Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Author: Cranky Lesbian Page 3 of 54

Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.

Donna Mills Searches for a Missing Plot in The Lady Forgets

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On November 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Donna Mills has more hair than memories in The Lady Forgets.

Amnesia is contagious in The Lady Forgets (1989), afflicting not only its puzzled heroine, an art teacher mixed up in a murder she can’t remember, but screenwriter Durrell Royce Crays (Schoolboy Father), who seems to have misplaced its plot and improvised by scribbling bits of dialogue in spray cheese.

If you don’t feel like a neurologist within its first 10 minutes, when Rebecca Simms (Donna Mills) sustains one of her many head injuries and recovers previously lost memories while simultaneously losing newer ones, give it a little time. Eventually you’ll have wondered “Did he just have a stroke?” about several important characters, before finally questioning your own cognitive abilities as you struggle to make sense of anything you just saw — particularly Greg Evigan’s hair, the vivacious mullet of My Two Dads having been cruelly replaced by an ailing squirrel.

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Doing Time on Maple Drive: A Favored Son’s Gay Secret

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On November 7, 2023

In TV Movies

James Sikking, William McNamara and Bibi Besch in Doing Time on Maple Drive.

Before there was Beverly Sutphin, Serial Mom’s murderous matriarch, or Joanna Kerns in Mother Knows Best, there was steely social striver Lisa Carter (Bibi Besch) of Doing Time on Maple Drive (1992). So obsessed is she with making the right impression that you’re forgiven for wanting to shout “Don’t go in there, she has a knife!” at son Matt (William McNamara) when he ventures into the kitchen following a bruising family fight.

Though she’s only preparing dinner, Lisa’s so incandescent with rage over Matt’s broken engagement to Allison (Lori Loughlin, poignantly pretty, with the depth of a thimble), the wealthy daughter-in-law of her dreams, that you half-expect her to stab him. “You’re just going to let him get away with it?” she challenges husband Phil (James Sikking), a rigid military man turned restaurateur. “With embarrassing us? With humiliating us?” Who knows how she’d react if he wore white after Labor Day.

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Right of Way: Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart’s Suicide Pact

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On October 30, 2023

In TV Movies

Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart cuddle and fantasize about death in Right of Way.

If I told you that Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart costarred in an HBO movie about an elderly couple in a suicide pact, you’d probably think I was yanking your chain — and that’s without mentioning that Stewart’s character nibbles on cat food* or that Davis makes tuna casserole, something she certainly never did as Charlotte Vale, Judith Traherne or Margo Channing. It happens in the long-forgotten Right of Way (1983), which was produced in the network’s pre-Michael Patrick King era. In laymen’s terms, that means our octogenarian protagonists keep their clothes on and don’t break up with their daughter via Post-it note.

Instead, Miniature ‘Mini’ Dwyer (Davis, and there’s a long story behind that diminutive) and husband Teddy (Stewart) summon daughter Ruda (Melinda Dillon) to their Los Angeles home, which she finds unkempt and overrun with stray cats. Mini explains their lack of concern: “You see, we’re not worried about the house, the lawn these days, or the cats’ bowls or the weeds. We aren’t worried about any of it. We know we haven’t been attending to these things. We’re not blind and we haven’t forgotten. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We have chosen not to.” Indeed, they’ve been busy with weightier matters, like plotting their deaths.

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Stalked by My Doctor: The Return Improves on the Original

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On October 26, 2023

In TV Movies

Eric Roberts and Claire Blackwelder in Stalked by My Doctor: The Return.

When last we saw Dr. Albert Beck (Eric Roberts), the world’s second-most dangerous cardiothoracic surgeon, he was starting a new life as an international fugitive following a kidnapped patient’s daring escape from captivity. Stalked by My Doctor: The Return (2016) finds him in Acapulco, and one can only assume that Lifetime couldn’t afford to license the Four Tops’ “Loco in Acapulco,” which would’ve been the perfect soundtrack to a sequel that zestfully embraces the abject terribleness of its slightly more serious predecessor.

