Dina Van Cleve decided that the best solution to giving her boyfriend blue balls was to send him a video of her nude. Low and behold the video was sent to every one in the school. Dina is summarily and viciously slut shamed. It’s relentless. Within the first 5 minutes of the movie, Dina has hung herself. The rest of the movie revolves around her mom trying to find out the why and who of it all.

This is where it gets all “Lifetimey” with an escalation of violence and intimidation. They did my favorite, the broken window. They also pulled a page out of my book and had the boyfriend arrested on distribution of child pornography. Seems like our perpetrator is some blonde named Skyler. She’s is hellbent on slut shaming Dina, even after death. Yes they defaced the tombstone with condoms, pills, and graffiti. The school gets all pissy at Mom because she’s daring to find out who bullied her daughter into suicide.

The acting in this is tremendously bad, mostly from the actress. I would say, it’s Canadian without checking IMDB.com. The writing is full of these weak monologues, and has the requisite mentions of facebook and the term “viral”. Her one friend seems to have Asperger’s and reads the books of Skyrim. It’s ridiculous that the whole school turned on her. Skyler is being righteous here by not letting it die due to jealousy. Teenagers are mean, but they can also be righteous. So what I am saying is that some bitches should have gotten beat down.

What I found shocking about this movie is that it is 2 hours long with commercials. Unless aliens invade, there’s no reason this should be longer then an hour. I think there might actually be more commercials then movie here. I’d say that this movie is not awesomely bad enough to watch. I don’t even think I can get through it all. There’s sure to be an arrest or something, or some big speech at the end. Blah. This needs to be resolved with gun violence.

Oh wait, I just read spoilers. Claire was the one that sent the texts around, the Asperger’s friend. Skyler’s mom is behind the continued harassment. Also, LOL at leaving the magazine cut outs for the threat note. Maybe I’ll watch the rest of this.

The most ridiculously awesome part of the movie is when he buys supplies. He actually asks the dood at the home depot if  ”these are the disposable phones that are untraceable”. Then he takes a trip down the serial killer aisle, buying duct tape and plastic ties. He buys a gun with a fake id and then acts all psycho in the store. Anyone who’s been alive would have at least made a joke about him keeping prisoners in the basement.

The movie kind of ruined the most salacious parts of the story. We got more time with his fiancée dress shopping then we did with his killing. He apparently had 16 pairs of panties under his bed with his gun. He took a picture of his junk. We never saw the real dirtiness that went with this. Apparently he was into transsexuals and other shit. We never saw that or his enjoyment of his fetish. It was like J.Crew produced the most sanitized adaptation of a killer’s story they could.  Even at the end when he committed suicide in his cell, it was like an episode of Dawson’s Creek. Why were they trying to make it about a tragic romance? Save that for the CW. I wonder what Abercrombie and Fitch would do with the same material.

Our one star was William Baldwin. It’s been a long fall since Sliver for him. One thing he’s got going on is that his Boston accent is as good as his brother Alec’s.  This movie is a total pass. The movie failed to do the story justice. Word is that Michele McPhee was a consultant. I guess her input was to make a story about a sick fuck into a “Forever Young” style movie.

What a meandering movie. This movie is all over the place with the story. Frannie is a ne’er do well made to feel shameful of her weight. Her sister Shelly is a genius who develops hardcore anorexia and kills herself. Mom is a bitch with a bitch haircut who can’t stop being a bitch for 2 seconds. I thought this movie was going to be about girls driven to anorexia by their insane mom. It’s not.

The girls are grown women who are already fucked up. The damage is done. One sister takes her life because she has fallen apart mentally. The other seems pretty bright, but is haunted by her mom’s barbs about her weight. The Dad is a sad, uninvolved sack.

At some point in a movie, there has to be a reason to keep watching, even if its to see if something cool will ever happen. This movie has no incentive. Nothing awesome happens, it’s just kind of actors acting scenes. Events occur, but so what. Why do I care? I don’t. The whole time I watched this, I wondered where it was going. So here’s we where end up. The sister is still dead. Frannie gets a job and a boyfriend. Parents are divorced. The end.

