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Reviews
Terror in the Mall (1998)
Film sinks.
First of all, the new mall from the very beginning, looks very fake. It continues to go downhill from there.
I also want to add that it's not hard to find out the identity of the killer. We see the killer's eyes way before the killer is officially revealed.
The characters are very flat and everyone overplays their part. Rob Estes is fun to.watch as the psycho but he can be very hammy anytime he plays a villian.
It's not a bad concept but the special effects were horrid, the characters as written were very flat, and the acting was too over the top across the board. I did enjoy the banter between the killer and the heroine but that was it.
Best Friends (2005)
Incredibly plot driven even for Lifetime
Best friends? Hardly.
Claudia is the worst kind of best friend you can have. She's jealous of Beth from the very beginning. Yet she goes from a supportive yet jealous friend to drugging her, drugging her husband, stealing her identity, using her cards for online gambling, trying to turn her family against her, ruin her life, and ultimately kill her. Yet we don't see any resentment from Claudia until after she kills her husband. Then she instantly goes into stalker mode. There should have been more build up.
Megan Gallagher is OK but she's too wooden and it's hard to feel for her character. Claudette Mink is fun to watch, but she is way too vapid and vacuous to be convincing as the psycho. Barclay Hope is a decent actor but he's also too cold and hard.
Megan Gallagher and Claudette Mink have some, but not a lot, of chemistry as "best friends". It's probably the one redeeming quality in this movie. The concept isn't bad, although it's been done many times and the execution was an epic fail.
4/10.
Close to Danger (1997)
Close to (but not quite) a good quality movie.
Just your average tv movie about a woman who falls in love with a man with obvious red flags. Not the least of which are the pictures of Ted Bundy and Charles Manson in his house....
Rob Estes is fun to watch in this role, but he overacts and twitches like he's having a seizure. Meanwhile, Lisa Rinna and everyone else are napping. It was good to see Melissa McBride (you know her from the "Walking Dead") but she was wooden and completely boring in her thankless role in this film.
The detectives who provided her wire and instructed her in compromising the piece's villain looked (and acted) like they couldn't protect her from a girl scout selling cookies, much less a deranged homicidal maniac.
It's not a bad concept and some of the scenes are nicely photographed for a tv film from 1997. Most movies just like this would get a 4 or 5, if that. I'll give this a 6 because the lead actors have better chemistry than most. Rob Estes and Lisa Rinna aren't great actors but they do work well together. I can tell that they enjoyed working together, which is the one thing that made this lifetime movie more watchable than many of the others.
6/10.
A Promise to Keep (1990)
Promise kept.
This movie was based on Kurt Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane. It was inspired by the memoir of Jane - "Angels Without Wings: A Courageous Family's Triumph Over Tragedy". Four orphaned nephews befall a working couple who can barely take care of their own three children.
Dana Delany and William Russ are both very good here. The kids are OK. Some of the scenes are also nicely photographed and the beach is very nice. Unfortunately, the movie drags towards the end.