Its villain, now posing as a pediatrician named Victor Slauson, practices his own form of self-acceptance by ignoring the advice — and pharmaceuticals — offered by his psychiatrist, Dr. Clark (Tiffany Adams). Their online appointments convey Beck’s commitment to indulging his madness, as when he confidently tells the doctor of his plan to stalk 18-year-old Amy Watkins (Claire Blackwelder), who he recently saved from drowning. “I’m thinking I can date the mother, which would help me get closer to the daughter,” he muses. “The mom likes me, I can tell. But don’t worry, she won’t be bothering us for long.”

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Twist of Faith: Toni Braxton Falls for an Orthodox Cantor

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On October 20, 2023

In TV Movies

Toni Braxton and David Julian Hirsh in Twist of Faith.

Don’t be fooled by Lifetime’s promotion of Twist of Faith (2013) as an interfaith romance. This extraordinarily bizarre film, starring Toni Braxton as a Methodist gospel singer who unbreaks the heart of a grieving Orthodox cantor, is something rarer: a religious Rorschach test from the same network that brought us Trapped by My Sugar Daddy, Psycho Yoga Instructor and Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear. Whether it leaves you feeling uplifted or appalled is a matter of (very) personal taste — and to a lesser extent, a reflection of your ability to perform rudimentary math.

Twist of Faith’s timeline is shockingly condensed: Nearly as soon as we meet teacher and cantor Jacob Fisher (David Julian Hirsh), his wife and three children are lost to a senseless act of violence. After sitting shiva in a nearly catatonic state, he leaves his personal belongings behind — including his kippah and tzitzit — and boards a southbound bus from Brooklyn, finding himself homeless in rural Alabama. When Nina Jones (Braxton), a fellow teacher, first spots him, it’s hardly love at first sight. “There’s a white guy sleeping over there by the church. Keep your eye on him,” she warns her uncle Moe (Mykelti Williamson).

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The Day the Loving Stopped: Rhoda, McCloud and a Very ’70s Divorce

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On October 13, 2023

In TV Movies

Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver in The Day the Loving Stopped.

As if Rhoda Morgenstern’s divorce from Joe Gerard wasn’t emotionally bruising enough, here Valerie Harper (Goodbye, Supermom) goes again, putting us through the wringer in The Day the Loving Stopped (1981). This telefilm about a 1970s split with ’80s repercussions isn’t as giddily melodramatic as its title suggests, but coed Judy Danner (Dominique Dunne, Valentine Magic on Love Island) sure cries a lot, a trait shared with mother Norma (Harper). Younger sister Debbie (Ally Sheedy) gets so fed up with all the waterworks that she eventually snaps “Just knock it off!” — it was either that or break into “No More Tears (Enough is Enough).”

The family has gathered for Judy’s wedding to Danny Reynolds (James Canning), a persistent classmate who is resolutely untroubled by his betrothed’s ambivalence about marriage and hostility toward her estranged father, Aaron (Dennis Weaver of Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction). Alone together, the sweethearts can’t put groceries in the trunk without pausing to kiss. Alone with her thoughts, or with Debbie, Judy’s a waterlogged mess who isn’t sure she believes in love. “I’ve never seen it last. I don’t know if it does. Don’t you understand?” she asks, increasingly hysterical. We do, but she clarifies: “I don’t want to do to my kids what they did to us.”

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Kate Jackson Fools Around in The Silence of Adultery

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On September 23, 2023

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson and Robert Desiderio in The Silence of Adultery.

The loftiness — and supreme silliness — of The Silence of Adultery’s title drew me in because it was almost Bergmanesque. Doesn’t it conjure mental images of Erland Josephson or Max von Sydow meeting Harriet Andersson or Ingrid Thulin in a barn in rural Sweden for joyless assignations before an indifferent, possibly nonexistent God? And while we’re asking unserious questions, if your adultery is silent does that mean you’re doing it wrong?