Marvelous, none of the themes are truly developed. I wonder who funded this movie and why? Even for a made for TV movie this is terrible. Christina Hendricks really is talented. She has a way of being vulnerable, flirty, and serious that no one else can match. I am glad she’s on Mad Men where she can do all those things at once. It’s better then this drek. Hunger Point is certainly the kind of movie actors do to pay bills.  Next time this director and screen writer make a movie about body issues, how about making that the central theme?K thx.

Movie info: http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/movies/sorority-wars

This movie is currently on Comcast On Demand and viewable online. I won’t waste time with a recap of events. I though this movie kind of buried the lead. Lucy Hale is a stunning brunette with amazing skin. The fact that she could be ostracized and made a pariah by a Sorority is supremely fascinating. It was mostly left untouched. Sure the Delta’s put of flyers saying she had herpes, but most students can see through that. Most guys would be in denial once that got a glimpse of her. Instead they are in denial of her beauty and good nature.

I think I was expecting more, like explosions and assassinations between multiple sororities. Instead the most war we get is a volleyball game, trivia competition, and a dance number. Zzzzzzzz. Where’s the binge drinking and the hair pulling? There was some food poisoning. That’s was neat. Everything else was kind of done in the Karate Kid, or Heathers but with more compelling violence.

Susan Wilson is an unemployed house mom. She discovers her 14 year old daughter talks dirty to middle-age men. One of them tries to pick up her daughter in a park. She prevents the meeting and the guy just walks away. This event causes her to freak out that the internet is allowing pedophiles to seduce young girls.

A trip to the police is fruitless since the laws have not been updated to make this sort of thing illegal. Of course the police has a budding special unit. She teams with them to lure these pedophiles into the open where they can be arrested. Susan decides that her job will now be to talk dirty to old men to make them think they are going to have sex with underage teens.

If you’ve seen “To Catch a Predator”, that’s better. There’s no annoying mom freaking out all day and meddling. It’s just Chris Hanson and whatever local P.D. in the house. I guess this movie was made because it’s one screwball housewife versus the internet.  The busts are not awesome. They show up and get arrested after a tense moment.  We don’t even get to hear or read the stuff they talk about.

This movie is a rare strike-out for a former member of the Designing Women cast.

A Princeton undergrad goes home to visit his family in NY. He finds his family shot and his dad on the lam. After the funeral, his dad’s secretary tips him off to shady dealings. He grabs a box of files from her place and goes to South Carolina.

Tori Spelling plays a “lap dancer” that is paid by the Colombian drug lord that hired preppy’s dad to launder money.  She gets close to Preppy so she can find dad, in South Carolina. Everyone is searching for Dad because he’s faked his own death and obviously running with millions of drug bucks.

The silliest part of this movie is that Richard Belzer is playing a Colombian drug lord. He has the worst accent ever and it’s hilarious. The worst part of this, is that the plot is so predictable. Tori falls for her mark. The son finds the dad. The bad guy is shot and arrested. Happy endings all around, except for the double murder. Snore. Nothing insanely awesome. It’s a by the numbers “thriller” without the frills, and a Jew playing a Columbian. Tori’s outfits are 90s’ awesome though. I guess that’s something.

Starring: Marcia Gay Harden, Matthew Modine, Mena Suvari

This movie is based on the true story of the death of Teddy Binion. He is the son of Benny Binion of Binion’s Horseshoe. In the first scene Teddy finds his girlfriend, Susan Murphy, on the stage at a strip club. He likes her and eventually she gives in to his charms. 3 years later he’s a junkie with a gun. He’s lost his gaming license due to his drug use and ties to the mob. Teddy Binion is found dead in his house, seeming dead from a heroin/ xanax overdose.

