A week ago I was staying at a hotel in sort-of rural Ohio for work and, hey!, the Quality Inn has the Lifetime Movie Network. Score! I can mix business with pleasure!

There was no pleasure.

Mind Over Murder is predictably terrible. Tori Spelling plays an assistant district attorney (ha!) who hit by a car and develops the power to read minds. She then uses this power to go after a Republican Senator who murdered his mistress.

1. This is going to blow the Lifetimeness scale out of the water. Reread that last paragraph. That is shitbird crazy.

2. After reading that paragraph, don't you know every detail of the movie already? Do I need to spend 1000 words telling you about Tori Spelling using her powers to catch people lying on the stand? Or the forced awkwardness of when the judge realizes that one of the attorneys is psychic? No. You got it down.

And I had it down. I actually left in the middle of the movie to go grocery shopping. Seriously. I don't think I missed much. Somewhere in there Spelling falls in love with a cop played by her real-life husband. The lack of chemistry between those two was astonishing.

And since the movie came out in 2006, way after Spellings's plastic surgeries, you have to stare at this for two hours:

Hypnotically unsexy

But, finally, a Lifetime movie so stupid that I gave up on it. Sadly, this one the "pick-a-flick" contest they run for Friday nights. In other words, this movie was shown because of popular demand. That's a Human Centipede amount of scariness.

AWESOMENESS: 0

They say a D- is sometimes harsher than an F, but, no. This deserves the zero.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 2

Tori Spelling only exists to fuel the Lifetime Nightmare Machine. She isn't a celebrity anymore.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

And well earned.

GRAND TOTAL: 12

So my shortest review ever leads to a 12. Avoid at all costs.

Family Sins [Trigger Warning for, uh, Everything]

[Harmony note: Since trauma is the bread and butter of the Lifetime film, I'm going to start putting trigger warnings in the titles when appropriate. On one hand a person can reasonably expect SOMETHING horrible will happen in a Lifetime movie. On the other hand, some movies go a little farther then others, so why not make it easier to skip something you don't want to read?]

It's always a happy occasion when Rusty and I have the time to watch a LMN movie together. Since we don't get to do it very often, it's best to try for a special occasion kind of a film. Family Sins hit our criteria through three very important key phrases: "true crime", "evil basement", and "Kirstie Alley". We sat down on Friday with a bottle of Kid Rock's favorite bourbon (Red Stag!) and gave it a go.

First off, can I just say "ew". It's no secret that my favorite true crime Lifetime movies are the campy ones. This one was like if the team behind Saw remade Serial Mom. I know that it's cliched to proclaim something Saw-like, but this movie is striving for it. Every third scene features someone being tortured in a grimy tableau. Your enjoyment of the movie will be predicated by your ability to enjoy watching a mentally handicapped woman get enslaved, beaten, and raped by people she trusted to take care of herself and her baby. Whoops, spoiler alert. Also, they rape her daughter. Again with the spoilers!

The movie starts with a family photo session that is probably trying to remind us of Capturing the Friedmans. (Remember when we talked about how it's not a good idea to remind us of a better movie in the middle of a bad movie? Read the blog, you hacks!) Is this picture perfect family not what they seem, or will this be the most boring hour since Project Runway moved to Lifetime? Cut to Kirstie Alley playing Brenda Geck, celebrating Mothers Day with her extended brood of biological and foster kids. Her kids are creepy, too. One is a Spencer Pratt-y meathead. There's also a girl who hides in the corner and looks and acts like pre-pubescent Carrie: sad, stuttery, and powerless. She spends a lot of her time shielding a tiny boy in her lap who looks a little too much like the Spencer dude. Brenda receives a bunch of lovely expensive appliances with price tags attached. Carrie, who is actually named Marie, is the only person who did not bring Brenda a Mother's Day present. This is underlined, highlighted, and poked into our eyes by writers who are firm believers in foreshadowing. And rape basements. Mostly rape basements.

