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janicemanson
Reviews
Secrets and Lies (2015)
The secret and the lie
The lie is that this is an excellent series and the secret is that it's horrible. I suffered through all 10 episodes. I'm a fan of Juliette Lewis, but not in this series. Her performance was very dry and monotone. The twists and turns are not very compelling. Things that are supposed to be shocking plot twists are just meh. Just when you think it's ramping up to something good or exciting, it falls flat on its face again. The end is made to be a shocking revelation, but it's just not. By the time you get to the real killer, you're so bored that you just don't care who did it, and then the real killer gets away with it so you don't even get the satisfaction of "getting the bad guy." Aside from that, my big takeaway from this was to never give your neighbors a copy of your house key. *SPOILER ALERT** The amount of neighbors going into and out of Jess' house while she is sleeping or gone is just not believable. We are supposed to believe that all these people are just comfortable going into someone else's house and reading their kid a bedtime story and leaving tooth fairy money, removing the child from his bed and taking him into the woods in the outing rain, or waiting for her to leave and rifling through her stuff, or yet another time planting evidence to frame her... I mean I can give a pass here or there on some unbelievable things if a movie or a series is good enough, but in this case, it's not good enough to earn the pass and it needs too many of them to make the storyline work. It's just not plausible in any realm of possibility. Just like how Ben, more than once, goes sifting through people's stuff in their house while they are home. Like, in what works would that actually happen once let alone over and over, and especially in the case with the doctor, he's searching through his stuff looking for some kind of "trophy" from his supposed child victims. I mean, c'mon! He doesn't even know specifically what he's looking for (jewelry, a lock of hair, etc) or where to find it, because even if the doctor were a predator and even if he did keep souvenirs, they would be hidden away somewhere much safer than any old neighbor could just walk in and find it. It's just so unbelievable it's almost laughable. It's ten episodes of unbelievable scenario after unbelievable scenario all played out through flat performances.
Peacock (2010)
Worst movie I've seen in a while
First of all, there is no mystery to uncover seeing as how the whole mystery is the fact that he suffers from split personality disorder and spends half his time dressed as a woman, and that is revealed instantly at the start of the movie. Movie would have been better if the audience had to figure out on their own that Emma and John were one in the same. But because of the description of the movie, the audience is thinking there is some big mystery, and since we know from the get-go that John and Emma are the same person, we then assume there is some other mystery to be revealed. There isn't. This painfully slow-talking, whispering, and total bore of a movie drags on for an hour and a half, but it feels like a 9-hour movie. Think Norman Bates but extremely functional and impossibly boring. They could've fooled the audience by calling Emma Jon's sister, and doing some tricky makeup and this movie would have been so much better letting the audience discover it for themselves.
Murder on the Cape (2017)
HORRIBLE. ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, AND NOT IN A FUN WAY.
I actually enjoy made-for-TV movies. The cheesier the better. But THIS is just terrible. The acting is bad, the makeup is BAD, the actresses have bad skin, the wardrobe is bad, lighting is bad, camera angles and videography is BAD, the script is HORRIBLE. The most seasoned actor couldn't make this movie good because the writing is ALL OVER the place. Loose ends everywhere. They showed no emotional struggle when he cheated on his wife. Would've been more interesting to see the inner struggle and the turmoil that took place before he crossed that line and cheated. When you read the description, it says he became the "prime suspect" in her murder, but that isn't shown at all in the movie so why it's part of the description is beyond me. The movie should've focused on the struggle leading up to his cheating, her getting pregnant and him trying to hide it, and then the murder taking place and the investigation focusing on him. It was a short movie, but it felt like I was watching it for four hours. It was horrible. Watch it only because you want to see what everyone is squaking about, but please make sure you have ZERO expectations otherwise you'll be disappointed. The only thing you should expect is to be totally confused.
American Fable (2016)
A moral lesson on greed
An 11-year-old girl named Gitty enjoys the 1980's farm life while living with her pregnant mother, Sarah; evil brother, Martin; and doting father, Abe. A young Gitty discovers a businessman named Jonathan hidden in an abandoned grain silo located on the vast property that is her family's farm. Gitty befriends Jonathan and begins bringing him food and literature at his request with a promise that when he escapes the silo, he would give her anything she wanted. Gitty asks Jonathan to tell her a story, and he tells her the story of the lion and the mouse. Later on, Gitty asks her father if he has heard the story of the lion and the mouse. Abe says he knows the story, but then he ends up reciting the story to her with an incorrect, sinister ending. Abe's version of the story has the mouse setting the lion free, but then the lion harming the mouse anyway after it is set free. I thought this was a foreshadow to the man in the silo being set free by Gitty in the future and then harming Gitty anyway.
We learn that Abe was about to lose the family farm and has made some sort of plan with an evil woman named Vera. Abe has agreed to hold the man for ransom, but when evil Martin finds out that Gitty has been speaking to the man in the silo, the game now changes because the man may later be able to identify them with the police. The family panics at the thought of going to prison, so they decide Jonathan must be killed so they will not get caught. Just then, Gitty's mom goes into labor and she and Abe leave for the hospital. Gitty sees her chance to save her friend from a horrible fate. She calls the town's bumbling sheriff, but the sheriff ends up being no help at all and ends up being shot by Martin. A chase ensues, and the Martin now threatens to kill Gitty but ends up falling into a shallow, dried-up well during his pursuit of his sister. Jonathan finally breaks free, only to find Abe has come home from the hospital to kill him. Gitty jumps in front of Jonathan, and an injured Jonathan scampers away.
Later, we see a still 11-year-old Gitty fending for herself and eating roadkill to survive, as I assume, her parents are now in prison. As she is preparing her roadkill meat for consumption, we see a fancy car pull up and a clean, and well-suited Jonathan step out. Then the movie ends.
Because of Abe's incorrect recital of the Lion and the Mouse, I am left wondering whether Jonathan was there to harm her or if he was there to grant her the wishes he promised to fulfill when he was still captive in the silo. I am not sure if this was supposed to be a cliffhanger, or if the ending was accidentally unclear.
All in all, it was a very slow and gentle "thriller." I liked it, but I just with the ending had been more clear.