The movie reveals some of the crazy details of this death. Susan has an affair with the contractor Teddy hired to build his secret desert silver vault. His sister, Becky, is at odds with Teddy. However she HATES!!! Susan.  After Teddy’s death Mike, (the contractor) makes a play to get Teddy’s buried silver.

Eventually Susan and Mike are charged, then convicted of theft and first degree murder. However, new facts and a new lawyer bring upon a re-trial. It turns out Becky paid off witnesses to say that Susan and Mike talked about Teddy’s death. While it doesn’t look like murder, it certainly doesn’t look like the two were eager to save his life.

Matthew Modine has a lot of fun playing the maniac cowboy that is Teddy Binion. He’s hootin’ and hollarin’. He’s crazy paranoid and pours on the drawl. Mena Suvari still looks like she’s 17 but was still cast to play the stripper turned murder suspect. She’s way too sophisticated and eastern European looking to pull it off.

I think the Dateline NBC special would be more compelling to watch. The facts of the case are quite insane. No one involved is a saint. However I really like seeing Matthew Modine in movies. He used to be a big big star, especially after Full Metal Jacket. This is the kind of story that Martin Scorscese should have adapted into a film, not a guy who spent most of his career directing an occasional TV episode. I like the story and the performances, but this needs to be as engrossing as Scarface and Goodfellas. In other words, I hope a major studio develops this into a real movie.

Starring, no one famous

Mickey is a victim of circumstance and rape. She’s a champion track star, but her father/coach died after a heartattack. Her mother wisely moves her to a school district with the best track team in the state. Unfortunately the coach, while the best, also likes to rape his stars.

Mickey first gets the extra special treatment from the coach. The coach is all business, all the time. All he cares about are results. Mickey goes on this nightmarish training regimen. Her grades are slipping, and she begins to juggle her studies and her training.

Out of the blue, the coach decides to sneak in on Mickey when she’s taking a shower. Then in another scene he rapes her. It’s not unintentionally funny. It’s a brutal and sick assault. Mickey’s life then goes straight to hell. She skips practice and class. Her mom and her friends don’t know what’s going on. They also can’t seem to tell that she’s shell shocked.

Only after her math grade drops to a point where she’s forced off the team, does she come forward. It then becomes a challenge for Mickey and her mom to prove an assault happened. No one on the team believes her. There’s no physical evidence since she didn’t report till weeks after. Eventually they get a former student/ current track star to come forward. They also use trickery to get him to confess to the rape on tape.

I am really glad that this wasn’t goofy. It’s worth showing to teens because dealing with a rape and then seeking justice has got to be brutal.

Starring Kelly Lynch (The doctor from Roadhouse)

I love when these movies address an issue. Justin is a swimming star at high school. It’s a shame he loves internet porn. He stays up all night watching it. To make sure he doesn’t fall asleep, his desk draw is filled with energy drinks.  Things are going well until one day his mom catches him. Then she gets freaked out while dad’s like “What do you expect? He’s a teenage boy.”

Things go from “Who fucking cares?” to “Now there’s a problem!” when his younger brother starts burning CDs of all the porn and giving them out to his friends. His performance as a top swimmer goes to shit. His smoking hot girlfriend won’t fuck him because of her Christian beliefs. To top it all off, he never jerks off once in the movie. Now that’s bizarre!

After that, the internet at home gets cut off. He gets caught looking at porn at school. He uses his mom’s credit card to buy porn, but gets busted. He runs out of places to go to feed his addiction. He can’t use his girlfriend’s PDA (lol) or his friend’s PC. They are done with him and his addiction.

Early on, someone gives him a link to one of the senior’s webpage where she does cam shows. He obsesses over her page. She meets him at a party and wants the peen. When he finally gets his chance, he bails. What he didn’t count on was her being a psycho. She bangs her head against her own table to bust herself open. She then leads his friends to believe that he was responsible. The movie begins and ends with him jumping in the HS pool (must have the key) to drown himself.