The film leaps forward and we learn that Marie has fled the household, little blonde mini-Spence in tow. She's trying to find an official to listen to her story, but everyone is all "That family is cool, you crazy". As always in Lifetime films, social services only exist to rip families apart, ignore children in crisis, and maybe set orphans on fire. Her flight to freedom is interspersed with flashbacks to her icky childhood. Apparently, Mrs. Geck spends most of her time teaching her kids to shoplift and setting fires in her family's rental properties when the tenants displease her. Don't worry for them though, it's not all iron-fist tactics for a Geck property tenant. For example, one of the unfortunate arson victims was lucky enough to be taken in to their home, child in tow, for some loving rehabilitation. It's unfortunate that the Geck family learned their rehab techniques from Abu Ghraib, but oh well. If sexual assault, torture, and forced labor is good enough for our enemies, it's good enough for a mentally handicapped woman and her child. The mentally handicapped woman, who is named Nadine, is locked by Brenda in the basement for "her own good". She doesn't eat unless she does the housework to Brenda's specifications, and the one time she flees the property she's delivered back there by a well-meaning policeman and is rewarded with a beating from a stripped extension cord. She doesn't have the werewithal to escape on her own, and her daughter doesn't fare much better- raised as a Geck, as she grows older she learns of her mother's imprisonment. She also learns that she's expected to shoplift to support the family, and oh yeah, any male member of the family is entitled to sexually assault her at any time. One morning Brenda teases her for getting too fat, only to learn that she's been impregnated by her son. Instead of being horrified, she beats up Marie for being dumb enough to get knocked up by one of her kids. One commenter on the Lifetime site singled this moment out as a "lighthearted teasing" scene that allowed Kirstie Alley to show her fun side. I didn't know they had internet access in the violent offender wings of federal prisons, but you learn something new every day.

Carrie finally manages to find someone who will listen to her, a young DA that hasn't drunk the Geck Kool-Aid. The pieces of Marie's stories don't mesh with what the town believes about the Gecks, but they make enough sense that he's willing to hear her out. A raid on the Geck's house reveals Nadine's imprisonment, which is enough to put them all in custody while the DA builds a case. They slowly learn about the arson, the shoplifting, and the other illegal stuff the Gecks get up to. Brenda is unrepentant, and calls a dude that fences shoplifted goods for her to make things hard on Marie. He haunts her trailer, setting stuff on fire and breaking shit, but is generally just a nuisance as opposed to a real threat. And yes, the only other criminal in the film is black. Of course he is.

The climax of the film is the trial, which pretty much goes how you'd expect. Testimony is given, Marie cries a lot, Brenda looks suitably chagrined, and the men of the family get 10-20 years a piece for their involvement. The judge is super-excited to send Brenda to jail. Marie gets her public vindication, and she moves into a trailer with her mom. The film ends on a touching family hug. Yaaaay!

Awesomeness: 5
Urgh. Yes, this movie is campy and weird, and has a lot going for it in the arena of production values and a very strong cast. BUT! I cannot give awesomeness points to a movie where a mentally handicapped woman reminisces about how gentle her rapist was. Does that sentence make you feel awesome? Hey, me neither. 5 points for baseline awesome and I am cutting you off, movie.

Star Power: 6

Kirstie Alley has to be worth 5 points. She was in Cheers, and also is fat, which apparently means that as a nation we must observe and scrutinize her at all times. Everyone else in this had bit parts in every TV show ever, which makes them all annoyingly familiar but not immediately recognizable.

Lifetimeliness: 10
Now THIS is a Lifetime movie. Motherhood, child abuse, true crime, women in peril: this is the greatest hits reel of Lifetime Movies. This is Now Thats What I Call A Lifetime Movie!. It also had my favorite instance of a social services diss in one of these films: a harried social worker checking her watch and yawning as a child covered in bruises and close to tears says her family life is fine. Fuckin' social workers. Am I right?

I feel 21 is fair. This movie is a riveting watch, and it's certainly everything you'd expect from an LMN joint. But it is just SO GROSS. I'm going to go ahead and say you should watch it once, but I kind of doubt you'll want to watch it again.

LOST Finale: Sad Trombone

Alternate Title: No, no, no, no, NO.

A few months ago I used my podium here to hate on some non-Lifetime programming. I'd like to do that again. Don't know if you heard, but one of the most influential television shows of the past decade or so closed up shop yesterday. And since Lost is one of the few shows I've watched from the very beginning to its stupid conclusion, I need to get a few things off of my chest.

The obligatory disclaimer: Lost was one of my favorite shows ever. My weekday social calendar revolved around Lost for years. I am a hater by nature* and I love to complain, so please don't allow my incredibly negative reaction to yesterday's finale scare you off from watching the show if you haven't seen it yet.

(*As mentioned in my last review, I am currently watching Angel and Buffy for the first time. It's awesome. Highly recommended to all. But when I talk about it with people who are already huge fans (one of whom named their son after a Buffy character), I have nothing but weird complaints about very minor plot points. I am not pleasant to deal with. So I guess this entire post should be taken with a pillar of salt.)

