Sunday, November 1, 2015

Lifetime Movie: Cold Spring (Contains Spoilers)


The Plot: After losing her baby when she’s hit by a car, a couple decides to move to Cold Spring in hopes of a new start.

The Players:
Roy: Sean Patrick Flanery (Powder, The Boondock Saints, Suicide Kings)
Sarah: Natasha Henstridge (Species)
Diane: Jennifer Gibson: (Maps to the Stars)

What Happened: Roy (Flanery) is a lawyer who is stepping out on his wife with Diane. While moving into a house with the help of Diane, Roy gets a phone call from his wife Diane (Henstridge). She tells him that she’s on her way home and would like for them to have lunch together. Roy hears an ambulance in the background but also in real time which causes him to believe his wife is closer than he thinks and his fears are confirmed when he looks out the window and see’s his wife across the street walking towards the house. He tries to divert her from the house by asking her to get a table at a nearby restaurant and he will be there shortly to which she agrees. Just as they are to hang up from each other he hears her scream and fall into traffic and get hit by car. Fast forward a few weeks later we learn that she has lost the baby. A doctor doing a home visit prescribes her medication and tells her that in time she will get over the lost.

I can’t remember how it came about but Roy is advised to move him and his wife from New York to Cold Spring, a very small town in which Sarah can get the peace and quiet she needs and it will be a great place for them to start their lives over again. Roy wants to move there to get away from Diane as well who won’t leave him alone. Since the accident Roy has become more attentive to his wife and does not want to have anything to do with Diane.

During their time in Cold Spring Sarah is having dreams of a four year old boy as well as of being killed or attempted murder on herself, while Roy thinks he’s seeing Diane about town. Each instances is not really happening.

What’s REALLY Happening: The boy Sarah is dreaming about belongs to Diane (whom was killed by Sarah but not on purpose*). The boy is not Roy’s but a child Diane had with her former boyfriend who was abusive to both Diane and the boy. The boyfriend beat the boy so bad he put him in a coma. Roy is not aware that his former girlfriend is dead until the end of the movie when the boyfriend takes Sarah hostage and lures Roy to the hide out so he can witness the boyfriend kill Sarah. It’s Diane’s boyfriend how pushed Sarah into traffic in hopes of killing her but since that didn’t happen he decided to kidnap her with the goal of killing her.

*Diane arrived at Roy’s house (when they lived in New York) and encounters his wife. She (Diane) tries to play off by saying she has the wrong place and as she’s leaving Sarah tells her not to ever come back. Diane somehow ends up in the house (I never understood how that happened) and as Sarah is running upstairs, Diane follows her and that’s when Sarah pushed Diane while telling her to get out of her house. Diane hits her head against the banister and dies. Sarah moves Diane’s body to an alley to look like she got mugged while burying her purse in a field or her backyard.

The Good: The plot and story-line was a good one. I enjoyed the mystery behind the strange dreams Sarah was having and the meaning behind the boy she kept seeing in her dreams.

The Bad: The chemistry between Flanery and Henstridge was not there at all. I really don’t think Henstridge was feeling the roll as Flanery was while Flanery’s acting was sub-par. His best work was in Powder (1995) and The Boondock Saints. The interaction between the two seemed forced and took away from the movie a bit. I got the feeling that Henstridge didn’t want Flanery near her and seemed annoyed by him. Flanery seemed to try to hard and possibly at times was over thinking his acting and movements.

The detective (who’s name I don’t remember and he’s not listed in the cast credits on imdb.com) was absolutely horrible. He used the vocal fry tone when talking which is so damn annoying. I’m not sure if he thought it sounded cool or what. And if he thought it sounded cool, like he was a hip detective, I wonder where he got the idea from.

Here’s a video about Vocal Fry

The boyfriend was just as bad as the detective in his attempt to act and sound threatening. He over emphasized his threats to Sarah and the looks on his face (which were meant to be mean looks) were of a joke. The look of fear on Henstridge’s face I think were more towards her fear of having to deal with this no-acting ass clown than the threats he was supposed to be giving her. The speech he was giving Sarah was something along the lines of leading a lamb to slaughter with Sarah being the lamb. Oy vey.

At the building where Sarah is being held, the cops see Roy through a window yet it took them almost 10 minutes to get to him. This threw me for a loop and had me lose a little bit of what was going on because I was trying to come up with excuses on why it was taking the cops so long to get inside and rescue Roy and his wife. Obviously the delay so more dramatic interactions between Roy, the boyfriend and Sarah could be played out, but they could have done this by switching between the scenes going on inside the building and the cops racing to get there. Oy vey once again.

The Ugly: There really isn’t any ugly to this movie. As mentioned it had a good story line and plot, but the chemistry between Flanery and Henstridge just wasn’t there and it was quite obvious. Sometimes, bad chemistry between actors can take away from the movie and cause the viewer to lose interest. I stayed because I wanted to know the meaning of Sarah’s dreams as well as get answers to a myriad of other things going on. I was getting a bit nervous that this was all going to be a supernatural thing, but it wasn’t. Whew!

