cpoet Reviews

Shadow Island Mysteries: The Last Christmas (2010) Season 1, Episode 2

Unintentionally Hi-LAR-ious

[3/10 · 20 February 2013]

If you're in the right frame of mind, this movie can be quite enjoyable.

Obviously made for television with commercial breaks, it's funny when the music soars and the scene fades out at regular "peak" moments, only to resume two seconds later with everyone frozen in position. "Action!"

The characters are classic: the clever good girl, the tramp, the manipulative patriarch (in an ascot, no less,) the tipsy aunt, the mysterious foreigner, the taciturn hardbody with a past.

From the very beginning, you anticipate an Agatha Christie knockoff where the characters will perish one after another, but this is only "Ten Little Indians" if one of those snowbound characters had been adept at CPR and Heimlich and the victims simply required a Tylenol.

Finally, test your screen writing skills by trying to say the next line before the characters. You are correct, Sir!

This movie is fun, if you're in the proper mood. Consider a double bill with Charles Bronson in "White Buffalo."

Shout (1991)

"Skip it"? Are you kidding?!?

[8/10 · 8 January 2007]

Here's a chance to see some smooth moves out of John Travolta, dancing with the lovely Linda Fiorentino. There's a great soundtrack that's apparently impossible to find at less than sky-high prices. There's an impressive early performance by Glenn Quinn, who died too young, and a look at Heather Graham and Gwyneth Paltrow when they were still fresh-faced ingénues. The setting is a little bit "Last Picture Show" meets "Cider House Rules" and there's an interesting surface skim of race and class structure in the '50's. The story line could have been meatier, but having spent two hours today with "Ultraviolet," I was grateful enough for the linear progression.

The Third Miracle (1999)

Here's the third one

[8/10 · 12 July 2005]

They told you the third miracle at the end when she says "You're a priest" and he says "And you're a mother" and the little girl (who's the saint) smiles and trots off.

Through the whole movie, Anne Heche was damaged and bitter about her mother and Ed Harris was disillusioned and shaky about his vocation, but in the end their doubts were overcome and they were both instruments of God in their respective ways. The miracle is that Ed Harris can be joyful in giving first communion to the children and Anne Heche is going to be a great mother.

The point of the movie is that not all miracles are going to be bombs disappearing in mid-air and deathbed patients getting up and walking down the church aisle--that God answers prayers with quiet miracles all the time.