Obligatory disclaimer #2: If you haven't seen the finale yet or are watching the show and haven't gotten to Season 6 yet, just please stop reading. And since I am only speaking to the people who watched last night's show, I won't get into too much expository detail. You all know what happened.

And Season 6, what a disaster. What a stupid, pointless disaster. The show spun its wheels for months with a bunch of crap like the Temple and the Lighthouse that didn't do anything for me and then tried rushing a resolution in the final four episodes. Let's take a step back and look at how the show has evolved itself into failure.

The first two seasons you have a bunch of survivors on a mysterious island with a monster and some hostile natives. Neat! But then! The end of Season 2, the show kind of evolves into a Dickensian romance between Desmond and Penny. By Season 3 we discover the Hostiles may be looking out for the Island's best interest, but they are willing to resort to great evil to protect it. (I wonder if Richard and Ben saw them genociding The Dharma Initiative when they realized they were in purgatory.) Also, pregnant ladies always die. Which leads for the mad scramble off of the island. Then they need to go back! Also, Penny and Desmond are quickly resolved and the show becomes a battle between two sets of Hostiles: Ben and Widmore. Which is kind of tangentially connected to Desmond and Penny, so, fine. But by the time we get to Jacob vs. The Man in Black/Smoke Monster, no. Too much. The master plot had changed too often and the show's creators saying that only the characters mattered was code for "we cared more about cliffhangers than story so here we are with a bunch of loose ends that can never be answered."

And by the last episode of the last season, we got some of the worst television writing in the medium's history. Basic 101 stuff. What was Smokey's motivation? He wanted off the island, then he wanted to destroy the island. Ok. Why? Why did he need Desmond? Why did Jacob want Desmond on the island? Desmond turned out to be pretty useless, no? What did Ben want? Why did his motivation change every episode? Same goes for Widmore. That whole war he had against Smokey was for what? He wanted to take over the island in order to protect it? Or did he just want to get back at Ben?

These aren't ambiguities meant to add shades of gray to each character. It's just piss poor writing. The entire finale, I was still wondering what it was that each character wanted. And other than Jack and his other candidates needing to save the island, I never got it. I swear to God I am a smart person and I couldn't figure out what was happening. I watch the show religiously, read a bunch of Lost crap on the Internet, and I had no idea why things were happening. That can only be interpreted as a total failure.

And the sideways universe being purgatory....JESUS CHRIST. I admit, that on an episodic scale, neat. It was awesome to see characters reconnect and to have a big ol' reunion at the end of the show. I got all weepy when Sun and Jin saw their pasts (although they as a couple clearly did not give a shit about their daughter). I got all weepy when Sawyer reconnected with Juliette. It made the episode very watchable.

But spending an entire season with it? UGH. Not worth it! Weeks and weeks of stupid can not be made up with some weepies.

And the open plot holes....Those open plot holes. The fertility stuff? The very situation that drove the plot when the show was at the height of its powers? Nope. The show cared so little about the fertility stuff that - as previously mentioned - the miracle baby became an afterthought never to be seen again. And what about Jacob's cabin? What the hell was that all about.

And has there ever been a more frustrating moment on television than when Ben and Hurley were talking about the Island's rules and Ben casually mentioned that those weren't real rules, they were just Jacob's whims? First, how do you know that, Ben? Jacob's been there for centuries. Second, Jacob is the one who made it impossible to find the island, impossible to boat off the island, and allowed the island to shift in time? AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DEAL WITH THE ISLAND SHIFTING IN TIME!?!?

The laziness here is really troubling. And it's apparent throughout the entire episode. Why does Desmond think pulling The Cork of the Island will be good? He just does. And why does pulling The Cork make Alpert and the Man in Black mortal, who knows, but it sure is convenient for Jack and Kate. And if plugging the Island back up is all you need to save it, I wouldn't exactly call Jack a hero. I would just call Desmond useless.

This show had so much wasted potential. This awesome science-fiction, mystery, romance thingy became a show about spirituality and religion which freed the writers from having to make a lick of goddamned sense. And even worse, the show ended in an Unitarian Church. Unitarians are stupid. That stained-glass window at the end that had every religious symbol? Stupid as balls. Why not just have Jack ascend to heaven in a Prius with a "coexist" bumper sticker?

And what happened to Cindy the stewardess and the kids!? GOD DAMN THERE ARE SO MANY HANGING THREADS HERE!

