Based on the novel by one of the world's best-selling authors, the Lifetime Original Movie PATRICIA CORNWELL S THE FRONT is the fast-paced sequel to Patricia Cornwell s At Risk and it reunites Monique Lamont (Andie MacDowell, Sex, Lies and Videotape) and Win Garano (Daniel Sunjata, Rescue Me) to investigate Boston s most famous criminal. Attempting to generate much needed publicity for her flagging political aspirations, Monique orders Win to re-open the investigation of the brutal, decades-old murder of a young blind woman named Janie Brolin. Janie s boyfriend was the main suspect in the original investigation, but Monique has another suspect in mind the Boston Strangler. Win must work closely with a no-nonsense and combative female detective named Stump (Ashley Williams, Good Morning, Miami) to unpeel layer upon layer of the 40-year-old crime. Win and Stump s relationship evolv! es as they uncover the truth about Janie s death and track down a psychopath who is leaving their witnesses and colleagues dead in his wake.This funny and touching story centers on Kate a forty-year-old respectable and successful headmistress in a small English village who gets together with her single friends Molly a doctor and Janie a local police detective every Monday to drink eat chocolate and decide who is the Saddest of the Week. Things start to turn displeasing between the three friends when Kate begins an affair with Jed a sexy 25-year old ex-pupil and is no longer the Saddest of the Week!System Requirements: Running Time 122 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating:Â R UPC:Â 043396079021 Manufacturer No:Â 07902At first
Crush seems to be merely the latest film to portray a clique of boozy, trash-talking women as part of a larger, liberated sisterhood worthy of celebration if not admiration. The lighthearted comedy abruptly detours, however, to ex! pose vicious jealousies with brutal, unexpected consequences. ! A trio o f single women in their 40s, Kate, Janine, and Molly (Andie MacDowell, Imelda Stanton, and Anna Chancellor) engage in a weekly ritual of gin, cigarettes, and joyous male sniping that despite its occasional glimpses of bare insecurity is all good "girl" fun. But when Kate, headmistress at the local school, takes up with a former student (Kenny Doughty) nearly 20 years younger and falls wildly in love, her closest friends, rather than embrace a true departure from social mores, plan instead to sabotage Kate's happiness and bring her to her senses. In one of the most inexplicable twists you're likely to see in a comedy, Janine and Molly's ploy takes an unexpectedly lethal turn, and
Crush goes from amusing, if predictable, to downright nasty, and then back to end on a happy note. The effect is provocative, though perhaps unintended.
--Fionn Meade OBJECT BEAUTY - DVD MovieThe director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has a name that sounds British despite the fact that he is a ! New Yorker by birth. Maybe that association derives from the fact that he's primarily helmed television films--segments of
Brideshead Revisited, for example, as well as a pile of music videos for English bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones. One of his few ventures into feature filmmaking (another was the little-seen
Frankie Starlight) is the 1990 film
The Object of Beauty, which also looks, sounds, and feels British in sensibility. The film is set in a tony London hotel, the weather is England-dreary, and the clothes (when the actors are wearing them) are tweedish and woolly in appearance. And the story is essentially repressed and internal save for the brash American performances of John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell, who play a couple living way above their limited financial means. When Jake (Malkovich) bottoms out in a business deal, he urges Tina (MacDowell) to sell her little Henry Moore sculpture, an object of great beauty. Such beauty, in f! act, that a young mute hotel maid decides to steal it for her ! own. The actress Rudi Davies, who plays the maid, steals more than the Moore, however. She sneaks the film out from under Malkovich and MacDowell, who was just coming off of her
sex, lies, and videotape acclaim, and who is quite good here as well.
The Object of Beauty is too subtle in its message--Jake and Tina lose their last monetary chance and in penury begin to discover who they are as people--to let us care about such a pouty pair, and the "hilarious mix-ups and mayhem" that the film promises are, in actuality, tame and trite.
--Paula Nechak Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore and Mary Stuart Masterson star in the wild Western story of four fallen women on the run. Branded as outlaws, pursued by a posse and tracked by Pinkerton detectives, the four must ride together to stay alive. But when they're double crossed by a gang of ruthless desperados, the women decide it's time to stop running, and start fighting! BAD GIRLS is a rough-riding, str! aight-shooting, fun-filled adventure that writes a whole new chapter in the lore of the Western hero!Viewers of this Hollywood-processed movie should prepare to suspend disbelief: the four prostitutes turned outlaws will have flimsy excuses for being adept in gun slinging, stunt riding, and world knowledge. But this Western trips over a poor script of laughable plot points (secret plans are left out for wandering eyes, loot is taken without resistance) and a story that sticks forever in second gear. Never better or worse than
Young Guns, with these intelligent actresses only part of the scenery. Drew Barrymore comes off the best, along with James LeGros as a meek rancher.
--Doug Thomas