This movie is wacky for sure. In 2009 there are You Tube sites for porn. He’d never have to pay a dime. In 2005 he’s stuck looking at welcome screens for his fix. He goes to a party where his HS age friends are drinking beer and looking at porn. The Dad of one of those friends is there, blissfully unaware of all the beer bottles and porn.

What I find the most shocking is that the kid doesn’t masturbate ever. He drinks energy drinks to stay up all hours of the night to watch porn, just to watch it. It’s like he doesn’t know that the whole point is to watch it until you have to beat off. At 16, that’s something he should have picked up on.

The mom acts like this is a cocaine addiction. She gets all freaked out that her son is straight, curious, and doing something about it. While porn is illegal for a 16 year old, it’s understood that a lot of boys will actively seek and get their hands on it. The worst thing a lot of them do will be to either jerk off or have unprotected sex.

In essence, this movie is the story of a young man discovering he’s a voyeur. He’d rather watch then participate. There is a scene where he tries to get it on with insanely attractive GF (Lyndsy Fonseca at age 18) but I don’t buy it.  The fact that he’s trying to induce insomnia to watch porn is strong proof of his commitment to his fetish. He didn’t start stealing or sneaking around until his mom cut off his free supply. That suggests his need is pathological. I wish this movie explored that a little bit more. Instead it clumsily lead this character to awkwardly deny the fulfillment of his fantasy of losing his virginity, getting beat up in an alley, and then drowning himself. We don’t see him go to support groups, or work some program like in other addiction movies. He just kind of ends up in that pool after getting his ass kicked.

It’s worth a watch to yell at the TV for all the things the main character does that don’t make sense.

Starring Tori Spelling

This is another one of those NBC movies of the week, except I didn’t watch this one when it aired. Boy, that was a mistake. This one is a fucking riot. The movie starts off with our psycho bludgeoning a girl to death after she kicks him out for being an obsessive psychopath. 2 years later he’s Laurel Lewiston’s BF. He’s taken on the identity of some other dood so he can get close to her. The usual shit happens. He becomes super obessive and jealous. She thinks it’s love at first but realizes the guy is a maniac. After a showdown she gets away and gets on with her life.

What makes this movie good is the fact that psycho bf is like Jason from Friday the 13. He’s an unstoppable force.Laurel thinks she’s gotten away, he’s already in front of her. He takes out people running around, and then stops like 5 feet away from them. They do nothing. Laurel makes a getaway on  a boat , puts a lot of distance between herself and the dock, he’s there in a flash tipping the boat over. This guy is very motivated to keep his obsession target in that log cabin!!!

There are two great scenes in the movie. The second greatest is when the mother catches up with them after he’s kidnapped Laurel and taken her, of all places, to mom’s cabin. She finds him. He flashsteps and punches her square on the face, knocking her downhill into a tree. I was howling at how over the top that was.

The best one is when he goes to take care of a little unfinished business. He runs into to the guy whose identy he stole, played by Lochlyn Munro (the 30 year old QB from Stand Against Fear). That whole scene is gold. Psycho BF stalks him to the motel where he is staying. Then Lochlyn’s character starts bossing him around after 30 seconds. “Bring the rest of my bags into the room”. Then he starts undressing in front of him while the door to the room is still open. Instead of being like “Let’s catch up, he demands that psycho BF fetch his shampoo.” What an ass!!! Seriously? You haven’t seen this guy in 2 years? You are both 20 and allegedly straight? You are going to invite a dood into your room, not even bother to close the room door, and be like “Today!” when you don’t get your shampoo fast enough? Naturally he’s bludgeoned to death, and buried at some lake. I think that’s what any of us would to do a pompous ass who behaved like that. Good riddance cocksucker.

This movie is super over the top. There is nothing subtle about how obsessive the BF is. I had forgotten what a buttaface Tori Spelling used to be when she was young. The ironic thing is that Laurel never asks for her mom’s permission to sleep with the guy. She just fucks him and then ends up in a pinch when she’s stuck at the log cabin eating salad and drugged wine. Fun for the whole family.