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Her Hidden Truth (1995 TV Movie)
Ultimate Lifetime Movie!
6 April 2007
I'm not sure how to rate this -- on the one hand, it has some of the dumbest writing and one of the most obvious "mysteries" I have seen (I knew who the killer was before he was even introduced!) On the other hand, this is almost like a complete study of the formulas for Lifetime Movies -- if it only had a rape and some drug abuse worked in, it would have had everything.

The story is that Billie Calhoun, at age 10, was framed for the murder of her single mother and baby sister, and has spent the last 8 years in juvie. She is set to be released early for good behavior, but a cackling, gleefully evil psychiatrist who obviously has some kind of ulterior motive (which is only barely explained later) advises that Billie be kept longer. The prison guards all just *know* Billie is innocent, and they arrange to let her escape so she can discover the truth of what happened. Billie's legal guardian is a local priest (who obviously is played by a man who had auditioned for the handsome-young-cop-role, since the fellow would have had to have been around 13 years old when Billie was 10) and he knows the truth about who killed Billie's mother and sister, but he never mentioned it to her before this time, and when he intends to tell her, he is suddenly murdered. Billie is the one to discover the body and of course she proceeds to touch everything in sight with her bare hands including the murder weapon before she flees, making it seem as if she had been the killer. Soon the cops are hot on her tail, but Billie manages to find a sympathetic handsome-young-cop and he starts up a completely inappropriate romantic relationship with her that is so creepy I started wondering if it should have been counted as a rape. (The girl is completely at his mercy -- she's an escaped convict that he is hiding in his house, and he's a cop. What's she going to do, reject his advances?) Without giving away too much of the ending, Billie and the Cop set out to find the EVIL HEARTLESS MEN who caused all this. Oh, and somehow Billie knows how to drive even though she's spent all her life in juvie.

Dumb writing, but if you're like me and don't exactly watch Lifetime Movies because you expect them to be good, then this is definitely one to see!
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3/10
Cinema for masochists and possibly Swedes.
11 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Fearing he is being stalked, a film star not so slowly becomes his own worst nightmare and no one seems to care. With no stakes at hand, -- until the only-slightly tense last ten minutes -- no character provides opposition, no character is challenged. This vital conflict seems to be left to the unfortunate viewer who must fight to stay seated. Giovanni Ribisi and a host of other very talented actors try desperately to drag the broken pieces of this pathetic story into view. When it is not necessary for Ribisi to dramatize his unhappy character's descent into madness, his face continues to read, "Someone, please, get me out of this picture!" There are far too many characters and, worse, the characters sometimes exchange roles, to illustrate the film star's confusion and significantly add to the viewer's. The director's ambitious intent seems to be to create an extended Twilight Zone episode, dark, twisted, moral, and full of cheap effects. It never quite works, though there are a few, small moments of disconnected pleasure drawn from the incomparable Ribisi's pained performance and bits of his numerous but admirable supporting players' equally extraordinary commitment. I Love Your Work might go over well in Sweden, where audience distress is sometimes considered evidence of art.
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