I swear I am fine with some hanging threads. I really, truly am. But a lot of these things were driving entire seasons. Seasons I loved and cared about and couldn't wait to find out what was going on. I honestly feel like I was tricked into watching the last season. There was never any attempt to deal with what had come before it. Boo to that.

I truly hope that I'm not one of those people who was going to be unsatisfied no matter what. Despite my hater status, I'd like to think that I was open to loving this episode. I truly believe that I was. I didn't care that Sayid ended up being literally soulmates with a character based on Paris Hilton instead of the woman he literally shot himself for and then later married. Shit like that is fine. It's a finale, weird things like that need to happen for closure. But the show just did not care about what I cared about. And what they cared about was boring and insignificant.

And yes I will be buying Season 6 on Blu-Ray. Why do you ask?

Cheaters' Club

As mentioned in the last post, Cheaters' Club is the third Lifetime movie I've ever seen. And the first movie I ever saw on the Lifetime Movie Network. This is historic. It might not be the greatest, but it is the inspiration.

Cheaters' Club's opening credits are a direct rip-off of Seven's. The film is all scratchy and the Mexican non-union equivalent of Nine Inch Nails is screeching in the background. All of this just to show us that a psycho has some photos of our unintroduced protagonist.

We start with a call-in radio psychologist chain smoking cigarettes and getting yelled at by angry callers. It seems that she is advising listeners and clients to cheat on their spouses in order to get the spark in their sex life back. These callers are great because they don't make sense. "My 18-year-old daughter is pregnant because of you!" Who wants to bet that nonexistent dude is a Teabagger now?

Finally we get to the titular Cheater Club. The psychologist, who I will refer to as Slutty Frasier, is counseling three clients to cheat up a storm. Well, two clients are already all over it. The third, our protagonist Linda, thinks that adultery might be a violation of her marriage vows. Everyone has a good laugh at the prude and that's that.

That night, Linda tries making the sex with her hubby but he's tired from work and wants to watch sports and sleep.

so sleepy

From there, the cheating begins in earnest.

We next see Slutty Frasier slutty cheating with a shirtless young man. This shirtless young man can not get enough of Frasier. He is going all out. Ropes, chains, and raw oysters. They have sex at least twice. Twice!

Then they get murdered. By a mystery assailant.

The Cheaters' Club meets up because the murder of an adulterous woman with a ton of enemies immediately becomes all about them.

The club consists of three women. Our hero, the aforementioned Linda, is the good gal since she is less eager to sleep with other men. The other two women are pretty weird. Meredith is a controlling lawyer who sleeps with a "pro" escort. She cheats because her husband is a stay-at-home dad and real men work. She also browbeats her secretary and becomes de facto leader once Frasier is stabbed to death.

The third woman, Cindy, is a stranger bird. She is sleeping with her high school flame and seems to like chasing the thrills of her youth. She's more timid, but is clearly capable of stabbing people. She looks generally stabby.

stab stab stab

Anyways, they all agree to keep quiet about the cheating because they don't want to get caught cheating. Um, if your psychologist is FAMOUS for telling women to cheat, isn't that cat out of the bag?

Linda gets paid a visit by a crazy detective who also concludes that this murder is all about the Cheaters' Club. The lady detective demands to know what Linda was in therapy for. When Linda refuses citing doctor-patient privilege, the detective basically tells her there's no such thing and that she is going to subpoena all of her medical information. Right. Because this is a thing that happens.

Linda then somehow gets access to all of Slutty Frasier's patient information. I admit I wasn't paying great attention because a playoff hockey game was in double overtime during the movie (Go Bruins!). In the patient file, Meredith is described as a woman with extreme anger issues. Therefore, Meredith must be the killer! Linda tells the detective that she knows Meredith is a murderer.

Well, good one, Linda, 'cause it isn't Meredith. The killer pays Meredith's escort to record a lovemaking session and when the killer goes to pick up the video, he/she (Who am I kidding? She.) throws in a few stabs for good measure.

The killer sends the video to Meredith's firm and it goes viral. She gets fired. That's it for Meredith.

Linda goes back to her files and, lo and behold, Cindy's file is pretty interesting too. Cindy isn't even really cheating. She's delusional and vindictive and batshit nuts and WHY DIDN'T YOU READ THIS WHILE YOU WERE LOOKING OVER MEREDITH'S FILE WHICH IS ON THE SAME WORD FILE!?!?

