video review : Mommie Dearest

video review : Mommie Dearest

I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling Joan Crawford might be mentally unstable. Perhaps it’s the way she reacts when she realizes her daughter’s dress is hanging on a, gasp, wire hanger. It’s one of the movie’s many examples of overacting but also its most iconic, and most hilarious, moment. All of Mommie Dearest’s best scenes, in fact, are ones in which she’s abusing her daughter.

To be fair, the plot is based on a book, a memoir, written by Crawford’s real-life adopted daughter, so we’re only getting one side of the story. When it comes to allegations of mistreatment, especially among dysfunctional families, the truth is often overdramatized for the sake of one’s own virtue. Her take is interesting though, even if barely enough to have been made into a Hollywood movie.

my rating : 3 of 5

1981

video review : When A Stranger Calls

video review : When A Stranger Calls

For the first twenty minutes, When A Stranger Calls a babysitter named Jill and threatens to cover himself in her blood, it seems this is going to be a decent horror flick. What it suddenly turns into, after a seven-year time leap, is a half-ass crime thriller involving a different woman. Jill eventually comes back into the picture as an adult with kids of her own, but by then it’s way too late to save this mess of a movie.

my rating : 1 of 5

1979