This 1995 Lifetime movie isn’t prurient enough to provide an unequivocal answer, but there isn’t much heat between the married Rachel Lindsey (Kate Jackson) and Michael Harvott (Robert Desiderio), a recently separated father. They’re introduced when Michael brings his nonverbal son to the barn where Rachel offers equine therapy to autistic kids. Her qualifications are unclear — the script says she isn’t a doctor, despite IMDb calling her one — and don’t matter, anyway. Autism is merely a plot device to introduce the lovers.

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Connie Sellecca Cries and Commits Bigamy in She Led Two Lives

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On September 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Connie Sellecca and Perry King in She Led Two Lives.

We meet Rebecca Cross (Connie Sellecca), a 35-year-old flannel enthusiast with a flawless complexion and unfortunate bangs, when she’s hauled off to jail in handcuffs. Suspenseful music plays as she’s booked — what crime did the mild-mannered cancer researcher commit? For the answer, let us turn to one of Barbra Streisand’s greatest hits: Rebecca is “A Woman in Love.” And she’ll do anything to get Mike (A Martinez) into her world and hold him within, even if it means committing bigamy. It’s a right she defends over and over again.

Rebecca is already married to Jeffrey (Perry King of Inmates: A Love Story), a dashing surgeon. Weeks earlier, he slid a bracelet onto her wrist for their seventh wedding anniversary and proposed a toast: “To Rebecca. I didn’t think it was possible but I love you more today than the day we were married.” And then he is paged to the operating room, a familiar conclusion to their nights together. Her loneliness is accentuated by her father’s deathbed regret at not spending more time with loved ones, a fate he implores her to avoid.

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Twirl: A Baton-Twirling Competition Tests a Friendship

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On August 29, 2023

In TV Movies

Lisa Whelchel, Erin Moran, and Moran’s false lashes, in Twirl.

Pauline Kael’s review of Urban Cowboy memorably concludes with a question to its writers and director: “James Bridges, Aaron Latham, have you been riding a head-pounding machine?” From Twirl’s earliest moments and throughout its duration, you might wonder the same of its filmmakers — had they sustained baton-related head injuries? Did they ever recover?

Clearly they were influenced by Cowboy (released theatrically a year earlier, in 1980), a moderately campy and classist crowd-pleaser masquerading as something more serious. Baton-crazed besties Bonnie Lee Jordan (Erin Moran of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi) and Jill Moore (Lisa Whelchel of The Facts of Life) never mount a mechanical bull, but they share a boundless passion for twirling, which consumes their identities.

In Twirl’s dizzying opening moments, the girls trade voice-overs expressing sentiments such as this: “You know what it means to twirl? It means not havin’ time for messin’ around with my friends, it means sayin’ no to dates on twirlin’ days. When I am out there twirlin’ my heart away, no explanation is necessary.” Viewers may beg to differ, of course, but Bonnie Lee continues: “It is worth it? The bruises, swollen fingers and even black eyes? Yes, it is all worth it. I am a Texas twirler.”

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Parkinson’s, Part II

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On August 12, 2023

In Brainpan

8/27 update: Twirl review coming by Tuesday at the latest; got waylaid by continued shoulder problems. Thanks for your patience!

TV movie fans: I’ll be back soon with a look at “Twirl,” a very special exploration of the ultra-competitive world of baton-twirling starring Lisa Whelchel and Erin Moran.

“How has your mood been lately?” the neurologist asked last week at my first follow-up appointment since being diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s in June. I was there for the neck and shoulder Botox injections that were previously delayed by levodopa adjustments, but she set aside extra time to discuss the diagnosis itself since our last meeting had been rushed.

“I’m told there’s room for improvement,” I replied modestly.

“Are you depressed?”

“I’m not sure if I’m depressed-depressed. But it’s depressing to be told at 40 that you have Parkinson’s.”

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