Well, too late for Linda since Cindy has already stolen your five-year-old son. Linda goes to Cindy's and realizes that, whoops, she's been sleeping with Cindy's husband.

Now, I know pointing out massive plot holes in Lifetime movies is going after real low hanging fruit, but, Jesus Christ. Cindy and Linda were in group together before Linda had slept with anyone besides her husband. And Linda slept with Cindy's husband the same time Cindy was stabbing Slutty Frasier. And Cindy was supposed to be avenging people sleeping with her husband? She was targeting people before there was any cheating. What? I mean, maybe, if Cindy's husband was sleeping with Meredith and Slutty Frasier too. But then why not just stab the husband? None of this makes sense.

Linda and Cindy fight and stab at each other and Linda kills Cindy. Linda apologizes to her husband and Meredith moves to Cincinnati (*sad trombone*) to start over. THE END.

AWESOMENESS: 14

The movie is fun. Again, it's the second time I've seen it. There are a lot of Lifetime movies I wouldn't watch twice.

That being said, it's not perfect. There are a lot of plateaus where the viewer is just waiting for anything to happen. But the waits are always worth it since the movie is so unhinged.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 3

The reason I saw this at my old DC group house was that I had a roommate who was flipping through channels who stopped on Lifetime Movie Network. Why? Because the movie stars Charisma Carpenter, an actress from three of his favorite things: Buffy, Angel, and being naked on the Internet. So a point for each of those.

Remember how I tried watching The X-Files in its entirety? Yeah, that was a wash. I, like the majority of X-Philes, couldn't make it past the terrible Season 6. The dream is dead. So, new dream! I am going to watch all of Buffy. It's available instantly on Netflix and a ton of my friends are in love with the show, so I am going to see what the fuss is all about. I just started Season 2 and the show is finally starting to get awesome. That first season though....woof.

Oh, other than Ms. Carpenter, no other famous people. And calling Charisma Carpenter famous is already a stretch.

LIFETIMENESS: 5

It doesn't count as women's intuition if you're just taking wild guesses on who the killer is. There were, like, three non-murdered characters in the entire movie. At some point, Linda was going to figure it out.

But Linda did have a child in danger. And the show is very, very hard on unfaithful women. That scolding tone makes me feel right at home on LMN.

GRAND TOTAL: 22

I'm actually disappointed in the mediocre score. It's definitely not essential viewing, but it is definitely ridiculous.

More Programming

Well, I said I'd give people more advance, so here we go:

Next Wednesday (4/21/10) at 10pm, Lifetime Movie Network will be showing Cheaters' Club. I've actually seen this one before, back in 1 BLW (Before Lifetime Wow). Other than Fifteen and Pregnant and When Friendship Kills, this was my first Lifetime movie. And I clearly enjoyed it since a few weeks later this blog came to pass.

So won't you watch this with me this Wednesday so we can compare notes?

Programming

IMPORTANT NEWS.

If you can get to your TV or DVR today (4/14/2010) by 4pm, please watch or record Fatal Trust on the Lifetime Movie Network. It's one of the few movies to score above a 30 on my arbitrary scale and it really is an all-time favorite that I would want to see even if I didn't write these reviews.

I'll try to make these updates more regular whenever an awesome movie is about to be on. Hopefully next time you'll get more of an advance.

ADMIN

1. Obviously no one reads this blog on a regular basis. What happens is people find us by Googling a Lifetime movie that was just on. And that's great! The problem is, when people leave comments 18 months after the original post, I'm likely going to miss it. I went back through years of archives reading comments left way after the fact and most of them are awesome. It's a good way to kill an hour.

And I totally missed an actress from one of the movies I reviewed leaving a comment. And naturally it's an actress who I teased about her physical appearance. Smooth.

Thank God, the actress, Kimberlee Peterson, star of Painful Secrets/Secret Cutting, has a sense of humor about the whole thing. It's clearly not the first time she's read a joke about her eyebrows not quite lining up.

So, in her honor, I give Ms. Peterson official FRIEND OF THE BLOG status. There's no way she's the only Lifetime actor to stumble upon this site, but she was the only one to strike back. And it is much appreciated.

2. So, the sight that I was previously known for writing, Why I Hate DC, is shutting down. This after I inherited it from its founder and after I passed it down to others. I love the idea of a legacy blog and am greatly disappointed that its last writer, Dave Stroup (who was AWESOME by the way) has decided to end the hate. Now I don't have administrator status anymore and that's just the way I want it. It's his blog and therefore his decision. But I hope he reconsiders.