Trivia: The house in the movie is the same house used in Cold Creek Manor (I shrugged my shoulders because I’ve seen nor heard of Cold Creek Manor).

As with most movies, towns are made up. But in this case there really is a Cold Spring, NY:

“The historic Village of Cold Spring is a small community in southeastern New York that is situated on the east bank of the Hudson River only fifty miles north of Manhattan.  It is one of two incorporated Villages within the Town of Philipstown in Putnam County. The Village occupies 0.6 square miles across the river from the United States Military Academy at West Point in the most scenic region of the Hudson Highlands” (read more here-> Cold Spring, NY)

Cold Spring
2013
Director: Sheldon Wilson –
Writer: Irvin Belateche
Starring (probably with regret): Natasha Henstridge, Sean Patrick Flanery

Drama, Mystery, Suspense
Currently showing on the Lifetime Movie Club app available for download in the Google Play store or App Store.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

The Murder Pact [Movie Review]



SATURDAY MOVIESSUNDAY VIEWINGS

I just finished watching The Murder Pact on @LifetimeTV via DVR since the movie was Lifetime’s Saturday night movie (last night, 12 September 2015) and it’s Sunday. The movies are recorded for I enjoy watching them on a Sunday and last night’s movie was not exception. I absolutely enjoy this movie and these type of movies is the reason I watch and love movies on LifetimeTV.

THE PLOT

The Murder Pact centers around four college friends who partake (one does) and witness (the other three do) the death of classmate atop of a roof of a building.

The friends:
Will LaSalle (Beau Mirchoff, Awkward, I am Number Four, Scary Movie 4)
Camile (Alexa PenaVega, Spy Kids 1 and 2, The Middle, Nashville)
Annabel (Renee Olstead, The Insider, The Secret Life of the American Teenager )
Rick (Michael J. Willett, Faking It, United States of Tara)

The classmate:
Heidi (Madeleine Dauer, The Cobblestone Corridor)

THE PLOT THICKENS, THE CAMERA CLICKS

Will comes from money; a lot of money and he’s poised to take over his father’s business once he graduates from the prestigious college he and his friends attend. Camille is Will’s girlfriend but does not come from money. This information is important to know.

One particular night Heidi goes looking for Will. She finds him on top of a roof of a night club. When she finds Will, Rick and Annabel are there as well. Camille has yet to arrive, but does so shortly after Heidi arrives. Heidi tells Will she needs to speak to him alone, emphasizing “alone” to his friends but they don’t leave. Shortly thereafter, Heidi threaten to tell Camille that Will was stepping out on her.

Will, not wanting to lose Camille, pushed Heidi (in an attempt to keep her from leaving).  Will was not aware the railing was broken and Heidi’s death was an accident. But there’s a fifth witness. The fifth witness is Heidi’s friend and roommate, Lisa. Lisa was outside the building with her camera taking pictures of Heidi and Will and when Heidi fell. She got a picture of Camille as well who is now looking on to the pavement where Heidi is lying. It isn’t until a class that Will, Camille and Lisa are in that Will and Camille learn that Lisa was there.

The instructor of the class wanted the students speak about the feelings of what has taken place. A few people say a few words. When it's Lisa turn she begins hypothesizing on what could have happened. Her theory is so on point, only someone who was there could imagine such a possibility. Will and Camille feel they might be in trouble. After class Will pulls Lisa aside and asks her how much does she want for the pictures. She claims she doesn’t want any money and tells Will that he can’t buy himself out of everything and walks away. Camille tells Will that she can get Lisa to change her mind and she does for Lisa shows up at Will’s house and is asking for $4 million to be transferred to an account and that’s when everything goes down hill and fast.

I’m not going to give away the rest of the movie for I really hope this was enough for everyone to want to see it if you haven’t done so already. There are plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing and the end..well the ending you will never see coming. I don’t mean the final ending, right before the credits, but the part where everything comes to a head.

LIFETIME TV MOVIES AREN'T THE BEST..UNTIL NOW

LifetimeTV does get a lot of flack for it’s movies, mainly for two things: bad acting and plot holes, and I agree at times. But I still find the movies enjoyable and I look forward to them every Saturday night and the days in between. However, LifetimeTV can put out really good ones, and as I said earlier, this one was really good. Not only did it have a good story line, nice twists, but it also had good actors and actresses.

It has been asked if this movie was based on real events and the answer is no. I can see why the question would be asked because it did play like a “based on a true story” type of movie due to the plot being so realistic.

Written by John Doolan and Directed by Colin Theys. Both Doolan and Theys worked together on Remains, Remains: Road to Reno, Dead Souls, and Banshee!!!
Download the soundtrack and movie from iTunes. Music by Matthew Llewellyn. Make sure to check out the song Deadly Romance below: