Western Movie Review: The Over the Hill Gang (1969)

The Over the Hill Gang: TV Movie:  This was originally a TV movie and I have watched it on the Western Movie Channel.    In this movie we have an ex captain of the Texas Ranger whose son-in-law is being bullied in his attempt to unseat the mayor.  The mayor has the sheriff and judge under his thumb.  The son-in-law is a newspaper man and would like to expose the mayor, but the law forces him out of this.  The Captain calls some of his old Ranger’s to help.  They are all old men, and at first they don’t succeed.  However, they take up the strategy of divide and conquer.  The influence the officials to get away or to kill each other.  However, the mayor has already hired replacements who appear even more ruthless.  Walter Brennan, Edgar Buchanan, Pat O'Brien and Chill Wills star as the Texas Rangers. 

Netflix Movie: ***Bird In a Cage (2018)

*** Bird in a Cage  (2018 Netflix)  There is something out there that if you see it you will be compelled to commit suicide.  Your only hope is to make sure you don’t see whatever it is.  So you use cover all the windows, and beyond that you always wear a blindfold.  However, when other persons show up whose mission it is to make you see whatever it might be, then it is just a matter of time until everyone will be dead.  However there is some hope, a place you have contacted over the CB band radio.  However the journey is perilous.  A couple who did not make it, Tom (Trevante Rhodes) who for a time had made a partnership with Malorie (Sandra Bullock).  They have two children, one Malorie’s and the other of a friend who did not make it.  Douglas (John Malkovich) was the most wary of strangers.  But even he did not make it.  Tom dies as they are leaving, making it possible for Malorie to get to the river and into a boat, which they must navigate blind folded.  All goes well, until they were almost dumped by the current, but their food supply went overboard.  The must go to land to find supplies, and this is really tense.  Not only is there hazards, but the entity seems to know your friends and tries to call you and confuse you.    The thing is never just seen, just leaves that blow in the air, and the birds in a box that get really excited when the thing is close.  Never is a monster worse than the one you never see.  Great fun but too much swearing and violence.  Sheri and I watched this by ourselves when everyone was gone as we didn’t want everyone to see.  I love Sandra Bullock in just about any roll.

Movie Review: ***A Memory iIn My Heart (1999)

A Memory in My Heart (1999)  This is Jane Seymour in a made for T.V. movie.  Seymour portrays a woman with amnesia.  She has since remarried and decided to forget the past; until she runs into someone who knew her from the past, and even has a photo of she and her children.  She is able to travel to her hometown and reunite with her children.  However the story from her ex-husband is that she ran away and abandoned the children eight years earlier.  The children have been told that she died.  Could this be the real story?  Her current husband does not believe she would ever abandon her children.  However without her own memories what is she to do.  It just happens that scenes keep triggering flash back to her memories; and she isn’t the only witness to what took place.  Reportedly this movie is based on true events.

Movie Review: Facing the Giants

Alex Kendrick and Shannen Fields star as Grant and Brooke Taylor, a couple struggling to have a baby.  Alex is also struggling as a high school football coach.  The team loses their first three games, and aren't together.  It isn't until Grant turns his life over to the Lord, that he starts to have the inspirations needed to get his team to play together, and they come back a completely different team, and with new attitude.  They don't loss after this, except a game in the state finals, but that team is declared ineligible for using players who were too old.  The finally face The Giants in the state title game, and team with three times more players, who are stronger and faster.  And so they face impossible odds, but with God all things are possible.  Kendrick also helped write the screen play.

This movie deals with the theme of infertility.  This story has a fairy tale ending, but in life it does not always work that way.  God has a design for all of us as his children.  Sometimes that includes mothering and fathering in different ways.

