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Tag: TV Movies Page 2 of 12

The Seduction of Gina: Valerie Bertinelli Gambles

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On December 19, 2023

In TV Movies

Valerie Bertinelli accessorizes in The Seduction of Gina.

From California Split to Croupier and Uncut Gems, women are often afterthoughts in movies about gambling. Jeanne Moreau’s compulsive gambler in Bay of Angels (1963) is a notable exception, a deadbeat mom whose desperation is evident in her haunted eyes and peroxide-blonde hair. “The first time I walked into a casino, I felt like I was in church,” she recalls in that film, a romanticization not quite echoed by Valerie Bertinelli’s Gina Breslin* in The Seduction of Gina (1984).

Gina’s gambling is less about spiritual communion than emotional immaturity and marital ennui. “I feel like I’m single except I can’t date,” she moans to best friend Mary (Dinah Manoff) as they loll around the college campus where she studies art. It’s a problem of her own making. Husband David (Fredric Lehne), a young physician, warned against tagging along for his intern year, worried she’d feel lonely and isolated. She insisted on cohabitation anyway but struggles during his overnight shifts, resorting first to restless late-night baking and then baccarat to keep busy.

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An Afterschool Special Asks, What If I’m Gay?

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On December 5, 2023

In TV Movies

Richard Joseph Paul and Evan Handler in What If I’m Gay?

There comes a moment in What If I’m Gay?, a 1987 CBS Schoolbreak Special, when our teen jock protagonist — the one with gay pornography stashed in his bedroom, its walls adorned with posters of muscled male physiques as if he were Josh Hawley — questions how people know they’re gay. “How can anyone be sure?” he asks Allen (Evan Handler of Sex and the City), a dweeby heterosexual friend who is not yet romantically interested in girls.

For some of us, all it takes is renting the right Gina Gershon film at the age of 14 for those puzzle pieces to fall into place. Others tread more winding paths, like the curious Todd (Richard Joseph Paul) himself, a soccer team captain whose girlfriend has recently started to wonder, after a year of dating, why they never spend time alone. Surely he has some idea, between his choice of reading material and previous (offscreen) sexual encounters with a friend, but acknowledging it’s a struggle.

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A Mother’s Justice: Meredith Baxter Goes Charles Bronson

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On November 26, 2023

In TV Movies

Meredith Baxter and G.W. Bailey in A Mother’s Justice.

There are worse tales of maternal vigilantism than Meredith Baxter’s A Mother’s Justice: John Schlesinger’s notorious Eye for an Eye, starring Sally Field, springs immediately to mind. But don’t take that as an endorsement of Baxter’s film, which premiered on NBC in 1991 and found a second home on Lifetime. It’s still quite bad, just not as grotesque as Field’s revenge fantasy. The closest it comes is a misguided scene at an Italian restaurant that brings new meaning to the slogan “When you’re here, you’re family.”

Justice, directed by Noel Nosseck (No One Would Tell), opens suspensefully, with a predator prowling the streets. His abduction of Debbie (Carrie Hamilton), a 23-year-old aspiring nurse, is more graphic than her subsequent rape, which she immediately reports to police. Det. Bogardus (Blu Mankuma) assures her it wasn’t her fault and awkwardly tells her “I know I’m the same color as the man who attacked you, but I just want you to know, we get ’em in all colors. Like I said, don’t worry. If he goes on, we’ll get him.”

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Faye Dunaway Crashes A Family Thanksgiving

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On November 19, 2023

In TV Movies

Faye Dunaway stuffs a turkey with dermal fillers in Hallmark’s A Family Thanksgiving.

There are those who will watch A Family Thanksgiving (2010) for the reassuring comforts of its adherence to Hallmark formula: nothing says the holidays quite like an ambitious, career-driven woman realizing the error of her ways in a festive family setting. A second, smaller group of us merely want to hear Faye Dunaway cry “Tina, bring me the carving knife!”, an opportunity that screenwriter Emily Baer senselessly squandered.

Minor consolation can be found in Dunaway’s Stevie Nicks meets Mother Goose wardrobe and ill-fitting wig, which might’ve been salvaged from a drag bar’s dumpster after a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? revue. A Family Thanksgiving is also saucier than the average Hallmark offering, featuring both scatological humor and — heavens to Betsy! — sex. It’s not often you see the heroine tear off her love interest’s clothes in one of these movies, but don’t get too excited: it’s made less unseemly by a time-travel loophole that places the action within the bonds of holy matrimony.

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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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