TV Movie Review: The Little Match Girl 1987 Best Quality- Full Movie

This is a made for TV version of the Little Match Girl.  It strays pretty far from the original Hans Christian Anderson story.  In this version Keshia Knight Pullman portrays the Little match girl, who is not only down on her luck, but also portrayed as an angel type character.  She comes to intervene with a family where the father and son are long split as the son married a Catholic girl and they clash politically.  William Daniels portrays the father, who is a realtor magnate and has decided to sell some of his property, resulting in evictions of many tenants.  The police chief (John Rhys-Davis) takes this further, giving people only a week to move out, during the Christmas season.  The people are upset.  The son (Jim Metzler), a reporter,  is arrested on Christmas eve.  When his wife goes to get him from jail, our little match girl is left with their toddler to babysit.  She decides to take him to grandfather's house.  And so starts a series of events, which very likely will backfire.  The angry tenants march on the home of the father, and the situation is tense.  Father refuses to admit anyone.  This includes his son, but when his daughter-in-law is having a baby, maybe finally his heart with soften.

Music review: Freedom Song: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

This music is from the TV movie Freedom Song which is set in the south in the 60s and shows the struggle for Civil Rights by African Americans.  The music is composed and performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock and James Horner.  I generally enjoy Black spirituals, but this music falls short for me as it focuses on the negative and not on the good.  However "This Little Light of Mine" is a favorite form my childhood.  This version is special because of the rhythmic music as part of the song, clapping and thumping and I am not sure how they make the sound but it is cool.  I also enjoy "Oh Freedom" and "This May be the Last Time."  However a few songs are just too angry such as "Born Angry" and "Jonah's Last Day" is just strange.

TV Review: PBS Indie Shorts

I just watched three intriguing short on PBS.  More to come.  I was set to watch a fourth, but it said adult content so I figured it was too mature for me.
I watched "11 Paper Place" which was an animated feature.  It showed the life of paper in the recycle bin.  How the papers decided which became people and which became buildings etc. I don't know.  However if you are in a recycle bin be aware of the recycle man.
"20/Nothing" is a documentary where a man with just one eye talks about how he lost his eye, and how this has effected his life.  He says it makes him unique.
Finally "The Future is Crowd Funded" tells the story of a couple, who were excited about traveling to Mars to be part of the colonization.  However, in the training the male candidate is reject, while the wife is accepted.  What would you do your last few days on earth; how would you respond to leaving a relationship, and all you other family and friends with no prospect of ever coming back.  This movie poses some very interesting questions.

Movie Review: Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise (2006)

This is a very intriguing episode.  Police Chief Jesse Stone (Tom Selleck) has two cases going on at the same time, both involving lots of violence.  He is dealing with a domestic violence, and this episode lets us know that domestic violence can turn to death.  Stone is also dealing with a girl found drowned in a lake, and working through the case leads him to a child molester who is an author; and from the child molester to the murderers, who are in fact part of the mob.  It is intriguing how the question of a knot leads to breaking the case.  Plenty of violence in this episode, so if violence is not your thing this is not the movie for you.  I enjoy this series because of the characters--especially Jesse Stone and how he is portrayed by Tom Selleck.  This is again based on the book of the same name by Robert Parker.

Movie Review: **^Scary Godmother: The Revenge of Jimmy (2005)

 http://mmboebillywardle.blogspot.com/2014/10/tv-movie-review-scary-godmother.html
After last years fright Jimmy is determined that Halloween should not take place this year.  He comes up with several different schemes, such as destroying all the pumpkins, or getting rid of all the candy and costumes.  In every case, he is thwarted by his cousin Hannah.  He even tries to destroy the Halloween party, but aain is thwarted, and in the end wins the award for the best costume as he scared the Bug-A-Boo.  This show has the feel of the Magic School Bus, but other than that is very good. 
The voice talents include Tabitha St. Germain as Scary Godmother, Gary Chalk as Harry the Werewolf, Alexander Ludwig as Jimmy and Britt McKillip as his cousin Hannah.
I must admit, the characters are growing on me.

TV Movie Review: **Scary Godmother Halloween Spooktacular (2003)

I was going to write a review of how this movie was not any good; however the ending did make up for some of it.  I  had a bit of a hard tie with the kids and their characters.  They seemed a bit much.  Then add the monster party, and it all seemed just noise.  However, the monsters did grow on me.  And the ending was really pretty cute.  The point of the movie is older cousin and his friends scare their younger cousin by sending her into a haunted house.  She find the Scary Godmother, who taks her to the monster party.  When they realize they trick that has been pulled on her, they decide to get even with the older kids.  She thought her flashlight would keep monsters away.  This is just something her father had told her.  However, the flashlight is party of the revenge scene and is rather well done.
for the sequel
http://mmboebillywardle.blogspot.com/2014/10/movie-review-scary-godmother-revenge-of.html

Movie Review: ***^Concrete Cowboys (Tom Selleck)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_7vsH1FYw
This is a 1979 made-for-tv movie starring Tom Selleck as Will Eubanks and Jerry Reed as J.D. Reed.  Eubanks and Reed are two down on their luck drifters from Montana, who end up in Nashville after hopping a train.  In Nashville they have a friend, Lonnie (Randy Powell) who says they can stay at his house, provided they pick up a package for him  He is going to be out of town. 
This they do, and then they get sucked into acting as private detectives to find a sister of their customer named Karla (Morgan Fairchild.)  The sister had come to Nashville to make it in music, and although she didn't make it big, she met some stars, most recently Woody Stone (Claude Akins.)  However, in their search, they become the target for attempted murder.  First someone shoots at them, and then their car is blown up.  It gets more and more interesting--and our two drifters are not really detectives.  Can they figure this mess out and get away with their lives?
This movie also affords the opportunity to show a couple Nashville acts.  We see Ray Stevens perform a funny song and also meet Barbara Mandrell and Roy Acuff.
I liked this show.  It had some action and some humor and some mystery.  It also had some country music and artists.  

Movie Review: ***^ All Around the Town (tv movie 2002)

This is a really pretty good made for TV movie.  It is based on a book by Mary Higgins Clark.  It has as its story line the unraveling of a kidnapping.  Laurie (Kim Schraner) was kidnapped when she was four, and then found again when she was six.  The events around her parents dying, when she is a new college student, set in motion her defense mechanisms and a new chain of events.  A side-lite of these events, is a murder she is accused of.  Her defenses include several multiple personalities.  A psychologist (Michael Shanks) is helping her work through her past, in an effort to relief her of the personalities.  Memories of her past has caused her to loss her boyfriend.  Her older sister, Sarah (Andrea Roth) is supportive in helping her achieve closure.  Sarah is also an attorney and takes her sister's case.  Slowly the unravel the past, the murder and the kidnapping.
This book is interesting.  Tony could tell there was something wrong with the lead character.  However in this case, the kidnapping sexual molester was more creepy and more of a pervert. 
This movie was better than most of the tv movie fare.

Movie Review: ***^Treasure Island (1990 tv movie)

This a made for t.v. movie starring Charlton Heston as Long John Silver.  It really showcases Heston's ability.  He gives Long John the  larger-than-life feel he is known for.  There are enough plot changes between this and the Disney Treasure Island that it is worth viewing.  I especially like the use of a blunder gun, sort of a cannon shot gun, used by the captain.  However they are facing the cannon from ship.  In other words, there are some clever fight scenes.  It is well played the dangerous situation Long John and Master Him Hawkins (a young Christian Bale) find themselves in, and it gets worse when the treasure is already gone.   But it is Heston who makes this movie enjoyable and worthy of a view.  

Movie Review: ***^The Quick and the Dead (1987)

This is a Louis L'Amour book made into an HBO movie starring Sam Elliot as Con Vallian.  Elliott portrayed a Westerner who befriended a new migrant family, and took them under his wing in protecting them from a gang of outlaws, because a Ute, he was trying to get revenge with, was part of the gang.  The gang starts out as eight, but their numbers slowly dwindle.
The migrant family includes an ex Union Sargent from the Civil War, his beautiful wife and their son.  This movie is about family, and family loyalty, and finding inner reserves and strengths.  It is also about friendships, and supporting each other when there is need.